The most consequential — and unresolved — item of the night was the Downtown Revitalization Project, which drew a reported 77 public speakers, mostly in support of adding protected bike lanes and wider sidewalks on Main and Broadway (Alternative 1). After more than an hour of public comment and lengthy council debate, a motion to adopt Alternative 1 fell short of a clear majority, and the meeting ran past its self-imposed 10 p.m. cutoff for new business without the council settling on a path forward. Earlier in the night, the council unanimously approved its consent agenda, a federal housing-grant spending plan, and a request to invite Oroville officials to discuss public power options, and gave narrower, split approval to studying legal cannabis cultivation. Several items — including reconsideration of sewer rates, three heritage tree designations, and a deputy public works director appointment — were postponed to the May 5 meeting.
What happened, item by item
Routine items — including a weed-abatement resolution, a property acquisition for the North Esplanade project, and transfer of old redevelopment-agency properties to the city — were approved together in one vote, 7-0.
The city's housing program manager presented the draft plan for spending about $993,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds and $573,000 in HOME funds on affordable housing, homelessness services, and small-business support. A citizen advisory committee volunteer, Kim Dietz, thanked city staff and said, "I fully support the recommendation of the CBDG voluntary ad hoc committee." The council voted 7-0 to hold the hearing and schedule a final public hearing for May 19.
Councilmember Winslow asked to explore Oroville's efforts to build a public power system, saying he wanted the council to "invite some probably Oroville city staff to come forward" to share what they've learned. A PG&E government affairs representative, Brenda Narayan, cautioned that "these takeovers of electric utilities are extraordinarily complex, costly, and long-term undertakings." The council voted 7-0 to invite Oroville staff (not elected officials) to give a future presentation, with timing left to staff's discretion.
Councilmember Hawley asked to discuss expanding legal cannabis cultivation, which is not currently allowed in city limits. Several licensed cannabis retailers spoke against expanding retail licenses, with one, Josh Lewis, arguing "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Councilmember O'Brien raised concerns about cannabis's effects on teens' mental health, saying, "if you've ever talked to a parent with a child with schizophrenia, I think you'd understand my point." A motion to add retail-license expansion to the discussion failed 3-4. The council then passed, 5-2, a narrower motion directing staff to study the feasibility of indoor and outdoor cultivation licensing.
Staff presented three street-redesign alternatives for Main Street and Broadway, largely centered on whether to add protected bike lanes at the cost of one traffic lane. Roughly 77 members of the public spoke, with the majority favoring "Alternative 1" (protected one-way bikeways with wider sidewalks), citing pedestrian safety and downtown revitalization; opponents, including several longtime downtown business owners and a representative from Enloe Health's EMS operations, raised concerns about construction impacts, delivery access, and emergency-vehicle response times. Councilmember Hawley said, "if we don't make community-oriented decisions, I don't want to live here for the rest of my life," while Councilmember O'Brien countered, "I do not want to base my decision on potential grant funds, especially if it is not the best decision." A motion to adopt Alternative 1 was recorded with three "yes" votes (Goldstein, Hawley, Winslow) and three "no" votes (O'Brien, Bennett, Reynolds); Councilmember Van Overbeck's vote was not clearly captured in the recording, so the final outcome isn't clear from the transcript. No substitute motion passed before the meeting reached its scheduled adjournment, and the item ended without a clear resolution.
Votes & roll calls
Present: Goldstein, Hawley, O'Brien, van Overbeek, Winslow, Bennett, Reynolds
Notable moments
- Turnout for the downtown revitalization item was large enough that the city set up an overflow room with audio (and later video) feed, and repeatedly asked standing attendees to move to the adjacent conference room to meet fire-code limits.
- A speaker who introduced herself as Enloe Health's representative said the hospital had concerns about losing a traffic lane on Main and Broadway because of its effect on ambulance response times — information several councilmembers said they were hearing for the first time that night, prompting Vice Mayor Bennett to say, "I had no idea that Enlil Hospital was concerned about two lanes down Main and Broadway. I had no idea."
- One speaker delivered her public comment in the form of a poem in support of "Alternative 4" (no changes to downtown lanes), drawing applause and a mention from the mayor that she'd "win the costume contest tonight."
- During public comment on homelessness, Chico resident Nicole Nava said many residents are "not hearing anything about the plan for when the settlement agreement comes to a conclusion in January," referring to the city's homelessness-related legal settlement.
- A final public hearing on the 2026–2027 Annual Action Plan for federal housing funds is scheduled for May 19, 2026.
- The next regular council meeting is May 5, 2026, where several postponed items are expected to return, including: reconsideration of the sewer rate decision, three heritage tree designations (Bidwell Mansion magnolia, Enloe Mansion elm, and a valley oak at Little Chico Creek Elementary), confirmation of a new Deputy Director of Public Works Operations and Maintenance, a resolution on procedures for property-related charge increases, and Mayor Reynolds's request on mitigating public nuisances.
- The closed-session item on pending litigation was also postponed to May 5.
- Staff indicated they would continue engaging downtown business owners and Enloe Health on construction-impact mitigation and delivery logistics regardless of which downtown alternative is ultimately chosen.
Machine transcript (local Whisper transcription), lightly cleaned — expect imperfections. Timestamps jump to that moment in the official video.
Good evening. Six o'clock, we're going to get started. Out of respect for everybody's time, we're going to get going on time. We're going to call to order our meeting with an invocation from Mary Ann Hawkins, Chaplain. Everyone? Do we have Mary Ann? Oh, there she is. Welcome. Let us pray. God, you are the one that is high and holy, and we give you thanks. You created all things from the smallest microbe to our giant redwoods, and you care deeply about your creation, including the people who breathe the air. And swim in the sea. Lord, we ask with a prophet of old that you give us wisdom. Lord, you promised that you would, and so we ask tonight, above all things, that you give us wisdom. That you give wisdom to this city council as they hear and respond and need to make decisions.
People who genuinely care about our city. Lord, we pray that those of us who are responding or speaking tonight, that you would also give us wisdom. Remember that this is the city we share. And Lord, we thank you that you have brought us together in a time such as this, where we can both look to one another, our neighbors, but that we can also look to you. And so we give this evening to you in praise. Thank you. Amen. Thank you. And please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. Salute and Pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all. We have a roll call. Madam Clerk, can you call our roll please?
Council Member Goldstein? Present. Council Member Hawley? Here. Council Member O'Brien? Here. Council Member van Overbeek? Here. Council Member Winslow? Here. Vice Mayor Bennett? Here. Mayor Reynolds? Here. Speaker card announcement. Anyone wishing to address the council on any matters listed on the agenda should first complete the speaker card found at the back of the chamber. Once completed, turn your cards into the city clerk and speakers are taken in the orders received. Once the first speaker begins, no additional cards will be accepted. Persons demonstrating rude, boisterous behavior, speaking on matters outside of the jurisdiction of the city council, or engaging in otherwise disruptive behavior will be called to order.
If such conduct continues, I may call a recess requesting removal of such persons from the council chambers, adjourn the meeting, or take other appropriate actions as necessary. I would like to note, hold on. We are not going to be hearing item 5.6 consideration of the three heritage tree application. It's not urgent. We have a full room, busy room, and we're going to try to get through as much of this as we can. So if you're here for 5.6, you do not need to stay to talk about trees. We have our Arbor Day proclamation. It has been issued, but it's not going to be read aloud like we normally do just out of respect for time and trying to get through this as quick as we can. But we have done our Arbor Day proclamation.
And our city attorney, Ryan Jones, has a closed session announcement for us. Yes, I do. Thank you, madam. Mayor. The city council did discuss two items. There was a conference of labor negotiators and direction was given to the city's negotiator, as well as a discussion about the city manager recruitment and direction was given to our recruiter from the city council. The item on the conference legal council has been postponed until the following meeting. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Madam Clerk, I saw you looking at me. Did I miss something? Well, first of all, I just wanted to let you know that the overflow room is set up and we can only have, we can't have anyone standing and blocking the doorways.
However, we only have the sound on right now. I'm trying to get the video feed into there, but they can listen. If they do have cards and they go in, if you're standing, you need to go into the conference room. Although we can have, I believe, the fire chief indicated 20 people standing. However, the rest would need to move into conference room two, excuse me, conference room one, which is over here. And when you will leave extra time for if you place, have put a card in to speak, I will make sure that I give you enough time to leave the room to come into this room to speak at the podium. So I'm just very concerned about the number of people that are in this room. Okay, so everybody's standing, especially standing in the door area.
We can only have 20 people standing in the whole entire room. So the conference room next door is open. They have audio on. They're working on getting video on. We will have extra time to give it. So listen for your name. She's going to call the first person who's speaking and then the two additional people to follow. And then you can just come through the doors, wait right in the center, and then we can get through everybody as quick as we can. I know with some of these items we have 40 and 50 speakers on, so we want to make sure to hear from everybody. Okay, thank you. All right. Consent agenda. All matters listed under the consent agenda are considered routine in nature and can therefore be enacted with one motion.
Do we have any no votes or any items to be removed? Any council disqualifications? No. No. Do we have any speakers on consent? We do not. Okay. I will consider a motion. Move to approve. Second. All right. Motion and a second. All right. And that was to approve the consent agenda as read. Councilmember Goldstein? Yes. Councilmember Hawley? Yes. Councilmember O'Brien? Yes. Councilmember van Overbeek? Yes. Councilmember Winslow? Yes. Vice Mayor Bennett? Yes. Mayor Reynolds? Aye. Carries 7-0. All right. Public comment. Members of the public may address the council at this time on any matter not already listed on the agenda and are within the jurisdictional authority. The council cannot take actions at this meeting on these requests made under this section of the agenda.
How many speakers do we have? We have one speaker under public comment. All right. Three minutes. And that is Nicole Nava. Good evening. So, first off, I want to start by saying how encouraged I am at how many people showed up tonight for what I know to be a later item. But it's very encouraging to hear people, whatever side they're on, take an interest. So, with that said, what I wanted to bring up, which everyone has talked about before, is encampments and my concern about public safety hazards, public health hazard, et cetera. And I feel like there are still things you can do within the framework of that. So, I also want to talk about the exit strategy again. And I know I might sound like a broken record, but I feel like it needs to be said that many of us are not hearing anything about the plan for when the settlement agreement comes to a conclusion in January.
Thank you. And so, public transparency is key. And you have a lot of good people who are involved and want to give you opinions on across both sides of the aisle, I'm sure. I wish it was a more unified approach. But there are things that I would like you to consider. I would like you to consider that we do have shelters. We do have shelters that have beds available that folks need to go to. But there are gap individuals that are out in encampments that are such as the sex offenders. They are not allowed to be in the shelters. So, we do need plans. We do need public transparency. And we need to figure out what that pathway looks like and who needs to lean in earlier and be having those conversations.
If you guys are acting in silo, maybe in closed session or wherever, we don't know. We don't know what comes out of that other than action was taken, direction was given, or no direction was given. It's very frustrating as a community to be held to that. For this long, I don't really feel like it needs to be in closed session anymore. I'm really hopeful that the county can partner with you. They have really bright and eager people that are very seasoned who could get out there and be in more, in my opinion, aggressive outreach by being planted there with card tables and things to be able to interact more continuously than just a, hey, I'm coming here because we're going to be noticing you. And then it's more of a scare thing than it is a, we're partnering with you thing.
And that's not on the county. It's just how we're set up right now. So, hopefully, those kinds of conversations are happening and we just don't know it. But we do have those populations. I would also like to see us build up more of the sobering centers and things that we've started down the path of. Yay that. I've always been a fan of treatment. And we do have a lot of people in need out there. And also, I'd love to see our medical community, like Public Health, get out there and really start triaging the people who have disabilities and untreated things to see about getting those people down that road as well. Thank you so much for your time. All right. Public hearings. Hearing to consider the draft 2026-27 annual action plan for our CBDG funds.
Mary Jo Alonzo, our housing program manager. Welcome. Hi. Good morning. Or good evening. Sorry. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council. I'm before you tonight to present the draft 2026-2027 annual plan for public hearing as required for use of federal funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which is referred to as HUD. The city is a federal community development block grant, CDBG entitlement community, and a home investment partnership, home participating jurisdiction, and meeting that we receive funding directly from the federal government. It's based on a formula that considers population, housing conditions, and other socioeconomic factors. These funds are used to address the needs of low-income households and neighborhoods in our community.
Low income, as defined by HUD, is households earning at or below 80% of area median income. So, for example, for a family here in Chico, family of four, that would be about $75,000 a year. Every five years, a consolidated plan is developed with broad goals to be achieved over the following five years. These goals were developed through a public engagement process, which included interviews with stakeholders and was presented last year to Council in June. Tonight, I will be presenting on the draft plan for the second year of the five-year plan. There are five priority needs listed in the slide here and 12 goals identified. The needs are affordable housing, homelessness prevention, homeless services, neighborhood revitalization, and economic development.
I do want to highlight that the proposed plan reflects a commitment to leverage CDBG and home dollars through partnerships with local agencies and nonprofit Organizations and private sector stakeholders. Proposed programs and activities were prioritized because they align with our HUD consolidated plan and approved 2022 housing element. The funding sources are listed above. The CDBG is estimated about $993,000 and home is about $573,000. Final funding allocations were actually released after this draft plan was prepared. So, I'll be bringing back an updated version next month when I come for the second and final public hearing, which incorporates the new final amounts. We did plan on flat funding, which our amounts are very close to what we were awarded by HUD.
More detailed information about the budget is included in attachment D of my staff report. The city's annual action plan reflects priorities and projects identified in both the city's consolidated plan and our housing element, which aligns with both federal and state requirements. This slide provides an overview of the proposed use of home funds. Home funds can be used to support the development, preservation, and affordability of housing for low and very low income households. The eligible activities are listed here. We have continued commitment to develop five homeowner units with Habitat for Humanity. We will continue funding the tenant based rental assistance program. We're going to carry forward funding for the rehab of Turning Point Commons, which is an existing 66 unit affordable housing complex.
And we're setting aside funding for the construction of affordable rental housing for a project to be developed. Funding also includes expenses to cover program administration. Proposed CDBG has a broader overall range of eligible activities than home, but somewhat restricted housing uses. The draft plan includes funding for housing programs and projects. That includes funding for our homeowner rehab sewer connection assistance program. It includes a carry forward of funding to support the rental of rental rehab of Turning Point Commons. We're planning to set aside funding to support the design and planning of the Warner Street West Sacramento multimodal capital improvement projects. This is in connect coordination with public Works.
We're proposing to set aside funding to support infrastructure improvements in support of an affordable housing project called Humboldt Senior Housing, which is a project utilizing Butte County CDBG DR disaster recovery funding. It's located within the city of Chico near the corner of Humboldt and Yosemite Drive. We will also be supporting housing services, which includes the administration of TIBRA, which is housing authority assist us with that program. We will continue funding to support economic development activities with our partnership with Small Business Development Center. Continue funding to support city code enforcement services and low and moderate income census blocks. And continue funding for our program and administration.
The final CDBG activity is public service funding and recommendations are made by our ad hoc citizens advisory committee, which is made up of members selected by the city's finance committee. Our ad hoc citizens committee holds two public meetings. The first is to hear from applicants and then the committee then presents their funding recommendations. The grant applications are evaluated using a rating and ranking process along with applicant presentations and consideration of the services that are provided to our community. This year we had six eligible applicants after one applicant withdrew. Based on their review, the citizens advisory committee reached a consensus to recommend awarding the two highest scoring applicants $30,000 each and distribute the remaining funding evenly among the four applicants, which is approximately $22,000.
Similar to the overall budget, these amounts will be slightly adjusted when I come back next month with the final plan. A summary of that whole process is included as attachment C to my staff report. And this side summarizes our public outreach for this year's annual plan. Information notices were posted on our city's website and via social media. A newsletter was sent out to interested parties and a notice was published in the Chico ER. Staff has presented at various public meetings the past few months and also at tonight's public hearing. The draft plan is available to review on the city's housing website. Comments can be made tonight at this hearing or in writing to the email listed on the slide.
We do have one more public comment or public hearing where we will receive public comments and that is the council meeting May 19th. This concludes my report. The community development director recommends that council hold a public hearing, invite public comments and schedule the final hearing of the annual plan for May 19th. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have. All right. We will open the public hearing. And do we have any questions from council members before we go to the public? No? Okay. How many speakers do we have? We have one. All right. Three minutes. Kim Dietz. Kim Dietz. I'm Kim Dietz, a Chico resident since 1982. For the past five years, I have volunteered on the citizens advisory ad hoc CBDG committee.
That's a mouthful. And I chaired that committee three of the last five years. This evening, I'd like to express my appreciation for the dedication of the members who serve on this committee as well as city staff. They do a great job to support us to do the work that we do to advise this group. Our team is committed to enhancing both the effectiveness and transparency of our processes. One of the greatest challenges for this group remains to be the limited funding available to distribute amongst all applicants. Oftentimes, we have more applicants than we do have many. As the sole citizen member without a background in the nonprofit sector, I was initially unfamiliar with many of the difficulties that face the applicants.
However, my participation in this committee has provided valuable insight into the Organizations that serve our community. The city staff and committee will continue to look for ways in our recommendations that utilize these funds. I fully support the recommendation of the CBDG voluntary ad hoc committee. She's our only speaker. All right. Any further? I don't have anybody in the queue. Councilmember Hawley. Yeah, I'd just like to thank Mrs. Alonzo, our speaker, Mrs. Dietz, and everyone else who served on that ad hoc advisory committee. We really appreciate all the work you've done. Nobody else? All right. Consider a motion. I just had one. Where did you go? Mary Jo? I believe you said this in your presentation, but I just want to make sure.
There was seven applicants on here, and one applicant did not receive funds, but you said they withdrew their application? Yes. Okay. One of the seven withdrew. Okay, perfect. I just wanted to be sure it was a withdrawal, not anything else. Okay. Move to approve. Move to approve. I'll second. I'll second. I'll motion by Vice Mayor Bennett and a second by Councilmember Hawley. Okay. Councilmember Goldstein. Yes. Councilmember Hawley. Yes. Councilmember O'Brien. Yes. Councilmember van Overbeek. Yes. Councilmember Winslow. Yes. Vice Mayor Bennett. Yes. Mayor Reynolds. Aye. Motion carries. Motion carries. I don't know that I officially closed the public hearing, but that'll close the public hearing.
Thank you. Okay. I'm just making sure. Okay. On to our regular agenda. There was something I was going to announce here on the regular agenda. I wanted to, before we get going and get too far in, I made a mistake at our last meeting, or I think I've actually done it a couple of meetings. So, once we hit 10 o'clock, we can amongst ourselves agree to finish the item that we are on, and then we do not take anything else up after that. And I think I went to like City Manager Report and all the other stuff, but anyways, well, we can get there. So, I will be more cognizant of that. We do not take anything else to do last time, and then the other one was that we, as council members, should do our best to try to keep ourselves to three minutes an hour speaking, because that's what we give the citizens when they come to the dais, at least three minutes when we have enough time to give everybody three minutes.
So, just a reminder that for us to keep our brevity and try to keep within the three minutes that we give the public. So, that was, I think that was it, right? Okay. Did I miss anything? Okay. Council Member Winslow. Oroville Electric Utility. It's all you. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah. Interesting to have this come up early on in the agenda. Usually, these things are at the end, but it's got pushed over from the last one. So, this is a topic I asked to have a discussion on. In general, I've had a growing interest in electricity. It's become a rising share of people's expenses overall. And proportionately, since, especially since this war in Iran, we've had the cost of fossil fuels go up. We're in this interesting moment where the cost of new renewable energy has gone down so precipitously that there are these new opportunities opening up.
There's also a lot of legislative changes, which I allude to in the report. I don't want to get too much into unless people desire to here, about that are encouraging cities or allowing cities like San Francisco that are pushing to purchase their distribution system and to move to a public power system from what they currently have a monopoly of by PG&E. All these things, I think, converge to make some interesting opportunities. And I have a general interest in this, and I find that most people in the community do too. But in particular, I was inspired by looking at what the city of Oroville has been doing. And it's their elected leadership. It's their city staff. And it's also people within private industry that have been pushing these kind of interesting solutions.
And just in very brief, what they're looking at doing is setting up some local generation of electricity through the form of solar farms and biomass plants and building transmission lines to major industrial users and then handing those over to the city. So the city has actually formed a public electric utility. Well, they currently don't own anything, my understanding. But they intend to be able to provide electrical service to, in particular, some large customers so they can essentially offer it as an economic development incentive for employers to come to Oroville. That's kind of the idea. It's very interesting. It's very complex. I've spent several hours having conversations with people involved with this in Oroville.
And I found that because there's interest in our community too in similar things, I think it would be worthwhile to hold in the future a discussion with some people from Oroville. And that's all that I intend to ask with this. The question of purchasing a distribution system that people are interested in is a much bigger question than we're going to get into here or probably in the next meeting or the subsequent one. But I think there are steps forward that the city can make. I think there are these general historical trends that we can jump on. I think we'd rather be one of the early ones out and early ones innovating with this than one of the later ones. So my only intention after hearing from all y'all is to ask that we invite some probably Oroville city staff to come forward.
They hold their city council meetings a little earlier. They actually started a couple hours ago. But I think it's most likely that the community development director would be sent because he's been working on this. But I've also spoken with Mayor Dave Pittman and Brian Ring, the city administrator there. And I think they're all supportive of having these sort of conversations. Thanks. All right. Councilmember van Overbeek. I think that's a great idea and would encourage us to do that. How do we move forward on this, Debbie? Well, after public comment, we will, the council can just give direction to invite representatives from Oroville to come over and do a presentation if the council agrees with that.
I would support that as well. I think it's a good conversation to have. All right. How many speakers do we have? We have two. Okay. Three minutes each. Okay. And I'll call both your names and hopefully the video is up now and running and the audio in conference room one. So the first two speakers are the only two speakers. Tracy Vincent followed by Brenda Narayan. And if you can go ahead and line up and come on forward. So Tracy, and then go ahead and make sure you get close to the microphone. Okay. I'm actually going to try not to take up that much. I would like to say I'm seeing a trend in some skewed data points in the proposal that was in the agenda. I think it's great to talk to Oroville.
That's wonderful. But when it comes down to the bottom line, we need to really look at our own city and where we're spending a lot of money for sure. Joining the CCA, which we're going to do in 2027, that's great, but it is just a step. But some of the realities and some of the data points that were listed, like using Briggs and Gridley, that's not a good sell for me. They started out with their own infrastructure. They built it because they didn't have it and they've had it forever. And having the Wiener bill, the SB 875, that doesn't affect us. That's San Francisco. And if his bill potentially gets through, that still leaves us stuck with trying to buy infrastructure. So unless we've got $500 million to start with and going up into the billions, I don't see that happening either.
I think there are some great alternatives and we can have Oroville come talk about, but we don't have their infrastructure and we don't have hydropower here. So while, yes, let's have discussions, but we need to look at some real things that are happening and where we're spending a lot of money to decrease our reliability on PG&E. And since we're going to talk more about it, I'm just going to leave it there for some of the talking points that I was going to have, because I know we've got lots of good stuff to talk about tonight. Thank you. And then, Brenda, and I apologize in advance if I do not pronounce your names correctly. Narrowin? Good evening. My name is Brenda Narayan. I'm PG&E's Government Affairs Representative.
PG&E is proud to serve the North State, including the communities of Chico and Oroville. And we're deeply committed to delivering safe, reliable, clean, and affordable energy to our customers. While we understand and respect the focus on affordability, proposals to pursue a government takeover of utilities makes promises that are not supported by real-world experience. These takeovers of electric utilities are extraordinarily complex, costly, and long-term undertakings. There are many studies and examples to draw from, including the city of Hercules, which is about the same size as Oroville, in Pittsburgh, California, that show that these efforts frequently result in higher customer costs for decades and not savings.
I want to talk a little bit about the legislation that was referenced. So proposals like 875 ignore the significant risk of cost shifts, potentially transferring billions of dollars of expenses to remaining customers, and many of whom live in smaller cities and towns. And this legislation also threatens funding for critical wildfire mitigation, system hardening, and low-income assistance programs, increasing wildfire risk, and undermining energy affordability for the state's most vulnerable residents. And I do want to make note, and I only learned this about two hours ago, that the legislation is not moving forward. But I wanted to mention it because it was mentioned in your paper. So what are we doing? PG&E is taking concrete steps to address affordability.
And electric rates were reduced again March of this year, which is the fifth reduction since January 2024, bringing the bundle residential electric rates down about 13%, with the overall goal of keeping future rate growth at or below inflation. I do want to talk a little bit about Chico. So according to UUT.org, there are about 156 cities in California with a local utility user tax. And two of those are in Butte County, and one of those is here in Chico. So it's 5%. And PG&E has no control over this additional charge and collects and remits the 5% tax on electric charges on behalf of Chico. So any decision to move forward with public power warrants careful consideration of these facts. And exploring a new municipal utility or public takeover that is not viable would introduce additional risk and cost and will not benefit Oroville nor Chico.
PG&E remains committed to working with you, with local leaders, to achieve shared goals without exposing customers and taxpayers to unnecessary harm. Thank you. Thank you. We only have those two speakers. All right. Any further? Council Member Hawley. Yep. As always, I just really appreciate our speakers giving their two cents. And I think to mitigate some of the concerns that were brought up, first of all, let's not make promises. We're opening the doors here to a conversation for Oroville staff to come and share their experience with the city of Chico. So hopefully we can learn from them. And then, secondly, every acquisition would certainly have a thorough review on return on investment, exactly what deal the city would be entering into.
But right now, it just looks like baby steps. So I would fully support having a short presentation from Oroville staff. I will say, however, Council Member Winslow, if you can touch on this. I understand there was a small group looking at economic development solutions in Oroville. And one of the council members really was steamrolling that. And I would hope that we could exclude Oroville Council Member participation and really focus on staff when it comes to the presentation. Because I think that can have some contentious items that come with it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. I think the fact that the Oroville Council is meeting right now, and they'll probably meet most of the time when we're meeting, this probably excludes themselves.
But I appreciate all the people I know on the Oroville City Council. I think that they're doing pretty ambitious things. And I'm impressed by them. Yeah. And thank you, Brenda. I mean, Brenda's our rep from PG&E. Had a great relationship with her. It's been wonderful to be able to talk to and kind of, you know, discuss these things. Naturally, there's going to be some differences of opinion or interest on these sort of things. But, yeah, it is kind of baby steps. And I would emphasize, too, as far as the public takeover goes, well, that's certainly an alluring concept. I mean, if you have interest rate that makes it, like, offsets the profit that currently is being pulled out by shareholders there, then it becomes economical.
But it is difficult to get through. And that's why not a lot of cities have moved forward with this in recent times. Although, you know, there's some good examples out there. I would love to talk about, but I don't think people are here for that right now. At a future meeting, I hope that more of the public gets engaged. And that's kind of part of the intention, too, that people who know things about this or have an interest are able to participate. And we can kind of move forward as a community that way. So I'm happy to have more discussion. But I would just make a motion that we, what did I say, to invite the City of Oroville to present to us the plans and explore a deeper partnership on electricity between our cities.
I'll second that. Councilmember Goldstein? Well, I support this. I'm very supportive of learning more. And especially if it could lead us to being able to save our residents some money on their utility bills eventually. So, yes. Okay. All right. We have a motion and a second. I just have a question for Councilmember Addison Winslow and Winslow. I believe that this is on the agenda tonight for Oroville to hire a new firm to do their, what do you call it, their outreach and investigation and all that. Could we maybe wait to get the presentation until after they have all their information back from their consultant and so that we have a little bit more information and we're not just. Yeah. Totally. Yeah.
Yeah. I actually agendized this is quite a while ago. Yeah. It got postponed a bit. I hadn't put in the report. I was doing some fun research on municipal electricity. If you interested, go read the report. And then it got postponed a couple of times. So I put it off because we had a full agenda. Then we had such a full agenda, it got postponed. And yeah, so state bills, Oroville's progress, I haven't really checked. I think we'll just leave it up to leeway to our staff to schedule it when makes sense. But I totally agree. Yeah. I just want to use the best of their time and our time. Sorry. When we are real information. So. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Goldstein. Yes. Councilmember Hawley.
Yes. Councilmember O'Brien. Yes. Councilmember van Overbeek. Yes. Councilmember Winslow. Yes. Vice Mayor Bennett. Yes. Mayor Reynolds. Aye. It carries 7-0. Councilmember Hawley request regulations on commercial cannabis. Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. I hope this is going to be quick so we can clear up some seats for the folks who are waiting on the next item. But really, I'm just looking for an opportunity to close the loop in production. We have commercial retail and manufacturing legalized here within city limits. And I know a lot of municipalities are hopping on legalizing commercial cultivation as well. So my review is pretty thorough. I don't want to take too much time to dig into it. And I kind of want to let the rest of the council pick out items as they arise as concerns.
But when conducting meetings, not only with staff, but also the greater community and people who are interested in the industry and active in the industry, one of the really easy wins that consistently came up was commercial cultivation permitting. There are pretty significant differences between indoor and outdoor cultivation. So to me, that's where the bulk of the discussion lies. But you'll see that my motion was considering changes in commercial cannabis legislation. So that's what the discussion is open to. My council member write up is really just focusing on cultivation because I feel that was coming through as a consensus building item surrounding that. So with that, I think I'm open to questions.
And after that, we can open to public comment. Are we back? Council member Winslow. Sorry, we got these new beepers and my beeper keeps breaking. It's always him. Yeah, I don't know what it, I pushed it too hard the first time. Yeah. User error. So I was just thinking when this came up that we would, we were going to talk about some of the other, I mean, points of contention as far as like, you know, how much does the city allow? Because it very much is up to the city and retail dispensaries and in other delivery companies were two of the ones that I'd heard of in the past, you know. And given that we've had a lot of tax revenue and I didn't pull the numbers, but like, I mean, several million dollars have come out of these.
I think there's the potential for more. More, and then it's just, the reason why we limit these is similar to the reason why the state limits alcoholic establishments is because there's considered to be like a public safety risk with having more of these in more places. So we're pretty, we're pretty rigid about where they can go, where they can't go. And then, and then the number of them is set. And, but as far as like how, what the number is, I mean, it's sort of arbitrary. And what we found, our experience in these years, is these retail dispensaries operate so admirably, so successfully, they give a great name to cannabis sales everywhere. And there's been like, I think, zero police calls last I heard, like associated with any of them.
So it's, in any case, it's a very, it's a very safe operation. So then it's a question of like, well, should we lift the cap on competition a little bit to a certain extent? And I imagine, I know that we've had, we've had contacts from a lot of businesses in town. And I think we've had three businesses that are opposed to more retail. Those are the three that have the franchise. And I think that if we had two franchises, we would have two businesses opposed to opening up a third one, you know. And I'm interested in other council members' thoughts on opening up that a little bit more. Okay, so your question to me is why commercial retail licensing was precluded from the report. Is that your question?
Yeah, why limit it to just what you have limited to? Yeah, thank you. Yeah, that's a great question. So it came up consistently throughout all of my meetings. And a reoccurring point of concern, of course, was market oversaturation, which I know a lot of areas in like LA and other Southern California municipalities ran into. Everybody jumps on this brand new market. Market oversaturation occurs. And then you have a pretty significant number of closed down storefronts and closed down businesses. And that can sometimes create an environment that feels like blight. So I think that's the concern there. So as far as like slashing all licensing limitations, as far as cannabis retail goes, I would not be partial to.
But if we're talking about on a small baby step, I'm willing to open that conversation. And to be frank, I'm just trying to be realistic of what our council makeup is right now. So. All right. Council Member Goldstein. First question for Council Member Hawley that I probably could find more deeper into our policy. But so for indoor versus outdoor cultivation right now, are either of these legal in any capacity in Chico? No, there is no commercial. Cannabis cultivation legalized within city limits limits. We have personal cultivation that has very strict rules surrounding it that I hope we can touch on at a future date. OK, thanks. And here and Council Member Winslow's question about storefronts, I would support looking into expanding that.
We can talk more after public comment, but that is my feeling on it. Any other questions from Council? Council Member O'Brien. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. So, Council Member Hawley, how do we address, not just in this county, but throughout California, the cultivation of illegal black market marijuana, which is substantial in the billions of dollars? Council Member Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Johan Joh As you'll see in my introduction, there's a pretty substantial supply, demand, and balance, which has led to California having such a vast illegal cultivation market.
I first learned about this from our sheriff when I was a freshman at Chico State in 2018, as he was a guest speaker, and it's prevalent in Butte County. And one of the goals actually here is to ensure that if we pursue licensing options for cultivation, they have to be cost-competitive options with those illegal markets. And although since it was so recently legalized in the state, it's an under-researched topic, the research that is coming out, in fact, by the government itself, this is coming from the USDA Forest Service, asserts that there's a statistically significant linkage between state-level legalization and reduction and illegal growing. And my biggest concern is the adverse impacts that illegal grows have, not necessarily on the city of Chico, more so on the foothills and our foothill neighbors.
So thank you for that. I'll have more to say on this, but I appreciate your response. Thank you. All right. And I'll see anybody else in the queue. So how many speakers do we have? We have six. All right. Three minutes each. Okay. And so I'll call the first two names. We have Tracy Vincent followed by Mark Breckenridge. And if you could please line up, that would be great. So Tracy Vincent. This might take the three minutes. I don't know. And let me preface by saying we are farmers. So if we could make money out of this, I am all for it. But and however. Again, I am seeing some data points being skewed. Like, for instance, the 2019 study that you were just referencing was small. It was only in national forests.
It does not deal with broader market that we're with today. Okay. So I'm going to try to hit my high points. So let me just start out. Considering commercial cannabis cultivation, I just want us to be clear on what we're actually talking about, what's going to work and what probably isn't going to work. And this is coming from a farming perspective. And I would put a PSA out there. If you want to be a farmer, buckle up. People don't like farmers. They want to eat food, but they don't like dust. They don't like trucks. And they don't like noise. Just telling you. Anyway, initially, when they legalized in some places, it was great. Big cash boom. Just watch the Netflix series. See what happened in Humboldt.
You talk about Chico being a great place to grow it. It's not. We're way too hot. And we don't have the humidity that you need. So my concerns with that are it's likely going to turn into a lot of greenhouses. Because to grow it correctly, you're going to need to control the heat. You have to have constant air so you don't have all sorts of problems. Yes, you have to have pesticides. You have to have herbicides. If you're going to make money with this, you need more than one crop. More than one crop here. It's got to be inside. Otherwise, it's not going to do well. We're just not going to grow good pot here. It's just not going to happen. But that's okay. We can have mediocre pot. People still want to get stoned.
It will be fine. I promise you. I'm not going to lie. The second big issue I have, and we need to talk about it, is water. Growing marijuana is a high consumption of water, high consumption of electricity, and we're already fighting over it to grow your food. Like I said, if we can figure these things out and I can make some money, I'll grow some outside. We got room. We got room. I'll do it. But the fact of the matter is it's going to turn into greenhouses. So we really need to talk about that. What I would recommend, because we need to run this to ground, because I think it could turn out we could get good tax revenue. We could make some money, maybe some farmers even. But I would suggest if we do do it moving forward and exploring it, have a very limited pilot program rather than broad rollout.
The pilot should be tightly structured with a cap on permits, canopy side, local zoning, and setbacks from homes and schools. We need to verify the water, the legal source, where it's coming from. And I don't recommend somebody try to come off Cal Water to water our pot. It's going to cost you an arm and a leg. You need a well. That is all. Thank you. Mark Breckenridge, followed by Josh Lewis.
Good evening, Mayor and members of the council. I'd like to thank everyone who has reached out to me concerning this subject. My name is Mark Breckenridge. I'm the co-founder and owner of Oregon Chico, one of the city's licensed dispensaries. I'd like to express our sincere appreciation for the ongoing partnership between the city and our business. We understand that the council may be receiving input from stakeholders regarding potential updates that Chico's cannabis ordinance. While we are not involved in the recent correspondence, we appreciate the opportunity for the operators to share their perspective as part of a thoughtful public process. We remain grateful for the city's careful and deliberate approach for cannabis regulation.
The current licensing framework has helped foster a stable and well-functioning local market, one that supports tax revenue, local jobs, and meaningful community investment. Once again, thank you for your continued leadership and partnership in building a well-regulated and successful local cannabis market. Thank you. Josh Lewis, followed by Tim Dodd. Good evening, Honorable Mayor, members of the council, staff. Thanks for letting me speak tonight. My name is Josh Lewis, and I have the honor of serving as government and community relations manager for Embark. We're one of this community's three licensed cannabis retailers. I want to start with a simple point, and that is that the cannabis program that you all created is working.
And for that, we thank you. That's not to say it's easy. This is a tough industry across California, but the framework the city put in place has created a stable, functioning market, which is more than the majority of jurisdictions in this state can claim. Our three licensed retailers are operating, paying meaningful local taxes, employing Chico residents, and contributing directly to the community through local philanthropy and partnerships. That stability matters. It's what allows businesses like ours to consistently generate tax revenue for the city and reinvest in the community. In many parts of California, markets that expanded are now dealing with closures, unpaid taxes, and declining revenues for their operators that can stay open.
Chico has avoided that outcome this far. For that reason, I'll reiterate something we've all heard before, and as at least as it pertains to cannabis retail in this community, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. We do not believe changes to the retail program are necessary at this time, and several of the ideas that have been proposed by members of the community put these existing benefits at risk. With that context, I do want to briefly address the cannabis revenue loss analysis, quote-unquote, that's been submitted to the city. That document has been framed as reflecting the views of Chico's operators. It does not. Embark was not aware. We were not involved. And it does not reflect what we were seeing on the ground or the reality of the cannabis market today.
More importantly, its conclusions rely on basic errors. Given limited time this evening, I won't dive into the details, but the broader argument that adding more retailers will meaningfully increase total revenue has no basis in fact, and it's directly contradicted by observations from jurisdictions across the state of California. More often, it leads to market saturation, reduced revenue per store, and ultimately less reliable tax generation for communities that expand. That last point is critical. When revenue is split across more operators in a market of fixed demand like we see in Chico, the result is not more tax revenue. It's less stability, more risk, and declining returns to the city.
When you take those issues together, the analysis does not present a reliable case for changing Chico's current approach. And that brings us back to where I started, which is that the city made a deliberate decision to limit the number of retail licenses and select operators through a competitive process. That structure is producing consistent tax revenue and enabling ongoing community investment from the operators you selected, even in the difficult statewide industry we face today. So our request from Embark is straightforward. Maintain the current retail structure, codify the limit at three licensed retailers, and move forward in full confidence in the system that you've already built, because the stability you've created is exactly what supports reliable local tax revenue, employment, and sustained local giving.
And changing that structure now risks undermining all of the benefits that this industry delivers. Thank you. Thank you. Tim Dodd, followed by David Peterson. Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity to speak, Mayor and Council members. My name is Tim Dodd. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Sweet Flower and Sweet Flower Chico. We've operated in Chico since 2022. We pay our taxes. We hire locally. We are locally co-owned and operated. We follow all the rules. We are, if I may say, a model of responsible retail. And I would say that Chico has a model cannabis program. A competitive local market with good retailers, with strong local ties to give back locally in a meaningful way. And as a good local retailer, legal retailer here in Chico, we have been, and we are supportive, of a good legal cultivation program in Chico, should the city so decide.
I should say that we have nothing vested in this, but we are supportive. I would like to address one topic, a document placed before this Council purporting to reflect our views. It doesn't. I want to be very clear. It does not represent our views. We have neither been consulted nor informed on this analysis. And also, most importantly, it's wrong. It claims Chico has a $30 million annual cannabis market. But that is, unfortunately, two years of sales, not one, presented as one year of sales. So the correct number is divided by two is only half as big, which undermines every other conclusion in this document. What I find puzzling about the document is the author is not only Chico's only licensed manufacturer, he is also Chico's only licensed distributor.
This author holds, in other words, not one, but two monopolies here in Chico. Now, I don't want to sound unsympathetic, but if you hold the only manufacturing license in a city and the only distribution license in the city, and you're still not making enough money, I would gently suggest the problem is not with the regulations. It's a different conversation. It's a conversation to have maybe with one's accountant, not with his counsel. There has been a lot of argument about a room for another retailer. What this argument doesn't conclude is the state average reflects a state market that is fundamentally flawed and broken. As has been discussed, hundreds of retailers, many thousands actually, are going out of business and not paying taxes.
Chico has avoided this. The council built and maintains, through Mark and through Charlene, a very sensible program. The adage Works. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. There is no retail gap. There is three well-placed stores delivering products, selling products at every price point for every Chico. There is free delivery from two of these locally. There is simply no evidence of unmet demand. What there is, unfortunately, is someone who applied for a license, didn't get it, is a monopoly position holder, and would materially benefit from a new retail license. That's not a retail gap. That's a business strategy. And is it not a strategy the council should subsidize through public policy. Please keep the retail program as it is so we can contribute back to the city of Chico.
Thank you so much. So David Peterson, followed by Charles Vernon. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, Council members. I want to start by recognizing the city and staff for what's honestly been a very successful integration of commercial cannabis here in Chico. Specifically, I want to acknowledge Angie Dilg, Hope Ithaburn, and Charlene Durkin. The work that went into building this program, navigating the risk, the uncertainty, and the complexity of bringing a highly scrutinized industry into the city was not easy. And I think it deserves to be recognized. The city took a chance on cannabis, and that chance has paid off. The original goal was clear, generate revenue to support the city. And today, we're seeing that success.
The program is generating millions in revenue. And more importantly, it has resulted in the increase, it has not resulted in the increase in crime or public safety issues that were, that were, many were concerned about early on. By most measures, it has been a very responsible and effective rollout. But the industry and the environment around it has changed significantly since those regulations were first adopted. Nearly every state in the country now has some form of cannabis program. The federal government has directed the Department of Justice to move forward with rescheduling. Chico State, this year, received grant funding to study cannabis. And more people are participating in the legal market than ever before.
At the same time, studies, including those from HDL, show that access and participation directly impact legal sales and revenue. When access is limited, people don't stop purchasing. They just purchase elsewhere. And that's revenue, that revenue leaves the city. Right now, Chico has a strong foundation. But it's not fully capturing the economic opportunity that already exists. Vertical integration is a big part of that. Allowing businesses to cultivate, manufacture, distribute, and sell locally keeps more value here. More jobs, more investment, more taxable revenue. Expanding license types and allowing more participation doesn't weaken the system. It strengthens it. And beyond cannabis itself, this is also about a broader economic condition.
Chico is facing real challenges. Businesses closing, commercial spaces sitting vacant, and ongoing pressure on the local economy. This is one of the few industries where Chico already has a proven, regulated, revenue-generating system in place. The opportunity is now to build on that success, thoughtfully, responsibly, and in a way that continues to benefit the city and its residents. I'll close where I started. The city took a chance on cannabis, and it has been an overwhelming success. It may not be perfect, but there is a clear opportunity to continue improving it and generating even more revenue by allowing thoughtful industry expansion. Thank you for your time. Thank you. And our last speaker is Charles Vernon.
Good evening. I'd like to start by thanking you all for bringing this topic back up and into light. This is a big topic in my life, as I am one of the founders of Chico's Best. We are a local business built right here in Chico, California. Yesterday, we happened to celebrate our three-year anniversary, along with Embark, who has taken us from one store to now 16 stores across the California market, and we're now also available in over 20. So our business is growing. Over the time, we've sold over $2 million in cannabis, yet none of that cannabis has been growing in our town, and none of that has really benefited us. We would like to move it so we could start purchasing cannabis that was growing in this county, that was growing by our local people.
When we started doing this ordinance, and I do say when we started doing this ordinance, because I was here when we were doing this, when we were talking in the building over there, we really wanted to make it local. We wanted to build brands. We didn't want to bring in Budweiser. We wanted to build new Sierra Nevadas. And in this time, we can do that. And it's not really looking towards a small future. It's looking towards the big future. Cannabis is here, and it's going to stay. It's not going anywhere. It's only going to build. And we're either going to import it, or we're going to export it. Everybody in business knows you make much more money exporting. Now, this is a great spot. The farmer that came up and said that this isn't a good community to grow in, I will tell you, I am a cannabis award-winning ganja.
I do this. I do this for a living. If we could put this back in our town, I would love to put Chico on the map for some of my strains that I've created in this town that can take that 100-degree weather. One thing we also need to look at is the way that this ordinance was really written. It actually said that we were going to have unlimited distribution, unlimited manufacturing, unlimited delivery, unlimited testing. I personally applied for a license, and I got my distribution license. I chose not to activate it. The reason why I chose not to activate it is because David Peterson and the C4 team actually made it more economical for us to just team up with them. We need to open up this. We need to bring more distribution into our town.
More manufacturing. We need to get a testing facility. You're correct. We do need to have things tested, Mike. We need to make sure that this cannabis is a product that is safe for our families and our friends, something that I do believe in. Along with doing that, we need to open up new licenses. As bars are starting to close and businesses are closing downtown, consumption lounges could be the new thing. Instead of having your 2 o'clock fights, you could have 2 o'clock pizza parties. Downtown could become a new place. Could you imagine if we turned to cannabis instead of opioids? Saying that, you know, I'd just like to open up all licenses. If we can get some grows, if we can get some things in this community, we could actually bring money to this town.
Now, I have a dream, and you guys could actually really help me get it. My dream is to get my cannabis across state lines, across world lines, and be all around the world. We could start this today. Chico's Best is a brand that's going to make Chico proud. Please help us to do that. Thank you guys for opening this up. Thank you for listening to us, and I really appreciate you guys. Have a nice day. Thank you. Thank you, and he's our last speaker. All right. Council Member Winslow. Those are some great speeches from people, and it's really nice that these are people that have been brought, I mean, allowed to flourish in business because we decided to act on legalizing this. And I think the result that we've seen is that it has not really caused the unintended impacts that people thought.
The reality is there's been a black market in marijuana for much longer than we've even considered legalizing it. And there is like a tradeoff between the two. The more you suppress it, the more black market you get. I want to address some of these comments about market oversaturation and this being a concern. I didn't follow the whole process with cannabis legalization. I wasn't on the council at that time. Frankly, I had other things on my mind related to the city, but I don't think that was ever our intention to avoid market oversaturation. I remember when this was going on, 2016 legalization, this concept of the green rush. We knew that a bunch of people were going to see this as an opportunity, and they were going to come in, and we knew that like the gold rush, there was going to be a boom and there was going to be a bust.
There was going to be equilibrium over time, but in that process, some businesses were going to fail. And so the fact that some cities have allowed more business than was able to succeed doesn't, to me, say that we need to limit it and be the government picking winners in an industry. I mean, I didn't really thought about this before, but I mentioned that Sierra Nevada comparison. You know, what if we put a cap on craft breweries and Ken Grossman didn't get the permit, right? And where would we be as Chico? So there's a whole philosophy here, but it's really the reality of our economic system and free enterprise. There's something called creative destruction, the understanding that not all businesses succeed when they're subjected to competition.
But there are benefits to having more. There's consumers get lower prices. We do have more tax revenue. You know, there was a mention of reduced revenue per store, but there should still be more revenue overall. And then, again, we're talking about, like, businesses becoming successful on the market here, and it's a much bigger picture than just us piecing out the market and giving it off to some winners. So, like, we're not Willy Wonka giving out golden tickets to the ganja market, and I don't think we should be. And this is an opportunity, I think, for us to reflect on the maturity, the years that we have of experience with this market, and say that it's not something that has negative effects upon Chico.
In fact, the only thing that we see is positive effects. Sorry I wasn't gaveling you. I knocked it off. Council Member Hawley. Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. Just to briefly address Council Member Winslow's point, because I think it's a good one. At a certain point, with a growing population coupled with what's essentially a market oligopoly enforced by the government, it ends up being price-fixing. I think because it's so new to the city, I don't feel like that's where we are now. But to kind of loop it back to cultivation, which I think would be an easy win, we only had people speaking in favor. I did want to address the first speaker, because you brought up a really, really good point about water and energy.
And I did hit on that, actually, in my outdoor cultivation portion. So there is actually evidence that cannabis is currently the most energy-intensive agricultural crop in the United States, eating up about 1% of the country's entire electrical output. And I think it's a concern to address demand reduction when we're talking about grid capacity solutions. And that's why, really, I think outdoor cultivation would align so much more with our climate action plan. But when we're looking at outdoor, the question then is land use and zoning, right? There's always going to be complaints of smell if we're popping it next to where people are shopping and living and working. And that's not what we want to run into.
And that's why I think, really, the next step is just asking staff to see with either outdoor or vertical indoor what the city's options would realistically be as far as available land or pursuing vertical indoor with pretty strict energy regulations when it comes to that. Council Member O'Brien? Yes, thank you again, Mayor. And thank you, Council Member O'Brien, for this conversation. I do not hold anything against our retailers. I know they're doing their job. And you are bringing this to our attention because you believe in what you are presenting. But here is my concern related to this and really two-prong. So my first concern is the emerging data on the impacts of marijuana on the developing brain.
So this body is heard from our behavioral health director at least once, maybe twice, regarding that danger. And then a recent study that came out in February of this year from the Public Health Institute, a study that looked at 460,000 Northern California teens, almost half a million of our teens in Northern California. In that study, they found a doubling of psychotic and bipolar disorders in that population when monitored to age 25, meaning the developing brain. And one of the connections they had was age frequency and potency. And we have very little control, quite frankly. And maybe the industry would want more control over the products that we sell. We have more control over alcohol than we do with cannabis.
So it is estimated that the cannabis industry generates tens of billions of dollars in this country annually. Schizophrenia treatment alone is estimated to cost $350 billion annually in this country, if you just look at it from a dollars and cents factor. I look at it at impacts to people, young people in particular. And if you've ever talked to a parent with a child with schizophrenia, I think you'd understand my point. The second issue really has to do with the black market. And every indication, every study is that when you legalize marijuana in a state, the black market increases. And I'm not blaming the industry for the system that we have in place. We essentially have encouraged illegal cannabis because we have states that have very little penalty.
Like the state of California, did you know that you can grow not just 10 pounds, but 10 tons, 20 tons, 30? There's no limit and only be charged with a misdemeanor if you're not diverting streams or using illegal pesticides. A misdemeanor? And where do you think that marijuana, that legal marijuana goes? Do you think it stays here? Of course not. It goes to where the money can be made, which is typically the East Coast and the South. That's where that goes. So if we're going to talk about this issue, let's talk about it comprehensively. Let's look at, and I'm going to encourage the industry to come forward, put some teeth into the laws related to illegal marijuana, the black market. And I would have more of a willingness to listen to what you have to say.
I really would. Thank you. Councilmember Goldstein? Well, I'm also concerned about the black market, and that's why I support legalization and allowing legal business to function. But also because I support expanding opportunities for local business. We consistently hear about how our small businesses in Chico are struggling, and our sales tax revenues are flat. We, as a government, should not be arbitrarily limiting the number of businesses that can operate in our community if there's not a reason for us to. Now, of course, I support being careful about this, but the reality is we have been careful. We have tested out a small amount of legal cannabis business, and it's time for us to expand that, at least in terms of allowing cultivation.
I believe we're losing city revenue by not allowing for this, and, in my opinion, by limiting our storefronts. Councilmember O'Brien brought up good points about environmental impacts of illegal cannabis grows. I went to Humboldt State University before cannabis was legal, so I've seen a lot of that. And that's a huge reason, again, why I support legal regulated production. Let's also be real about the economy in our North State. Legalization of commercial cannabis had a lot of good impacts as far as regulating the environmental impacts, the social impacts of illegal cannabis grows. But it's also altered our economy. We used to have growers and workers coming down from the hill with a lot of cash to spend downtown.
That's just real. And as a state, we legalized production and sales, but we here missed out on legalizing it locally and transferring that black market economy into something that we actually could regulate and profit from and to support our regional economy. So, yeah, we missed out on getting that cash flowing through our economy. We're not reaping the sales tax that we could be. And I think this is great timing when we're also talking about revitalizing downtown and we're talking about budget season coming up. Our next year's budget, we're very likely going to have to tighten our wallet a bit. So, we cannot revitalize business or have a sustainable budget if the people in our community don't have jobs and money from those jobs to spend.
So, I fully believe that we should allow for more safe and legal cannabis businesses. And I also believe that now that we have tried out a small number that, again, I want to reiterate, I don't feel that it's right to prevent other people from trying that out and establishing business here. Council Member van Overbeek. Well, I am heartened by the enthusiastic embrace of capitalistic principles by my young socialist friends. Thank you very much. And I am not a fan of cannabis. I will say that I was going to say I have elderly friends, but all my friends are elderly because, you know. And they derive great comfort. One of the things that happens when you get older is you have trouble sleeping.
They derive great comfort from the cannabis gummies. So, there's a benefit there. But my observation is that this society does not have a shortage of unmotivated young people. And selling them dope that makes them even less motivated, I'm against increasing the production of dope and having more dope dealers. Thank you. You don't want to follow that, Vice Mayor Bennett? Thank you. It's all you. There we go. So, Councilor Van Overbeek and I have a lot in common. Not only our age, but our attitude. I think we have three dispensaries in Chico. That's fine. I don't want any more. I will not support increasing the retail dispensaries in Chico, period. I think cultivation, though, as you brought up, I think that warrants some consideration.
That might be okay. But I'm just going to say it might be. I don't know a lot about it. I'm not going to do any research. I'll let somebody else maybe look at that. And we can see where we go with it. So, your request was just cultivation, correct? With that, I'll make a motion that we direct staff to present on the feasibility of both indoor and outdoor cultivation licensing options. I'll second that, but I'll also make a substitute motion that we tag on retail, expanding retail. Could you just make that a friendly amendment instead of a substitute? Since you just seconded the motion. Yeah. Well, I wouldn't. Sorry, I wouldn't accept that. You would have to accept the friendly amendment. Right.
So, I pitched it as a friendly amendment, but I hear I don't have many friends over on that side of the dais. You're too young to be Mr. Overbeek's friend. There's a substitute motion. Okay. Well, I'll second the substitute motion. Okay. So, the first motion by Council Member Hawley that doesn't have a second. No, I still did second it. I'm just being parliamentarily clever here where I'm seconding it, but I'm also having us vote on something else first. Okay. So, all right. I usually don't have a problem following the substitute. Seconded the substitute. No, I seconded the substitute. Okay. So, Council Member Hawley made a motion, and that was for indoor and outdoor cultivation discussions.
Is that correct? The motion was... Oh, sorry. No, go ahead. The motion was to direct staff to present on the feasibility of both indoor and outdoor cultivation licensing options. Okay. Thank you. All right. And, Council Member Addison Winslow actually seconded it. Yes. And then we will go to... Sorry, I have to get it pulled back up. You're doing great. So, then there is a substitute motion by Council Member Winslow and seconded by Goldstein, correct? Is that correct? Mm-hmm. And that one was to... Do what? I'm sorry. Just the same thing, but rather than limit it to indoor and outdoor cultivation, also add on expanding retail dispensaries. Okay. So, add on retail to the indoor-outdoor cultivation presentation.
Presentation. Discussion. Okay. Are there any other substitutes? No. Okay. No. Then we'll take the first, the substitute motion. Council Member Goldstein? Yes. Council Member Hawley? Yes. Council Member O'Brien? No. Council Member van Overbeek? No. Council Member Winslow? Yes. Vice Mayor Bennett? No. Excuse me, Mayor Reynolds? No. Okay. It fails 3-4, so you go back to the original motion, which was to have a discussion, NASS staff or direct staff, to bring back and present on feasibility of indoor and outdoor cultivation. And I will do the vote on that. Council Member? Can I just make a quick comment? Because I actually didn't get a chance to before we went forward. I was here when we were going through cannabis the first time and was actually the Council Member who championed through getting this actually finally done because there was a change in the Council in the middle of doing cannabis.
And I promised back when we did this that we would crawl before we would walk, before we would run, before we would sprint. And I did make a commitment that if things went well, and I think it's actually one of the things that's going relatively well in our community, that I would consider other things later down the road. So I just want to say that I'm being true to my word when I do vote yes to at least have the conversation and learn more about indoor and outdoor cultivation. I've toured some down in Sacramento. They're not as scary to me as they were in the beginning. I'm very apprehensive of outdoor because of the smell and all the things other people are. But I would like to hear more information on it for that.
And I just want to get that on the record to let everybody know. Okay. Council Member Goldstein? Yes. Council Member Hawley? Yes. Council Member O'Brien? No. Council Member van Overbeek? No. Council Member Winslow? Yes. Vice Mayor Bennett? Yes. Mayor Reynolds? Aye. Carries 5-2. Okay. And with that, I know we're going to be here for a while on the next one. So we are going to take a quick break before we hop into street revitalization. We can't be stuck. We can't be stuck. We can't be stuck. We can't be stuck. We can't be stuck. We can't be stuck. We can't be stuck. We can't be stuck. Thank you. All right. We're ready to get going. We've got two more council members coming back. They're going to be here in just a second.
20. All right. So I have to be the bad guy, gal. Okay. So the walls are for standing room only, a.k.a. We can't sit because if you're sitting, then if there's an emergency, people have to walk by legs. And we need 20 people to go to the overflow room because we can only have 20 people standing, and we have about 40 right now. So we can continue. Downtown revitalization alternatives. We have a report from Mr. Brendan Audubonny, Director of Public Works Engineering. Thank you. Good evening, council. As you know, at the last meeting on April 7th, council directed additional input and engagement with our business community on this topic. So last Thursday, we held that meeting. No additional information was provided by staff, but we did a lot of listening and heard a lot of feedback from folks on this project, both for and against the project.
Tonight, we'll be succinct in our presentation covering the overall process that we've had to date, next steps, and what that looks like. We're going to cover and identify and clarify information on the top comments that we've heard. And of note, I want to say that this is a step in the process. Business engagement will continue throughout the process, and you'll see that in the presentation. I want to clarify the grant application as an opportunity for funding. Based on previous communication and discussion, the opportunity to apply for grants is an opportunity to fund this project that is likely in the, you know, $40 to $50 million range. And so it's an opportunity. And that's what we're trying to communicate is just there's varying levels of competitiveness with the different strategies.
But ultimately, it is our downtown and want it to be what we want it to be. If additional direction is given, then we find out a funding strategy and a plan to achieve that outcome. One thing I heard regularly, too, is that there is a concern that we're going to construction this summer. I just wanted to clarify, we are not going to construction if the direction is given. This is multiple years away, likely four plus at a minimum. And so I just wanted to clarify that note. So with that, I'm going to pass it off to our project team, Aaron Silva, to follow up on the presentation. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council. Here's a quick agenda for the presentation. Brendan did a good job of covering the highlights.
We did a deep dive in the alternatives last council meeting. This will be more focused on the process and timeline, but I'll be happy to answer any questions from the previous presentation. So I wanted to briefly cover the process on how we got here, where we are, and where the plan would take us moving forward. So we started off with all the previous studies. That included the 2030 general plan, active transportation plan, climate action plan, local road safety plan, and downtown access plan. All those planning documents over the last several years were the guiding principles into evaluating what can be done in the downtown Chico area. That then brought us to the feasibility study, which we're at now, looking at multiple alternatives through the project area, developing data or gathering data, getting community input, and then trying to organize the input and make a recommendation on next steps.
With a recommendation that gets adopted, the next step would be preliminary engineering and environmental review. And that would allow us to develop more design details on the selected alternative, get into additional technical studies. It could be related to traffic, parking, deliveries, and then further the construction cost estimates. And like Brendan mentioned, ongoing public outreach. From that, an environmental document would be developed, and the project would move into a final design phase. That is a typical engineering process. It encompasses several years of development and outreach opportunities. We have a schedule, a timeline shown, a potential timeline. We're at that green line right now where we're ending the feasibility analysis.
And that would lead us into an opportunity for grant applications. The grant award would be at the end of the year. And if successful, the project would be able to move forward into that environmental analysis, which would span over two years. With an approved environmental document, we can be designed, which would take another 18 to 24 months. We have had nine outreach events. We have had various open houses, multi-day events to collect public feedback. With the ability to move forward during the grant application, there would be opportunities to further discussions with property owners and the community to gather feedback on a selected alternative. And really troubleshoot what some of the sticking points might be.
During the environmental document phase, when a purpose and need is developed, there would be opportunity to go out to the public to talk about the alignment with the goals of the community. And again, more outreach available when technical studies are completed and the public review of the environmental document. As typical with a lot of design projects, there would also be the opportunity to meet with the community when we start getting a lot of design details. This is where we get into the very nitty-gritty property-by-property analysis of what the improvements would look like. And we could share that with individuals as design progresses forward. And then pre-construction, more opportunity to describe what those impacts would be during construction, how they would be mitigated, and how the project would be constructed.
So last week, we had a crowd similar to this in attendance to talk as an open forum. So it was a fantastic turnout, and we were able to engage with the community and hear feedback from all those that are interested in speaking. And we summarized some of the main issues that had come up during that meeting, and I wanted to briefly talk about those. First was the concern about impacts during construction. While we're not going to be there in the immediate future, that is a real concern, and there are mitigation strategies to handling impacts during construction, whether it's time of day, limits on the contractor, and the ability to ensure that businesses remain open during construction. Another common theme was the concern over lane reductions.
Our preliminary analysis did show that the reduction in lanes from three to two would have minimal to no impact on the flow of traffic. But furthering technical studies with traffic analysis will enable us to get into the intersection operations and get into the details of what the true impact of a lane reduction would have through the downtown area throughout the peak times of the day. There was also concern over the outreach process and that this might be the only opportunity to weigh in on the alternative and the details. As you saw with the timeline, there would be a lot of opportunity in the future steps over the next several years to be able to engage with the community and business owners to answer questions and come up with solutions to some of the challenges.
There were a lot of comments related to truck loading and emergency vehicles. We did preliminarily look at opportunities for truck loading both on main streets and on side streets, and we could take that a step further moving forward in the process of going on a block-by-block basis, looking at the actual needs, delivery needs for each property, and developing solutions to make sure that we're being accommodating of all the different deliveries that happen throughout the week. From an emergency services standpoint, we did engage with police and fire about the lane reduction, and we could continue to look at design details as it relates to response times and access to fire apparatus, and so that would continue throughout the design process.
And lastly, there was a relationship between the sewer infrastructure project and the downtown revitalization project. They are, in fact, two separate projects. The grant funding that's being requested would be focused on the improvements to the street itself, and the sewer would be paid for through other means. So I would just end this presentation moving forward that we're here ending the feasibility study and looking forward to moving this project into the next phase with a grant application, and that would also, during that period of time, be an opportunity for further discussions with the community and business owners. That ends the presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions. All right.
Any questions from Council before we go to our speakers? Council Member Goldstein? I have one question. Thank you, first of all. Thanks to staff for continuing the public engagement and for the community members for continuing to show up. So you mentioned what I also heard, which is people being concerned about the impacts of construction and whether the city can provide mitigation strategies, and you started discussing that. I think we also had a communication from our assistant city manager about some potential strategies, and I am wondering if staff or our consultants have had any new thoughts on that that can be shared tonight. Specifically relating to construction impacts? Yeah, the impacts of construction on businesses and essentially how we can support businesses through this process.
Yeah, and so as Aaron mentioned, that's going to come through those future phases once we have a scope identified and we have a funding strategy. The funding source is dependent on that sometimes too. But through that, once we know what we're building, then we'll be strategizing, staging the work. Again, nighttime work is going to be a must during non-business hours, making sure that there's access to businesses during business hours at all times. There will be further engagement throughout that entire process. So to be able to nail down specifics at this point, we don't have that level of detail, but that's the point of talking about there's going to be future engagement so that those types of discussions, as those details are hashed out more, we can better understand, articulate, communicate, coordinate with the businesses to make sure we minimize those impacts as much as possible.
And Council Member Goldstein, too, I could just add that in some preliminary discussions, just noting there's a lot of resources out there with, you know, 3Core and other agencies that provide, you know, assistance for these types of things and connecting the dots that Director Adabani is mentioning. And there's, you know, low interest, zero interest loans and things like that that could help financially offset any impacts. But I think the overall objective is to minimize and eliminate any impacts as much as we possibly can to businesses when going through these projects. Great. And the city could help facilitate getting those potential zero or low interest loans? Sure. We could facilitate those contacts and let our partners regionally do the legwork on those.
Absolutely. Okay. Well, this is good. Thank you. I'm done for now. Thank you, Mayor. Vice Mayor Bennett. So there's a lot of confusion about when you say grant funding. What is it for? Is it for the sewers specifically? Is it for the bike paths and the bike lanes? What is it for? So could you please clarify exactly when you have grant funding on your sheet, what is it specifically for? Yes. The grant program that would be targeted for this project would be the Active Transportation Program. And that would fund most elements that were being proposed in the alternatives. So that is sidewalk improvements, roadway improvements, bikeways, safety elements, like better enhanced crosswalks and curb extensions, ADA improvements, making it easier to walk through these city streets.
So several of the elements within the proposed alternative would be covered underneath that program. Thank you. I'll just add that the sewer aspect is likely going to be done in the next three years or so. And that's utilizing our sewer rates that are currently budgeted for sewer line replacements. And so that's happening with a separate funding source, with our local funding sources, to replace those lines that are, I think, over 100 years old. Council Member Winslow. Council Member Winslow. So before we go to public comment, because there's been so much of the talk in my experience that's focused on these delivery trucks and the idea. There's sort of this common doubt that we could ever stop delivery trucks from double parking or it could stop them from blocking the entire street, right?
And there's a lot about having loading zones. And it's kind of this like flex loading zones. So during certain hours, we would talk to the companies and try to ensure that their deliveries arrive during those hours when we don't have peak parking. And I wonder what other flexibility we would have in increasing the loading zones for wider availability of hours. We had some correspondence looking at our data on this, which we could recite at some point. But specifically the hours when most deliveries occur, I think 12 to 2 was like the height. And so what are our options for if we wanted to prioritize that, to make sure that these lanes are not blocked by delivery trucks? It would come at the expense of parking, I assume.
But I wonder if you weigh in on what our options are to try to push more in that direction to address that concern more. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's definitely an area where moving forward, we would intend on holding additional business engagement. That can be done in the near future, in the next couple months. If the council wants us to initiate that, that's going to take a lot of direct engagement with those businesses, first and foremost, to understand how they currently receive their deliveries, and then capture that information, then develop strategies that we can mitigate those impacts so that there isn't double parking happening. It happens all over the state, all over the country, of coordinating those types of delivery services.
And so coming up with a strategy and a plan that Works for the businesses and can be incorporated with minimal impacts would be the objective there. And continuing that direct engagement over the next 6 to 12 months especially, I think that would be an appropriate approach to mitigate those concerns. Again, the goal would be if we get direction on this evening, we apply for the grant in June, and we would not hear back until December at least. And so through that time, further developing those details would be important, and we can adapt the scope at that point too throughout that process of engagement. And having that information will help us get in the detail into the design to mitigate those impacts, have a strategy that Works and is effective.
Do you have any idea? I could have talked about this before, but I haven't. If we were to put a dedicated loading zone on every single block all the way down Main Street and Broadway, how many parking spaces that would require? I'm not sure. Roughly, the California legal length I believe is 62 feet, so you're looking at about three spots per flex parking space if you wanted to do that type of thing. Typically, you want to see those on more side streets. And so it would be, again, we'd coordinate where it fits best to ensure parking is maximized, but typically we wanted to look at those side street type of opportunities. Right. Yeah. I just wanted to think of it in comparison to the 40-some odd spots that you would lose by converting Wall Street to bike lanes because you lose the diagonal parking there, and just see that we work with all these trade-offs, and we can make the decisions of what we value most.
If we really want to deal with delivery, it comes at the expense of parking probably. I mean, the alternative is keeping a third lane that is essentially a loading zone all the way down, and it's only used when, I mean, it's an excess vehicle lane and is used for loading when it's needed, but thanks for that. I'll just chime in real quick that my observation is that we're losing access to parking by having trucks blocking it in that existing format where trucks are just in a third lane. Okay. I'm going to ask just one more time. Are you good? Yeah. Okay. One more time, $40 to $50 million is what we're talking, not including sewer, right? And that's in today's dollars, or is that in 2030's dollars?
Because as we know, every year everything goes up? That includes the escalation for when we would anticipate going to construction. Okay. So $40 to $50 million, $20 to $30. And the grant would include cover 100% of the construction, not including sewer, or it will cover 8%, and do we know that percent? So the grant program does require a local match of almost 12%, and then there are certain elements that are not fully funded, like landscaping and other architectural treatments. They do cover a percentage of it, but not the full amount. And I'm not sure about these guidelines, but in the past, that's one of the scoring criteria is the higher the match you get. If you hit 20%, you can maximize your point total for your competitiveness.
So if we say we have 20% to match, then we have a chance of getting 80%. And do we have a fund already set aside for these monies, or is that something we'll have to do in the next five years? Several years ago when we had the council adopt a 10-year plan, we strategically included the downtown and south campus area for the year that we anticipated this project to go into construction. So that was the plan. And given where Measure H is right now, I'm not sure if that funding is still going to be there, but that was the intention at the time. How much do we have saved right now? Do we know? For Measure H. Well, so everything, we have nothing earmarked right now, then it all has come out of Measure H in the next five years for the 20, up to 20%, 12 to 20%.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you. All right. Speakers? All right. How many speakers do we have? Thank you for, sir. Mayor, can I ask one more question actually related to what you just asked? Can we use any other grant funding as match funds? Typically your match funds are other non-federal funds. But they could be other state funds potentially? I think so. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. All right. How many speakers do we have? So Mayor Reynolds. Yes. Are you ready for this? I'm ready. Okay. We have 76 speakers. Excuse me. We have 77. We have 77 speakers. All right. 30 seconds. One minute. Either. Either. We say 30 minutes. We say 30 minutes. Our AP and PT. Wow. That is 30 minutes. What is our AP and PT intents?
AP and PT intents. It typically says that you have 30 minutes for public input. Okay. The mayor decides how much time is allotted or a council majority vote. So typically, you know, if we've had 15 speakers, we've limited it to two minutes a person. But again, it varies. We've had upwards to 90 people. We've had with one minute. We've had 30 people with one minute. So it would be up to you and the council. I don't think we can go any less than one minute apiece, I think. But we may need to take a break halfway through because you have to remember time of people walking and everything else. So 75, 77 people at one minute apiece were going to be here for two hours. Right. And the good thing about, I know that there's been some comments made about the lack of a video.
The video is showing in conference room one. It's showing the same picture that the council is seeing on every screen. Okay. But it is a live feed. Okay. So they're going to hear it. If you were streaming, it's like a 45 to 50 second delay. So this way, I will say them slowly. I'll say the names. I'll say the first two names. Or maybe I'll say the first, how about three? And then if you hear your name, you're in the conference room one, you would come forward and get in line. Okay. And then let's not wait too long for somebody. But we won't forget anybody. Correct. So if it's taken a while, we'll pass you and then we'll catch you on the way back around. So we'll do our best to keep it moving.
So take it away. Okay. So one minute apiece. One minute apiece. Take it away, Madam Clerk. And I'll call three speakers to come out and come up and line up in the middle aisle. So the first three speakers, Carrie Daves, Mark Kessler, Julie Kenner. And I apologize if I say your name wrong or we couldn't read your writing. So Carrie Daves. And then if you can, just a quick reminder before we get going, I'm going to let you go to one minute. Bring the speaker down so everybody can hear you because I know we have lots of people at home that are watching. Can you change the time so I can see? I will when I click the button. As soon as she clicks start, it'll go to the one minute. And then just real quick reminder, we want to do everything that we can to make everybody feel welcome to speak here.
So we do our very darndest best not to cheer or boo or nay or bicker da da da roll. You can roll your eyes, I guess, because that's silent. But we really want to make everybody feel welcome. A lot of people are probably coming and speaking for their very first time today. We're super excited to hear you and we want to hear from everyone. And so please come and share your piece with us. All right. Carrie, no pressure. Take it away. Okay. So my name is Carrie. I was born in Chico. I've worked downtown for 20 years. I'm just going to break this down to the math. I keep hearing that you guys have a 67% approval rating for your project. But that's based on the number of 200 people that were surveyed.
There's over 100,000 people living in the city limits. There's an additional 100,000 in what is rural Chico. I'm part of that. If you do the math, it comes out to basically 0.2% of the people who were surveyed that live in the Chico city limits. That's two people for every 1,000 people. It comes down to 1.3 persons per 1,000 that agree with this. That seems like an extremely low number to me to bottleneck our downtown and ruin it. Because 1.3 people for every 1,000, just of the 100,000 in the city limits, wanted this. Not even considering the people who are outside the city limits. And I'm out of time. So thank you very much. Okay. So I don't see any. So Mark Kessler, Julie Kenner, Anton Cario.
And if they could go ahead and please stand in the aisle and be ready to go. So Mark Kessler. And then I have to, because we don't have a one minute, I'm having to put it in each time. And it will start when I hit it. So go ahead. One, two, three, four, five. Five seconds is how much longer it will take to drive through downtown Chico with two lanes instead of three. Would you donate five seconds to have a 40% lower probability of pedestrian injury or death? Would you donate five seconds to increase downtown revenue and your tax base by 20 to 30%? I was at the last meeting on Thursday and I heard from concerned businesses and walked out to the Thursday night market. There I saw six lanes closed, all parking removed, and still 7,000 people showed up.
Each Thursday they spent an average of a quarter million dollars. What I saw was a rainbow of diversity. Young and old. All races. All income levels. I saw Chico. Their actions show me that they wanted downtown to be a place to gather. They want more space for pedestrians. They want common space to celebrate each other and our beautiful community. It's a public space for all. Thank you. Thank you. Julie Kenner, followed by Anton Cario, and then Alan Tochterman. Hello, my name is Julia Kenner, and I am super excited about this opportunity for downtown. At this time, downtown Chico is like a highway thoroughfare. With all the lanes, it is dangerous to drive, it's dangerous to bike, and it's dangerous to walk.
People are weaving around trying to get through as fast as possible. I would like downtown to be the center and heart of the city. I would like downtown to be a destination, not a thoroughfare. I would like downtown to be beautiful and welcoming to all. I want people to come downtown and enjoy seeing people out and about in our city. Downtown is a public space that belongs to all of us, not only to the brick-and-mortar businesses, even though I think this will help them thrive. Let's plan for pedestrian safety, bike safety, and the future. What an amazing opportunity we have. I fully support Alternate One. Thank you. Thank you. Anton Cario, followed by Alan Tochterman and Gail Rossi. Am I good?
Hi, I'm Anton Cario. I'm a junior at Chico High School, and I live between Bidwell Park and downtown. I followed this plan for change closely. I understand that it's not easy to find agreement when there are so many perspectives, especially considering businesses, parking, and community needs. While I can speak from a business owner's perspective, I can speak for Chico's youth. To us, downtown is more than just a place. It's the heart of our community. And I've observed that this opportunity for change is essential not only to revitalize the look of these streets, but also to create a more accessible bike route that would not only protect students, visitors, and pedestrians, but also encourage more people to come downtown, support local businesses, and stay engaged in the community.
And to help build a better future for Chico. Thank you. Thank you. Alan Tochterman, followed by Gail Rossi, Rossi and Yesenia Moretti. Good evening. I guess it pays to come early. I had the opportunity to speak to you two weeks ago. I had the opportunity to attend the open forum. Tonight was the very first time I heard what this is potentially going to cost. $40 to $50 million. That's a wide range. And the city might have to come up with 20% of that figure, and we still don't have figures yet for our sewer. Earlier tonight, Council Member Hawley made reference to something called a cost-benefit analysis. Council Member Goldstein talked about going through the budgetary process next year. The only thing I'd like to bring up is we're supposedly in the feasibility study portion of this.
How do you do a feasibility study when you don't know what the cost is going to be? I would encourage the Council to consider there might be other alternatives and find out what the... Sorry. It's time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Gail Rossi, followed by Yesenia Moretti, followed by Marlene Merlot. So, Gail Rossi, Yesenia Moretti. Good evening. My name is Yesenia Moretti. My husband and I are owners of 8th and Main Antique Center. At the Antique Center, we have 80 vendors, ranging from our youngest vendor is 11 years old, and our oldest is 90. Some of these are senior vendors. We rely on our sales from our business to supplement our retirement income. And the reason I'm in favor of keeping the lanes as they are is because Chico has already experienced an unusual concentration of downtown business closures.
And I won't name all of them because I don't want to take up my time. But I would like to highlight that as a small business, we alone have had many challenges that have affected our... That has affected our businesses. Arson, which occurred to us in 2009. COVID, the current economy, the homeless problem. Those items, unfortunately, keep customers away. In order for us to remain in business and not be added to the aforementioned list of downtown business closures, we respectfully propose that you vote to keep the vehicle lanes as they currently are. That's time to provide. Thank you. Thank you. Gail Rossi, followed by Marlene Merlot and Don Jones. So is Gail Rossi. Marlene Merlot. No, you're down lower.
Marlene, I know your name. You're good, Marlene. Are you Marlene? Hi, thank you. Yes. You already know my name. I've lived in Chico 74 years. I reside in the county. We own property in the city, but of course we're not able to vote. I am and always will be a downtown shopper. That being said, I've never seen a shopper on a bicycle. Not quite sure how one could balance shopping bags or a framed piece of artwork and ride the bike safely. I rarely see bike riders in the green bike lanes that we already have. My solution as a common sense thinker would be to fix the sewer, leave the three lanes of traffic, wash the sidewalks, and remove the tarps and tents. That would keep our retail stores open and encourage others to shop, eat, and socialize downtown.
Thank you. Thank you. And I'm going to continue to ask Gail Rossi, Don Jones, Lori Monroe. So, Gail Rossi, are you here? Don Jones? Okay, Lori Monroe. Oh, okay. I'll bring you up in just a second. I apologize. So, I am in faith. Do you want me to? Can you hold on one second? Sorry. Sorry, we changed the time. Sorry. I gave you four minutes, Lori. There you go. Thanks. I'm in favor of option one. When I have guests from out of town, we walk downtown from my house going through the West Avenues and then through the university, and they're really impressed, but then they get to downtown, and they wonder why it doesn't look so pretty as the rest of what we just saw. And I really feel like the option one would create a downtown that is friendly and conducive to people enjoying themselves there.
I grew up in San Luis Obispo. They fixed their downtown sometime in the 80s, and it really is quite remarkable. I lived as a young woman in Santa Cruz, and Santa Cruz has what they call the Pacific Garden Mall. It's their downtown. It's not a mall at all, but it's only one lane going one way with streets around it that are bigger. That's time. Thank you. Thank you. Don Jones, followed by Celeste Bailey-Pace, and then Bob Fortino. Thank you. Good evening. The city cause for reducing a lane on Main and Broadway is the assertion that the current three lanes is unsafe, and that they should remove one lane to make it safe. A NACTO study cited lane width, not road width, as the greatest cause of traffic mishaps.
The study showed that 10-foot wide lanes are the most traffic calming and safest, 11-foot less calming, and 12-foot traffic mishaps increase. If the city adjusts the lane width when they resurface after the completion of the sewer repair, then Main and Broadway will be safer, and there will be no cause to reduce lanes. Also, I suggest maybe you submit for another grant that keeps three lanes and still takes care of the city. Thank you. Thank you. Celeste Bailey-Pace, followed by Bob Fortino and Connie Apostolacos, and I apologize if I massacred that. So, Celeste. Hello. Thank you. Okay, just a second. Hold on. Let me get it to come up. Hi, I'm Celeste Bailey-Pace. I'm a physician at Enloe. I'm also a downtown shopper, and I ride my bike downtown, and I shop on my bike, and I shop on my bike, and I bring my toddler on my bike, and I am worried that I'm going to get hit by a car or that I might die, and I don't think that that is a safe environment to live in, and I think that we deserve better in Chico, and that's why I moved here.
I'm a physician. My husband is a physician, and he interviews 150 residency candidates a year for the Family Medicine Residency Program, and, man, it's a bummer to bring them downtown to those boarded-up businesses and to show them what it could be living in Chico. We deserve better. Thank you. Thank you. Bob Fortino, Connie Apostolakis, and Anika Rodriguez. Thank you. Bob Fortino. We have 426 Broadway, which is a Silverstein building next to Stobols. We also have Camellia Courtyard, which has Morning Thunder and T-Bar, so we're very entrenched in the city, and we're very proud of what we own for everyone to use. Very briefly, I'm not sure I understand where the city is going to get the money that it may need, which is in the millions.
I'm not sure how far you can go in a project without knowing that you've got a source of funding that is secure as you're spending, I assume, grant money to get there. The other thing I would suggest is that we get a presentation of the cities where this concept is working, and a presentation where it may not be working or there are issues that could be addressed to improve our plan. Thank you. Thank you. Connie Apostolakis, Anika Rodriguez, Kathy Squires. Good evening. I'm Connie Apostolakis, and a lot of us wore red today because we want you to stop trying to take a lane of traffic away. Let's learn from the campfire. In 2018, Paradise was destroyed and 85 lives were lost. The Skyway was the main route out of town, and it had been reduced to two lanes to create a business-friendly downtown.
That made things worse during the fire and the evacuation, so please do not do that to Chico. Remember the Park Fire? Chico was threatened, and it burned for 65 days. Fortunately, we escaped disaster, but we might not the next time. We need three lanes to get out of town. We're a city of over 100,000, according to the 2020 census, and we need three traffic lanes. Let's not give another reason to be frustrated by going to downtown Chico, by making travel harder. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Anika Rodriguez, Kathy Squires, and Jacqueline Chase. I'm going off script, and I think it's fitting that I'm wearing pink. You guys know I'm a big proponent of option one, but Director Audubonny did say something that concerned me, and that was when the sewer project was going to start.
And in my understanding, they were going to be coupled together, revitalization and sewer. So I just ask, Council, that you give very specific staff direction. If you go with option one, that these two projects would be coupled together so that downtown businesses don't have to endure two projects. That said, whatever this Council decides, I will respectfully support your decision because we all want the same thing, a thriving downtown. Thank you. Thank you. Kathy Squires, Jacqueline Chase, Carol Munson. Hi, I'm Kathy Squires. I own three businesses in downtown Chico for 52 years. Sidewalks, reducing the lanes, the time it will take to accomplish will finish the legacy that we've built for the 52 years.
We've been at the same location for that whole time. I had two main concerns tonight that came up. One was that you consulted police and fire, but what about medical? That's a big one. And also, you said that the funding would not cover landscaping, which is a big part of this project. So please listen to the input of the entire community, not 1%. We need careful planning that reflects what owners and customers need and want to survive here. Thank you. Thank you. Jacqueline Chase, Carol Munson, Jillian Leach. I'm going to do a little role-playing here. I love you, downtown Chico, but downtown Chico, you don't seem to love me back. That hurts. That's unrequited love. Have you always hated me, downtown?
Are you breaking up with me? I've always proudly introduced my friends and relatives from out of town to you to visit, dine, stay, and shop. In 2006, I started riding a bike to work, and you and I became even closer. I visited you even more often. Even though I love you downtown, I've never felt really safe with you. Navigating our relationship has been confusing and dangerous. As our relationship has become rockier, I hear you telling me, after I have supported you with so much business and optimism, that there's no need to make me feel safer. You have said that you don't want to be seen with me. This is heartbreaking and infuriating. I feel abandoned. Downtown, do you really want to break up with me?
Can't we make this work? Please support Alternative 1. Thank you. Carol Munson, Jillian Leach, Tyson Henry. I don't know how I'm going to do this in one minute. Well, I'm Carol from Fifth Street Clothing Company. I've been in business for 48 years. I've seen a lot of change, and change is good when it doesn't harm. And revitalization 1, 2, and 3 will harm downtown, not help. During construction, businesses cannot survive if customers can't get through the door. Block the door, lose the store. No business means no economy and no tax revenue. Removing a lane will not slow traffic. Esplanade has already two lanes, and it's driver's behavior, not how many lanes. They drive the same. The plan also takes away a lane downtown, widened sidewalks that are already wide enough, and it puts a bike path where it doesn't belong.
It's not, it's, the issue isn't the bike path. It's the location. Salem would be a better alternative. And the delivery trucks, having that delivery. That's time. Thank you. Yeah, I have that. Okay, thank you, Jillian. She was just getting started. I know. Jillian Leach, Tyson Henry, followed by Shang Vang. First off, I want to say I'm wearing red because I'm a Chico State person, and I did not know, I did not get the memo. So... This project is not a choice between business success and safety. The data shows we can and should have both. Other cities have already tested this. In Davis, a college town just like ours, 20% of all trips are made by bicycle. That didn't happen by accident. It's over decades of building safe infrastructure.
In Portland, after installing protected bike lanes, retail sales increased by 10%. In Boulder, Colorado, another college town, there have been many city projects to reduce car lanes and add protected bike lanes. Even now, they're planning to redesign more streets in this vein. This project isn't about eliminating cars. It's about balance. It's about making downtown a place where people feel safe enough to spend time, not just pass through. Biking is also freeing up parking for others. As an economist, our downtown has a supply of great businesses, but we need demand. And demand comes from making downtown a place people actually want to spend time in, like Thursday Night Market. Doing nothing will not reverse the current trends.
This isn't a high-risk gamble. It's a low-risk, high-reward opportunity backed by data from many other cities. That's time. Thank you. Tyson Henry, Sheng Vang, John Gunnell. I'm Tyson Henry, and if we do nothing else, we've got to go to two lanes. I encourage you—this isn't an advertisement—I encourage you to sit at a table in front of Tres Hombres and see what happens. Two lanes go into three, so people line up at that light, and they gun it. It's absurd. People see, oh, three lanes. I'm going to hurry up through downtown. That's not what we need. Even if we just got rid of one of the lanes, we'd be better off. I also eat lunch down there a lot, and I've noticed that trucks will block two of the lanes.
It happens fairly frequently, especially the food delivery drivers. They don't really care. And with just one lane open, it's okay, because there's a pile of cars that come through and then nothing. Another pile of cars that go through. So it's not like an L.A. freeway that's constantly, constantly filled with cars. So if we can just get rid of one of those lanes, we'd be better off. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Shang Vang, John Gannell, and Carol Lohippo. My name is Shang Vang, and I'm the owner of Vang's Plants Insectlands Hub. This Sunday, we'll be celebrating five years in downtown Chico, and we're truly grateful to be part of this community. Two years ago, when I heard of this project, I was totally against losing a lane, but three lanes have not improved foot traffic in our downtown, which is what we need to survive.
Therefore, I am in support of Alternative 1. Every year, I tell myself, this is going to be the year, but I have to be honest, my optimism is fading. Something needs to change, because what we are doing now isn't bringing foot traffic to our businesses. I understand there isn't a single solution to fix downtown, but what we have right now isn't working. So yes to slowing down traffic, yes to protected bike lanes, yes to widening our sidewalks, and beautifying our downtown to make it a place where people want to gather, shop, and eat. Thank you. Thank you. John Gannell, Carol Lohippo, and Tracy Vincent. Hey, guys. I'm a family physician, and I support Option 1. The very first thing I looked at when I decided whether or not to move to Chico three years ago was its bike lane network.
I commute every day by bike to work. Or rather, I did until six months ago when I was riding on a bike lane that ended, and then a car made a left-hand turn into me, broke my wrist. I have chronic pain in my wrist six months later. I have PTSD that has prevented me from going to work. I'm lucky I wasn't brain damaged, paralyzed, and my two six-year-old daughters are lucky that they still have a dad. I beg you guys, if you're thinking about voting no on this, just throw it up on chat GBT. Look at the data supporting the economic benefits. Look at the public health benefits. And if you're still on the fence, think of the sons and daughters of people who are not as lucky as I am to be able to come talk to you.
Thank you. Carol Lohippel, Tracy Vincent, and Sean Todd. So is Carol? Tracy Vincent? There's like so many things. I even have a hard time knowing where to start. So number one lesson, this rollout was horrific. You can say, oh, we told people, I ran it to ground. No, the word didn't get out well. That being said, the people that went to work on this project and to get the funding did a lot of good work. This is a great project. There's a lot of energy in it. If these two groups could have come together early, we wouldn't even have all these people here. That's what's really sad about it. But I personally do not agree with losing a lane, especially with all the housing. We have major corridors that feed into Chico.
Nord Avenue, one lane. Nobody's going to take it. That huge project that's going in out there with those houses, they're not going to take Nord. They're going to come up East Avenue and hang a right on the Esplanade. 99's not getting any bigger. Mangrove is not getting any bigger. I am all for slowing down traffic, smaller lanes, bigger sidewalks. I just don't think we can risk losing a lane. But I don't want to lose this project money either. Thank you. Thank you. Sean Todd, Rob Anderson, and Elizabeth Devereaux. Hi. I'm Sean Todd with Smart Growth Advocates, supporting infill growth and smart urban development. I just want to say, please, please support bike lanes that will revitalize downtown and support Alternative 1.
Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to check. Is Gail Rossi available or Carol Lohippel? Rob Anderson and Elizabeth Devereaux. So Rob Anderson. Awesome. Thank you. Hi. I'm Rob Anderson. I own the Prosperity Building on the Roundabout. I love riding my bike around downtown Chico, my scooter, Segway scooter, and driving to work. And I don't want to lose that. I love a bike lane that's going up Esplanade. They did a beautiful job with it. I was riding into town. I stop on my scooter, push the button, wait for the light to let me go. Nice. Pulls up. Stops. My light turns. I go forward. He goes forward. I end up on his windshield. I understand what the good doctor is talking about. People are not looking to their right for traffic where they do not expect it.
Downtown, people, if they park their car, they're not expecting to have to cross a bike lane to get to a store. You have young people. You have old people that are going to get hurt or killed. And by doing that, you might hurt or kill business. So please, keep three lanes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Elizabeth Devereaux, followed by Greg Scott, Jackson Privet. Good evening. Thank you. Alternative 1 will create a downtown that supports both pedestrians, bikes, and slowing traffic. By widening the sidewalks and providing safe bike infrastructure, it will help create making downtown a place of destination rather than a thoroughfare. As a member of Smart Growth Advocates and the Park Avenue Working Group, I wonder if we can try to envision our town in another 20 years, where Park Avenue has grown a significant amount of mixed-use housing, and that the residents living in downtown and nearby will naturally revitalize downtown if we make it now a destination for community, for fun, for dining, entertainment, and commerce.
And that will be a vote for alternative number one. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Greg Scott, Jackson Privet, and Molly Shuey. Hi, I'm Greg Scott, downtown property owner and business owner. And rather than going over the same issues about cost, timing, grant funding, and a whole host of other issues this project has, I'm asking the council to take a step back and just allow a group of people that we put together as a cross-section of bike enthusiasts, property owners, downtown business owners, and concerned citizens across Chico to come up with another alternative. Right out of the consultant's report from the memo of last March, the neutral and non-preference responses highlight the importance of clear communication, flexibility, and trust building.
This group represents an opportunity to refine the alternatives, address uncertainties, and potentially develop a hybrid solution that better reflects the full range of community priorities. With this in mind, I'm just asking you to take a step back, look at it, and not commit yourself to $40 to $50 million or 20% of it or whatever. Thanks. It's time. Thank you. Jackson Privet, Molly Shuey, and Matt Beshore. Good evening. My name is Jackson Privet, and I am a student at Chico High School. I am still yet to hear credible arguments presenting numerical data that in any way proves adding bike paths and pedestrian infrastructure will harm downtown. The numerical data supports that adding bike paths improves safety.
The Esplanade Corridor Safety Project did this. More data, such from Thursday Night Market, demonstrates possibility. Around 100 parking spots were closed for vendors, and yet we see thousands of people walking the streets and attending the market and engaging with downtown businesses. When you create a space for people to go, they will. People will find places to park outside of downtown, just as on Thursday nights and Saturday mornings. The best times in our community are the times that people are safe and together. I beg everyone to consider option one. Thank you. Thank you. Molly Shuey, followed by Matt Beshore. Ryan Sharp. Good evening, Mayor and Council staff. My name is Molly Shuey, and I'm a Chico High student who also grew up and currently lives downtown.
I am here to share a perspective that many of you may have not considered. In 2025, the city of SLO undertook a downtown revitalization project similar to ours. Despite initial pushback, much like what our remodel designs are facing, the city proceeded, and they completed a $5.8 million project that focused on making their downtown safer for pedestrians and cyclists. Cal Poly SLO has become a college that draws many Chico students to their community that resembles what Chico State could become. In 2024, CNN recognized SLO as one of the top 10 towns to visit in the U.S. and ninth in the nation for places to retire. I encourage everyone to look beyond their biased opinions of Chico and see that positive change is happening everywhere.
Please consider this opportunity to improve Chico for us all. Thank you. Matt Beshore, followed by Ryan Sharp and Annette Heinmeier. Good evening, Council. I'm encouraged by the turnout tonight and the turnout for a lot of these. It's great to see that people want to participate, and it's great to see that people care about downtown. Sometimes it's felt like an afterthought to a lot of the citizens in this community. So it's great whether or not I agree or we all agree that people want what they think is best for downtown. I couldn't help but notice walking up here just staring at the sign that the number one goal of the City Council strategic goals is a safe community. I can't also help but feel that downtown, the way it's currently arranged, is not a safe place.
People fly through downtown. Just the Trace Hombres thing, that was the first thing that came to mind when I thought about this. I completely agree with the idea. Two lanes, whether or not it's a bike lane or whether or not it's wider sidewalks, whatever it might be, slowing people down, making downtown a destination, not a thoroughfare, should be priority one for our Council. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ryan Sharp, Annette Heinemeyer, and Nicole Farley. I see Nicole coming. Can you call the other two again? So Annette Heinemeyer, Nicole Farley. I don't know which. So what is your name? Annette. Annette. Okay. Let me do this real quick. I'm Annette Heinemeyer, and I'm a relatively new Chicoan, and I love this community, and I love that everybody is here, you know, arguing for what will be best for Chico.
My concern as a person that lives downtown is that our businesses really are having a really difficult time, and to be introducing this at this point might not be the best timing. I love the idea of narrowing the lanes to slow traffic. We haven't solved a lot of the problems yet. We're doing this visibility study. I haven't really, I don't understand the results. So I think we should just slow it down a little bit. I'd love to see more invested in trying to get more businesses to thrive downtown first, and then once where they are actually able to contribute to do more with the tax dollars to make the environment, like, safer and more appealing. I love that idea, but we should do as much as we can during that sewer project to make the streets safer.
Thank you. Thank you. Nicole Farley, followed by Carol, with no last name, and Chris Daniels. Okay. Good evening, Mayor Reynolds and Council Members. My name is Nicole Farley, and I'm here as a business licensee in downtown Chico for a consulting agency, in addition to my role with Explore Butte County and Travel Chico. I'm here to urge alternative one for the downtown revitalization project for many of the things that you guys outlined in 2025 with your strategic planning and strategic direction for the city. But also, I love to shop downtown, and I would love to be able to ride my bike safely downtown to continue to shop downtown. I buy most of my products here locally, from my clothing to my groceries to everything and beyond, and the opportunity to ride my bike, park it someplace safely so it doesn't get stolen, as well as to go into shops to buy more from our retail establishments downtown would be an added benefit to why I love Chico.
Thank you. Thank you. I'm Carol, Chris Daniels, and Julia Sidman. Good evening. I had a beautiful three-minute speech, but I'll clip it to one. My name's Carol Wallen. I have an environmental consultant here in town. I've done this 17 years for Butte County, Sutter, Glen Tehama, City of Chico, Town of Paradise. You get the point. I'd like to respectfully propose to you guys that this is a public safety issue, not a bikes versus business issue. This is an honor to our downtown section of our specific plan. A vision statement from that general plan is, downtown is walkable with supportive parking facilities, and new development is designed with pedestrian and bicyclists in mind. Another excerpt from that is that traffic should not disturb the pedestrian experience.
I will skip ahead to John Bidwell himself planted rows of trees on what would become Esplanade, Maine, and Broadway with the intent to mark off lanes for carriages, wagons, riders, and pedestrians. In closing, in support of Alternative 1, the fourth greatest baseball movie of all time, if you build it, they will come. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Chris Daniels, Julia Sidman, and then Linda Juanapina. Good evening. My family operates multiple downtown businesses and owns commercial properties here. We are opposed to the proposal and grant as it stands with bike paths along Broadway and Main, option one. Kiosks, the Warren settlement, parking, and access are already major problems for downtown.
I would like to consider a different alternative with wider sidewalks and reducing the width of the lanes, slowing traffic naturally as an alternative. Another approach for bike lanes would be improving existing routes like Salem and Wall that would go around the outside of the city downtown and not along the core, providing safety. So that was more along the option four. The consultant memo states that there is no clear consensus and that people do not fully understand the tradeoffs, yet we are moving forward anyway. So I would like to go along with Greg to slow this down a bit. We support improving and creating a safe downtown, but only with a phased plan and protection for businesses, which have not been clearly defined.
If visas fail, there's no downtown. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. Okay. Julia Sidman, followed by Linda Wannapena, and then Maddie Hinckley. Hi, my name is Julia Sidman. I'm here tonight as a Chico resident. I'm relatively new to town. I've previously lived in six different states. I'm often drawn to cities around the size of Chico, smaller towns, tight-knit communities where there's a vibrant community of young people, art, culture, things like that, all of which Chico has. I feel I can view Chico with some fresh eyes. I love hearing about people that have been born and raised here, but when I came into this town, I immediately loved it. I looked for apartments where I could bike to town, and I don't bike to town because it is scary.
You hear about how downtown is suffering, dying, things like that. So if we have an opportunity for growth, for vibrancy, for change, I think we should try something new. When people look at where's the best places to live, you don't see, wow, this town has three lanes of traffic right through the middle of downtown. You hear big sidewalks, outdoor dining, bike lanes. That's what draws people, and that's what's going to contribute to Chico's growth. Thank you. Thank you. Linda Wanapena, Maddie Hinckley, Muir Hughes. Hi. I'm Linda Wanapena. I own a business downtown. I also have a 20-year career at Enloe Hospital, and I've witnessed many traumas and emergencies. Three lanes is essential for emergency services to be able to respond, police, fire, and ambulance.
If you go down to two lanes and you have emergency services blocking lanes, also, they can't get through from our main medical center down Esplanade if they've got to maneuver and then it goes to one lane. It's a disaster. Consider enhancing Salem Street for bike lanes, direct to college, side streets, direct to shopping. Deliveries being restricted is a very bad idea. We get our resources, a lot of it from out of town, because they're not here. So we can't dictate to them when they deliver. They're going to tell us to find another vendor. This also affects Uber Eats. That's time. Thank you, Linda. Sorry. Thank you. Maddie Hinckley, Muir Hughes, Leanne Powell. Hello. My name is Maddie Hinckley.
I'm opening a business downtown, and I support Alternative 1. I would like us to move forward in applying for the ATP grant, knowing that major construction wouldn't begin for years, which allows plenty of time for more debate and public input to tweak the design of this plan. If we apply for the grant, we can keep talking. If we don't, the conversation is over, and I would like us to keep talking. I understand the fear about whether businesses can survive the construction period. I have that fear, too, but it's a short-term fear that we cannot let dictate our long-term future. We have to replace that fear with hope, along with a strategic plan for economic-supportive businesses, both during and after construction.
We can work together to find solutions as long as we keep working together, instead of shutting this whole project down out of fear. I want our downtown to center around people. I want us to ride our bicycles or drive our cars to one of the six parking lots or 500 parking spaces and then walk around in the shade. Foot traffic is critical for the success of our businesses, not car convenience. Thank you. Thank you. Mira Hughes, Leanne Powell, Nicole Nava. Hi, everyone. My name is Mira. My husband and I have the bookstore downtown, and I've grown up in Chico. I love this community, and tonight I feel so proud that we're here, passionate about the future of this town. I think everybody has some really valid concerns.
Safety is important. The viability of businesses, which are the destination for travelers, that's important as well. And I think that we all want this to be a vibrant place where everyone thrives. I think that's kind of a common vision. I feel like this phase with the consultants didn't exactly answer some of the concerns that citizens, some business owners had. And I would like to suggest perhaps that council, this is a huge decision for the future, just in cost alone that we don't have the answers to. If we took a pause and had two weeks for a cross-section of stakeholders to meet and bring back proposals. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
a narrow track no longer holds the city's back. I've heard the talk of downtown plans from local folks and city fans. Though silent as a wooden door, I'm casting vote for option four. For bikes and walks and safer air, will we still all like it here or there? I've checked my list. I've seen the view. Option four is what I'll do. With magic tricks and elf delight, we'll make downtown scene feel right. No more delays, just another cheer and glee. Option four is best for me. Leanne, you win the costume contest tonight. Thank you. So just a second, Nicole. Let me follow that one. Good luck following that. All right. This is a solution in search of a problem, and the lack of a bike lane isn't the problem. Encampments, high rents, and lack of a unified identity are the problem. We have a lack of clarity on scope of work, cost of work, the city's ante-in, the difference between the sewer project and this project, the duration of the construction, which impacts the economic vitality of the businesses and their ability to retain staff and customers. We have a lack of public notification to all stakeholders.
Data skewed due to sample size of survey population combined with guided options that did not include keeping all existing lanes of traffic. That is not representative of all of Chico, nor taking a non-biased approach. Did you ask first responders whether they support lane reduction? Shoppers include our disabled residents, the elderly, and kids trying to exit vehicles, cross through the bike path, and then get up on the sidewalk. We have data that doesn't support the need for bike lanes. Vote for. Okay, so Marie Patterson, Matthew Knoll, and Matt Edie. Hi, good evening, Council. My name is Marie Patterson. Born and raised in Chico. Went to Chico State, constantly riding my bike around town. I graduated with a degree in construction Management and later a master's in geography and planning, focusing on master planning, bicycling infrastructure, and sustainable development. I can see the vision. I can see the vision of wider sidewalks on all aspects of streets. I can see outdoor dining, similar to what we have at Tres Sombres and Raw Bar and what we had at Banshee. I see families riding their bikes downtown and enjoying ice cream and further going to farmers markets and Friday night markets. I lived in the Bay Area after graduating. I've lived in San Francisco. I've lived in Redwood City, in San Carlos. I lived in Oceanside. All of those downtowns, vibrant, all of them having either single one lanes of dual traffic or occasionally two lanes of traffic.
They all have figured out their times. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Matthew Knoll, Matt Bede, Casey Bounds.
We have 38 more. Hi, my name is Matthew Knoll. This is actually a question I don't know the answer to. I want to ask the City Council if the City opts for option four that is keeping downtown at six lanes. Will that mean when Main and Broadway are torn up to replace the sewer lines and then need to be repaved? Will 100% of that cost have to come from Chico taxpayers instead of only 20% that the Chico taxpayers will pay with the grant? And then if 100% of the funding has to come from the general fund, does that mean that eliminates that money from repairing our other roads? And then as part of that process, I would like to request the City Council provide a list of roads the City may forego repairing because there's no longer funding for it or how much the City Council will propose increasing the sales tax in order to fill that gap. Thank you.
Thank you. Matt Bede, Casey Bounds, and Celeste Bailey-Pace. Do I have to wait for the timer? Can I just start going? Go right now. Just go. Okay. Matt Bede, I own Stovall, and I'm the director of the Lupine Legacy Foundation. We've been operating downtown for a number of years already, and we have, we just took over the Collier's Building. We're working on renovating. We met today about, we're working with the State of the Elroy folks to get the Elroy going back up. So I live in the avenues. I'm in downtown every single day. I practically live here. I'm a major supporter of Alternative One. I'm also a licensed civil engineer, and just looking at data, other case studies, I'm used to living slow, and I've heard that come up a lot. I think we're a good analog for that, and it makes sense there.
So I think all the data supports that initiative. So I, yeah, from my perspective, you know, I think we all can agree that downtown is not in the best shape it has been. And things need to head in a better direction, and I feel like this is our best shot at doing so. So just wanted to support that. And also, I just want to shout out Leanne. Even though I fully disagree, you, Oscar of the night for a speech, so she gets an award. Thank you. Thank you. Casey Bounds, Celeste Bailey-Pace, and Dave Drewitt. So Casey Bounds. Hi. I just wanted to briefly lend my support to Alternative One. I think we've heard the best arguments for it, but really it's about inclusivity and safety, accessibility, and helping businesses thrive.
I think it's very rare we have a unique opportunity to choose something that really benefits every single member of the community, and I think it's really clear that it does. And I liked what someone pointed out about how it's saying yes can help continue this conversation. This has been in the making for so many years, and I would love to see it start to move forward. And as they experiment, it's still years out, so it's not that we're rushing into anything by any means. It would just help us to be able to continue the conversation and start to make progress on this. Thanks. Thank you. Celeste Bailey-Pace, Dave Drewitt, and Reese Muster. Oh, did she? Okay, thank you. I guess we had her in twice.
Dave Drewitt. Good evening. I want to start by saying I hear where opponents are coming from. Construction, emergency response, deliveries are legitimate concerns. But every city that has done a project like this has heard those same concerns, and they've found solutions, because these are solvable problems, and we have time. The real problem is the street design. Main and Broadway were built as a highway, and the city never reclaimed them as downtown streets. Parents I know won't ride bikes downtown with their kids, because these streets were not built for them. That is the problem that this project addresses. It is not evidence against it. And if you want to know whether Chico would actually use safer streets, if you want to know what Chico values, you don't need a comment card at an outreach event.
Any city is lucky to get even half a percent at outreach. Just go to the farmer's market. Go to Bidwell. Go to the Thursday night market. Go to the wildflower race this weekend. Come to my neighborhood on Oleander. These people exist, even if they aren't all here tonight. We deserve a downtown built for people. Thank you. Thank you. Reese Muster, Erica Mohar, and Jessie Horgan. Hi. My name is Reese Alvester, and I'm a senior at Chico High School. I want to share how I feel about updating downtown Chico, because I think it sounds like a wonderful idea. My family and I have lived in downtown Chico area for more than 10 years, and I've spent countless hours running, walking, and biking throughout downtown.
As a younger kid, I noticed how biking downtown was tricky, because it's hard to avoid people on the small sidewalks and hard to bike on the street with no marked bike lane. Chico State is such an accessible campus when it comes to walking and biking, and it brings a lot of students in every year. And I not only think that adding bike lanes downtown will make it safer for everyone, but also make it more appealing for students. Downtown Chico is the heart of this town where people spend every day, and I think this remodel would be a great idea to keep the town accessible. Living directly on the S18, I have noticed how the new bike lanes have changed the dynamic of the street, making it much safer and accessible for everyone, actually bringing in more people because there is now a safe place to actually be.
So I believe that by doing this downtown, it will make it more accessible for businesses. When I biked around downtown with my dad as a kid, it always felt risky, and being on a bike with your kids always will be, but I believe that these plans will help it for the future. Thank you. Thank you. Erica Mohar, Jesse Horgan, Duncan Lee. Hello, everyone. My name is Erica Mohar. I supported option one, but then I had one. Wait, Erica, can you pull the mic up to you? Oh, sure. Sorry, I thought I was screaming. It's riveting. Everybody wants to hear you. Okay. Hi, my name is Erica Mohar. I supported option one, but then I had one important question. Is the city planning to remove hundreds of old-growth native trees, like the sycamore, the oak, the black walnut, to name a few in this project?
It's been my past experience that when you widen sidewalks and create bike lanes, you remove old vegetation and trees that are in the way. The trees, in my opinion, are a crown jewel of our downtown and cannot be replaced by a twig. The Temescal Telegraph Project in Oakland is really now a dreary gray space. And the trees that they planted are still tiny twigs nearly 15 years later. It's time. Thank you. Okay. Jesse Horgan, Duncan Lee, and Robert Snowberger. Good evening. My name is Jesse Horgan. I've worked in parking Management for 26 years now. All the points I was going to make are made better by the people who are speaking around me. So I wanted to talk about leadership and vision. Working in parking, anytime you make a change, you get a ton of fear at you.
People are afraid they aren't going to have a place to park. They're afraid their employees won't get to work on time, et cetera, et cetera. One thing I've learned in all these years is that if you make decisions from fear, you get left behind. So leaders listen to the problems, create a vision, make plans, and then deal with problems in the plans as you implement them. There's plenty of time in this to listen to people's concerns and put in place solutions. And I will volunteer to be on any committee that you need for those plans. Be careful, Jesse. We like to talk a lot and have a lot of committees. So Duncan Lee, Robert Snowberger, and Ann Byker Kaufman. Good evening, Council. I'm a student at Chico State.
And when I decided to go to school here almost four years ago now, a big part of what drew me in was downtown and the proximity of campus to downtown. The active transportation study at Chico State found that the majority of students get around without a car. And so for all of us, it's very important that downtown is accessible, not just by car, but by bike and by walking and that we feel safe. I lived in Pullman, Washington for a while, which is a college town that's a little bit smaller than Chico. And they had a similar downtown revitalization project where they added protected bike lanes. And there were a lot of the similar fears and concerns that people had. And the community really came together and supported the businesses while construction was going on.
And it turned out to be perfectly good for the businesses. Thank you. Thank you, Robert Snowberger, Ann Byker Kaufman, and then Logan Underwood. Good evening. My name is Robert Snowberger. I am the current coordinator for the VETS program at California State University, Chico. I would like to voice my support for Alternative 1 for the downtown revitalization. This alternative will ensure that Chico State students and Chico residents that choose alternative modes of transportation are safe coming to and from downtown. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor, do you want to continue? We have 28 speakers, but that includes... I say we power through with the speakers and take a break before we go into deliberation, if everybody's okay with it.
Anybody dying up here? Okay, let's go power through. Okay, so Ann Byker Kaufman, Logan Underwood, Kathleen Cordy. Good evening. Good evening. I just wanted to say I understand the fears of the downtown businesses. They're fighting for their lives as many of their neighbors go out of business. And I get that just looking at technical drawings, it's really hard to see how this project would work at all, let alone fix things. But the status quo is not working. We've got to do something. And the crowds at the Thursday night market really prove that people will flock to downtown Chico if it feels safe and it's pedestrian friendly. So traffic violence is killing people downtown. It is a big problem.
Something has to be done. And it's not bad drivers. It's the design of the streets. It's wide streets with wide lanes encourages people to speed. So please do implement Alternative 1. It will save lives. Thank you. Thank you. Logan Underwood, Kathleen Cordy, Eric Booth. Hello. I support Option or Alternative 1. I guess I can echo some of the concerns of outdoor dining. It does seem like you're having a conversation with cars as well when you're trying to dine outdoors. So that can be not as pleasant as maybe it could be with Alternative 1. And I think there's a lot of data to suggest that it would be a generally positive impact. So that is all. Thank you. Kathleen Cordy, Eric Booth, Catherine Harrigan.
And if I could ask people to get a little closer to their microphones just so we can make sure everyone hears you. Sound good? Oh, that was really good. No. Okay. All right. Good evening. My name is Kathleen Cordy, and I am a first-grade teacher here in Chico. Please vote for Alternative 1. Thursday Night Market is one of my favorite events here in Chico. It is safe for families by car, foot, or bike. It is community-focused and provides an experience that cannot be replicated elsewhere. It is jammed-packed with smiling folks to the point where it has expanded now onto Main Street. Yet, when you visit Chico during any other time on any other day, downtown is practically a ghost town. Why? Because right now, downtown's infrastructure is unsafe, unwelcoming, and provides nothing that cannot be found from a comfortable pair of pajamas and Amazon.
We all know that downtown is dying, and we are all here today united in our cause to revitalize it. We need strong bones to rebuild downtown from. That's time. Thank you. Not the broken skeleton. Thank you. Our workshop said they want downtown to thrive and to shop local. All we're asking is to not have to risk our lives to do so. But the loudest voices made it clear that safety isn't a priority. Well, that message is received. There's nothing that downtown offers that I can't get elsewhere in Chico, purchase online, or make myself. If the safety of your customers and the 15,000 students traveling downtown daily isn't a priority, then I won't support those businesses. I may be one voice, but if one person says it, others are thinking it.
Mayor Reynolds, Schubert's is my favorite ice cream in Chico, but I'll gladly go somewhere else. Thank you. Catherine Harrigan, followed by Jill Bailey and Susan Baldwin. Good evening, Mayor Reynolds, Council Members. I live in Council Member O'Brien's district, and I'm here to support Alternative 1. I've lived in Chico for 15 years. I first came here to attend CSU Chico, but I stayed because of the ease of getting around town. I have the luxury of choosing whether I bike or drive around town, and when I choose to bike downtown, I am one less car competing for parking. It means a space is available for someone who needs to drive. Alternative 1 removes just one parking space while improving the look and feel of downtown.
And I want to highlight this. 99 has two lanes in each direction, but Main and Broadway have three lanes. Our downtown streets are being treated like a thoroughfare. If we want downtown to be a destination, we shouldn't design it like a thoroughfare. Please support Alternative 1. Thank you. Thank you. Jill Bailey, Susan Baldwin, Will Furr. So Jill Bailey, Susan Baldwin. Moving on to Will Furr. And then Rob Berry. Will Furr. Do we have Will? No? I guess I thought he was coming up. I thought that was too. So Rob Berry. Come on down. The price is right. It's been interesting watching the city council from the kids table inside, so it's nice to be in the room. Okay, so there's not much more that I can say that hasn't been said, but I would say this.
Number one, you're being forced into a funnel, and the conclusion of the funnel has already been determined. This is a case of we have to pass the bill to find out what's in it. You don't have the money. You don't have the studies. Some of the sources of the conclusion about lanes was drawn from the wrong source. The funding source is designed to increase bike infrastructure at the expense of automobiles. So the conclusion has already been reached, and all of this theater is just justification for reaching the conclusion that the study and the funding sources intended to achieve. Delay this or vote for option four. Thank you. Thank you. Peter Washington, Kasha Wilson, and Kimberly Michael. Thank you.
I submitted a written comment that was much longer than I have time to deliver tonight, so I'm not going to go over all those points, and I'm also not going to go over a lot of points that a lot of people have said more eloquently than I would. But the main point, I think, is safety, and what you have is a report that shows you that the status quo is unsafe for people who are not driving, people on bikes and people who are walking. And you have a report from experts in traffic safety engineering who have told you that the studies show option one will make it safer. You've heard a lot of comments from people who think otherwise. Those people have not demonstrated those kind of credentials. I don't have much time.
I want to close by just thanking you very much for the tone that you've created in this room. So previous councils on contentious issues like this have not managed that, and I really want to thank you for that. Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Kasha Wilson, Kimberly Michael, LaDonna-Kaniggy. So are you Kasha? Yes. Okay. Hello. All right. Now, I am a registered nurse at Enloe Hospital. I pride myself on shopping small and local, and I commute by walking and biking. Downtown Chico, as well as Bidwell Park, are a huge part of why I choose to live in Chico. I believe that if we want to live in a community with a vibrant, thriving downtown at its heart, beautiful, shaded, and full of life for decades to come, we should choose option one.
Wider sidewalks with curb cuts provide needed space for entertainment, outdoor seating and dining, space for people who use walkers or wheelchairs, space for families with strollers and kids, etc. We can look to the success of Saturday Market and Thursday Night Market as proof of concept. People will come if we create safe space for pedestrians. They are examples from elsewhere in the state, across the country, and around the world of declining neighborhoods being revived by revitalization. Thank you. Thank you. Kimberly Michael, LaDonna-Kaniggy, Genesis Espina. All right. Good evening, everybody. I'm here to just kind of echo all the things that everyone have already said, but I'm here to support Alternative 1.
We're not reinventing the wheel here. A lot of communities throughout the state and the nation have already done revitalization projects in their downtown, and it does show to drive a lot of economic growth and prosperity. Our issues of having a car-centric downtown are not unique. I think they've been being felt all around the nation. As someone who bikes and drives, I'll be honest with you, I tend to drive through downtown and bike around it. Those should be inversed, right? But I do that because of the design of the streets. And I'd just like to reiterate, we're taking this one step at a time. If we do pass this and move forward with the revitalization, we will have a lot of time to figure out the details, and we have a good opportunity to get the grant.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. LaDonna-Kaniggy, Genesis Espina. And I apologize if I say your name wrong. Hi. I have a probably two-minute thing, and it was more of just a scenario. I support Alternate One, and you've seen me here at every council meeting and every public meeting. It's 8.15 on a Tuesday, six years from now, and downtown feels different, not quieter, just alive in a new way. Sophia is the cafe owner setting out tables earlier than she used to. She decided to stay in downtown Chico, and with a small business grant, was able to make improvements to expand her business to include breakfast. She's learned that the morning bike traffic now rivals the old commuter rush. Parents ride past with their kids, no shouting, blah, blah, blah.
I have a couple other scenarios, but at the end, we can't keep optimizing downtown for a pass-through traffic. Or we can select a design for people who stop, shop, eat, and stay. Other cities have already made this shift, and they're not going back. The question isn't whether change will happen. It's whether we shape it intentionally in a way that supports our businesses and reflects our values. I invite you to support our downtown by supporting Alternative One. Thank you. Okay. Genesis, followed by Corey, followed then by Jenna Johnson. Hello. My name is Genesis Laspina, and I am a Chico resident who regularly bikes and drives. I believe our downtown Chico has been dying for a long time because it's not as an attractive place for people to be and not designed for businesses to thrive.
The way the streets are currently designed encourages people to drive through as fast as possible. Whenever I am driving through downtown, I don't feel encouraged to stop and engage with my surroundings because I feel like I am on a highway. When I am biking, I usually avoid downtown because it does not feel safe, and when I need to go somewhere in downtown, I'm usually riding on the sidewalk. I believe redesigning downtown will help already struggling businesses as well as invite new ones. I encourage you to approve Project One now so that we can take advantage of this grant money that we desperately need to complete it. And I guess I have a little bit more time. Yeah, I'm a bit confused as to why businesses are so against us in making this bikers against businesses.
Clearly, we want to go downtown and support them, and if they would just let us, that would be amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Corey Collier, Jenna Johnson, and Kelsey Simon. So is, okay, so Corey. Jenna Johnson. Okay, Kelsey Simon. Senate. Thank you. Hi. Whoa, sorry. My name is Kelsey Simon. I'm in Casey Reynolds District. I am a small business owner, a parent. I shop downtown. I ride my bike downtown. I don't bring my daughter downtown on her bike, and I would like to. Those who are nervous, doing nothing is not a safe choice. Vacancy spreads. Businesses that give downtown its soul will disappear, not with a vote, but with a quiet closing sign. I am a yes on option one. It's how we can make sure this place survives and thrives for our kids.
I would suggest having the city look back into Measure H and seeing where exactly those funds are going so we can allot them to these sorts of projects in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ryan Green, Susie Lowry Hall, and Lily. So is Ryan Green? Ryan Green. Susie Lowry Hall. I don't see Susie. Oh, there she is. Are you Ryan? Are you Ryan? All right, Ryan. Come on down. Sorry. Give Susie another minute. Okay. Hi. Yeah, I'm excited to be here because I've got three little kids, and my family often are downtown. And I also am a big biker, so I love to be able to go downtown, but I often go around it. But the idea of turning our downtown into a safer, more enjoyable walking and biking town, I think is, I don't understand why we would do something opposite of that or try to avoid doing it in some way.
And I think we should move towards making that happen, which is why I'm here trying to push for Alternative 1, because I think that's our best option at making something like this enjoyable, safe space to bring my family and kids into downtown and spend time. I think it's just, we have to do it. So please, Alternative 1. Thank you. Thank you. Susie Lowry Hall. Okay. And then it'll be Lily, followed by John Tyler. Okay. Hi. Good evening, everyone. Speaking on behalf of Inlow Health officially tonight, we at Inlow understand that the city is moving forward with a decision for downtown revitalization. Our concern is that our perspective has not been adequately considered, nor have we been asked for additional input as a key community stakeholder.
On March 4, 2024, Butte County EMS, which is operated by Inlow Health, was initially approached regarding this project, but since that time have not been invited for further engagement or provide input despite the direct impact. We are here to ensure that these concerns are clearly shared with the city council as you deliver it and make your decision. First, Inlow Health operates the only hospital in Chico. We also serve not only the city but surrounding communities, including Durham and other rural areas. Main Street and Broadway currently provide the fastest and most efficient routes to our response areas south and west of downtown, including access to Durham and areas west of Highway 99. Reducing these lanes will directly impact EMS response times to and from those communities.
Suggestions of diverting ambulances to side streets or through roundabouts does not adequately account for the realities of emergency medical care. Time. Thank you. Wait. Can you, I'm going to ask you to continue, please, because Inlow is a huge perporn of this, and it's been brought up several times. So can you, like, wrap it up? But I would like you to finish, please, if you could. As fast as I can. Let's see. So just letting people know that when you're providing life-saving care, that when you're asked to divert, roundabout, or go left, right, left, right, that that actually inhibits our ability to provide that care. In most critically fragile patients, seconds can make a difference for them.
We're also concerned about situations in which delivery trucks and other vehicles block single remaining lanes. If one lane is obscured, then how are we supposed to get through and the ambulance cannot pass? EMS providers are also contractually required to respond to emergencies within defined time frames. Any delay caused by roadway construction risk, noncompliance with these requirements, and, more importantly, jeopardize patient safety. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Okay. So Lily, John Tyler, and Nelson Antoine. I am Lily. I own Lily's Brazilian Bistro in downtown Chico. I am in favor of revitalization. Our business needs something happening downtown to bring in more business. I'm not just in favor to just worry about the bikes, the safety.
I'm also inspired by the Thursday farmers market when all the people can come together. I envision close all lines, close the whole broadly entirely from the park to the plaza so we can have a business and the people come together and feel safe, have the kids safe. The business drive as the Thursday farmers market every day. It will be every day safe and fun for family and families. Thank you. Thank you. So John Tyler, Nelson Antoine, Wendy McCauley. Hello. Thank you for hanging out, everybody. Hi. I just, I want to say that I'm a Chico resident. I teach at Chico High, and I couldn't be more proud of the Chico High students that came here and voiced their opinions. I'm just a proud teacher right now.
But with apologies to my students, my favorite job is as a father. My daughter and I love riding bikes. We do. And we want to get around town wherever we can on our bikes. She's a new bike rider, though. There's no way that I can bring her downtown for the next year at least because she just got comfortable riding through Bidwell Park. My family and I try and spend our money first here in Chico, and we want to just be able to do that in the easiest way that removes the most barriers. And option one seems to me to remove the most barriers to that end. Thank you. Thank you. John, one second. Did you happen to teach at Stellar Charter School in Reading? For two years. Yes, I did. Yeah, you were my English and creative writing teacher.
No way! Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Thanks for being here. Oh, yeah. Okay, so RM Alexander. Hi, I'm Nelson Anthon, and it's been really nice, like people have said, to see everyone so involved here. Someone said 77 might be a record, but for comments, I was at the session last Thursday evening and last Tuesday at the city council, and safety was barely broached except by the engineer who was addressing the plans last week. But, boy, safety has been mentioned here a lot tonight. It's been a crescendo from the last city council meeting to this one and then up. But I wanted to thank, and, of course, Casey and Dale were both there at the Thursday session listening very attentively, and I feel like I'm speaking to you two, actually.
And I came to town a long time ago, and I'm not really getting my main points. Well, clearly there's a generational gap, and younger generation is going for the alternative, and the older folks are against the changes. And I think a lot of people have commented about the successful efforts at other places, and I think we should move with the alternative one. And I'm proud of everyone who's worked on this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So RM Alexander, Wendy McCauley, and Kara Cannon. I'm sorry I had skipped over. Hi. 77 is a lot, but it's still not 250 or the thousands that you want to hear from. I'm really hopeful that one of you will change your vote tonight. I'm in support of alternative one.
And I just want to make my voice heard and add to it. I think the public safety improvements are the reason why you should change your vote, and those improvements are for the pedestrians, and everyone who's shopping is a pedestrian. So if we make the place for vehicles who just passed through, if they're not shopping as much, if we make traffic calming and pedestrian safety improvements, they'll affect the businesses and hopefully make a change. And of course we can change the plans. So if you can vote for the opportunity to just make a choice on any alternative, even though I said I'm for alternative one, any one of the alternatives, one, two, or three, the ones that were set before you. If you change the vote, that would be great.
Okay. Thank you. Wendy McCauley, followed by Kara Cannon. Hi. Thank you very much for your attention through these long meetings. I am a retired business librarian from Chico State, but I don't do math. The more I have heard about this, I'm leaning away from alternative one. I am so concerned about the truck deliveries with a basic question that has not been answered, which is how do we from Chico regulate when deliveries are going to happen in a narrow window that every downtown up and down Central Valley from Los Angeles to Oregon, they're on a schedule. They are not subject to, oh, we'll wait for something tomorrow. They do not have time to stay in a hotel and deliver just at our peak hours.
Also, a key question not answered is why are the fundings not applicable to Wall and Salem? They are part of downtown. They directly connect to the campus. That is the safe place. If bikers are fit enough to bike, they are fit enough to walk a block. Thank you. So Karen Cannon. Hi there. Thank you so much for having this meeting tonight. It's my enormous honor to be able to go last this evening because you have heard us all at this point. You have heard the voices who cared the most enough to be here to speak up. And I think it's enormously evident that the voice of Chico's future, the voice of Chico's young people and children, is so clear on what we want and how we want to see Chico grow. And I'm speaking to a couple council members in particular because please, please hear us.
Downtown Chico is not safe for children at this time. It is not a child-friendly environment. The students have spoken up tonight. Young parents have spoken up tonight. And it's our future that we're asking for. It's very clear to see who wants Chico to say the same and who wants Chico to grow in a very, very beautiful way. So it's my honor to bring it home tonight. Thank you so much for your time. And let's please, please vote for Alternative 1. So, Mayor, I would just like to run through the names that may have been in the other room. Yep. So we had Gail Rossi, Carol Lohippel, Jill Bailey, Susan Baldwin, Corey Collier, Jenna Johnson, and Ryan Sharp. Are any of you here and would like to speak?
I do not see anyone rushing. I do not see anyone wanting to impersonate or them coming up. So with that, after over an hour and a half of public comment, we have to take a break for all necessary duties. And then we will be back to deliberate.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. There he is. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, man, we were having bets up here. Oh, wait, that's not legal. We were debating up here if this was a record number of speakers, and apparently bike lanes are not as contentious as Walmart on the north end of town. So almost congratulations to being the second largest crowd, and our lovely city clerk would know that off the top of her head because she would remember. We're almost as fun as reading a 21-page ordinance, which we did one time. Okay. I don't see anybody in the queue. Who wants to go first? Council Member Hawley. Well, I'm feeling very optimistic.
I have nothing to add that I didn't already previously say two weeks ago and that people who have come to comment already said. But where we left it two weeks ago is that we needed one more opportunity to hear not only from stakeholders, but the greater community. And by God, have we heard from stakeholders in the greater community further from what was already collected by the consultants? We did have about, I didn't actually count this out. I was just taking marks for the 76 or so speakers who came to speak. About two-thirds of them were in favor of Alternative 1. And on the con side, we had about equal numbers of business owners show up for both pro and con. But on the con side, I was surprised to hear a couple of critics actually seem to inadvertently speak in favor of Alternative 3.
There was some consensus around slowing down traffic generally and thinning roads and widening sidewalks among a small number of those people. So I'm feeling very optimistic going into this conversation. Council Member Goldstein? Yeah, a couple of comments. But first, I'll try to get to a couple of questions. First, I did run the numbers. I counted 68 speakers and that there were 45 in support of the project, 19 against, and a handful who didn't take a specific site. But my question for staff had to do with the couple comments we got on whether the sewer project and road projects are happening at the same time. Can we be certain of that? They are happening at separate times. How does that work?
The funding for the sewer project is through our sewer rates. And so that's already programmed. So we have to do that regardless of what this decision is tonight for this project, which would be surface improvements. So it's already planned and part of our sewer replacement projects. Interesting. That seems slightly different than what we were told last time. Can you elaborate on that? Like has that changed? I don't recall saying anything different. That's been the approach all along that one of the reasons to consider doing surface improvements is the fact that we are already planning on doing the sewer line replacements. And so that project is already planned and it's a completely separate thing.
Okay. But they're two separate projects, like separate funding sources. But we can basically use the opportunity of replacing the sewer lines to do the surface improvements, right? The approach or the concept is that there's going to be new trench lines cut replacing these sewer lines. And so tearing up roads and sidewalks to get those sewer lines in, laterals, all that kind of stuff to businesses. It's an opportunity to rethink, do we want to take advantage of that opportunity at following that project to do surface level improvements? Okay. This is slightly less clear than I would like it to be. Taking the opportunity. I just want to make sure that we have really good information here. I'm not sure how to ask that any clearer.
These projects are very tied together, but... Yeah, yeah. Like we're basically doing a dig once scenario here in this proposed solution, right? I guess I'm confused. That term typically isn't used in that context. Yeah, I know. It's used for fiber broadband. Yeah. So the concept, we have to replace the sewer lines. And so we have funding through our sewer enterprise to do that. And this concept would come after that project. So we wouldn't do this project first and then go do the sewer lines, right? Yeah. We would do this project, the sewer lines first. Okay. But we are... So you're saying we're going to replace the sewer lines, patch up the asphalt, and then tear up the asphalt again? It'll be trench patch, trench repaving at the completion of the sewer, just like every other linear utility project, whether it's the city with sewers or PG&E or Cal Water or whoever.
Whatever. When's the sewer project scheduled for? I believe we're on pace for like 2029, 2028, 2029 right now. So at least it'll be within like a year or two. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely, yeah. I guess... So I suppose it makes sense that it would be a lot to expect that as soon as you replace a sewer pipe under, say, 2nd Street, that you're going and filling that gap and building everything right then, that there would be some patching, but it's all going to hopefully take place within the same year and that these projects will be coordinated year to two years. They'll be coordinated in the sense that where our manholes and all the pertinences that are at surface level will be coordinated with those future improvements so that they're in the right spots.
But you always do underground first. And so when you complete your underground trenching, you repave that trench with asphalt and it gets put back and there'll be a trench patch there with real asphalt. But then, again, we're going to follow up with that with this project would be the intent. Okay. So it might be within a couple years. Again, there's a lot of different unknowns in terms of that based on the level of design detail, but that would be the intent is relatively close in time. We're doing the sewer lines and then we're following up with a different project. I see. And so generally what I'm hearing is that when you work on your underground utilities, you're patching up the streets.
You're basically making the pavement condition worse. And so with our current pavement condition downtown getting worse and then doing these underground utility work, we are going to need to repave the streets to make them smooth and more usable after this project, ideally. And so then the streetscape improvements will be the opportunity to do that. Okay. I think I see a nod. Okay. And if I can also ask another question. Well, actually, I have two more. Is it, I assume it's normal at this point to have a range of potential costs. That's the $40 to $50 million. But then by the time we apply for grant funding, you have to have a solid number. So we're still working on refining that, but we will get there.
Okay. Thanks. And then with the old growth trees comment, my understanding is that since we have many non-native Bradford pears and such, that if we end up removing some of these, our downtown will smell better in February, and we can replace those with more native trees. Do you know of any old growth native trees that are at risk of being lost, and can we work with our urban forest manager to make sure that those don't have to be removed? Yes. And that was part of the previous council direction two years ago to save as many trees as we can. But to your point, there are a lot of non-native species, and they're not built to current standards. So oftentimes you have tree roots that are heaving the sidewalk.
There aren't tree grates. So you create trip and fall hazards. So any new trees that would be planted would be native species with root barrier, proper irrigation, and flush-mounted tree grates so that it's not a trip hazard, and you can maximize that foot traffic area in the sidewalk. Thank you. I'll speak later when everyone else has spoken. Done for now. Council Member Winslow. Just since we're on trees, so we did, I was, we were on a committee, and we discussed this in December 2023, believe it or not. It's been a really long time, and Mayor Reynolds was there. We were also blessed with the presence of Council Member van Overbeek. And I did a little walking audit of the trees and talked to Urban Forrester on the phone, and there's a few sycamores by the post office.
I think those are the only native ones. The other real substantial ones that I thought were worth saving, and I think Richie, our urban forester, agreed, are northern red oaks, which are native to the eastern side of the continent, but close enough. Anyway, Mr. Auduboni, could you just tell us that we're not going to be jackhammering up the streets like in the Christmas season? Is that something we can just establish here? Yeah, those are all factors. Any project we do, construction is impactful. And so we work around the existing land uses. You know, residential, usually you're working during the day, but when we're around commercial type of uses that have business hours during the day, we tend to require night work.
And so that's going to be paramount. We usually build in times like, yeah, if it's downtown during the Christmas season, if we have the ice rink up, we're not going to be having, you know, excavators trenching through lines while people are trying to ice skate and things like that. And so we would build that into the project, scoping requirements and our specifications to not allow that type of work to occur at that time. Okay, so I'm hearing that Christmas is saved. I'll take that. I don't want to just speechify. We've talked a lot about this. I've given a lot of my thoughts about this. I do really hope that we can pass this tonight. I hope that we can apply for this grant cycle because the last time when it got put off and I realized it was a two-year grant cycle, I was having night terrors over this.
And I thought about like truly trying to force us to bring this back and open up that conversation again because I realized that we were at risk of never funding this project. There are a lot of cities that are really good in promoting active transportation. This is how Chico went from being the sixth most popular bicycle commuting city as in the greatest share of people bicycle commuted to now kind of dropping off the list again in a matter of years because the cities are really excelling at this and we're struggling to inch forward just even for our downtown. So I really hope that this passes. There's not much more than I can say to that, but I would say that even in advance of that, I would really like to see broader support on the council for it.
And I think that we can get there because I think that we do share the same goals, although we maybe have interpreted differently what effects these things would have, but it is on that poster over there. And we had a strategic planning session came up with the safe community, long-term viability and protection and enhancement of our primary community assets, which we understood to mean downtown in Chico State and Bidwell Park. And this is to connect downtown in Chico State and Bidwell Park. It is really the best thing we could do to enhance the connectivity and access and safety of all these things. I think there's nothing better that we could do for our downtown and those assets. I wanted to propose, in addition to just approving one of these alternatives and the one that has the most community support by far, that we do ask for a really specific business mitigation plan to help ensure that small downtown businesses are able to weather the construction impacts.
I talked to Mr. Gustafson the other day about three core and financial sources that would be available to any businesses that need them to make sure they can keep the doors open on the understanding that there will be an increase in revenue at the end. And I'd like to throw that on. I also want to hear from all the other council members and would really like to see us all get to an agreement on this. Council Member O'Brien. Thank you, Mayor. So, clearly this has struck a chord with our community. The fact that so many people care so much actually is a very good thing. I applaud you all. Thank you for coming. And I am sorry that it has become so divisive and contentious. I do believe everyone is advocating for what they believe is best for our community.
I do. Our staff and consultants, they were given another impossible task. We seem to do that to you guys a lot. No matter what you did or how you did it, you're going to hear about it good and bad and with passion. But I think the reason for this contention is this. Chico values its character and its icons. Remember the discussion on the Esplanade. We were talking about putting a roundabout in. I remember those conversations. That was voted down. Staff took the mission, which was to make it safer for bikes and pedestrians, and did a fantastic job with a creative solution. That's a fantastic example of finding a solution to a real problem. So, thank you for that. South Park Drive, we just had a discussion.
This council had a discussion on drastically changing South Park Drive. People did not like that. And with good reason. Now we're to our precious downtown. And by the way, this is Chico, not any other community. So, I do not want to base my decision, my decision on potential grant funds, especially if it is not the best decision. And bike paths on Main and Broadway do not make sense to me. I am not anti-bike. I have ridden hundreds, hundreds of miles on our downtown streets. I was a much younger person. And we can both support our bike riders, our businesses, and really all who enjoy our downtown without spending $40 to $50 million, taxpayer dollars, by the way, whether it's grant funding or not, essentially on bike paths.
There are other and better options, in my opinion, some that have not been fully vetted. Protected bike lanes on Salem that lead to the university make all the sense in the world to me. Considering a bike path on 4th, which by sex or downtown, goes by City Plaza, our municipal building, and leads to Bidwell Park makes sense to me. Adding robust bike racks downtown so people and their bikes are not separated, which, by the way, happens a lot in this community, unfortunately, that makes sense to me. Making a decision, a rushed decision, based solely on potential bike path funding, and I will again emphasize potential bike path funding, is not the best option for us related to our downtown, especially for our historic Main and Broadway streets.
There is more meat on this bone for sure. I think there's a lot that we can continue to discuss. And we actually have time to do this right if we do not impose artificial time constraints based on potential bike lane grants. And I will end with this. The official Enloe Hospital position, they have concerns with removing traffic lanes due to emergency vehicles and access to our only, our only hospital. And I agree with them. Seconds matter in emergencies. Thank you. Vice Mayor Bennett. That was far more eloquent than I am prepared to present. Originally, there was a third phase of this study, which was from February through June. And that was going to be to look at all the alternatives. And perhaps, I believe the term that was used, and I read it a couple times, but I don't remember, look at a hybrid solution.
And that did not happen. We haven't looked at a hybrid solution yet. I think that needs to be done. We've heard a lot of people talk about what they prefer. And I respect everybody's opinion. Everybody has an opinion, and that's fine. Last Thursday, I heard a different tone, but there were a lot of shop owners here, store owners, and property owners as well. So I heard a little bit different than what I heard today, tonight. And I believe we need to look at this some more. It's not, I don't think it's ready for a decision. We need to look at some more alternatives, which would be the hybrid, taking into consideration everybody's comments, your passion, and I respect that. I want to thank you for coming down here.
You spent a long time here expressing your views and your opinions. But I still think we have a ways to go to find, and there are a number of ways we can slow down traffic on Main and Broadway. There are some measures that can be taken to slow down traffic if we want to look at that more in depth. But I'm still leaning towards option three, alternative three, excuse me, which would put the bike lanes on Salem and Wall. I think that's the direction that we should look at closely and perhaps go with. But we'll see how this next vote comes out. But that's the direction I'm leaning in right now. Council Member Winslow? I don't know what you have in mind with a hybrid solution, but I want to point out I was surprised that we only really heard one strong assertion of this comment.
Lily's wonderful Brazilian bistro said we should just close down Broadway like we do every Thursday Night Market and then have Main Street be two ways. And this is actually, I thought of this long ago. I thought I was, you know, when I was a young radical, and I'm thinking, wow, we could just tear up the pavement, plant trees all the way through, and it would be like Thursday Night Market all the time, and then we would just slow down the traffic on Main Street. You know, people are going through, they'd go around. Like, that would be the, like, really pro-bike solution. What we have here is a hybrid solution. There, I don't know, so there's been a lot of statistical analysis going on in this.
I've seen more AI in public comments than anything else ever, and a lot of that involves kind of running, get Chabuji to give you numbers based on all these documents and stuff, but if you look at this proposed design, there's 82 feet between building face to building face. The bike lane that you're saying, like, is the whole project, is the whole grant, the bike lane is all for the bikes, that's seven feet. You know what that comes out to? That is 8.5% of the space we're proposing to give to bikes. 46% of that space is going to cars. That's between Main and Broadway. That's four lanes of parking between the two of them, and then there's four lanes for vehicles. This is a hybrid solution. What we have come up here has not come from, sorry, traffic engineers are not, like, the biggest bike enthusiasts.
They're really into car traffic, and we've had all kinds of conversations where I have had disagreements with the traffic engineers because I am more into bikes than car traffic, and this is a very balanced proposal we have here. It provides safe access to bikes. It takes away very little from cars. Five-second delay. There's no loss of parking. This absolutely did come out of years of us discussing this down to a very balanced solution that does provide what the people who are very focused on cars want, and it also provides the basic safety that bicyclists need. I don't even know where to start. You literally just gave me cold sweats. Like, I thought I had made my decision on this and knew where we were going, and now I'm having heart palpitations.
Okay, it might be the second cup of coffee. about the fact that we are going to tear up the roads and do construction in front of somebody once. I don't know where I've been, but I thought the whole talk of this the whole entire time was we are tearing the streets up to do the sewer, and when we put that street back, we're putting it back at this new thing. So now my brain, I'm like, I've got to, yeah. I'll just add the impacts of the sewer construction are pretty limited, and over the last couple years, we have had pretty significant construction in downtown. PG&E did some major replacements, Cal Water. We've had some race communications tearing up sidewalks, and so this is out in the middle of the street more so than a lot of those efforts even, and so just to help provide a little context on the sewer impacts, it's pretty limited.
It's a linear project. It's at night. Contractors are working during non-business hours. It really is limited in terms of its impacts. When we start tearing up sidewalks for this, I mean, that's going to be the bigger impact, and that's where that really, the additional engagement with the business owners will be extremely critical, and there will be so much effort to engage with them, understand their needs. We're going to have to sequence the work in a way that minimizes those impacts, so I just wanted to reiterate, over the last couple years, we have seen some pretty major construction projects and haven't really heard a ton of concerns, and that wasn't city forces. We put conditions on those types of efforts so that they minimize impacts to businesses.
So we're going to put sewer down the middle, and then we have to have laterals that go out. Would the laterals then be done at the time when the sidewalk and this whole redoing is done, or will the laterals go at the same time? I'm just trying to understand. And say you're doing a block on Main or Broadway. Is a block like a week, two weeks, a month for sewer, do you think? And what would... Because I understand, like, businesses are going to have to close, and there's other businesses that talk like, hey, if we know this is coming, I'm going to take the opportunity to do some remodeling and do some cleaning and do some new racks and some stuff that I want to do because I know it's five years from now.
I can save up. I can get ready. And so I think business owners can, like, understand and justify and plan for that. I think part of the problem is nobody really understands the clear view of what it looks like, which is what creates the fear, which is what creates, no, don't make change because I'm scared to death because we're barely hanging on by a thread, right? So I think if we could address some of those things, and, yeah. And I'll just add, there's a bit of a chicken or the egg kind of thing where we're here to get scoping of the project in order to get that level of detail. We need this direction in order to get there, but then we need... And so that's where I, in my opening, really discussed the communication, the engagement is going to be consistent throughout this process.
And so moving forward, you know, construction impacts, obviously we've heard that's a major concern. The other one is I think we really need to kind of roll up our sleeves with the business owners and find solutions to the loading, unloading, so that that can bring some resolution to those concerns. So those are just the ongoing, I think, things in the near future we can be doing to continue that engagement. If direction is given tonight, I would say that would be a requirement that we should be doing as continuing those conversations and gathering information, engaging in those conversations about what those concerns are and then coming up with solutions to those problems so that everyone's aware of what's going on and we can identify that there are solutions out there that can be done that are not as impactful, maybe as perceived originally.
So you're sitting there talking, and I can't help but look at the consultant sitting behind you, and she's sitting there shaking her head and saying, no, we can't. And I don't know if that's... No, no, no. It has nothing to do with the health. Okay. I'm just seeing this. No. So I just wanted to understand if there was something that we needed to know as feedback, I would love to know that. No. Okay. Sorry. It was distracting. I just want to make sure. SLO did this for $5.8 million. I can't believe they did it for that. What was my other... I had a couple... The sewer and we were going together. 12% to 20%. I don't know where we're going to get that. We'll hold Salem. Okay. I'm going to... We have other people in the queue I'm going to hold for now, but thank you for expanding on that.
Council Member Goldstein. All right. I will... I've heavily trimmed down my comment because we're almost at 10. I wanted to speak about how both of my former hometowns have embarked on major successful downtown street redesigns since I left. When I was a small child, I lived in Livermore and I biked three miles to school with my parents. And since then, since we left in 2003, they redesigned their downtown first street from a former highway into what's now a thriving main street with just one lane of travel in each direction, outdoor dining on both sides of the streets with beautiful trees. And this was in 2004 and they're doing great. Reading has really recently built significant affordable and market rate housing downtown connected by bike lanes and they've also actually opened up their market street to cars.
It was closed off as a pedestrian mall for a long time and that was not doing well. But it's one lane of travel in each direction and they're doing really well and their entertainment zone is thriving. So I'm going to say it. I'm worried that Reading is becoming cooler than us, something I thought I'd never say. If we lose Chico-ins or prospective Chico-ins or even businesses that want a safe, thriving, and bikeable community to Reading of all places, sorry, then we're failing as policymakers. So I don't want us to fall behind. I want us to be the leaders we were elected to be. I also want to point out the Wildflower Century Ride is this weekend. It'll bring in thousands of bicyclists from around the state and country.
We have the bike park on Humboldt Road being developed. And we want to impress those folks. So I also wanted to point out we got some communications from our constituents. I don't even think I could capture all of the emails in this tally, but we got at least 98 that I counted. 74% were in support of Alternative 1 or 2. 20% were against. And tonight, as I said, we've heard from about 45 of 68 speakers in support of this project. And so I see a lot of community support here, but I also completely understand the concerns with moving forward. And I am also very supportive. Council Member Winslow mentioned that we could establish a more concrete plan for how we're going to support businesses through the construction, because that is a recurring and very real issue.
So thanks. Council Member O'Brien. Thank you again, Mayor. So we all were given a survey and initially a scientific survey. I will state that someone did on social media and received approximately 440 responses in three days, with 99.3% of them voting no on all the options. That's just something to consider. Please don't interrupt me. I do have a direct response to that when we're ready. Please don't do that. You can respond to it in a moment. He's letting him finish or start. So the sewer project comes first. I'm glad you clarified that. And then the grant funding would kick in how long after that? And realistically, what would that look like? We would know once we get awarded. And so there's a programming phase of it.
And so I think it's usually a four-year programming cycle. So depending on direction tonight will dictate what we put in that programming for the funding. So we're looking at that probably 2030, 2031 timeframe. So is it like at least a year after the sewer project? Is that fair to say? Yeah, probably about that. Okay. All right. Thank you. Council Member Hawley. I'm always getting really logistical and referencing our planning documents up here. But it just feels right right now with the last commenter and bringing back to what I said in closed session. I want to ensure that we're making our decisions for the right reasons. And I'm going to pretend I'm down at that speaker podium right now. But I came to Chico for a reason.
Right now I have no family who lives here. Almost all my friends from college moved away. What I have is community. That's the reason I stayed. That's the reason I committed to this role. And community showed up today, first of all. Second of all, I don't want to ever lose that community. And if we go forward for our future, continuing to use our downtown as a thoroughfare, I just, I want to be really cognizant of what that message sends to people who want to stay in Chico like me. Because if we don't make community-oriented decisions, I don't want to live here for the rest of my life. Council Member Goldstein, you had something you wanted to say? Just giving you, Vice Mayor Bennett. So, Councillor O'Brien was referring to Alternate 4, which was taken last week.
It was a rather unofficial sampling of responses to Alternate 4, which is not doing much of anything. And I was amazed at how many people voted in favor of that. It was 99%. Thank you. Anything else? So, which disturbs me, because there's a whole other group of people out there that have an opinion, and they express their opinion through the survey, and we haven't talked about it much. Thank you for bringing it up. So, we need to look at that, too. They are residents. They have an opinion, and we should take a look at that. Are we... So, please don't interrupt me. Is that what you're referencing? No, I'm not. That's not what I'm referencing. That's not what he's referencing. So, maybe some more analysis of that unofficial survey.
Council Member Goldstein. I'm not actually sure which item we're referring to. I think there were a couple different things. One person sent us screenshots of her Facebook friends commenting on her post, and then she summarized that as 99.3% of them saying, no, it was 93%, I believe. She did her statistics wrong, but that's not really the point. It's that you can't consider that a survey if it's your Facebook friends who already agree with you. Like, I don't show you my Facebook comments on my personal page for that reason. But there was also a form put out by business community members, and I think that would at least have more value. Okay. Okay. So, how do you want to move forward? I'll make a motion that council move forward with alternative one for the downtown revitalization project.
I'll second that motion. Let me just ask for a friendly amendment that I wrote down on this terrible Facebook survey. Somebody who lived in Durham asked if people would walk downtown Chico. And just ask for a friendly amendment that we direct staff to build a partnership with three core and local financial institutions to ensure that small downtown businesses can weather construction impacts. I worry that's scope creep. Can we make that a council member request at the end of the meeting? I think it would help to include it in the motion. I think it's direction around this specific project. Okay. It's part of a mitigation plan for this project. I would like to ask staff for any comment on the friendly amendment before I accept it.
I don't. Just to be honest, I don't think telling a business owner they can go out and take out a loan and go into debt to stay in business is probably really going to make a lot of difference for a bunch of business owners. So, Mr. Gustafson and I spoke about this yesterday. He alluded as we started this agenda item that there could be low interest or zero interest loans, but the city can help facilitate that. And three core is a public-private partnership for economic development. Yeah. I'll just add we had a brief discussion on what financial options are out there, and we're a member of three core, and there's all sorts of low interest, zero interest loans, if that's an option. I mean, above and beyond that, I'm not aware of a municipality giving like a financial commitment.
I mean, that would be, you know, probably from the general fund and something we haven't budgeted for. But there's a lot of resources out there at the state level, the regional level, and three core would be our partner in connecting businesses to those resources that are there. But I will say, you know, I think in any project, it's a major objective to minimize any impact to local business. My colleague, Mr. Auduboni, is an expert in delivering those types of projects, and I think we would do everything possible to reduce and potentially minimize those types of impacts. And with, you know, the project likely not starting for five years, that would give us plenty of time to do so. I'm hearing that the direction is clear but implied that staff is going to continue working on this.
Yeah, it's like, I feel like it's, I could direct staff to look into options for delivery parking, but that, it's just kind of assumed we're going to be pursuing that anyways. So that's no on the friendly amendment? That's a no on the friendly amendment. I don't think it's applicable here. Did you get a second? Oh, I seconded. I did now anyway. We have a motion by Council Member Hawley and a second by Council Member Goldstein. And the friendly amendment was not accepted. Is that correct? Okay. Council Member Goldstein? Yes. Council Member Hawley? Yes. Council Member O'Brien? No. Council Member Winslow? Yes. Vice Mayor Bennett? No. Mayor Reynolds? I'm a no. But. But. But. But. But. I want to move forward somehow on this.
Well, what can we do? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Do you have any suggestions, Mayor? I would like to ask staff. Or Brendan. Is there a way to move forward on this? Yes. You keep saying we can do all these changes and we can make all these alterations and we can do all these things. It has seemed to me in the past when we've come down this road. Once we say this is what we're doing, it makes it very, very hard to make those changes. I'm more inclined to support something like option three. If there's a way to look at that to keep this going forward. I understand that that does not get us probably as much ATP funding as we would get on Main Street. I'm not as scared about the two lanes on Main Street.
I think we can get through that. I think there's. But I still can't get back the fact that we're saying we're going to slow down traffic, but we're only slowing down traffic by four seconds. So I'm not sure if we're slowing down traffic or we're not slowing down traffic. That's. How many times has it been said we have to slow everybody down going through downtown and then we have how many people say, but we're only slowing it down by four seconds. So we're either slowing it down or we're not slowing it down. There's a lot of other things that we can do is my understanding to slow down traffic. Like we can raise intersections. How many people have driven into the Chico Mall, right? What does everybody do going into the Chico Mall?
They slow down and they go because they have to go underneath that thing, right? So there's ways of controlling traffic via other things. Raised intersections. I don't know that you guys have done the bulbs out and those things. I just don't think we're there yet. How can we continue to move forward? I don't want to shut it down. I didn't want to shut down two years ago, but I wish we would have had this in front of us two months ago so we had more time to continue this conversation, but we're here now and we have to be done in two weeks. So what can we do? First off, just to clarify, it's kind of a two-fold thing when you talk about slowing people down. So there's the levels of service, which was the four-second additional delay.
So that is the amount of delay time at an intersection. And so through our traffic analysis, determined that we would still be operating at what is called a level of service A. That is the most minimal delay time. Based on our general plan identified levels of service, it says we can go up to a level of service E. So we're not even close to that, which is kind of like school grades, A, B, C, D, E, F, right? And the lower you get, the worse off you are. So that's the level of service delay. When we talk about slowing people down, that's traffic calming measures of the reduced lane widths. And so those are kind of two different components when we talk about the traffic elements. In terms of moving forward, again, as staff, we're looking for direction.
I'm confident our team can deliver whatever project is determined by council for this scope. And so if additional engagement is needed, in your opinion, again, we can do whatever is the will of the council. And it would be helpful to receive kind of clear objectives and outcomes that we'd be looking for to come back if that's the desire of the council. Again, when we talk about funding, it's a massive project no matter what. If we don't do bike lanes, it's still in that same $40 to $50 million range because you're tearing up sidewalks and roads and doing all these things. And so that just comes down to the direction of the council. We as staff would determine what that funding strategy is for that scope of work.
So I don't have a clear answer for you to make it any easier. I apologize. I wish I did. But at this point, we've exhausted, I believe, our efforts to communicate the scope, the challenges, the pros and cons, do public engagement. And we're ready to deliver whatever the council comes up with. And if that's nothing, then that's nothing too at this point. What's the minimum that you need for direction to be able to move forward with this to be able to apply for something by June, if that's the direction that we generally want? That would be direction on what to include in that grant. As staff, I wouldn't want to put into a grant and commit to something that we don't have the council support on.
And so that's where if the desire is to move forward with something in the grant application, then direct us as staff with that scope and we'll apply for the grant. Again, it's going to take six months to find out whether or not we're successful. It's an extremely competitive program. We believe option one, alternative one, is extremely competitive based on our prior conversations with Caltrans and the grant folks. But if it's not that, that's fine. We can still submit a grant and we can do our best to make it competitive. And so that would be the direction. If you're looking for something, you want to take advantage of this opportunity, giving direction on what that alternative is, we'll apply for the grant and include that scope.
But absent that direction from council, staff isn't going to proceed with a grant application with a scope of work that's not supported by the council. Council Member O'Brien. Thank you, Mayor. So again, you can apply for grant funding if we choose as a council to put a bike path on Salem, which I said makes perfect sense to take us to the university, take bicyclists to the university, and down 4th Street that takes them through downtown, bicyclists downtown, and takes them to the park. You can apply for that as well, right? Yep. We can apply for whatever the council directs us to. Thank you. So we're at our 10 o'clock time. Can we direct this to go somewhere so this does not have to die? I feel like we have very much come together.
I see you. I understand. I'm trying to get there. I'm trying. Trust me. How can we continue? We're learning things tonight that we did not even know. Half of the broom gasping, nobody up here knew that we were tearing up the sewer at this different time than we were tearing up the sidewalks. Clearly, things have not exactly been communicated correctly. We have some community members that have offered to come together and be part of a committee. Jesse has said he would be part of a committee. If I trust anybody, I trust Jesse to be on a committee because he's amazing and he's awesome and he has more, no offense to my fellow council members, but he's got more information and knowledge on this than probably a lot of people, including our consultants.
But you're here. You're in the community. You're at Chico State. I trust and value your feedback. So can we get community members together and all? Mrs. Zorn, you had amazing stuff. You guys have amazing stuff. We all are super close on this. How can we move forward together? Council Member Goldstein, I see you in the queue. Go ahead. Well, I mean, if staff has any input on that first, I am very worried about this isn't every two years grant cycle and it's our main hope to get funding, so I'm very worried about the timeline. So I'll throw that football to staff to see if they have any insight on what would be feasible to do next. Vice Mayor Bennett. The mayor mentioned that we had some new information tonight.
I had no idea that Enlil Hospital was concerned about two lanes down Main and Broadway. I had no idea. I thought that had been vetted. Apparently it wasn't. So in that, when a representative from the hospital tells us that they're concerned, I have to listen to that. Council Member Hawley. With the proposal of another community group to further vet this, I would just counter with, look at the message that our council has just sent to the community. And we had two years of stakeholder input and gathering sessions, QR codes posted to every street corner. And after a recent meeting, I had this Friday with a DCBA representative. The only counter was, well, the only further outreach that could have been made was mailers, and it's just not in the budget.
And even if we do send out mailers, like, okay, evidence comes back and we just ignore community input again. I posed this question two weeks ago. I don't think there's any more community input we could possibly gather that that would be somehow different than what we've already gathered. Council Member O'Brien. Thank you again, Mayor. I think Vice Mayor Bennett said it best. We didn't know that Enloe had this position. That's community input. It's not just on one side of this issue. It's the whole community. And that's an important piece of this that we did not know until tonight. At least I didn't. I don't think anyone else knew as well. That's pretty significant. Pretty doggone significant.
So a ballot initiative, you want to put it to vote? To the public? That's the only other option. Mr. Ottoboni? If we voted yes on option three tonight, and speaking of Reading, I actually did notice in Reading, somebody showed me a picture of that. They do have the one lane going through downtown. And then they have their bike lane is one or two streets off of their main thoroughfare, and it's a two-lane bike lane. I don't know. You guys would know the class that that is, but that's how Reading did theirs. It's one block off of their main downtown, which is kind of what we're talking about with this Salem potential. If we voted on option three tonight, would that allow us to keep this conversation moving forward and continue to make the changes?
If, yeah, if the direction from council is option three, we can certainly go with that. I think as we've communicated from our perspective and knowledge of the program, probably a lot less competitive in that grant program. But if that's the council direction, that is what we will do as staff. Absolutely. Totally negates the whole thing about Enloe wants three lanes. We've had this conversation for years, and you still haven't come. I mean, we're just hearing now that Enloe has an opinion, and it's that we need to keep three lanes, and this is not eligible for anything. Can I just add, Enloe was engaged throughout the entire process early on, and we engaged with them as a major stakeholder. So they, I'm not sure maybe there wasn't communication internally, but we did engage them, and they were part of our stakeholder engagement.
And so where that miscommunication lies, I don't know, but we did involve them in that process. I just wanted to clarify that for the record. And I want to clarify, I was not accusing you of not reaching out to Enloe. I'm just saying we have not heard that until tonight. For whatever reason, we have not heard that until tonight. Councilmember Goldstein. I don't know why we would do option three. We already can bike on Salem and bike on Wall. There are bike lanes and shared use paths on those streets. And also to the point of, like, in Reading, so there might be a bike lane on the arterial roads outside of the main Market Street area. But, like, as a bicyclist, it's totally fine to bike on a one lane in each direction path.
You don't need a bike lane because cars aren't going fast enough to make that necessary. But anyway, I just, I don't, like, when speakers talk about, like, the cost of this, I feel like it would honestly not be a good use of taxpayer dollars to put $50 million into bike lanes on streets that are already safe to bike on and not change Main and Broadway at all. Yep. Yep. Well, we're at 9, 10, 20, and we don't have another motion of something else, so I don't know how else to move forward. Yeah, can we vote again on this? No. We can't vote on the same item again. Please. Please. Please. Please. I feel if we let this project die, we're ignoring the voice of our community. We're done for tonight.
We get to this state of the department. We're done for tonight. We're done for tonight. We're done for tonight. We're done for tonight.
Every recap on this site is produced by the same pipeline: official city sources in, a machine transcript, a logged cleanup pass, and one AI drafting step. This page shows exactly what each step did for this meeting — including the full instructions we give the AI — so you can judge the process, not just trust the output.
The weakest link is turning the meeting's audio into text. Council chambers have distant microphones, cross-talk, and names the transcription model has never heard — so names, dollar figures, and mumbled stretches are where errors creep in. Everything downstream inherits those errors, which is why the later steps exist mostly to catch them: a name-correction pass with a public log (step 3), instructions that tell the AI to omit or flag anything shaky (step 4), and a cross-check of every vote against the clerk's record (step 5). If you spot something wrong, tell us.
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Start from the official record
We pull the agenda and the full meeting video straight from the city's own publishing system (Granicus) — fetched July 9, 2026. Nothing in the recap comes from any other source, and you can check both yourself:
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Turn the audio into text
Biggest source of errorsWe transcribe the meeting audio locally with an open-source speech-recognition model (
whisper-large-v3-turbo), producing 3,620 timestamped segments. Machine transcription mishears things — especially proper names and numbers — and it doesn't know who is speaking.The one hint we give the transcriber
Before transcribing, the model is shown this sentence (built from the official member roster) so it's more likely to spell names right. It biases spelling only — it can't add words that weren't spoken — and because that bias is silent, step 3 double-checks every name anyway.
4/21/26 Council Meeting, City of Chico, California. Present: Mayor Kasey Reynolds, Vice Mayor Dale Bennett, Councilmember Bryce Goldstein, Councilmember Katie Hawley, Councilmember Mike O'Brien, Councilmember Tom van Overbeek, Councilmember Addison Winslow, Incoming City Manager Gillian Haen, City Attorney Ryan Jones City Attorney Ryan Jones, Director Brendan Ottoboni, Engineer Public Works, Administrative Services Director Barbara Martin, Housing Program Manager MaryJo Alonzo, Accounting Manager Heather Childs, City Clerk Deborah R. Presson, Urban Forest Manager Richie Bamlet, City Manager Mark Sorensen, City Manager Verbal Report, Chico Police Officer Chico Police Management, Administrative Services Director Employee Organizations.
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Clean up the transcript — with receipts
A rule-based pass (no AI) merges the raw segments into readable paragraphs and checks name-like words against the official member roster. It only corrects a name when the context makes the match near-certain — after a title like “Councilmember” or an exact first name — and every correction is logged below. Anything it can't confirm is flagged for a human instead of silently guessed.
All 12 name corrections made in this meeting
Transcript said Corrected to Times Van Overbeck van Overbeek 7 Holly Hawley 2 Addison Addison Winslow 1 Addis Winslow Addison Winslow 1 Ottobani Ottoboni 1 16 name spellings we could not confirm
These looked like member names but didn't clear our confidence bar, so they were left as heard and passed to the next step as “treat with suspicion.”
- “child” (closest roster match: Childs, heard 2× — listen at 1:06:02)
- “work” (closest roster match: Works, heard 30× — listen at 18:22)
- “ones” (closest roster match: Jones, heard 8× — listen at 24:01)
- “worse” (closest roster match: Works, heard 4× — listen at 1:56:48)
- “person” (closest roster match: Presson, heard 7× — listen at 5:35)
- “along” (closest roster match: Alonzo, heard 9× — listen at 15:32)
- “persons” (closest roster match: Presson, heard 3× — listen at 2:36)
- “johan” (closest roster match: Haen, heard 1× — listen at 40:48)
- “brendan audubonny” (closest roster match: Brendan Ottoboni, heard 1× — listen at 1:18:53)
- “participation” (closest roster match: Organizations, heard 1× — listen at 31:22)
- “mentioned” (closest roster match: Martin, heard 1× — listen at 3:49:47)
- “dave” (closest roster match: Haen, heard 1× — listen at 24:42)
- “write” (closest roster match: O'Brien, heard 1× — listen at 35:51)
- “vice mayor” (closest roster match: Katie Hawley, heard 3× — listen at 10:15)
- “request” (closest roster match: Bennett, heard 1× — listen at 3:39:17)
- “decides” (closest roster match: Goldstein, heard 1× — listen at 1:40:02)
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Draft the recap with AI
The only AI writing stepThe cleaned transcript, the official agenda, and the list of unconfirmed names go to a language model (
claude-sonnet-5) , run July 9, 2026. The instructions below are the complete, verbatim prompt — nothing is hidden. Note what it demands: accuracy over completeness, no editorializing, omit shaky details rather than guess, and mark anything it can't verify — those become the dotted-underline flags you see in the recap.Read the full recap prompt
The {{PLACEHOLDER}} markers are where this meeting's title, date, agenda, transcript, and unconfirmed-name list are inserted.
You are writing a plain-language recap of a Chico, California city council meeting for residents who don't usually follow local government. Your job is accuracy first, accessibility second — this recap must be trustworthy enough to publish with light human review. You are given two sources: 1. The official meeting agenda (structured, reliable). 2. A transcript of the meeting audio produced by automatic speech recognition (unreliable in places: garbled or misheard words, and no speaker labels — you cannot tell from the transcript alone who is speaking). Rules: - Only report things supported by the sources. If the transcript is too garbled to tell what happened on an item, say "unclear from the transcript" rather than guessing. - Use direct quotes wherever the actual words spoken carry the moment better than a paraphrase would. This is especially true for ceremonial items — honors, farewells, proclamations, tributes — where what was said IS the story, and for pointed disagreements or a member explaining their vote. Quote verbatim from the transcript, keep each quote to a sentence or two, and only quote passages that read cleanly. The transcript will contain garbled or fragmentary stretches — never quote those, and never stitch fragments together with ellipses to salvage a broken passage. Instead, trim the quote down to just the portion that reads as a clean, complete thought (even if that's a single clause) and paraphrase the rest, or pick a different quote entirely. A quote should read as smoothly as if it appeared in a newspaper. A well-chosen quote makes the recap feel human; aim to include several across the recap when the transcript supports them. - Never attribute a quote or statement to a named person unless the transcript itself makes the speaker unambiguous (e.g. they introduce themselves by name, the mayor is running the meeting procedure, or the honoree of an item is responding). Speakers who introduce themselves may be quoted by name; otherwise attribute by role ("a councilmember", "a member of the public", "the general manager of the parks district"). Do not let this rule stop you from quoting — when the speaker is unclear, keep the quote and use a role-based attribution. - Vote outcomes matter most. If you report an item as passed or failed, there must be a clear basis in the transcript. If the outcome is not clear, say so. - Plain language: define jargon inline the first time it appears (e.g. "consent agenda — routine items approved in one vote"). Write for a smart neighbor, not a policy wonk. - Keep neutral tone. No editorializing about whether decisions were good or bad. Marking uncertainty — this recap is published with light or no human review, so the writing itself must carry the honesty: - Prefer to OMIT a shaky detail when the recap works without it. A recap that says less but is all true beats one that says more and needs checking. - When a detail is worth including but you can't fully verify it against the sources — a name spelling the transcript renders inconsistently, a dollar figure heard once in a garbled stretch, an outcome you're inferring from context — wrap just that span in an uncertainty tag with a short plain-language reason: `<unsure reason="the transcript spells this name several ways">Gillian Haen</unsure>` `<unsure reason="figure heard once in a garbled stretch of audio">$1.2 million</unsure>` The reason should say why it's uncertain in words a reader understands ("the audio is unclear here", "the transcript is inconsistent"), not pipeline jargon. Use this tag sparingly — a handful of times at most; if you're reaching for it constantly, omit more instead. - Never mark vote outcomes as unsure — if a vote outcome isn't clear from the transcript, say so in plain text ("the recording doesn't make the final tally clear") rather than reporting a tally you're guessing at. - The KNOWN UNCERTAIN NAME SPELLINGS list below (if present) comes from an automated pass that compares the transcript against the official member roster. Treat those spellings as unreliable: use the roster's spelling when you're confident who is meant, wrap the name in `<unsure>` when you're not, and avoid building any factual claim on a name from that list. Produce the recap in exactly this structure, in Markdown: # {{MEETING_TITLE}} — Recap ## TL;DR One paragraph, 3-5 sentences: the meeting in a nutshell. Lead with the most consequential decision. ## What happened, item by item For each substantive agenda item (skip pure procedure like pledge of allegiance and roll call unless something notable happened): a short heading with the item number, then 1-3 sentences on what it was and what happened, including the outcome if determinable. Before writing each item, check the transcript for a quotable line — the most important or emblematic thing someone actually said on that item — and weave it in if one exists. Ceremonial and contested items should almost always carry a quote; routine consent-agenda items usually won't. ## Notable moments 2-4 bullets: public comments, exchanges, announcements, or anything a resident might want to know happened. Skip this section if there's nothing notable. ## Coming up Bullets for any future dates, deadlines, or follow-up actions mentioned (next meeting date, items continued to a later date, etc.). --- MEETING METADATA: Title: {{MEETING_TITLE}} Date: {{MEETING_DATE}} KNOWN UNCERTAIN NAME SPELLINGS (from automated roster comparison; may be empty): {{UNCERTAIN_NAMES}} AGENDA: {{AGENDA}} TRANSCRIPT (automatic speech recognition of the meeting audio — imperfect, no speaker labels): {{TRANSCRIPT}}Read the social-media post prompt
Our Instagram cards are written by a second AI pass whose only source is the already-reviewed recap — it is forbidden from adding any new facts.
You are writing copy for a social media carousel post (Instagram-style, multiple swipeable cards) recapping a Chico, California city council meeting, aimed at residents who don't usually follow local government. You are given an already fact-checked recap of the meeting. It is your ONLY source. Rules: - Every fact must come from the recap. Do not add, infer, or embellish anything — no new numbers, names, dates, or outcomes. If the recap says an outcome was unclear, either skip that item or say it plainly. - Quotes must appear word-for-word in the recap. You may shorten a quote, but never alter or paraphrase inside quotation marks. - Neutral tone — no editorializing, no cheerleading, no snark. Being punchy is fine; having an opinion is not. - Write for someone mid-scroll: concrete, plain language, zero jargon. If a term like "consent agenda" is unavoidable, gloss it in a few words. - No hashtags or emojis in card text. Produce 5 to 8 cards following this template: 1. First card — type "hook". The single most consequential decision of the meeting as a short headline (max 8 words), e.g. "Chico has a new city manager". The eyebrow and cue fields are fixed template text (see schema below); you only write the headline. 2. Middle cards — type "item", one card per newsworthy agenda item. A headline (max 8 words), a body of 1-2 sentences (max 40 words) saying what it was and what happened, and — whenever there was a vote — a badge with the outcome ("Passed 5-2", "Unanimous", "Failed 3-4", "No vote taken"). Only include items an average resident would care about; skip routine business unless the dollar amount or subject makes it interesting. 3. Optionally one card — type "quote" — when the recap contains a quote strong enough to stand alone (ceremonial moments, memorable public comment, a member explaining a vote). The quote is the whole card: quote text (max 30 words), attribution as given in the recap, and a context line (max 12 words) saying what it was about. 4. Last card — type "coming_up". Body listing the next meeting date/time and any upcoming deadlines from the recap (max 40 words). The cta field is fixed template text. Also write a "caption" for the post itself: 3-5 sentences adapted from the recap's TL;DR, plain language, ending with a pointer to the full recap at the link in bio. Output STRICT JSON only — no markdown fences, no commentary before or after. Schema: { "caption": "...", "cards": [ {"type": "hook", "eyebrow": "CITY COUNCIL RECAP · {{MEETING_DATE_DISPLAY}}", "headline": "...", "cue": "Swipe for what happened"}, {"type": "item", "headline": "...", "body": "...", "badge": "Passed 5-2"}, {"type": "quote", "quote": "...", "attribution": "...", "context": "..."}, {"type": "coming_up", "headline": "Coming up", "body": "...", "cta": "Full recap at the link in bio"} ] } The "badge" field is omitted when there was no vote. Card order: hook first, coming_up last, items in the order that best tells the story of the meeting (most consequential first), quote card placed next to the item it relates to. --- MEETING METADATA: Title: {{MEETING_TITLE}} Date: {{MEETING_DATE}} APPROVED RECAP (your only source): {{RECAP}} - 5
Extract votes without AI
Vote tallies matter too much to trust to a language model, so they come from a rule-based pass that finds the clerk's roll calls in the transcript (“Councilmember Goldstein? Yes…”) and counts the answers. We then compare our count against the tally the clerk states out loud, and against the official written minutes once the city publishes them. Mismatches are shown, not hidden:
Vote Clerk said We counted Check Item 2 7-0 7-0 ✓ match Item 4.1 (not stated) 6-0 — Item 5.1 7-0 7-0 ✓ match Item 5.2 3-4 3-4 ✓ match Item 5.2 5-2 4-2 ✗ differs Item 5.3 (not stated) 3-3 — Where our count differs from the clerk's stated tally, it usually means the audio swallowed a member's answer — the clerk's tally is the official one, and it's what the recap reports.
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A quick check, then it's published — and you're part of this step
Honesty about our own process: this pipeline is mostly automated. Before publishing, a person skims the draft for major problems — a wrong vote outcome, a garbled item — but it's a quick check, not a line-by-line fact-check against the video (this recap was published July 9, 2026). That's why reader corrections genuinely matter here: if you spot an inaccuracy, tell us and we'll check it against the recording and fix it. Corrections are noted on the page, not silently edited.