Council orders softer sewer rate plan

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We're going to call to order our regular Chico City Council meeting. Speaker card announcement. Anyone wishing to address the council on any matters listed on the agenda should first complete a speaker card found at the back of the chambers. Once completed, turn in your cards to the city clerk. The speakers are taken in the order they are received. Once the first speaker begins, no additional speakers will be accepted. Persons demonstrating rude, boisterous, speaking on matters outside the jurisdiction of the Chico City Council or engaging in otherwise disruptive behavior will be called to order. If such conduct continues, I may call a recess, request removal of such persons from the council chambers, adjourn the meeting, or take other actions as appropriate.

We had one posted item to the agenda. There was an item that arose after the posting of the agenda. It required a two-thirds vote to agendize once, and it was on potential litigation cage, which was added to closed sessions, and we heard that. So we will start with our call to order, our invocation by Carol Rainier from Christian Science Church. Welcome. Thank you. Better? Okay. Okay. Okay. Let's take a breath. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we welcome your peaceful presence into our meeting this evening and ask for your guidance every moment. Help us to slow down and spend time listening to your intelligence and love, recognizing your sovereignty. Let every task become an opportunity for us to express your love and goodness with right feeling, right action, honesty, purity, and unselfishness.

To begin rightly enables us to end rightly. And from the book of the Lord bless thee. And from the book of numbers. The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee and give thee peace. Amen. Amen. All right. All right. 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, in your heart, unisitful, with liberty and justice for all. Madam Clerk, can you call our role for us, please? Yes. 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. Close session and announcement. City Attorney, Mr. Jones, can you please do our close session now? Yes, I'd be happy to. There were several items in closed session. The first was Conference Legal Counsel on pending litigation, and direction was given on those two workers' compensation cases, as well as Conference Labor Negotiators. The direction was given to our negotiators on 2.3. Actually, that item was postponed until the next meeting. Public employment on the city manager recruitment, there was direction given to staff on that one. And then the final additional item, the Conference Legal Counsel on the anticipated litigation, there was direction given to staff and council move forward.

That's my report. All right. Thank you. All matter of consent agenda, all matters listed under the consent agenda are considered routine in nature, and therefore can all be acted in one motion. Are there any no votes or Council Member disqualifications? I'm going to recuse myself, actually, from 2.6 and 2.7, Mayor. All right. Because it's on consent, Mayor, you don't need to leave the room. If it gets pulled, then he would leave the room. But assuming it doesn't get pulled, you can just stay and you just vote won't be counted on those two items. Okay, great. All right. How many speakers do we have? We don't have any. All right. All right. Consider a motion. Move to approve. Second. All right.

We have a motion by Council Member van Overbeek and a second by Council Member Hawley. Okay. And with the recusal on item 2.6 and 2.7 of Council Member O'Brien. Council Member Goldstein? Yes. Council Member Hawley? Yes. Council Member O'Brien? Absent the recusals. Yes. Council Member van Overbeek? Yes. Council Member Winslow? Yes. Vice Mayor Bennett? Yes. Mayor Reynolds? Aye. Carry 7-0. All right. Public comment. Members of the public, may adjust the Council at this time on any matter not already listed on the agenda and that are within the jurisdictional authority. The Council cannot take any action at this meeting on these requests made under this section of the agenda. How many speakers do we have?

So I still have a stack. I haven't entered. Okay. But I believe I should have at least 30. Okay. So one minute each. Okay. So I'm wondering, would you mind taking just like a two-minute break to allow me to type them all in? Because otherwise, with it being only one minute, it may not be able to. You have to. Yeah. No problem. So just a moment. We'll take a break for just a minute and let her finish entering in all of the speakers and we'll be right back. Thank you. Walk in and make it a little bit. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right, looks like we are good to go. All right. All right, thank you, Mayor and Council, for your patience and for everyone in the audience. So I'm going to call the first three names up, and if you could go ahead and line up in that middle aisle when you approach the podium, please pull the microphone closer to your mouth so that we can make sure that we hear you. I'm not sure. We do have the overflow room set up. I don't know if there's anyone in there. So if there's someone that's delayed coming up, I'll move on to the next speaker. And we're going to do one minute each. So the first three speakers, Bill Monroe, followed by Tracy Vincent and Ann Byker-Kaufman. Bill Monroe. Hello.

I'm Bill Monroe. I came here more or less just to apologize for the outbursts that I had at the last meeting regarding recrusals and whatnot. That kind of led to what I think was probably the premature closure of the meeting, right when we were perhaps seeking some kind of possibility of doing something about the revitalization project. And I hope that the revitalization project will be taken up and that folks will consider option one as the best thing for our downtown. And thank you. Thank you. Tracy Vincent, Ann Byker-Kaufman, and Mary Lucas. In light of how many speakers I'm going to forfeit in hopes that we get to 5.2. Okay. Ann Byker-Kaufman, followed by Mary Lucas and Elijah Phillips. Hello.

So you all know what I'm asking for. I'm a leader of the Chico Safe Streets Coalition. And I just want to ask you to reconsider the decision to not approve any of the options in the downtown revitalization project. Leaving things as is leaves a very dangerous situation in place. 21 bicyclists and 28 pedestrians have been hit by cars since 2014 on Broadway and Main. That's more accidents than happened car to car. It's a really dangerous situation. It's not fair to make it too dangerous to ride a bicycle on those streets. So please reconsider and approve at least one of those options. Thank you. Thank you. Mary Lucas, followed by Elijah Phillips, and then Archer Lucas. Council members, thank you for being here and serving the city of Chico and making these hard decisions.

However, I'm here to protest the decision to charge parking fees in Upper Park. Our community suffers from a high rate of obesity, leading to high rates of stroke, diabetes, and heart disease. And having access to open spaces that are free to residents who are low income to have access to is imperative. We have taxes already that pay for our roads. Lots of sources. And there are other ways to allocate funds that prioritize the health of our community. This decision isn't just about finances. It is about the health of your citizens. So I urge you to please re-agendize that item and take public comment, advertise it more wisely. I honestly wasn't even aware. I hadn't been following along with this topic, and I'm very concerned about it.

My students in public health nursing at the university want to use the park, but they're strapped. My children, who are college students, they don't have the money to pay even a modest fee. So please reconsider that decision. Thank you. Thank you. Elijah Phillips, followed by Archer Lucas, and then Stephanie Ertel. Hello. My name is Elijah Phillips. I just am here to protest the parking fee in Upper Pivotal Park. Upper Pivotal Park is one of the few places in Chico that I've been able to go to my entire life. And it's one of the third places, which is a place besides work and home, that is free for people to access, and it's been free for many of years, almost 100 plus years. The matter is that when we consider the economic reality of Butte County, one-fifth of the people here are living in poverty, and applying a fee to those people to access a public space will make them not want to go.

If we put a paywall behind our public access, our public areas, they're not going to want to attend. And me being a college student as well and the college students around me, I know that they will think twice before going to a park if they feel that they're going to have to pay to go. I urge you to consider what kind of community we want to be, a community that truly values public spaces or puts paywalls behind them. Thank you. Thank you. Archer Lucas, Stephen Ertle, and then Samuel Joseph Glick. Hello, members of the council. My name is Archer Lucas, and I've come today to discuss the fee that's going to be implemented to Park and Upper Park. Bidwell Park was donated to the city of Chico in 1905 by Annie Bidwell with the goal of following the wishes of John Bidwell, those being to create a park to serve the public.

Fast forward to 2026, and the park is doing just as they intended. It's seeing tens of thousands of visitors every year, hiking Yahi Trail, Middle Trail, swimming in Bear Hole, such. And it's providing a public resource that, especially during a time when the price of everything is rising, is free for all to use. And the members of this council, though, have decided to put a fee on this public resource. By adding a fee to Park and Upper Park, the city has effectively created a barrier for much of the public to access this resource, which was donated to serve the public. This fee will greatly reduce the amount of visitors to the park each year and devastate the community which Bidwell Park is the heart of.

So I urge you to please reconsider and re-agendize this item. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Steven Ertl, followed by Samuel Joseph Glick, followed by Matt Bishore. Good evening, council members. I am here to ask you to reconsider the revitalization project. I'm a 30-year resident of Chico, and I spend my time and dollars in downtown. As I understand that, the previous vote was to not pursue this grant. What is the harm in pursuing the grant? This opportunity holds a lot of uncertainty, but what we're seeing with the current situation in downtown, the debt steady decline is certain. Let's put our hat in the ring for this grant and address the issues that have been clearly presented to this council if the grant is awarded.

In other words, why give up the opportunity now? We can address the concerns that have been well presented. I think this group has a lot of opportunity to come up with creative solutions. That's all. Thank you for your time. I appreciate your consideration. Thank you. So Samuel Joseph Glick, followed by Matt Bishore, Elizabeth Devereaux. Hi, my name is Sam Glick. Let's see. I am here to talk about practical barriers to public spaces specifically centered on Lower Park and the area surrounding Chico State. I've recently encountered problems with low lighting and homeless activity, specifically around the university. I come from UC Davis and have began my working career here in Chico, and I've noticed a serious lack of lighting right around the university.

To piggyback off of what Mary and Elijah were saying, I like the idea that people can feel comfortable enjoying the public spaces we do have. You know, in the evening around dusk, it can be a little bit sketchy walking around in certain parts of Chico. And I wanted to bring up the possibility of getting more lighting or possibly directing some of the homeless population to areas such as the area around the airport where they have, I believe that area. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Matt Bishore, followed by Elizabeth Devereaux, and then Eric Nielsen. Eric Nielsen, Good evening. I'm here also to speak about the parking in Upper Park. I was kind of left scratching my head when I read we're going to be installing probably the most hated thing in Chico and the most loved thing in Chico.

I know that I admittedly spoke in favor of fees for parking when this was first introduced in 2019 because we just didn't have funding for Upper Park for the roads. We didn't have Measure H, and we certainly didn't have the much maligned kiosks in downtown. So things have changed. We have Measure H. I think with the exception of Mayor Reynolds, none of you are on the council. It's something. Suddenly we're going to be paying for everything in our parks. With my last few seconds, I'd also like to suggest we also revisit the revitalization. I think that even if we just throw our hat in the ring and try to get the funding with the work that the staff has done, and we can revisit it later. Okay, thanks.

Thank you. Thank you. Elizabeth Devereaux, followed by Eric Nielsen and Bo Powell. Good evening. Again, I just would like to ask the council to re-agendize the decision on the revitalization of downtown to the May 19th meeting and also asking for your yes vote on option number one and to pursue the ATP grant. And I know we all love our downtown, and we want to see the best thing for it. I'd like to see if there's ways that we can work together to make that. You know, I know we've lost a lot of businesses lately, and whatever we can do to revitalize it is really important right now for all of us. So maybe we can come together on that decision. Thank you. Thank you. Eric Nielsen, Bo Powell, Jesse Horgan.

Good evening, council. Two years of study and review, contracting and consultant, and numerous community meetings, all at a significant cost to the city, produced three plans for the revitalization of downtown. Over 60% of community respondents voted for Alternative 1, the option that has the greatest chance of leveraging the millions of dollars in the ATP grant applications, monies that would relieve the city of the majority of the cost of the project. The sewer project is inevitable, and at the very least, Maine and Broadway will have to be repaved at a sizable cost to the city, a cost into the millions. Already, the city is challenged to keep up with our aging road infrastructure. Over 650 people have signed their support for Alternative 1 on the website Save Downtown Chico to include many of Chico's downtown businesses.

Almost all of the concerns of those arguing for the status quo have put forth arguments that have been addressed to include adequate emergency vehicle access, adequate parking, and delivery locations and solutions. As a community and with our eye on a vibrant social and economic future, That's fine. Thank you, Mark. Thank you. Thank you. Bo Powell, Jesse Horgan, and David Drewitt. Well, as you know, I've been here about the illegal ag spray. I see Chico State being sued now by the ag dean claiming that the Farm Bureau is pressuring to put her out. Imagine that. You can make Chico State being sued now by the farm. You can make Chico proud and make your family proud by speaking up. They spray everybody who drives by the farms with the blasting of city managers from all over.

Thank you, Bo. Okay. Jesse Horgan, followed by David Drewitt, and then Elias Haselton. Hello. Hello. I'm Jesse Horgan. I'm the parking services manager for Chico State. I'm speaking to ask for the downtown revitalization product to be re-agendized and to take a look at it. I think if we work together, we can find good solutions to improve downtown. Over the past week, I've taken a lot of questions about all of the problems that were raised in the discussion. One example I can give you is in 2025, January 1st, day-leading law went into effect in California. 20 feet from each intersection had to be left clear of parking. The two exceptions are bike parking and timed commercial vehicle parking.

So you could put two timed commercial loading and loading spots on every block and remove the extra double parking in downtown. There are good solutions. If we work together, we can improve downtown for everyone. Thank you. David Drewitt, followed by Elias Haselton, and then Anna Contreras. Good evening. My name is Dave Drewitt. I'm here to ask you to please reconsider the downtown revitalization plan. After communicating with public Works staff, I want to raise some financial considerations about downtown that deserve more attention. Per the capital improvement plan, downtown streets are due for replacement around 2029. So we're getting two projects regardless. The city's preliminary estimate for like-for-like replacement of Main and Broadway alone, not including the nine cross streets, is $2.5 to $4 million.

A full replacement of the entire corridor could be significantly more. The city does not have to match 20% of the ATP project. The minimum match is 11.47%, meaning the city's share would be 4.6 to 5.7 million. And it would leverage millions in state funding for all downtown streets. The city's traffic studies show two lanes are sufficient for Main and Broadway. A three-lane replacement means paying up to $1.3 million for lanes we don't need and committing to their replacement for decades. Bike lanes cost a fraction of that. Thank you. That's time. Thank you. Elias Hasselton, followed by Anna Contreras, Bryce Ingersoll. Hi, my name is Elias. I'm a computer science student at Chico State and Chico Local, and I'm here to oppose the parking fee in Upper Park.

The park was given to us by Annie Bidwell in 1905 as a gift, and her intent was for it to be a public park for everybody to enjoy. And by adding fees, it's going to discourage people from utilizing this resource. She only permitted one income stream that the park will make, and that is renting out pastures if it doesn't interfere with enjoyment. And there was no other allowance for any kind of parking fees or entrance fees or anything like that. So even a small fee will discourage people from utilizing the park. As a college student, I would think twice before going, even if it's just $2. So I would like to ask you to pursue other funding for the roads, such as grants or donations or some kind of reallocation of budget.

Thank you. Thank you. Anna Contreras, Bryce Ingersoll, Nicole Hill. Hi. I've lived in Chico for over 20 years, specifically in the Mansion Park and the South Campus neighborhoods. So I spent my childhood living in a neighborhood that bordered downtown and my adulthood in another neighborhood that bordered downtown. And I know you all have heard from several folks in our community about why we support the downtown revitalization project. And given the extensive resources that have been expended on this project, I'd ask that the council consider re-agendizing this issue and voting yes on alternative one. You all are really smart folks that bring a diverse background. And I'm confident that if we can cooperate as a council, we can listen to the voices of our community.

Thank you. Thank you. Bryce Ingersoll, followed by Nicole Hill, and then Julia Kenner. Okay. I mostly just want to echo the support for alternative one for the revitalization project. There's not much to say that hasn't already been said. But I just want to say that either bicycles will be on the street getting hit by cars or they're going to be on the sidewalk. So, yeah. Thank you. Nicole Hill, Julia Kenner, followed by Jacqueline Chase. And if you could get a little closer to the mic, that would be great. Thank you. Hi, all. My name is Nicole, and I'm here as a representative of the Lupine Legacy Foundation, Stobel, and a proud Chico local. And I'd like to urge you to reconsider the downtown revitalization project alternative one.

At the state of the city earlier this year, I was really inspired by Mayor Reynolds words saying, quote, when there's change, there's also great opportunities for reinvestment and development in those places that change. Chico isn't alone. Nationwide, downtowns are in our period of transition, and that's exactly what we're going through right now. And I frankly couldn't agree more. So I ask you to please listen to the support from the 655-plus Chico residents, the 30-plus downtown businesses of all types, the multiple community Organizations, and the one girl who keeps finding herself standing here in front of you to please reconsider the vote for downtown revitalization alternative one. Because Council Member Goldstein was right.

If you do nothing, you are ignoring the voice of your community. Thank you. Julia Kenner, followed by Jacqueline Chase, Jonas Herzog. Hello. My name is Julia Keener. And I was at the Internal Affairs meeting yesterday, which was very interesting. And the most impactful thing I heard at the meeting, though, was from Dale Bennett. And I believe you said you were on the DCBA board in 1996. And I also believe you said the issues brought up yesterday about downtown are the same as 30 years ago, 1996. We need to have a big plan for downtown. These small incremental changes may help a little bit, but we are on a downward trajectory. Downtown needs to be revitalized, and we have an opportunity to help with the cost, something we could never afford on our own.

It seems like delay is the tactic to get past the date the grant has to be submitted by. Please reconsider your position to Alternative 1. We would all like to have a vibrant, sweet downtown. Thank you. Thank you. So Jacqueline Chase, followed by Jonas Herzog, and then Nori Teese. Good evening. I'd like to see the city council try one more time to get past its impasse on the downtown revitalization. It's popular. People were excited. And many of us spent over a year attending meetings and participating in workshops that allowed us to give feedback early in the process. I feel that the democratic process that accommodates this kind of community input was pretty much derailed over the last couple of meetings here.

You may have noticed that people are kind of worked up now. That's what happened. So please put the item back on the agenda for May 19th. Thank you. Jonas Herzog, followed by Nori Teese, Lynn Overholzer. Hey, council members. Thank you for all your hard work that you do for our city. Downtown Chico is struggling. We're watching the slow death happen before our eyes. I love riding my bike downtown to go shopping and to go eat. Riding bikes with kids can be scary coming downtown. I don't know if you've done it. I have. I don't want to do it anymore. I want it to be a safer walking environment with wider sidewalks, protected bike lanes for cypher biking, and a thriving downtown. It would be a shame to give up on the free grant money to do this.

Please vote to put Alternative 1 back on the agenda and approve it. Thank you. Thank you. Nori Teese, Lynn Overholzer, and then Eric Boots. Hi, my name is Nani Teves. I'm basically here to ask you to re-agendize Alternative 1. I'm strongly for it, mostly for access for pedestrians and bikes and space for teenagers and elders and everybody. And speaking of access, I also would like you to re-agendize the upper park fee. I think it's crazy. Really, the goal is to get people outside in nature, and that just restricts that access. Thank you. Lynn Overholzer, Eric Boots, and then Kathleen Cordy. Hello. I'm sad that I have to cut this to one minute, but I'll do my best. I've been here about the Alternative site before, and that's why I'm here again.

I was here in the fall when you approved $287,000, I think, $1,000 in your budget for oversight of the Alternative site on Eaton Cohasset, Jesus Center, Staffing Security Guard. So given that, I'm very surprised to see what's happening there. I've never seen this many tents down in the channel. It's a flood control zone. I don't know how that's allowed. It's a B-1-over flight zone, as you're aware of. The increased cell phone usage, it increased safety risk for planes. There are tents attached to the outside of the fence. I believe they are on the Alternative site property, even though maybe they're not inside the fence. There's even a gentleman who's been there about six weeks, and he even brought some chain-link fencing on the south side and made himself a three-sided fence.

We are all really hoping that you don't have the attitude of it's only eight months left, so we're just going to let it go. We hope you do something. Thank you. Thank you. Eric Booth, followed by Kathleen Cordy. My name's Eric Booth. I commute downtown nearly every day, and I'd like you to please reconsider putting the downtown revitalization project back on the agenda. In the past two weeks, I've nearly been hit by a car multiple times, pulling over to park, crossing through the bike lane. I regularly get kicked out of the bike lane into traffic by parked vehicles, nearly get hit every day near the roundabout, trying to cross through the park on the second. This is the daily realities for me.

I don't view getting hit by a car as if but when. I was surprised to see this part of the reason this gets downvoted as a safety concern when your community has told you they don't feel safe in your city. So please reconsider this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Please return to, sorry, please return alternative one to the agenda and save our downtown. Every concern that has been laid out is not new. Downtowns around the nation are following revitalization and are seeing a growth in their economy and city pride due to it. They figured out the delivery trucks, the emergency vehicles, the construction, the grants. When it comes to design, there is not a single unique problem here that has not been answered elsewhere.

According to Record Searchlight, Reading has invested over $200 million into their downtown since 2018 using grants just like the ATP, literally the ATP. And they are prospering from it. Ten new restaurants, five expanded stores, falling vacancy rates, and plans for further development just this year. They are not unique. This is happening across the country. Simply put, Chico is falling behind. Downtown Chico is dying. The current infrastructure no longer Works. Thank you. And she is our last speaker. All right. Public hearings. Hearing on a resolution declaring weeds, rubbish, refuge, and debris to be a public nuisance. And we have a report from Charlene Durkin, our code enforcement supervisor.

Good evening, counsel. I'll keep this very quick because you guys have a very busy agenda. This is our annual weed abatement program. I'm looking for adoption of the resolution. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Any questions for staff? No. All right. We will open the public hearing. How many speakers do we have? Sorry. We do not have any on this one. All right. We will close the public hearing. Consider a motion. All move to approve. Second. Council Member O'Brien with a motion and Vice Mayor Bennett with a second. Okay. Council Member Goldstein. Yes. Council Member Hawley. Yes. Council Member O'Brien. Yes. Council Member van Overbeek. Yes. Council Member Winslow. Yes. Vice Mayor Bennett.

Yes. Mayor Reynolds. Aye. Carry 7-0. All right. 4.2. Public hearing on workforce vacancies and recruitment retention efforts and compliance with Assembly Bill 2561. We have Tiana Gray, our Deputy Director of Human Resources and Risk Management. Welcome. Thank you. I have a presentation for you. Okay. Just a moment. Can it be presented? Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Reynolds, Vice Mayor Bennett, Council Members, Tiana Gray, Deputy Director of Human Resources and Risk Management. I have a short presentation for you in accordance with Assembly Bill 2561. I'm going to be giving you statistical data regarding vacancy reporting for 2025 as well as the City of Chico's recruitment and retention efforts.

A little history on Assembly Bill 2561. It became effective in January of last year. It has been incorporated into Government Code 3502.3. You have heard a similar report from Director Barbara Martin last year in May on vacancy information for calendar year 2024. And this afternoon, we're going to be talking about that same similar type of information, but for calendar year 2025. Information about last year's overall allocated positions. We had a total of 476 that were approved and authorized by your council. This allows us to provide services for public safety, including fire and police, as well as community development and engineering, public Works, including parks, and the administrative support staff that it takes to provide support services for those departments.

This graph shows a history of last year's vacancies. We have a vacancy average of 8% in 2025. 8% is relatively a good vacancy rate. The reason why Assembly Bill 2561 was brought into place, because public agencies in the state of California were experiencing high vacancy rates, up to 30-plus percent. So legislation was brought down so that we would provide these public hearings to make this information public and allow bargaining units to speak regarding specific vacancy information when it comes to unionized workforces. This is step-by-step the processes that it takes from recruitment to hire for a city employee. Now, depending on what type of position we're recruiting for, not all of these steps may be applicable.

But what we are focusing on now, meaning human resources, is focusing on, we are looking to work directly with departments to create efficiencies in our recruiting and hiring processes to eliminate even days, if not weeks, off of every one of these process steps in order to reduce our recruitment to higher time period so that we can begin to get our workforce in quicker and fill our vacancies faster. In 2025, we filled a total of 76 vacancies. Not all vacancies are bad vacancies, right? So I'll explain more about the different types of vacancies that we filled of those 76. We had a total of 62 open recruitments, which means anybody within the public can apply for those positions. We also had 13 internal vacancies filled with city-only full-time recruitments that we did.

Some of the hiring issues that not only our agency but all public agencies across the state can encounter are specialized duties. We offer a lot of services that require license. For an individual to perform the services requires a licensure or a certification. We have a semi-remote location, which also decreases the number of qualified applicants. And remaining competitive in the market isn't very important. Although we might not be able to remain competitive within the private industry, we are certainly working towards remaining competitive within comparable public agency markets in our area. So I was speaking more about some not all vacancies are not positive or they're not all negative, right?

Some of them are positive. Of the 76 that were created last year, nine of them were new positions that you allocated through the budget process and approved. So that is bringing on new staff to help continue to provide great services to the city of Chico. We also had 16 internal promotions. So internal opportunities for city of Chico employees to grow and promote within the city. And internal transfers were four. So ability to just be flexible and move within their own department or another department to find the best place for them that is their home for, you know, where they want to stay to work for the city. Okay. The other vacancies had come, I mean, natural attrition will occur, right? So we had 11 retirements.

That is something that we can always just project will happen. That can happen from another of ways. Maybe other employment has been found, relocation, things like that can be reasons for people separating from their city employment. Our overall turnover rate for 2025 was at 5%. That is a rather good turnover rate. I mean, anything 10% or below is, you know, something to be proud of. So I believe that people come here and they stay here and they want to work here. So we're thankful for that. More specifically to the requirements of the Assembly Bill, this is a chart that shows all 10 of our bargaining units and specifically the percentages of vacancies related to the FTEs, the full-time equivalency positions allocated to each one of those bargaining units.

The Assembly Bill says that we must report in more detail on any bargaining units that are experiencing 20% or greater vacancy. I am happy to report we only have one bargaining unit, which is Local 39, that is exactly at 20% average for vacancies for 2025. A little bit more detail about Local 39. They have a total of 15 budgeted positions. So even one, two, or in this instance, three vacancies brought them to that 20% threshold. I am happy to announce that we began employment of a laboratory analyst yesterday. She has started her employment in that position at wastewater treatment plant. And we are dedicated and hopeful with the recruitments we have open for the supervisor electrical maintenance position and the technician position that will get both of those filled within this calendar year.

This is information about the number of applications we took for each one of those recruitments that we were not able to fill in 2025. These numbers are the numbers of applications received, obviously not necessarily the number of qualified applicants. So these three positions require specific certifications and those other things that I had mentioned, including experience. And so, as I said, we continue to look to fill those. The average number of calendar days to fill vacancies, this is a continued number that we are looking to reduce in those efficiencies that I spoke about earlier. This number can be skewed by continuous hard-to-fill recruitments, right, such as those requiring engineering degrees and licenses.

Wastewater treatment plant can be hard to fill. So we are looking to work with our departments to reduce the number of days to fill their positions. Opportunities we have to improve compensation and working conditions. We recently negotiated a new contract with Local 39, the only bargaining unit that's experiencing that 20% or greater vacancy rate, and that will sunshine this evening. We continue to use the implemented true comp software where we can collect immediate and quick data to benchmark our classification, see where we're at in the market and where we need to go to be competitive in the market. And, again, focusing on streamlining recruitment, hiring, and onboarding with our departments to reduce that time to hire.

That's it. Any questions? I was writing down a question. Sorry. Okay. We will open the public. Any questions from the dais before we move on? I had a couple that came up. Our average being the 8%, you said was a good average. I was just curious, that's for general vacancy, what surrounding area is running, do you know? Does that new software that we have? It doesn't give us that information. It's mainly salaries. I mean, we can look to all public agencies are doing these same types of reporting publicly, so we can look at that. I know that historically, prior to legislation going in, across the board, upwards of 30% was kind of the trend for the state of California. I believe that a 5% would be a reasonable vacancy rate, and I think that that should be our goal for 2026, and I hope to be able to report that to you this time next year.

And then the 5% on the turnover, that seems amazing for a public agency. Absolutely. Is that below average, I would think? Yeah. Any 10% or below is considered a good turnover rate. Great. Awesome. Okay. That was the only question I had. Oh, it did hit. I'm sorry. Council Member Hawley. Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. I only had a comment. It's so important that we have staff keeping the city in alignment with the requirements of state legislation. So thank you so much, Mrs. Gray, for the very in-depth presentation and all the information. You're really keeping our city on track. You're welcome. Thank you. All right. Now we will open our public hearing. How many speakers do we have? We have two. All right.

Three minutes each. All right. I will call them both up. Jim Lucanik and Daniel Hart. Good evening. Mayor Reynolds, Vice Mayor Bennett, and Council Members, City Staff. My name is Jim Lucanik. I'm here representing the Chief of Fire Management employees. Our group consists of the battalion chiefs that oversee the day-to-day operations of your fire department and the fire marshal that manages the Prevention Bureau. We'd like to start off by thanking you for the opportunity to address the council regarding vacancies, recruitment, and workforce retention. As the community grows and our number of emergencies increase, the fire department is slowly getting back to the staffing levels that we operated within in the early 2000s.

We are grateful to you for that. We now ask that this council remain vigilant in staffing a fire department that continues to meet the needs of this community. As a commitment to its residents, this city provides the same number of fire apparatus and fire personnel every second of the day. CFME believes in this commitment and we will always support that standard and its growth. Because those positions will be filled every day, we ask that vacancies be filled quickly to help reduce added hours away from our families. Vacancies in staffing affect all ranks, sometimes causing fatigue and lowering morale. Please continue to support our fire chiefs when they inform you of holes in our staffing. The recruitment members specifically to our bargaining group is of concern to us as we have found our candidate pool to be at a minimum during each hiring process.

It is no secret within the fire department that the rank of battalion chief carries a heavy workload administratively and a large span of control operationally. We gladly accept these responsibilities but ask that you continue to work with us, making this a desirable position that draws interest from our well-qualified and outstanding firefighters. Attracting internal candidates that understand our policies, practices, and most importantly, the needs of this community will ensure stability within the department. We believe that workforce retention will continue to flourish with focused career development and support from our council. Members of this department care deeply about this city and the product it provides its citizens.

Moving forward, we hope to retain these folks and attract strong candidates to our ranks. We look forward to working with you in the future and appreciate you giving us your time. Thank you. Thank you. Daniel Hart. Good evening. I think Jim stole my intro. Good evening, Mayor Reynolds, Vice Mayor Bennett, council members, city staff. Appreciate the opportunity tonight. My name is Daniel Hart. I'm representing your Chico Firefighters Local 2734. I'd like to start off with the appreciation for the support you showed for Engine 1. This will have a measurable impact on our community. Thank you tonight for the opportunity to speak on our retention, recruitment, and vacancies for our membership in particular.

From a retention standpoint, not a traditional way we're going to talk about retention. The challenge for us is the impact of our job on our bodies and our brains. The injuries, the cumulative physical and mental stress lead to industrial retirements, which we have seen many over the last decade, and that leads to early departure. From a recruitment standpoint, it's become a bit more challenging. We have seen the numbers drop over the years. One advantage we do have is the proximity and the participation we have with Butte College Fire Academy. Many of our members partake and mentor and instruct cadets, and that has presented a nice local recruitment pipeline. Currently, you saw in Tiana's presentation, we have two current vacancies with a planned third in July.

On average, we have about 4.28 people off a day. That includes workers' compensation. This means increased workload, more reliance on overtime, and the added physical and mental strain on personnel. This impacts our readiness, increases fatigue, and creates a toll on our firefighters, and ultimately the level of service we can provide. As we approach fire service, this demand will increase. Last year, over 34 times a month, we averaged forcing an individual on duty. When I say forcing an individual, that means keeping them on duty beyond the time they are scheduled, the 56 hours a week that we do work. So, that was a significant number. Last month alone, we forced 60 members. Without any intervention, we can expect similar results, and this certainly has a human cost.

Chief Hack has proposed floater relief in this upcoming budget cycle. These positions would provide critical staffing depth, reduce daily overtime, hiring, while protecting our workforce. Given our current daily staffing impacts, additional floater positions beyond those three would certainly be beneficial, and improve and stabilize our operations, improve our reliability. As a department, we're certainly optimistic in our trajectory, and we appreciate the support you guys have given us and the progress we've made over the last 10 years, and specifically the last several years. But we ask for continued support in prioritizing those floater positions for relief for our members. We certainly intend to provide the highest quality of service for this community.

Thank you for helping us do that. Mr. Hart, what was the number? You said 60? Last month, we had 60 members forced on duty. So, generally, you were told that the day before, like a couple hours ago. I was told I will not be going home tomorrow until 20,000, potentially later, depending on what happens between now and then. And you generally get that information before it, which takes a toll on not only you physically, mentally, but also what you're going home to. Got you. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. I thought I heard that number, but. All right. We only had two speakers, correct? Right. All right. We'll close the public hearing. Further comment from Council? Council Member O'Brien?

Yeah, I just want to say congratulations to our staff, Ms. Gray, all the directors. It really is a difficult job filling vacancies. It's easy to lose someone. You lose someone like that. It's much harder to replace them, much more time-consuming. But I think it has been said, and I think it's very important that we remain vigilant with those efforts because, like I said, you can get behind the ball rather quickly. So I want to make sure that while we celebrate the success and congratulations to all of you who have made that happen, let's remain vigilant that we remain strong with our vacancies limited. Thank you. All right. Anybody else? No? Consider a motion? It would be just acceptance of the report.

Just accepting the report. I'm sorry. Sorry, sorry. No, that's okay. Okay, 4.3, hearing on resolution amending the city's fee schedule. We have Heather Childs, our accounting manager.

Good evening, Mayor Reynolds and Vice Mayor Bennett, Council Members. So before you tonight, we have our annual request to amend the city's fee schedule. The fees are adjusted annually based on certain inflator indexes, which are listed on the exhibits. Exhibit A lists any fees that were requested to be new or changed by departments. And there are memos A1 through A10 that explain the reasons for these requests. Exhibit B are all of the fees that we have that require a public hearing. So that's what we're doing today. If you look, the HCI inflator is calculated at 35.7%, which is, that's a lot higher than it would have been because last year we only inflated it by 3% rather than the calculated amount.

So there was, we did meet with the finance committee in April and there was a very in-depth discussion about the fees and the inflation. And the finance committee recommended a 3% increase for the HCI fees again this year. And those are our transportation and storm drainage facility fees that are affected by that. So if approved tonight, the fee schedule will go into effect on Monday, July 6th. And do you have any questions? Any questions? No? All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you. We will open the public hearing. How many speakers do we have? We have one. All right. Chris Giampali. Hello, Council. Chris Giampali. Everyone's not here to speak on fees? Hmm. The HCI, which at the finance committee, got changed to the 3%, which is the right thing to do.

We, as CBA, and I'm speaking on behalf of Chico Builders Association, which is CBA, have been following this HCI index, which relates closer to what the streets and roads are going to be doing in relationship to places like San Francisco, the Bay Area, down in LA, but doesn't necessarily reflect what's going on locally here in Chico. So, we've been following ever since this nexus five, six years ago, has gone to this HCI index. And it really shouldn't be using the HCI index. So, we as a Builders Association have came up with local prices of items that would be in the HCI here in Chico. And so, items would be like, we took four rock plants over the last six years, asphalt plants, bottom dumps, three concrete companies, pipes, streetlights, sewer, storm drain, rebar, structural steel.

And whereas the city with their HCI was at 35% this year, we were at 1.2%, which is reflective of the market. So, it's great that we went to this 3% index, but really in the future, and it should be this way going on, the HCI shouldn't be used at all. And then maybe if we're waiting to the new nexus that comes in next year or the following year, we can prove that. Otherwise, the way to do it would be to follow very similar to what we have been doing with the local markets. We emailed this all to you this afternoon, and it reflects what is happening here in Chico. That way you don't get, as we've been saying over the years, a death by a thousand cuts. This is reflective of what's going on in the industry.

So, appreciate the Finance Committee doing what they did and the recommendation. And Chico Builders Association, we agree with that. But at the same time, if we want to do something that's more reflective, then we would follow this every year. Thank you. Any questions? Yes, Mr. Giamma. Sorry, you sent this email two minutes after we recessed into closed session. Can you say that again? I'm sorry. The letter that we got from the Chico Builders Association arrived two minutes after we recessed into closed session. So, we haven't had an opportunity to see it, unfortunately. I got you. Sorry about that. I understand this was reviewed at the Finance Committee, but you are saying that while the broader stat says costs have gone up 35.7%, you believe costs have only gone up 1%?

1.2% on a three-year rolling average. So, if you take the last three years and the year before, that was very similar to that, actually, too. So, what the city has used is 12.3% for this three-year rolling average. And because they didn't increase it, the last one, they added on 20% to that because they think that's what the number was. But we came last year as well and showed that those numbers weren't anywhere close to the 20% increase. Why do you think that this, why is Chico so much different from other places? Well, that's a good question. I mean, our market is our market. And once we get to a certain rate, we're not going to be able to get it outside of our market. We're not going to start building things.

We're not going to start doing roads. I think probably there's more of an impact locally than if you go down to San Francisco or L.A. or something that has maybe there's a shortage of something or whatever that would be. It just hasn't been reflective. And these numbers reflect kind of what we've been seeing in the market, to be honest with you. Now, this isn't houses. This is street construction is what this is referring to. Good question, sir. Any else? I think you're good. All right. It's our only speaker, so we will close the public hearing. Any other, anybody on the dais want to speak? I don't see anything in the queue. We can take that. Council Member Winslow? I find it really hard to believe that there's that large of a discrepancy between actual costs for us here.

And if we aren't upping our fees in accordance with costs, that means that, and this happens all the time, we don't recoup enough with fees, so the public ends up on the hook. We end up putting our sales tax and our property tax, our limited general funds, into projects that are required, which, in effect, subsidize these developments in the end. And I'm wondering, Mr. Odeboni, if you can explain why there's that discrepancy, or is that discrepancy there, in your opinion? I think there's two components. Barbara might be able to speak better to the 35% number, I think, that was used. I think that was accumulation of compounding from prior years that had reduced, that didn't follow the HCI. In terms of discrepancies and what those percentages are, I don't think there's a comparison of apples to apples.

Those might be private projects that don't have to follow the same rules that we have to do when we deliver projects, so we have to follow California contract code, pay prevailing wages. And so there's just different elements in terms of what those costs are. And so Caltrans has to follow those same public processes. It's not about the dollar figures. It's an index, so it's comparing those regional numbers to themselves. So an index is a percentage increase in what they see in those bid pricing for those regions. And they do it throughout the whole state, and then they kind of average those out. Are there, like, other indexes that other cities might use that would maybe reflect some of these differences?

Well, our other one is the ENR. That's reflective of vertical construction out of San Francisco, specifically out of that region. So that's the kind of traditional, I think, that all our other fees are. So the HCI is related to highway construction, Caltrans construction cost index. And so outside of maybe local projects that have we could compare year to year, that would probably be the best way to apples to apples compare what those true inflators are. Yeah. Thanks. Council Member van Overbeek. Yeah. So the Finance Committee found it hard to believe that the increased cost to build roads year over year was 35% when the underlying inflation rate was 2.3%. And we had, from the builders, we had specific vendors.

I mean, the big dollar items are concrete or asphalt or rebar. Or we had specific vendors and numbers and felt that the, and we did the same thing last year, that the fee request, the amount of the fee request was unreasonable. And we wanted to wait until the completion of the next nexus study before we decide how to go forward and what standard to use. So we're still waiting for that. Council Member Hawley. I'll be elaborating further on item 5.7 for sure. But just to respond to Council Member van Overbeek's comment, that that was representative of two-thirds of Finance Committee. All right. I'll consider a motion. Move to approve. I'll second. Somebody's got some music going tonight. Pretty loud.

Okay. Council Member Goldstein. Yes. Council Member Hawley. Yes. Council Member O'Brien. Yes. Council Member van Overbeek. Yes. Council Member Winslow. No. Vice Mayor Bennett. Yes. Mayor Reynolds. Aye. Carries 6-1. Do we need to read the resolution or are we good? Can I ask a clarifying question? Yeah. Is that an approval of all the fees and then a 3% for the HCI as the Finance Committee recommended or all the fees as originally presented? My understanding was a 3%. That's how I understood it, but I would defer to the one who made the motion. Yeah. Council Member van Overbeek. Yeah. Yeah. My understanding is what we're approving here is 3% on the storm drains and roads and approval and then approval on everything else that was requested by the city with the exception of the items called out in 5.7.

5.7. Yeah. 5.7. Thank you. Is that, sorry, is that procedurally correct? The items in 5.7 are omitted from this motion? It is how you would like to make the motion and approve it. If you'd like to accept that the way that the Finance Committee recommended, then we can do that here or we can wait and put that one fee aside until later. So, Debbie, weigh in on this. Do we need to restate the motion? I think it would be helpful to restate it so that we all know what it is. Because it was the adoption of the resolution, I didn't hear the Finance Committee recommendation in there, but if that's what you meant, then let's clarify it and get some direction for staff. So, we've had a vote. Do we need, does somebody need to move to reconsider this so we can vote again?

I think we can keep the vote, just restate the motion is what I think Debbie's asking. Just restate your motion. Just restate the motion and I'll change it. Okay. Okay. So, the motion is that the HCI fees are increased by 3% and all the other fees except the building fees are approved as recommended by city staff. And I'll second that motion again. Okay. All right. Okay. Was that clear enough? Do you want me to try that again, Mayor? Oh, no, that's good. As long as the clerk and Barbara understand who are. Barbara, are you okay with that? Okay. Thank you. Okay. And the vote, do you want me to do another vote on that or do you? Yeah, I think we should just to make it clean. All right. So, Council Member Goldstein?

Since I didn't comment, I'll say reluctantly, yes. Okay. Council Member Hawley? No. Council Member O'Brien? Yes. Council Member van Overbeek? Yes. Council Member Winslow? Still no. Vice Mayor Bennett? Yes. And Mayor Reynolds? Aye. Aye. Carries 5-2 then. All right. Nint, quick break before we go to our 5.1 on our regular agenda. We'll be right back.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Should we call him? Thank you. manager again. Good evening again, Mayor Reynolds, Vice Mayor Bennett, members of Council. Before you tonight are standard operating procedures for Prop 218 proceedings that provide clarity to both staff and to the public on the process for changes to property-related rates. I want to be clear that these procedures do not change our process. They are only documenting the Prop 218 process to ensure that we're following the procedures of government code. Those code sections are 53750 through 53759.2. Anybody have any questions? Any questions? Council Member Goldstein? Sorry, I forgot we have the request to speak button.

Since we have, I think, three different sewer fee-related items on the agenda tonight, could you just clarify for me and for other folks listening, you already kind of did about that this is just process-based, but what would become of this process if, say, later on in the agenda, we reconsider and discuss changing what we've already discussed? Yeah, so this doesn't have anything to do with rates or what you guys decide on that. This is just the process of what we mail out and what has to be on those mailers and the process of votes, and it just comes directly from government code of what we're required to do. Okay, thank you. All right, thank you very much. How many speakers do we have? We don't have any on this one.

All right. Further discussion or consider a motion? I move to approve. Oh, sorry. It's okay. Second. We've got a motion by Council Member van Overbeek and a second by Council Member Hawley. Okay, just one second. I didn't get Council Member Hawley. Get that. All right, Council Member Goldstein? Yes. Council Member Hawley? Yes. Council Member O'Brien? Yes. Council Member van Overbeek? Yes. Council Member Winslow? Yes. Vice Mayor Bennett? Yes. Mayor Reynolds? Aye. Carries 7-0. All right. Item 5.2, Vice Mayor Bennett requests for reconsideration of action taken by the Sewer Enterprise Study. Council, or sorry, we have a report from our city clerk and elections official, Ms. Debbie Presson. Thank you, Mayor.

And Council, I just want to quickly give you an overview of the reconsideration process. On April 7th, Council Member, excuse me, Vice Mayor Bennett asked under Council Member requests for reconsideration of item 5.1, which had been heard at the March 17th meeting. And so the council voted, I believe it was 5-2 to hear that discussion. So he was a member of the prevailing side of the original motion. So there was a motion and a second, and it was a 4-3 vote with Council Member Bennett, excuse me, sorry, Vice Mayor Bennett voting on the prevailing side. And so I'll turn it over to Vice Mayor Bennett to maybe describe what he's thinking about now and why he wants to reconsider that motion. And then if he does, I would conduct a roll call vote on that original motion.

Wait, so just to be clear, does that mean that we're not public comment on it? Oh, it would be after the public comment. Okay, okay, just to be clear. Okay, got it. No, I apologize for not, for leaving that out. But yes, always public comment. So I'm going to explain myself so those people that here want to speak to this, you know exactly where I'm coming from. And it will be a clarifying point. There has been conversation about the decision made in 22, and I was on the Finance Committee in 22, and we made a partial decision about increasing sewer rates. It wasn't enough. And that's a simple fact. Can't go back. It just wasn't enough, but it was a step in the right direction. So the elephant in the room is postponing or delaying the sewer rate increase further.

And I don't intend to do that. I'm going to ask for a very narrow, short time frame to take a look at the sewer rate again. The downtown Chico sewer improvements will be partially funded by this, as well as the work that needs to take place out of the water quality control plant. And there's quite a bit of work that needs to take place out there. Some of it's because of the age of the plant, and some of it's because of requirements from the state of California. And I can say that the engineering department is still working with water quality control to try and ease up on some of the requirements and save some money. So I want to thank you for that. I'm greatly concerned about the problematic impact of rate increases on our citizens, our business partners, and especially the restaurants.

I'm very concerned about restaurants. For that reason, I'm going to change my vote from a yes to a no. I will ask the council to support me in allowing Deputy Director David Keene to further study the rate increases with the guidance and support from Director Odabani, and take another look at the sewer rates and bring forward more options for us to consider. I haven't been encouraged by the meeting with Mr. Keene, Deputy Director Keene, sorry, and methods, and we're looking at methods to increase fees while hopefully lessening the impact of the rates on our citizens and our business community. I'm going to make a motion in a few minutes to work with Mr. Keene, Deputy Director Keene, on additional sewer rate options, although I honestly do not know if I will be helpful in that endeavor, but I'm going to make an effort to do that.

We have discussed with Mr. Keene bringing back more options on our June 16th meeting, which is a very short time frame, but he felt that that would be workable. So we're not delaying it for a while. We're looking at six months or six weeks, excuse me. So I am now going to ask for a roll call vote be taken on the sewer rate option from the March 17th meeting if I'm following the proper procedure. Yes, if you want, we can take a roll call vote. The motion was made by Council Member Hawley and seconded by Council Member Goldstein to approve option one to adopt the proposed sewer rate schedule and direct staff to initiate Prop 218 process, including preparation and distribution of the public hearing notices.

So that is what we would be voting on. It carried originally by Council Member Goldstein, Hawley, Winslow, and Vice Mayor Bennett, and the no's were O'Brien, Van Overbeck, and Reynolds. So let me just... Okay, I got... Madam Clerk, I've got a question. We do have speakers first, so... Okay. Yeah, that was confusing. Why would we do voting on the same matter again? But we're not. That's what a reconsideration is? It's a reconsideration of his vote on that particular motion. So it has to be the same motion. Thank you. Okay, so that's Council Member Ben O'Brien. Council Member Goldstein, did you have a question now, or did you want to hear it to speakers? I would just like to ask Vice Mayor Bennett a question before we go to speakers.

Perfect. I was wondering why you chose the time frame of talking about this on June 16th, and if you think that any of the options that we were already presented could be amenable, or if you're looking to direct staff to come up with something new. I'm looking for something new. Period. Okay. Okay. Can I also ask if staff, it sounds like you've talked to them, if they think that they'd be able to find something new that might be more amenable, because I thought we had a good array of options already. Well, I can't answer that because they haven't looked at it yet. So we're going to have to wait and see. We can't spend more an hour of time until they have further direction from Council. Council Member Winslow, go ahead.

Well, I just, because I really value the public input on this and hearing from the Chamber of Commerce and the feeling that like this severe of an increase like immediately is going to put businesses out immediately. Like that's really important. We selected an option that would lead to the lowest rates in 10 years. Any of the other options delaying it mean we have to increase the rates more later. Financing, even more because we have to pay interest for it. So if we go a debt financing group. So we were presented with like more gradual increases. And I mean, that's the reason why we opted for what is a seriously severe rate increase right away is to keep it lower in the future. So when you think about businesses that are making a fixed investment in Chico in the long run, they're not looking so much as like what are costs today, tomorrow, but like in 10 years.

And so that's what we're looking at in addition to just the people who will pay these rates in the future. The reason I just want to represent this argument is ask before we go to public comment, and we're hearing from people if any of the three members that voted no on that could weigh in as far as what options you liked more. Do you want to look at debt financing? Can we guide staff a little more and guide the public in terms of what we're looking at and what is acceptable? Because I didn't hear any alternatives presented from any of them. So I would appreciate if before we go to public comment, any of the three that voted no could weigh in. Council Member Rennover Beck. Yeah, well, listen, I don't think there's any question that we need to raise the sewer rates substantially.

We know that. We also know that that number is about $135 million, except that we do not have confirmation from the state on precisely, you know, we're operating on the presumption that we're guilty before we prove our innocence. But there are a couple of requirements, nitrates, and help me with the other one, David. But we haven't received the results of the test yet, so we don't know that we need to comply. And I have a problem asking people for a fee increase for something we don't know that we need to do. So, but assuming that we have to do some version of, you know, we have $100 to $135 million project, we got two options. We do it with cash, which is what the majority initially approved, or we bond part of it, which is what cities and, you know, when people buy houses, because it's a big lump of an expense, they take out a mortgage.

Cities take out bonds. They're, every major bank has a municipal bond practice. And this would be a very high quality bond because there's a revenue stream attached to it. The rates are very attractive. And we need to look at that. Otherwise, the impact of the, in the immediacy of the fee increase is just not reasonable. I hope that helps. I really appreciate you saying that. Thank you. Council Member O'Brien. Yeah, so I will respond as well. And I first want to thank Vice Mayor Bennett for reconsidering this, because I think the impacts to many in our community, particularly our vulnerable businesses, is significant. And I think, from my perspective, there's no doubt, like Tom said, Council Member van Overbeek, that we need to address infrastructure in the wastewater treatment plant, exactly what that number is.

I think that's still yet to be determined. There's no doubt that we have to do something. I get that. But starting off with a 180% increase to our community is not the way to do that. We need to soften the blow in some form or fashion. And I suspect some version of a bond, like Tom said, would do just that. But we cannot inflict a 180% increase in the first year on our vulnerable businesses or community. That does not make any sense. Yeah, I'm not going to go too deep. I agree with most everything that was said here. My biggest concern, I think, on the residential side, we're getting right there to about probably what everybody in our immediate area is and where we need to be eventually. I'm not sure if we can get there in the first step.

But the hit to our restaurants, especially in businesses, and I just am not sure on the matrix on that, that they're 1% of the users, but they're 14% or 16% of the use. But then if that's the case, then why do we all have grease traps? Because I don't have a grease trap at my house, and I use a dishwasher disposal. So we're putting more down from our houses than we are from our restaurants because the restaurants have to clean their plates and have to clean their stuff and have to have a dish trap. So I need more information. We need to look at other ways to think a restaurant is going to go from $600 a month to $2,500 a month for just their water. Sewer is just crazy. So I just think we need to look at that unless we're not going to have restaurants in Chico anymore.

Just thank you all for saying things, and I think that's good for the public and now being able to weigh in. Appreciate it. Anybody else before? No, I don't see anybody in the queue. But okay, how many speakers do we have? We have six. All right. Okay, I'll go ahead and say. Yes. Yeah, could I? I had a comment. Oh, okay. I don't want to. I agree with everything you said and Councilman O'Brien said, but I don't want to lose sight of Vice Mayor Bennett's comment that we need to do this quickly. And because there are needs that need to be addressed right now. Got it. All right. Six speakers, three minutes each. Yes. And I'm going to go ahead and keep calling three up and go ahead and line up in the middle.

Tracy Vincent, followed by Ann Biker-Kaufman and Greg Scott. You guys actually talked about a lot of questions that I had, so I appreciate that. And at the risk of this being unpopular, I feel like this one we might have to bite the bullet a little bit. I think everybody tried their best to kind of push off having to pay for this as long as they could. But now we're down to the wire. I think what would be great for the community is if we could have some real transparency about what things are legally required, growth-related, and then just kind of the excess of what we have to have as far as federal requirements and mandates, if you know what I mean. I think if we're just really up front and forward and come up with maybe some other ways to offset costs, maybe because there's not really a lot we can do with our sewer, but we might be able to get some help on the electric side of things just to kind of shift burden, if you will.

I think we might need to get creative because we have to fix it, and especially if we're going to be building more and having more stuff. We're just going to have to kind of bite the bullet on this one, I'm afraid. And I don't want to sell off to Cal Water. I absolutely don't want to go into debt over it if we cannot go into debt. So this is something I think we just need a ton of transparency, and we kind of are going to have to kumbaya of this and bite the bullet and get it fixed. Thank you. Thank you. And by Kirk Kaufman, Greg Scott, and then Molly Koptah. So I just want to say I fully support the idea of a cash-funded financing option as opposed to a debt-funded option. We're in this pickle because previous councils didn't raise the rates enough to keep the reserves high enough to deal with this situation.

And so financing this with debt just kicks the can further down the road and makes it more painful for people in the future. So if possible, please make this be a cash-funded financing option. We're also in this situation because of the low average density of Chico. So we have a lot of sewer line for the number of properties that we have. And so if you do a flat fee plus a volumetric fee, you're not taking into account how much sewer pipe is going past each property. So I think it would be wise to look into the possibility of having a fee based on how much sewer pipe goes past a particular property. So that way, downtown businesses, for example, Tres Hombres, has half the width of property as Del Taco.

Why should Tres Hombres pay the same amount of flat fee as Del Taco? It's going to cost twice as much to refurbish the sewer lines at Del Taco. So I just want you to consider that possibility in addition to making sure that it's a flat fee system. Thank you very much. Thank you. Not flat fee. Pay as you go. Sorry. I got you. Okay. Thank you. Greg Scott, followed by Molly Koptah and Carol Wallen. Or Waylon. Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council. Thank you. The cost to rectify decades of mismanagement and unfunded projects or deferred projects can't be made up in five years. The water treatment plant today does a little over 6 million gallons of effluent discharge a day. And it goes through some of the richest farmland in the United States.

It used to have an outflow into the M&T canals. And I've heard people say that, well, you can't use treated water for resale. We don't have a recycled water program, which is something that the state of California is really big on. I mean, it's a drought resistant opportunity to serve farms. The Title 22 certainly lets you use recycled water for crops, fodder crops, orchards. I'm thinking there's quite a few almond orchards on the way to the Sacramento River. Maybe there's a potential revenue stream here. I don't know. It's about 6,800 acre feet of water at the current rate. Today it's $40 to $100 per acre foot of water for agriculture use. It's not a ton of money. Maybe you have incremental raises.

I like the bond issue. It makes sense. Debt is either an angel or a devil, depending on how you use it. Maybe you make a code that says, hey, if you raise the rates for 2% or 3% for 5% or 6% years, or however long it takes, and you're able to sell some water to ag, you take that and you make it mandatory that you pay down that debt early. People who buy a house, a 30-year mortgage is great, but if you pay it off of 15%, you save a lot of money. Our plant is designed for 12 million gallons a day. With a little expansion, you could do 15. To Councilman Van Overbeck's point, concrete lining the ponds is probably the most expensive. I'm not a water treatment plant expert, but it is probably the most expensive method to replace those ponds.

There's clay lining. There's other options that you can do, and I would certainly find out what we're trying to prevent going into the ground or into the rivers or selling before I built the plant. It doesn't make sense to me, and I urge you to think about it. I agree it needs to be done quickly, but it needs to be done sensibly. Thank you. Thank you. Molly Kopti, followed by Carol Wallen, and then Rob Berry. Good evening, members of City Council. Thank you. On behalf of the Chico Chamber of Commerce and our Board of Directors, I want to thank Vice Mayor Bennett for bringing forward the reconsideration of this sewer enterprise study, and for Council Member Winslow for his support, ensuring the discussion could move forward.

We also want to thank, or we also want to recognize Mayor Reynolds, Council Members O'Brien, and Van Overbeck for their continued engagement on this issue and their focus on finding a path forward that both supports necessary infrastructure investment and a long-term sustainable plan for our local business community. This kind of thoughtful engagement is exactly what our business community is looking for. Since the last meeting, our members of the Board of Directors have been working directly with City staff to better understand the proposed rate structure and the underlying numbers, as well as the specific infrastructure projects driving these costs. We would especially like to thank staff for taking the time to meet with us, answer our questions, and engage in productive discussions around potential solutions.

Through these conversations, we have been collaboratively exploring opportunities to reduce the economic impact on businesses while still addressing the critical infrastructure needs. As these discussions continue, the change we will be advocating for an approach that includes a combination of financing strategies, along with reductions to proposed capital improvements budget, and in an effort to create a more balanced and sustainable path forward. We appreciate the continued dialogue and look forward to remaining engaged in this process as partners in identifying solutions that both support the City's movement forward, necessary infrastructure investment, and a strong local economy. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. And then, let me just get back there. Carol Wallen, or Waylon. Good evening. Thank you guys for your time. To remind you from two weeks ago, I am an environmental consultant, but I'm a biologist. I'm a biologist that likes making maps and data analysis. More taxes are not popular, but I would humbly suggest that we consider a special assessment district to adjust and blow soften as you were. I did a quick analysis of the publicly available tax data of just the P-bid parcels. There's approximately 311. Of those 311, 88, 32% pay 66% of those taxes. 77, 28% pay 21% of the taxes. And 112 parcels, 40% pay just 12% of the taxes. This is going to blow your wig. 32 are publicly owned and pay no taxes.

192 pay $10,000 or less. Of those, 148 pay $6,000 or less. The taxes ranged from a high of $86,000 to a low of $198. So, before we put this burden on our local restaurants and business owners, I think we should really talk about the building owners who have profited for years off this infrastructure. And consider looking at how much they've actually put into this system before we go after the current tenants. A tenant is temporary. A kitchen is forever. Thank you. And our last speaker is Rob Berry. Yeah, good evening. So, the sewer rate increase is not just a question of the rate issue. It's also a question of truthfulness. And this is what I mean by that. The public has been told that sewer rates were not raised for roughly 20 years.

And that the city now has an extraordinary need for a correction. And you know what we're talking about here. We're talking about over 200% over five years. But the explanation for why that occurred cannot be the end of the conversation. We need to understand. It needs to be the beginning of the conversation. We need to understand what happened so that we can understand how we got into the situation. Because this is not the only difficult or deferred maintenance problem that we're going to have. So, the question is, unless we understand how we got to the point where we're now needing to take these extraordinary measures, we're not going to have an opportunity to try to improve the process and make sure that we're paying attention to these things as it develops.

So that we can bring the public and our business community along with us as we try to take care of some of these issues. So, I'm glad that you're taking an opportunity to reconsider this. I don't think our sewer is going to fall apart next month or the month after. I think we do need to have a plan. But let's take our time here and understand. Now, I know that the city council and the staff is really responsible for, you know, for owning this process. But there is expertise in the community as well that you should tap into. For example, I was speaking to a contractor friend of mine who apparently has done a fairly deep dive on the budget and the capital financing that is expiring and the phased construction process and so forth.

And he came up with a completely different conclusion than the one that you were faced with. Now, I don't know whether he's right, whether you're right or whether the truth is somewhere in between. But we should know that answer to that question with with as much certainty as we can before we commit the community to a monumental rate increase that is going to have a disproportionate effect on our business community, which is already struggling. So I would say like I would say with some of the other issues that you're faced, take your time and really ask the hard questions and get down to the bottom, not only of what options do we have, but how is it that we ended up in a situation where we're now declaring basically a crisis for our sewer system when we've been using it for for years and it's not going to stop operating tomorrow.

So thank you very much for that. Thank you. Thank you. Is that our last one? Last speaker. All right. So procedurally, I have in the motion box the original motion because until that vote is changed, there's no need for Vice Mayor Bennett to make any additional motions or direction to staff. So, and again, that that was taken at the March 17th meeting related item 5.1 sewer enterprise study and it was to approve option one on the proposed sewer fee rate schedule and direct staff to initiate the prop 218 process. So I will put that in the system. And just, and I'm going to take a roll call vote on that. And Council Member Goldstein. Hold on. I've got Council Member Hawley has her name in. I just want to give her a chance real quick before we vote.

I appreciate it, Mayor Reynolds. Real quick before we go to vote. I would like to explain the reason for my yes vote is because it's adjacent to the solutions I'll be proposing during discussion thereafter. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. So, do you want me to go ahead? Okay. Council Member Goldstein. Yes. Council Member Hawley. Yes. Council Member O'Brien. No. Council Member van Overbeek. No. Council Member Winslow. No. Council Member Winslow. Vice Mayor Bennett. No. Mayor Reynolds. No. Okay. It fails two to five. Now, if Vice Mayor Bennett wants, or someone else wants to make another motion and direct staff, that this is where you would do it. So I'm going to make a motion. We can't have, I'm not going to use staff, our team work on something without approval by the Council.

So my motion is to allow us to move forward with this new analysis and a new look at the sewer rate. So hopefully, hopefully we can come back with some numbers that are more palatable. So my motion is to approve this short-term rate analysis and move forward immediately with a report coming back June 16th. I'll second that. Okay. We got a motion and a second, but I got a couple people in the speaker queue. So, Council Member van Overbeek. Yeah, I have a friendly amendment, if I may. First, I would like the staff to confirm what we're actually required to do by the state regulatory people. Because right now that's a question mark. Secondly, I would like us to start looking for a financial advisor to help us structure a bond measure.

We don't have to pay them anything until we actually retain them, but we should start looking for one. All the major banks have municipal bond practices. So I think that's something that finance can do or we can figure it out. Yeah, but I would like to add those two elements so that we confirm what the state's regulatory requirements actually are, one. And two, we start looking for a financial advisor to help us structure a bond deal. That's fine. And I'll second that friendly amendment. Look at everything. Thank you. Council Member Goldstein. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah. Even if I continue to believe that option one could be a good option, I'm happy to be discussing this, too. I think we could do better.

I think that it's been pretty clear from public comment that 180% increase in the first year is a lot. And although we already knew that, we've heard a lot about how strongly it's going to impact people. So if there's a way that we can make that increase less steep while also balancing the long-term impacts, then I am here for it. I am also worried about delaying this process. But I still would really like to hear just briefly from staff if there's even just, I guess, a gut check of will we be able to come back with something that might be able to meet these varying needs between, you know, not having a super sharp increase that puts people out of their homes immediately while also not impacting business to negatively 10 years from now.

So can we get a little bit of staff opinion? Good evening, Council. David Keene, Deputy Director of Public Works Engineering. So when it comes to reducing the sharp increase, the proposed CIP addresses the challenges that the sewer system is facing. Specifically regarding the pond lining project, I want to be clear that the pond lining project itself is not required. But adhering to the regulatory requirement is required. The pond lining project does that for sure. Now, we are performing studies to ensure that we, the regulatory requirement itself is land discharge requirements. So that's application of wastewater effluent on the ground, ensuring that it doesn't degrade groundwater quality. So if we line the ponds with concrete, we will do that.

Now, we are performing tests to see if a more cost effective solution exists. We do not have that confirmation from the Regional Water Quality Control Board that that solution will be accepted. But we have had studies even since the March meeting that are promising and it looks like a reduced scope project could be a potential solution. So as I discussed during my presentation, it's all about risk tolerance and where you would like to accept risk. That is an area as results come in that risk may be acceptable. So when I come back, that will be something that I will present. So that is the type of analysis that you will see is it will be a risk tolerance. Like any investment, some areas risk is more tolerable than others.

So that will be the reduced CIP that you will see. Okay. Thank you, David. How come Audubon always gives you the hard stuff? What's that? I said, how come Audubon always gives you the hard stuff? We've had long discussions about this. All right. Councilmember Winslow? Yeah. Hold on. Deputy Director Keene. I mean, I think you might be able to answer this. Just because what I heard in the front of the amendment, and I want to be clear, is it like consider hiring a financial advisor saying that we're going to hire a financial advisor? And I just want to understand that we have the need for that before we tell staff to go and hire a financial consultant. I'm a big fan of municipal bonds, but my understanding is we're looking at loans through a state infrastructure bank and the regional water quality board.

And so is that bond option actually something we should look at? We have had discussions with iBank, and they have given us their most current interest rates, and they are happy to discuss with us at any time. When it comes to Clean Water State Revolving Fund loans, those are highly competitive, and those funds are limited. So that's something we would, of course, pursue, but we would be up against a highly competitive pool of applicants. Okay. So, yeah. So it seems like the iBank is there if we want it. Is that competitive with municipal bonds? Like, should we be giving direction related to those at all, usage? It's around 4.5% to 5% is the interest rate they're currently offering. Okay. Yeah, so muni bonds, well, it depends on the term, but they're typically less than that.

Now, which is why I think we ought to look at bonds. And when I said consider hiring a financial advisor, I'm not saying we should retain them, but if we get some people teed up and we decide to do it, they can do an analysis and say, okay, here are four different options and what they're going to cost. Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay. That sounds reasonable to me. Thanks. Okay. Council Member Hawley. It would be helpful if you could keep me on track for three minutes. Okay. If you don't mind. Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. Thank you. Thank you. First, I want to commend my colleague, Council Member Bennett, for being so conscientious of extended deferral, as we know that can make staffs work a lot harder to implement.

But with this decision that's so profound and impactful to our community, I agree with you. I think it's best to come back in June with a really hardened decision of exactly what the options to be considered will mean. In regards to the friendly amendment that was made, I think when we vote on that, we need to be really, really considerate of what those debt financing options mean. The easiest conversation that we can have on June 16th is giving really, really clear direction to staff of what we want to see on that meeting day, so we're not doing the same exact thing as Finance Committee did all the way back in our, oh, geez, I forget exactly. Was that in April we first heard that earlier? I don't remember.

So when we're considering debt financing as the route to consider in June, I just want to remind all of you that this is a commitment to demonstrating proof of repayment capabilities, and that would require to commit fee increases of 20 to 50% all the way in 2034 for options 3B and 3C, and 3A doesn't look much better. Even debt financing 3A, which is the $40 million bond on the lower end, that would still see a five-year cumulative increase of over 235%, which is more or less 50% more than option one in the five-year cumulative. So when we're talking about long-term solutions, five years isn't exactly long-term on a municipal level. So going back to a proposed solution, what we should be moving forward and directing staff to come back to us with in June, on June 16th specifically, as Mr. Keene already elaborated on that ponds lining project is around the CIP proposal that has been budgeted.

If we're able to cut that lining project in half, that's a significant difference in the 180% jump we'll be seeing in option one. And for that reason, we're getting a lot of information from staff who's working with the state. We could incorporate a whole lot of different risk options pursuing option one, a debt-free option. How am I doing? Thank you. With that being said, I think we should pivot our final vote to pursuing option one with a little bit more risk. for a more financially sound long-term solution. So, okay. Madam Mayor, we have a motion and a second on the floor. And we're allowed to discuss before we, I mean, she's just saying, there's your seat. You still had 10 seconds. We're going to go to the motion and the second.

Next. Did you have any final thoughts that you want to eat? I would make a substitute motion if there's no further discussion. And it looks like there isn't. My substitute motion would be to direct staff to return on June 16th with a altered version of option one that considers slightly low percent jumps for year one and taking an increase in risk for budgeting our proposed CIPs. I will second that. I also would be open to including that as an option presented June 16th, not as the only option. I think we would have that included. That's my understanding. And Deputy Director Keene is nodding his head. I think, to clarify, I'm specifying that we should not return with the loan financing options that this body should be deeming financially inviible.

All right. I think we can vote on that first then. All right. So we have a substitute motion and a second. Okay. Did you want to speak, Council Member Bennett, before we go to a vote? Okay. So my only comment is that I don't want to put parameters on what Deputy Director Keene is going to do. And we're starting to do that now. I think it's premature, extremely premature. Start telling him how, when, where, and why. Let him go with what he knows the objective is to lower the rates and just let him go with that. Let's not tie his hands this soon. Thank you. Our staff has been historically very creative with finding solutions. I can name project after project. I do not want to hamstring them either.

Give them the freedom to come back with different options. All right. We have a Council Member Hawley. Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. One last response to those two last comments. I think my frustration with the extended deferrals is that deferring our decisions do not include enough direction. And that's why I made that motion. We need to be giving more direction to staff so we're not having the same conversations over and over and over again, as we already have twice in finance committee and once on the dice here. Twice now. Oh, twice now. Yep. Yeah, I agree with that. We've heard this a lot of times and we can take the direction to go with what sounds like a good compromise as a modified version of option one.

And if the Council votes to pursue all options, we will talk about them all again. But I would love to see a more clear direction. I think we're ready for the roll call on the substitute motion. On the substitute motion. Let me just put that in there for the record. All right. 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. Mayor Reynolds? No. It fails 3-4. So I can go back to the original motion, which was made by Vice Mayor Bennett, seconded by Council Member O'Brien, to direct staff to move forward with another short-term rate analysis on the rate increases and take another look, bring back options by the 16th of June.

There was a friendly amendment by Council Member O'Brien. There was a friendly amendment by Council Member van Overbeek for staff to confirm with the state on the regulations that we're faced with and then also bring on a possible finance advisor for bond issuance. That was accepted by both Bennett and O'Brien. Excuse me. So as it relates to the financial advisor, it was for us to look for a financial advisor not to retain one. Okay. Okay. Because that would be premature. Okay. That changes that for sure. Thank you. And I just have one quick comment because I haven't commented since we went here and that is that I know this probably feels at agnosium for those that were in finance committee because you had the information and then you guys had an additional meeting so you guys have heard this over and over.

When this was brought to the public and the public heard it for the first time, we literally had six speakers here and it was all new information to the public and we had not shared any of this with them. So I think out of fairness, it's good for us to take this time to bring the information back, bring the public along, let them know and see that we have exhausted every remedy, be it bonds, be it loans, be it whatever. I hope we don't have to go that direction. I hope we can do cash pay and hopefully we don't have to, you know, do some of the lining that is going to be super, super expensive that the state of California is requiring, but better to bring the public along in the process than not.

So thank you. That's all I got. Okay. All right. And Council Member Goldstein? Yes. Council Member Hawley? No. Council Member O'Brien? Yes. Council Member van Overbeek? Yes. Council Member Winslow? Yes. Vice Mayor Bennett? Yes. Mayor Reynolds? Aye. Carry 6-1. All right. Item 5.3, in confirmation of Deputy Director of Operations and Maintenance, we have a report from our City Manager, Mr. Mark Sorensen. Thank you, Mayor and Council. The City Charter states that the appointment of department heads is subject to confirmation by the City Council. In order to meet this requirement, the City Council is presented with the employment agreement for the Public Works Operations and Maintenance Deputy Director.

Pursuant to the government code, I'll state for the record that I'm proposing to enter into an employment agreement with Jacques Voss as the Deputy Director of Public Works Operations and Maintenance, and proposing to appoint Mr. Jacques Voss with an annual salary of $145,000 per year and recommend confirmation of his appointment. All right. All right. Any questions for the City Manager? No? Do we have any speakers? We do not. All right. I'll consider a motion. Move to approve. Second. Second. Second. Is it pronounced Jacques? Choc. Choc. Choc. The S is silent. S is silent. All right. Choc. Okay. Council Member Goldstein? Yes. Council Member Hawley? Yes. Council Member O'Brien? Yes. Council Member van Overbeek?

Yes. Council Member Winslow? Yes. Vice Mayor Bennett? Yes. Mayor Reynolds? Aye. Carries 7-0. All right. Item 5.4. My request for opportunities to mitigate public nuisances. As you can see, I put in my agenda report that what I'm asking for is simply to direct our city attorney to look at what opportunities exist to increase mitigation of public nuisances under our existing city ordinances and codes. For each opportunity, what is the risk of violating the terms of the Warren v. Chico, of which we do not want to be to do, and how that can be avoided? Are there any additional ordinances that would help the city expand its authority to mitigate and conduct those items, things that are interfering with public safety, health, and property offenses, and return recommendations to council in or about 30 days or however long it takes?

I'm not super tight on the time, just whatever it takes to have the city attorney, city manager, and chief of police review those items and talk about it and bring us back options. And we've already started having our conversations and transitioning to post-Warren, and I think this will help assist in some of those items as well. So, that's my ask. Council Member Winslow. So, we talked a lot about things that we talk a lot about, and this is one of those things. So, we've done a lot of it in closed session, talking about Warren v. Chico, we talk about enforcement of ordinances that are all covered under this. But this is one of those things that I've just never been satisfied with our conclusion on at all.

So, I appreciate you bringing this up. Thank you. Council Member O'Brien. I am going to agree with my colleague to my right, come to my political left, but yeah. Thank you for that comment, I completely agree, and thank you to our mayor for bringing this forward. I think it's much needed, and definitely time to do something. Thank you. All right, how many speakers do we have? We have six. All right, three minutes each. Okay. All right. Greg Scott, followed by Charles Withoon and Robin McCollum. That's me again. I'm here to support Mayor Reynolds. I'm asking that the city staff and city attorney enforce or help to enforce the current ordinances outside of the warrant agreement. Public nuisance ordinances such as fire risk, open flames, combustible material accumulation, unsafe heating and cooking setups, biohazards, human waste, decomposing materials.

I can go on down this list. I'm asking that, it shouldn't matter, whatever your housing situation is. Our enforcement personnel must be enabled to enact on the conditions, not the status of the housing situation. Waste must be cleared. Waste must be cleared. Obstructions must be addressed. If the conditions are not corrected, if the, excuse me, if the conditions are corrected, the presence may continue. If they're not corrected, then abatement should happen. If this is a legally defensive pathway, and it's applicable to every citizen regardless of their housing situation. This is not just a downtown Chico issue. It affects our entire community and should be given the time to work on results prior to the warrant agreement sunset so that we're ready for it before it happens.

For when it happens, I urge you to vote in favor of this item. Thank you. Thank you. Charles Withoon, followed by Robin McCollum, and then Rob Berry. Good evening. Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Councilors and staff for this opportunity to review a few observations. Let's mitigate some public nuisances. There are successful programs almost in every direction away from Chico. North State Shelter Team has shown the city a tiny home plan based on proven programs that have been successful for several years in other towns like Marysville, 14 Forward, Eugene's Community Supported Shelter. The shelter started with just four little tiny homes, and now they have 145 in 14 places all over town, and the neighbors like them because calls for emergency services go down.

They save money. They save money. There's less demand on the emergency room. In Redding, and now we hear from Red Bluff. Red Bluff has got a tiny home program going on. Is that a mayor point of view? Yeah. This is on public nuisances, not tiny homes. Our tiny home program from North State Shelter Team comes with a budget that we pay completely. So, you are leaving money on the table. We have shown you several possible locations. How does this have to do with public nuisance, Charles? We're going to have fewer campers downtown. We're going to have fewer people in the channel with a tiny home village program started. Proven a success. Start another one. All the neighbors are happy. Start another one.

And you have mitigated public nuisances. Direct staff to use State Statute 8698 to get going with our tiny home program that will help clean up downtown our parks and our bike paths without hazardous rocks. We have had letters of support from Chico Housing Action Team, True North Housing Alliance, Faith Lutheran Church, First Christian Church, the Housing Authority of the County of Butte, and Safe Space, among others. And that's what we're going to do with. And that's what we're going to do with. Response to our shelter crisis has been primarily three big shelters of over 100 people each. 100 people is intimidating to some people. It turns out we have a wide variety of people. Chico needs a wider variety of shelter options.

You are leaving money on the table and people in the channel. Let's get going with proven programs to mitigate public nuisances. Thank you. Thank you. Robin McCollum followed by Rob Berry. Excuse me. Good evening, Council. Perhaps you'll wonder how my comments are going to be relevant to the nuisance. But I'm speaking freely right now from without my notes. That we need to address the whole problem effectively. We've got, you know, the Jesus Center and so forth. We've got some projects underway that are generally effective. The Eden and Cohasset thing is marginally effective. But the rest of the larger number of homeless are still out there somewhere, not engaged, not brought in. So this is my appeal, that we have a change of attitude so that we welcome people to these camps, that we treat them with hospitality.

And I think then we will have better cooperation from them. The camps will move more smoothly as far as enforcing rules and helping with cleanup. I think even if we have to add a great number of camps, I mean, because the size needs to be kept small, that the effectiveness will make it unnecessary for the sweeps, which are, I think, really counterproductive, very destructive. It pushes people out, out to new places to be a nuisance, out to uncontrolled places where we have no control. And that's how you generate the nuisance, because they're not under control. I look to, I hope to have in these camps, develop a sense of community and cooperation with the city and the campers, where they have a meeting place where they can have some kind of a self-regulating access to services and so forth, so they can generate a community in each of these little camps.

I've used up most of my time without going to my, but that's the essence of what I'm after, is that we look at the whole problem and we deal with that and not leave that, all those numbers that we're not addressing that are out on the street, in the channel and so forth. That we get them in the program and then we would actually have accomplished something we need to do. This problem is not going away. The economy is the cause and it's only going to get worse in the near term and it's going to go for a while. So we need to get a good handle on it. All right, thank you very much. Thank you. Rob Berry followed by Susan Baldwin. You know, anytime the homeless issue comes up, we always have people that come up here and talk about what more we need to do.

This city has done a tremendous amount of work. What you have is you have about 200 homeless people spread throughout the city that are causing 95% of the problems. Now, you may not know this, but there have been 88 written complaints about public nuisances that have been denied on the basis of the Warren settlement. So my message here is that we are not helpless. We don't need to be victims. Enforcement of public nuisance and quality of life laws is part of every city's municipal affairs. And so I'm very happy to hear that this subject is coming up. The one thing that I would like to suggest is that we make sure that we don't make the mistakes that we have made in the past. And what I mean by that is I hope that as we start exploring ways to improve the quality of life for the citizens who have been on the receiving end of the public nuisances caused by the Warren settlement and other things, that you involve the public and take advantage of what expertise is out there that can help you solve this problem.

We had a meeting not too long ago with the number of the people around the county that have a role in this. And one of the difficulties that was mentioned by everyone is that in the state of California, the despite all of the laws that have been passed to try to help people and compel treatment and so forth, there is very few enforcement options. In other words, there's almost no teeth in any of our laws that are passed specifically for the homeless situation. So between now and January 14th, we are going to be having this conversation about what we can do that does not offend the Warren settlement, to try to improve the quality of life for the citizens who are experiencing problems in their neighborhoods and in our parks.

And that should carry us right through to January when we're no longer burdened by Warren and we are now as free as any other city in California to limit our enforcement to those things which are constitutionally required. But we don't have to suffer the consequences of 200 people that just refuse services, refuse social norms and so forth. We have to have a mechanism to enforce basic quality of life laws. So I'm looking forward to this discussion and I hope it's productive. Thank you. Thank you. Susan Baldwin, followed by Sharon Fritz. Thank you all for being here. I don't think I could say it better than Robin did that, you know, these are people. I ride my bike all over Chico and I see the homeless camps move, move, move, move, move.

The people aren't going away. They've gotten really adept at relocating, let's say. And we need campgrounds. They're not going to disappear. We need campgrounds. We need sanctioned campgrounds, smaller ones, as Robin said, so people can have their communities. And, you know, let's humanize these people. They are, they need our help. Okay, thanks. Thank you. And our last speaker is Sharon Fritz. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. A couple of weeks ago, I read that they were going to sweep Lindo Channel. And there were around 70 people camping in Lindo Channel and they had like 30 pallets at the pallet shelter. We just need more, more. And we need something, some kind of program for the dogs.

There's a, there's a lady living out there, eating in Cohasset, who has four dogs. Another lady who has two dogs, large dogs. And got to have some place to go, got to have some way of dealing with the dogs. But the, the, the filth is just overwhelming. The animals have fleas and, and worms and the people have rats running through their food. So, something's got to be done. Thank you. Thank you. And that was our final speaker. All right. Any further question? I would make a motion that we, um, have the city attorney, city manager and chief of police meet and bring back to us when possible. Um, any options that we have available so we can continue this discussion? Options to enforce our current public nuisances.

I will second that motion. And Council Member Goldstein. Thank you, Mayor. Thanks, speakers. Um, it's important that we discuss this. And I also want to note that it's important not to lose sight of the goal of improving quality of life by turning this into a pro or anti-homelessness conversation. We've had plenty of those. And I think we all know that we need to still address homelessness, but we can also address crime and other issues that are affecting our community, including our downtown, separately from that. Um, so I am interested to see where this conversation can go. Council Member Hawley. Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. I'm just requesting that the motion be restated before we take an, an official vote.

So I have, um, to ask that the city manager, the chief of police and the city attorney discuss if there are ordinances on the books or ones that can be created that can assist with this issue and bring back any options. Did that? Okay. So we have a motion and second, and I have no further speakers. So. Okay. Council Member Goldstein. Yes. Council Member Hawley. Yes. Council Member O'Brien. Yes. Council Member van Overbeek. Yes. Council Member Winslow. Yes. Vice Mayor Bennett. Yes. Mayor Reynolds. Aye. Carrey, 7-0. All right. I'm going to take a quick break before we go to our shared micro mobility. Operations candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate candidate All right.

Item 5.5, shared micromobility program. We have a report from Brenda Audubonty, our director of public Works engineering. Yes, and our senior traffic engineer, Sean Hummer, will be giving the presentation. Welcome, Sean. Good evening, Council. Vice Mayor Bennett and Mayor Reynolds. My name is Sean Hummer, and I'm the senior traffic engineer for the public Works department. I'm here to discuss tonight how the city can move forward with a shared micromobility program utilizing rental e-scooters or e-bikes. So staff is requesting direction on whether to proceed on this item, and if so, how. I am not finding the... Already getting people excited, Sean. Good job. Sorry about that. For whatever reason, I'm not getting this to work.

Can you... I don't have... It's not... There's no keyboard. There's... Right here. Is it? Ah, there we go. But it's not... That's really weird. Yeah, it's not projecting. It's not projecting. Hmm. Three. Well, that's what it was... It's weird. Two engineers in public Works want to work on it. Turn it off. Turn it back on again. It is. I can... I'll just close it and open it again. We'll see if that helps. There you go. Well, that was it. Thank you very much, everyone. Hey, there we go. That looks better. Oh, a second slide. Wonderful. Thank you. All right. So, today, I will discuss the process for implementing a shared micromobility program, if we approve one tonight. I will cover several areas that need to be addressed, including implementation, benefits, and challenges of such a program.

If we pursue a shared micromobility program, the city must address four areas as required by Assembly Bill 1286. Those are liability, operations, parking, and maintenance. For insurance, AB 1286 requires that vendors carry, at a minimum, a policy that covers $1 million per occurrence and $5 million in aggregate. Everything else, such as how devices operate, where they park, and how they're managed, is up to the city to define. Based on staff research, an effective model is a city ordinance to establish clear rules and enforcement authority combined with a permit system for flexibility. Typical requirements for implementation would include removing downed and improperly parked devices quickly, providing designated parking areas, sharing usage data with the city, and geofencing, which is a virtual boundary utilizing GPS that triggers an action when something enters or leaves an area.

For example, a scooter would not operate in the downtown plaza if that area were geofenced. This approach allows us to adjust the program without rewriting a municipal code each time we do. A well-managed program can provide benefits, such as first and last mile connectivity, especially between campus, downtown, and housing. It can reduce short car trips, helping with congestion and parking demand. It provides mobility options for residents and students, and it provides data to support transportation planning efforts. These benefits are most effective when they're paired with clear rules and proper infrastructure. staff has also identified several challenges for the program, such as existing bike lane infrastructure.

By ordinance, these devices are not allowed on downtown sidewalks. Injuries involving e-scooters and e-bikes have been increasing, according to Enloe Health. And finally, there are operational challenges with enforcement. These are real issues and would need to be actively managed through program design. To address these concerns, a program can include strict vendor requirements and insurance, geofencing and speed controls, defined parking zones, and performance thresholds, like complaint limits and safety benchmarks. If those thresholds were exceeded, the city could reduce the fleet size, modify rules, or even suspend the program. If the city proceeds, we can opt to start a limited duration pilot program, which would limit the number of devices, define service areas, and define the duration of the pilot.

For example, you could specify 12 or 18 month pilot duration. This would allow the city to test the concept, collect data, and adjust or discontinue if the program doesn't perform as desired. So tonight, we're seeking direction on whether to proceed and at what level. This concludes my presentation. Thank you for your time, and I'm available for any questions. Councilmember van Overbeek. Thank you, Sean, for your mercifully brief presentation. No, and I think you covered the high point. So my question is, does the city have any liability? I'm just concerned, you know, these things have small wheels, so they don't have the gyroscopic stability of a bike, and, you know, people are going to ride them without helmets, and so somebody falls off, cracks their head on a curb.

Are we on the hook? You know, that's probably a good question for the city manager. I think that we could be named in other, not city manager, I mean city attorney, but other cities have had their named in insurance policies. I'm not exactly sure how each city operates these programs. Well, the short answer is yes, and anybody that gets injured on our streets will likely be named. So in some other examples around the state that I found, they specifically would accept, like they would indemnify the city against liability. I actually had that in my agenda request from back in October, specifically, like that's a parameter we should put on it, because I see other cities doing that. That is a typical requirement in our insurance requirements.

Is it 100% foolproof? No. Yeah, otherwise we wouldn't, I mean, every action you take tonight has some legal consequence liability. It's a matter of what kind of level of risk you want to assume. It seems that the level of risk here is probably worth it. I mean, you do have some insurance to protect you, but we'd want to have indemnification language to also add additional levels of protection. All right. Council Member Bennett. Oh, I didn't know it turned on automatically. So do you have, I remember when Council Member Winslow brought this forward last year, where he had somebody that had, you had talked to or met with, that was interested in starting up this program. Do you know, are there one or more people that would like to get involved or be a vendor?

I guess it would be a vendor with this micro. Yes, we have been approached by at least two that I know of, maybe even three. Council Member Goldstein. Oh, sure. Thank you. Just one quick question process wise. We were talking in the presentation in the staff report about one potential direction being to develop an ordinance, but there's also an agreement or a permit. And I was a little unclear on the difference between those, but can you confirm that the ordinance is basically the staff recommended option and why that is? Yes, we recommend the ordinance. You could go as you mentioned with any number of routes with this. It could be an agreement or just a permit, but we like the idea of using an ordinance that references other state requirements for micro mobility that are beyond a rental program.

So we like using that for how it clearly defines the rules. And then the permit system allows us some flexibility how we implement. Okay. Thank you. Council Member O'Brien. Yeah, that was my question. That really your recommendation is that you would prefer a dedicated ordinance with a permitting process. That's what you're recommending. Yes, sir. Thank you. Council Member van Overbeek. Have you had any conversations with CSU about this? I know they don't allow bikes on the campus, I guess, because they had so many accidents. But would they allow the scooters? You know, that's better, probably a question for Jesse up here. We have, he and I have, he's hovering, you can see. He and I have discussed it informally, but we haven't sat down and had a formal discussion.

Yeah, I would think it would be really critical for the university. You'd want to make sure that there's no issues there. Okay. If no more questions for staff, then we'll go to speakers. No? Okay. How many speakers do we have? Guess what? We have one, and that's Jesse Horgan. All right, Jesse, take your full three minutes, baby. It's all you. Okay. So funnily enough, this afternoon I had a petition from students to bring a shared micro-mobility to campus. I told them we were waiting on the city to make a decision about an ordinance that would be a framework that we would work in. So some things to keep in mind and to add to this discussion. So people are buying more and more scooters every day.

The price is coming down. You're seeing more and more and more of them. We see more on campus. The benefit to having a shared program is that a student, instead of bringing a scooter from home, can check one out that has speed governance, that has tracking on it so it can't be thrown into the creek. When it's stolen, they know where it is, et cetera. So it gives you more control on the problems that come with scooters. Without a shared program, we're going to see more of these devices, especially as it gets more expensive to drive. So it gives us some level of control, and it also lets us have a campaign that says, don't bring yours from home. We have them here. So I want both a shared bike program and a shared scooter program.

I've been approached by four or five vendors to talk about bringing them to campus. We're one of the last downtown campuses that doesn't have a shared program. We're kind of behind on this project. So I think it would be great if the city gave us a framework that we could work in and then talk to me about where we can park things, how we can offer incentives to students to behave correctly, how to keep pedestrian areas on campus. Those are things that I'm actively working on right now. So I've been to about 15 meetings in the past year and a half about this. But I think the framework, 70% of students live within three miles of campus. Having them drive back and forth just adds more parking congestion, more street congestion, more pollution, et cetera, et cetera.

And this program is a way to get ahead of some of those problems. Oh, I'm under time. When does that happen? Wait, I want to ask you a question. More about the CSU coordination, something you'd have input in. So it doesn't sound like we're being asked to give this input right now, but I'm curious if you've thought, Chica State's thought about zonal restrictions because we're likely to pilot it in a certain area. And I'm thinking, you know, there is a bike path through campus now, but then there's some, like, student, there's dorms that are, like, off campus. And, like, would you think that's reasonable to try to connect to those? Or have you thought about what kind of box you want to draw around the university for this?

So this has been our strategy plan so far. If you look at campus, there's bike parking all around the outskirts of campus. The idea was people would ride to the outskirts, lock their bike or scooter up, and then walk to their dorms. That's not been very popular so far. People want to ride right to their buildings. So we're looking at putting pedestrian-only zones in and then adding additional bike paths through campus. So those are active proposals that I'm working on right now. So the zoning that I would want is Nord Avenue, the apartment complexes south of campus. Also, if you think about it, like, even coming from Forest Avenue, things like that, there's bike paths that come to downtown, and a student could use one of these.

So if I'm not so worried about the university zones and people riding on university because we're going to take care of that. We're going to add more infrastructure. We're going to add more restrictions and enforcement. So that's my part. That's my job. But if the city has a framework for making sure they're permitted, giving whichever vendor that comes framework to get insurance, so they know how much insurance to buy, they have to indemnify the city, et cetera, et cetera, that makes it easier for us to make an agreement with the vendor. Sure. Sure. All right. Further question? Council Member Hawley? Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. I just think it's so important, I'm going to bring this up in 5.7 as well, that we have a holistic lens when considering the decisions that we're making, as was pointed out by our presenter, the benefits are reaped much more fully by cities who incorporate micromobilities that already have bike infrastructure in their downtowns, just because the liability is so much more limited.

People feel safer and more empowered to take advantage of the micromobility programs. So all the decisions that we're making on the dais are incredibly interconnected, and this is a perfect example of how the downtown revitalization project would have perfectly complemented benefiting our public with micromobility options. All right. I don't have any more. We only had one speaker. I have no more speakers on the dais. What are we? Council Member Winslow? Yeah, thanks. I think that because so many other communities have gone forward with this, there's really like a sort of path cut out for us to this state bill that we've alluded to. It puts out specific requirements of the things we have to address that are the concerns that come with these programs, which really makes it easy for us, right?

I don't know how customer ordinance needs to be, but I think that the next steps that are proposed here, which is initiate some cross-departmental coordination to figure out exactly how this happens, engage with Chico State, which is going on, and they're actually, I think, ahead of us in having the conversations in a lot of respects, and then establish some liability insurance frameworks. To me, that seems like really appropriate, and I don't know what else I would suggest on top of that. Is that a motion? Yeah, I'll make that a motion that we follow the next steps that are recommended in the staff report. I second that. All right, we have a motion, a second. Any further comment from anybody else?

And the motion was to just move forward with the next steps? Next steps in the staff report. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Council Member Goldstein? Yes. Council Member Hawley? I'm so sorry, but when we're looking at next steps in the report. There's three bullet points. Okay, you said one. If Council direct staff to build a program, the next steps would be, and I summarize them. Okay. Okay, yes. Okay. Council Member O'Brien? Yes. Council Member van Overbeek? Yes. Council Member Winslow? Yes. Vice Mayor Bennett? Yes. Mayor Reynolds? Aye. Carry 7-0. All right. Item 5.6. Downtown Chico Property and Business Improvement District Park and Go Initiative. We have an report from Eric Gustafson, our Assistant City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor. Council, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you tonight. I will also be concise. No PowerPoint presentation for me. Part of my duties, I am the advisory member representing the city on the PBID board, the property-based improvement district in downtown. Council Member O'Brien is the council-appointed voting member representing the city. So this is an initiative termed Park and Go. It's from the PBID as part of their overall campaign to boost downtown economic activity. Park and Go is one of several PBID downtown initiatives that include Block by Block, which is a clean and safe objective to proactively identify items before they become larger issues. Safe Streets, which has an objective to increase law enforcement presence in the downtown area.

Open Doors, which is intended to reduce commercial vacancy. Fresh Coat, which is a building enhancement initiative, painting and so on and so forth. And Investment Ready is the final initiative, which is actively trying to get owners to reinvest into their property and entice new investment into those properties downtown. PBID representatives and downtown business owners have expressed concerns. The current paid parking system creates friction for customers, contributes to negative perception of downtown accessibility, and harms sales. Reported issues include the perception of kiosk usability problems. Customers reportedly abandoning trips due to long waits and dissatisfaction with the passport app.

PBID is requesting the city council consider a three-month pilot program from June through August termed Be Our Guest, which would give two hours of free parking in Zone A. A similar free parking pilot program was conducted back in 2024 during the holiday season. Based on the sales tax data that we have, the pilot program did not generate measurable improvements in sales compared to other retail areas. However, PBID believes this would show the city and PBID combined are taking a visible step to reduce parking friction and improve downtown access that can help encourage residents to visit downtown, support retail and restaurant visitation, and reinforce confidence. The park and go initiative is part of PBID's Be Our Guest campaign, which will leverage media partnerships, social media, and community outreach efforts to highlight downtown businesses and encourage visits during the pilot period.

We certainly understand the intent and do want to partner with downtown businesses to do everything possible to activate and encourage downtown visitation. However, staff do have some concerns. First, enforcement without kiosk interaction will be difficult with a two-hour free parking. We will have no baseline starting time. Therefore, we will rely on enforcement to capture vehicles during drive-bys, say, for example, at 1 p.m., then rely on a second drive-by two hours later for enforcement. So our fear is enforcement will be fairly inconsistent. Secondly, PD has directed the second enforcement staff member to focus on preferential parking districts such as the Mansion Park area along with abandoned vehicle enforcement.

Those functions will be impacted as the second staff member will need to focus on downtown to help assist with the two-hour free parking initiative. Thirdly, there's an expected revenue hit of approximately $100,000 for the three months in Fund 853, the parking fund. Currently, revenue is down just a little bit over 30% from the pandemic. It's hard to measure exactly when that took place, but post-pandemic, the parking fund really has not recovered. We did put the kiosks in shortly after, and since the pandemic, revenues have been about 30% down. So we've identified some structural deficits in the fund. We're working to correct some of those structural deficits now. Such as moving a meter technician to an existing vacancy, another vacancy in another division in Public Works O&M.

If the fund can't self-correct, the deficits become an obligation of the general fund. Therefore, this trial period should be considered a general fund obligation of approximately $100,000. Another issue with the parking fund is a transaction fee policy decision from 2023 notes that the city bears the $0.35 transaction fee rather than pass it on to customers, like some agencies do. That equates to about $140,000 a year of subsidy for the downtown from Parking Fund 853. So with that said, I think we could all collectively agree. We want to do everything we possibly can to activate and sustain the economy downtown. However, there is a price, and I want to make sure you're fully aware that the price is going to be about $100,000 for this initiative.

So with that, staff recommends that Council provide direction regarding whether to proceed with the development and implementation of the parking program, Park & Go, that the PBID is requesting. All right. So we've got a couple questions. Council Member Goldstein? Before we get into that, I think I need to recuse myself on this one. Are you in Zone A? Downtown Parking. Yeah. Sorry. Council Member Hawley accidentally. You're up. Can you read? Thank you, Mayor. So I was wondering, basically, how did this come about with looking at Zone A, which is basically our most utilized zone, when it seems like we have a lot of underutilized areas that we could be prioritizing? And also, was there any consideration of looking at fewer days or fewer hours of free parking?

Yeah, we went through a lot of options with the PBID board. I think Zone A was chosen just because that's the most frequently used in their minds. And they're looking for, again, a two-hour reduction so somebody could come in quickly. Conceptually, somebody could come in quickly to a business, do some shopping, and then leave. You know, staff's concern, number one, one of several concerns also was that people just, you know, if there's no kiosk interaction, enforcement's tough, that it's just going to really get locked up with parking. There's not going to be a lot of turnover. So that's a big concern, too. But the intent is to do it during the summer months when university students are gone.

So hopefully, it's somewhat less impactful. But to answer your question, Council Member Goldstein directly, there was a lot of discussion on this. And PBID board members were pretty adamant that it's Zone A in the two-hour fee deferral for the first two hours. Okay, thank you. I have comments, but I'll wait until after public comment period. Council Member Hawley. Thank you, Mayor Reynolds, and thank you, Mr. Gustafson, for the wonderful quick presentation on this option. I do have a question about a possible solution to the 100K loss to fund 853, which would then, by proxy, you said, be a general fund obligation. Could a reversal of the decision from 2023 on the transaction fee potentially supplement the loss that the city would experience from fund 853?

Yeah, potentially, if Council wishes to move in that direction. Right now, it's about a $140,000 hit to the parking fund. That likely wouldn't impact this initiative, though, because, again, they're requesting no kiosk interaction. So the first two hours would be free. But that's not to say after this pilot program, once it would expire, it's proposed to expire in August, if we reinstated the transaction fee to customers and that, you know, the fund could start to self-correct. Okay. One quick follow-up question to that. Yeah, because I understand what you're saying there. After the trial period, we touched a bit upon how it would be more difficult for enforcement to enforce after the two-hour mark.

Would that be continued after? I guess what I'm trying to say is if we're experiencing difficulties in enforcement with this two-hour park-and-go initiative, then if we use the transaction fee to hopefully supplement that fund later on throughout the year, will that actually not re-benefits if we're not enforcing as efficiently? I'm sorry. I'm just not sure if the enforcement difficulties are going to extend past the trial period. You know, I think it's safe to say, and we could rely on Director Audemoni over Traffic Engineering and then also Bailey Aldridge over PD, who's in charge of enforcement. I think there's some inconsistencies with enforcement that we're looking into and trying to correct.

There is a challenge with just one parking attendant downtown to get adequate enforcement. We're looking at the LPR system on the vehicles to make sure they attempt to read both sides of the road to help with some efficiencies there. But it's proposed after the trial program that the secondary parking enforcement staff person would likely go back to the abandoned vehicle abatement initiative and the other preferential parking districts for enforcement there. Okay. I don't know if that answered your question. Yes, yes, to the best of your ability for sure. And what I'm hearing is that the transaction fee, if we were to change a decision on that, it likely would not be a reliable source for supplementing the lost revenue.

Most likely it's a speculative solution. Not in the near term. I think it would start to make up over time, the lost revenue. Okay. Thank you for your patience. That was a last minute thought. Absolutely. Good question. I see Council Member. I got you. Brendan Audubon has something to say. Yeah. Add a little context. Operational logistics. First on the credit card fee, if we're doing free parking, there's no kiosk interaction. You're not recovering that anyway. So that's where that would be a challenge and not really helpful in this situation. From a logistics and operation standpoint, in a lot of coordination with our parking enforcement team through the Chico Police Department, we have two parking enforcement officers.

One covers the downtown. One handles all areas outside of downtown as well as vehicle abandonments that are substantial. So in this concept of a free parking program, in order to effectively enforce a two-hour turnaround, because that's essentially what we're saying. If we do a free parking program, we still want to do the two-hour limit so that we're getting turnover, so that employees are not taking up those spots. They are still going out in the economy lots or the parking lots. So there would still be two-hour enforcement in order to effectively do that without kiosk interaction or the passport app. Timely cycles through the zone is critical, because you have to basically use our license plate reader technology to virtually chalk.

And so you have to have consistent routes to do that. And that would require two full-time officers dedicated to achieve that outcome. So essentially what we're giving up is doing parking enforcement in the rest of the city. And then at the end of the program, they would essentially go back to those split duties. So that operationally, that would be the challenge of enforcement is the critical nature of the timely cycles. And it's over an hour right now, based on what we've kind of seen, for that cycle time and cycle length to be virtually chalking, which the goal would be to get that down around 30 to 45 minutes. All right. Vice Mayor Bennett, did you have... So I have been attending the PBID meetings with you.

Yes. And I've listened to... We've kind of explored all pluses and minuses to this program. And the big minus is $100,000. That's a huge minus. But I'm looking at this... I'm trying to wrap my head around this. I'm trying to look at it as a beginning and ending date. It's a trial program. A trial program is not going to continue. We're going to have a cutoff date. And with that, we could take a look at how much difference this makes in downtown Chico. One of the biggest considerations would be, is it successful? Did it encourage more shopping downtown? Was it beneficial to the shop owners and the building owners and all of those folks that have invested in downtown? So it's referred to as a shot in the arm.

Is that correct? A shot in the arm for downtown. I'm leaning towards, let's go ahead and try this. Let's see if it makes a difference. And then we'll know. Because the conversation about this type of activity will continue forever until we make a decision and try it and see if it Works or see if it doesn't work. Then we can conclude that thought process without verifying if it makes any difference. We're just going to keep talking about this. So I'm leaning towards, let's go ahead and spend $100,000 and find out what we need to find out. Supporting downtown Chico is very important to me. So I'm always going to be leaning in that direction. And we need to make a difference downtown. How would you measure success?

Well, that's the problem. We'd have to rely on the shop owners saying, yes, we did more business. There's no way to monitor it. There's no way to really measure it without just the response from the shop owners. What was that? Sales tax. Sales tax. I don't think we're going to see that much. Now, as an example, Zone A, July, August, September, not June, July, August, because we get quarterly data. Zone A total sales tax generation was $139,000. So we would have to almost double to cover the $100,000. To answer your question, we can't measure it. It's going to be relying on what people have to say about it, which is not a good method of measurement. I will agree to that 100%. It's going to be a verbal report.

We've still got speakers, but I've got a couple more. Council Member O'Brien? Actually, I'll wait until after the speakers, Mayor. Thank you. Okay. Council Member Woodrow? Yeah. Yeah. I think just because I know that there's some speakers that are coming up and that there's been a lot of conversations about this. And there's a couple of things that I just wanted to express beforehand very briefly. One, I am concerned about the confusion of doing a thing for a short time as a trial. It just throws people off. People develop the expectation that they can just park downtown without paying, and then it changes, and they're like extra upset about it. And there's always a lot of confusion about paying for parking downtown.

The other is just while we were on that, we did try this, right, in the holidays because a lot of business owners believed it would really bolster business. And the evidence that we had is that it didn't actually do any better than any other area. But we did take – I think this was left out when it was explained. We did take the hit to the parking fund, so we continue to need to subsidize that. And I love free parking just like I love free anything, right? But the one other thing, and I think this is where it's like is this good for business or is this not, becomes questionable because the idea is to encourage turnover. And if you can park for free in the premium quality zone, who would go and park in one of the 10-hour parking lots?

Somebody told me recently that people don't know about the 10-hour parking lots. And I was like, of course, everybody does. I barely even drive. I know about the 10-hour parking lots. And I started to ask people, and people don't actually know about the 10-hour parking lots. It's crazy. And people will suggest things like we should allow employees to buy a pass to park. And you totally can do that, but nobody knows that. So just one thing. This is what I want to pitch to the public commenters who are going to come out and talk about this who have been thinking about this. They are saying that PBID would contribute some money. And as I understand, there's kind of this amplification effect from somebody who wants to contribute to advertise this, be our guest campaign.

And I think that that would go so much further if it was advertised for free two hours in the 10-hour loss that people don't even know exist. Than if we were to say, you can park right in front of the business where you already know you can park. And you already want to park. And you're like, why isn't that space open? And that problem is going to be worse if people can park there for free. So those are my concerns. All right. Mayor Reynolds, I just wanted to add one thing, too. We learned recently that the – and I'm not sure if they'll have a major impact, but just so council's fully aware of all the information we have, that the university – and Mr. Horgan's here, too. He's still here. I see he could speak to it, likely.

But it sounds like the university does have plans this summer to close their older lot for repairs, some painting and restriping and other repairs. You know, the intent of this pilot program is in the summer months when the students are gone, so hopefully it'll be less impactful. But also know that the university does have plans to close one of their structures for some rehabilitation work during this time. Just want to make sure that's what we know. Thank you. Thank you. All right. How many speakers do we have? We have six. All right. Three minutes each. All right. Anika Rodriguez, followed by David Halimi.

Thank you guys so much for your time tonight. We started this discussion back in February, and we had a lot of meetings with city staff, and I could tell that city staff was not supportive of this. And I was told if it was brought before council that I should have a very compelling argument to go against staff's direction. And I really thought about that when I gave direction to the PBID board about whether they should bring this forward, because I love working with staff. Like, I've been working on a lot of projects with them, and I don't want to go against their direction. But I do think that this is a very important program. Something that I found interesting is Anika Burke, we're at 26.5% decrease from pre-COVID sales, which the parking revenue funds about 30%, so it goes hand in hand.

Of that 26.5% decrease, 61 point or 33% of that is from June 1st to August 15th. Something that I wasn't aware of until like a couple weeks ago is that Chico State no longer has summer school. It's coming back in 2027. So it makes so much sense that this decrease is happening when summer school usually happens. So for me, 61.92%, the numbers actually are really comparable to the parking fund, how much I'm down. And so that $100,000 investment is about the decrease that I'm also having, which is also what I personally would take home as wages. So we've been living off a savings post-COVID. So I'm asking the city to make a $100,000 investment. I'm making a personal $100,000 investment. I think that we should meet together.

And I know the parking revenue fund is a little over a million dollars a year. The operational costs are up 23.9% since 2019. So the parking revenue fund is where it was almost pre-COVID, about 30% down. But the cost of operating parking has gone up 23.9%. If I didn't manage my costs in my business, I'd be out of business. So I'm just asking the city to meet me in the middle. Thank you so much for your time. So David Halimi, followed by Jesse Horgan, and then Susan Baldwin. Good evening, honorable mayor, vice mayor, and respected city council members and city staff. I want to thank you in advance on behalf of the PIVIT board and all the people who love our downtown for considering our ask. I trust that you have studied a very extensive packet that was provided to you by PIVIT.

And I think the audience knows by now that our ask is for a park and go or park and shop initiative for three months during the slow time of downtown, with example parking available, in zone A for two hours without interaction with the kiosk. I've always considered downtown Chico or crown jewel of the city, as many of our citizens do. With these unique mom and pop stores, fabulous eateries, and our university, it is what sets our town apart from other cities, small cities. It has the culture, art, and music of a big city with the charm of a small city, which is why so many of us choose to make this our home. I remain very positive about our downtown, but I do believe that we are in a dire need of what was, the phrase was coined as a shot in the arm, to jumpstart and revive the economic vitality of our downtown.

Our ask is not made lightly. I understand the cost to the city. And I must say, during the first meeting when the idea was proposed and the city staff said, we'll have to consider the cost, I was not very understanding. In fact, I harshly said that it appears that you watch someone who's drowning and is asking you for a rope to save themselves, and you're saying, wait, let me consider the cost of the rope. But I do understand that the city has a job to do to consider the cost to the city, but my hope is and trust is that you, as the representative of the people of Chico, would focus on the benefit of our ask, which I firmly believe is not a handout, it's a hand up. And its benefits are multileveled.

In particular, there are three. One, during the slow time of the shopping season in downtown Chico, where there is ample parking available, it will put the downtown businesses on a competitive, even filled with people who shop Merriam Park or downtown. Second, and more importantly, it will give us a reason, a platform, to launch a $50,000 campaign featuring downtown, that's time to do it. Seeded by our $5,000 contribution. Thank you, David. I would ask if you just want to finish out that thought, because you mentioned us having a packet to study, but I have a four-page staff report with a one-page from PBIT, so if you would just elaborate just for like a minute or so. The packet for our program, they had an executive summary followed by three or four pages.

Does that not know what you received? It just wasn't attached. I think I may have peaked it at the Eternal Affairs meeting yesterday, if it includes those other programs, but what we have is just an executive summary of the Park & Go initiative attached here. It's a one-page. I happen to have it, but I thought this was what was sent to you as well. There's an executive summary with Park & Go with three pages, four pages. But anyhow, if you want me to finish, the third benefit really gives us a three-month reading room for us to gather and really explore some of the best practices for long-term parking, as they have done in other cities. So I think all in all, I think the cost is justified by the long-term benefits that our beloved downtown can have.

Thank you. Thank you, David. So Jesse Horrigan, followed by Susan Baldwin, and then Anne by Kirk Kaufman. Thank you once again for the time. I was part of three of the PBID meetings looking into this proposal. Originally, it was supposed to start in the spring when students were still here, which would have caused a ton of students to park in front of businesses, and that would have left no parking spaces for customers who want to go into the businesses. So there's some things that I want to add to this discussion. First, the city council should ask for an estimate of how much parking enforcement revenue will be lost by pulling the parking enforcement out of other areas and having them just circle around in downtown where there's free two-hour parking.

Also, there is an issue with how often the enforcement will get around to checking all of the Zone A because you have to stop and issue tickets, stop and answer questions, stop and it's inconsistent. So some cities who have tried this, they have the vehicle driving around, and then they have a second person who walks and issues the tickets that are identified by the cameras in the vehicle. But that is additional cost as well. So if you're going to invest $100,000 and give free parking in the summer, I would suggest that you get something out of that $100,000 to actually understand the dwell times in downtown, to understand how much people circle looking for parking. Because if a person has a choice between paying 50 cents out here and paying nothing in here, they're more likely to just circle and circle and circle and look for a free parking space, even though that wastes a lot of valuable time that they could just pay 50 cents to get back.

Also, I would consider the university passes the fees on to the user. We have a contract that's 25 cents per transaction. It is automatically added on to when you buy an hourly parking permit. So if you get good numbers out of this and you get good understanding of how it affects business, it might be worth $100,000 to have those things. But outside of that, free parking does not give you better business. The mall has tons of free parking and it's basically a gym now, right? Those stores did not thrive because of the free parking. You need to make downtown better place to be more businesses open, more pleasant place to be, not just a place to park. It's not the journey, it's the parking is the opposite of the saying.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Susan Baldwin followed by Ann Byker Kaufman. And I don't see them. How about Jason Kolobov? You're up, Jason. Do you want to speak? I'm sorry. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. Come on out. Good evening, counsel. Thanks for listening. While I do believe there's issues with logistics and virtual chalking and financial $100,000 losses, I believe that a yes on this decision would show the downtown businesses that we hear you, we care, we know you have endured five years of pretty rough times downtown. And the public, I mean, I'm sure you guys are on social media, the Facebook comments about parking are, it hurts, actually.

I own two businesses downtown. I've spent every day for 26 years downtown. And to hear hundreds of comments, I won't come downtown. It hurts. So this program that the PBID put together, it gives, it sends a message to the public and the businesses that the city cares and they hear you. It also gives us an opportunity to launch this program to try and get the locals to take their town back this summer. So I hope you guys can find it in your heart to say yes. I also think that that transaction fee, you guys need to revisit that. Thank you. He was our last speaker. All right. Council Member Goldstein. Thank you. All right. So I hear that this is a concern. Free parking is an issue downtown. But if free parking in this situation is truly worth the cost, it at the very least isn't the only solution.

It would cost us $100,000 a year and doesn't address the underlying issues that downtown is facing and not even just the underlying parking issues that we're facing. Like one of our speakers brought up the concept that people might just circle downtown looking for a free parking space. Zone A already has a pretty good utilization of parking. And like Council Member Winslow said, a lot of people still don't even know that they could park longer term in the lots or in the garage. I also have heard a lot of comments from the public about underutilization of the garage due to certain spots being leased out or maybe they don't know that they could park there during the day for some of the Hotel Diamond spots.

Anyway, there's also all kinds of issues like frustration with the parking meters and like I mentioned, lack of wayfinding to the longer term parking. And so what I would really like us to do is to not just address this issue piecemeal every year coming back with another proposal for free parking, looking for a silver bullet to get more people downtown. And we need to be talking about this in a setting where our community experts can be heard. I'm glad that PBID is meeting and talking about this, but I really would have liked to see a proposal that goes beyond just another free parking proposal and to hear a slate of potential things that we as policymakers could do to help get more people downtown and get them to not just the spots that they see on Main and Broadway, but also into those longer term parking spots that already are cheaper.

I'm not completely opposed to a free parking, like we had free parking Fridays, but I really want us to carefully assess this and not just throw $100,000 at something and then not get results from it. So towards the end of this item, I would like to discuss potentially continuing this with a more broad slate of potential solutions and seeing if we could get together, whether just a meeting or even an ad hoc group, to talk about this with our university parking manager, some of our PBID members and staff. Council Member O'Brien. Thank you, Mayor, and perfect timing. Thank you, Council Member Goldstein, because at our internal affairs meeting yesterday, this particular program was discussed as well as a slate of other things they would like to see.

Come to our downtown attic, you did a great job presenting, so thank you for that. And I was really excited to hear about some of these really low-cost measures that may make a very big difference in our downtown. But getting back to this one particular issue, yeah, it's going to be hard to quantify. There's no doubt. And I do not have any doubt with our staff and the $100,000 loss we may take. Yep, that may be the case. But our downtown needs something. They need a win, and I think they need a little love and attention. And so I am going to support trying this. It may not be the solution we want. I don't know. Yeah, it's going to cost us a little something, most likely. I would like to do our best to quantify what we actually get out of it and what our downtown businesses actually obtain from this.

That will be a little tougher ask. I agree with our city manager on that. But our downtown needs something. They need some action, even a small action right now, I think is a potential win for them. Let's look at this. Let's see how it goes. Let's do this for three months. I think a pilot program is perfect. We're not committing long-term to something that may not work. And if it doesn't, we'll know for sure. And I think that's an important thing for our downtown moving forward. Council Member Hawley. Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. I heard multiple times that this is something that's difficult to quantify. And I actually think the exact opposite. We already briefly discussed that we could just look at sales tax relative to previous years and general trends to define success.

But even with that, $100,000 is not a small expense. I'm just thinking about the West Sacramento pop-up and quick build project that was proposed by Council Member Winslow and how that $100,000 from a general fund could be used to support really critical projects like that. And while I'm very partial to parking reform as a whole, in fact, I think Council Member Winslow brought up a great point about how we need to better direct our downtown guests to historically underutilized parking lots and parking structures, which would be a very quick, easy win. And then we would really be able to quantify success with that by measuring if those lots are still underutilized after improving signage. So again, I am very supportive of parking reform in general.

I think we can follow up on the transaction fee. I think we can follow up on improving signage. And we can follow up on better scheduling systems with the parking meters, with the help of our downtown businesses. And it sounds like the Internal Affairs Committee is working on that as well, though I haven't been in those rooms. Okay. Well, hopefully that goes somewhere. So yeah, I cannot fully justify a $100,000 obligation out of our general fund for something that we've tried before during the holiday season and seen equal sales tax increases as other parts of the city during the holidays. Vice Mayor Bennett. So the 2026 initiatives for the P-Bid include open doors, that's a business attraction, fresh coat, which is building enhancement, investment ready, downtown living, which is pushing for occupancy of the second floor and third floors, safe street, which I believe Mr. Scott is in charge of.

Is that correct? Yes, it is. Sort of. Block by block, park and go. And the ambassador program, which has been underway for a number of years. So it's just not one thing. It's a list of things that the P-Bid is actively involved in, pushing forward to help reoccupy and make the downtown area successful. And park and go is just one of the seven. If I may directly respond to that, I'm talking about multiple solutions to parking and transportation issues. I am aware that there are multiple initiatives, but I want to see it focused on this. So I just have this in mind, like the shot, a shot on the arm is not a famously like healthy way to like get jacked. I would suggest something like a, you know, like a five hour energy, like a three month energy shot or something.

I, I'm just, I'm not convinced that this would actually be helpful, but it's, as far as just trying anything, throw anything out there, like throwing $100,000 out there is just not, we've done a lot of throwing money out there and I've, I'm, I have a hard time wanting to do more of that without some kind of sense, something different from when we tried this before that suggested it's going to work any better. And I'm not really seeing that here. I think that there's so much that can be done to utilize those other lots and that that is a great partnership. And I would love for the city to invest in something like that because I think it would have a return both for the business owners, for the property owners and for the city.

The park and go, the concepts, it's, I mean, it sounds like, you know, people really just kind of get out, get something, get back in. We converted like almost every single corner space into like 15 minute parking space. There's no kiosk interaction required. And during the summer, there's fewer people there. So I would think that those would be better utilized. Probably the problem is, is we don't actually enforce that 15 minutes. You'd have to have a really quick turnaround of parking enforcement to like get anybody violating that 15 minutes like one quarter of the time, you know? So there's things we could do probably to improve enforcement that would free up those spaces. At least people who are frequent downtown users would know that like you can just take one of those 15 minute spots and that's going to help a whole lot.

And as far as the utilization of the other lots too, and where I think that, you know, this is a perverse incentive to like say that it's free to park in front of the store, but if you're going to park two blocks away, it's going to cost you money. It doesn't really make sense. And this is why we have parking Management is just to try to like do the complete opposite. And we want, and one of the benefits of having downtown over the mall and over the strip malls and all these other commercial places in town is that people park and then they walk. And this is like, look at our general plan. It's like park and walk, not park and go. And granted, we should have all of both, but if we do encourage people to use the lots instead of doing this opposite thing, then people walk from the lot.

No business downtown, I can think of north downtown at least, zone A, is more than two blocks from a parking lot that you can park in, which we have like average 40% occupancy and lower during the summer. So if people utilize those, then they walk and they walk by the other shops. And this is the beauty of a downtown and that concentrated environment. And that's how you actually get, I think, more of a multiplier effect upon the business. If we have people, if it were successful in getting people to be able to park in front of the store they're going to, it would have less of a positive effect, I think, than if we got them to park two blocks away. So I just don't, I really want to support something like this.

I really want to work with PBID and the things that they're thinking of, all the things, not just this one, but I'm not really seeing it here. All right. Well, not that I'm, Council Member Goldstein, you want to go? You can go first. I was just going to say that not that I'm counting votes, but I'm guessing that we're probably divided, which means this is going to go nowhere. So with that, I'm wondering if, I mean, we can make a motion to do and then, but I'm wondering if there's a way to tie in with what you were saying, Council Member Goldstein, to expand the conversation, tie in the way making signage possibly, and maybe we put this with the other conversation that's happening in internal affairs right now and we bring it back as a package.

And maybe if the, it is not palatable to do the whole three months for free, maybe we can at minimum look at the doing Fridays again or something like that. And can we do signage pushing out to the longer term? I don't know. I would like to keep the conversation going and keep this going somewhere. So I feel like we might get a little bit further by making a motion to send it to internal affairs to tie on to have them bring back because I think, aren't you guys getting close to bringing that? So the plan actually is to discuss the rest of the slate that PBID provided that Vice Mayor Bennett referenced and then bring that back to full council. So we can do that. Certainly we can take it as a whole and bring the whole thing back to include this parking issue and then maybe make some options, some modifications to this that would be more palatable to the full council.

So that would be my motion then to send this to internal affairs to and maybe Council Member Goldstein, you had a couple of particular things. One of them was talking to the university and getting their expertise and include Council Members Winslow's, which you're on internal affairs so I know you'll do it anyways, but talking about the advertising, pushing out to the 10-hour parking and you said one other thing that I don't remember what it was. I'll check my list. But anyways, that we review all that stuff in internal affairs and you can get a list to Council Member O'Brien and then have it all come back to us from internal affairs as soon as possible. I think there's a lot there that we haven't discussed that we could include as well and I'm more than willing to have that conversation.

I just have to compliment them. They are just kicking booty and taking names right now. They're doing a lot of work to really try to do everything that they can and I'm pretty proud of the work that they're doing so we want to encourage and keep that going and do everything that we can. Absolutely. So that would be my motion. Just real quick, I don't think our request to speak is working. Oh, I see Winslow's on. Go ahead, Council Member Goldstein and then Council Member Winslow. Sorry, I've got to gather my list. Okay, so I guess first a little bit concerned that internal affairs often from the few meetings I've been to is kind of like a large forum and it would be really cool to have a core group meet on this but I'm happy with whatever format this takes as long as we can get the voices like our university parking manager and our PBID folks and center those voices and get their ideas and bring them back and I'm happy with it whatever form that takes and I'll just reiterate some of the things that have come up for me were kiosks, wayfinding to the longer term parking and then parking sharing agreements such as Hotel Diamond.

I mean, I don't even think they have to be in the motion because I think they will come up at this meeting but I just wanted to reiterate those for the record. Okay, sounds good. Council Member Winslow. Just remind me next month of those things. Thank you, Mayor, for kind of fishing for a compromise to keep things going with this. We're talking about a lot in internal affairs. It's been pretty open-ended at this point. I think we'll kind of reel things in. The only thing that I would ask and maybe this is implied in the motion is the three of us in internal affairs as mighty as we may be cannot direct staff to spend more than an hour on something and there's already so much coordination going on a PBID but I just want to be clear that we are asking staff to spend a little bit of time with us and with PBID and maybe with some small groups like Council Member Goldstein suggesting in order to workshop some better proposals so we're not just looking at the big slop of ideas in internal affairs.

So we're not and I appreciate you bringing that up because actually I was going to make that a Council Member request that we have some ability just to get some feedback from staff regarding some of these ideas costs and things without overextending certainly our staff but we're going to need some of that feedback to bring that back to full Council. Sounds good. Council Member Hawley? I'm sorry. I feel like I'm going crazy up here. So the proposal is to start this initiative in summer of 2026. If we're putting this whole package into internal affairs to come back to City Council with a whole package deal of proposals to analyze I think we're getting way out of what this item is asking for. I think it does too but I think the mayor was doing the math and realized that it was going to deadlock at three and so she's trying to find some solution moving something forward as imperfect as it is but she did read the room and I read it the same way.

I mean I can appreciate making a compromise. I feel like my role has been pretty clear on this Council and very pro-compromise. I just don't see how this is possible. So if you're concerned about the timing and I kind of get what you're saying is there something that you would agree to if it's not three months would you agree to a month? Would you agree to Friday? Would you agree to something that would at least get us off the ground to see what might or might not work? I don't think that a decision that diverges significantly from this proposal would do much good. I appreciate you extending the olive branch and looking for some agreement but I mean if we were to pass this on to internal affairs the only thing I can think of is making it a summer of 2027 proposal.

That or having it essentially last a month or two months at best. I mean that's the reality. And internal affairs can meet more often than they are scheduled, correct? Yeah, actually we can and maybe that's what we'll do as opposed to that June 1st meeting. So you can get in and get some of these questions answered. Yep. Have some side other pre-meetings to get information so we can get that back for June. That's kind of how I envisioned it but Council Member Goldstein did you want to say something? Yeah, I think I just wanted to clarify that like I see the free parking concept as going into internal affairs with these other things. Things come back to us. I don't think that we have to approve an entire slate without discussing them individually.

Like I think but I do share your concerns about this being an initiative for summer and it might not be super agreeable to our PBID folks to not have something for them by the end of summer. So I do hope that we can come up with some good discussion items that we can implement more quickly but I think it's great that we're communicating and being flexible up here as long as it fits within our policy and procedures. Okay. So if I can make a friendly amendment to your motion Mayor and the caveat would be that we will bump up our internal affairs meeting so we have a little bit more time to look at this in anticipation of a possible some kind of summer program. Absolutely accept that. All right.

So we got a motion and a second. So Council Member O'Brien were you the seconder on that? I was I believe. Okay. Sure. Yes he was. Okay. All right. Okay. So it's to refer to IAC Council Member Goldstein. Yes. Council Member O'Brien. Yes. Council Member O'Brien. Yes. Council Member van Overbeek is recused. Council Member Winslow. Yes. Vice Mayor Bennett. Yes. Mayor Reynolds. Aye. Carries six with one recusal. All right. Consideration 5.7. Consideration of finance committee report and recommendations. We have a fee schedule update. and yeah I'm waiting. I'm just somebody presenting on this. While we're waiting I just want to in case you're getting any messages from citizens. So there was a new state law or assembly bill I think that was passed that requires city all cities to provide closed captioning.

And so the closed captioning is running. We got the encoder. Angie made sure that all happened. But it is running along the bottom and so people out in TV land will not be able to see the speaker's name and the time limit. And so we'll talk to the vendor. We'll see what can happen. But that is what is going on. We implemented the closed captioning for this meeting. And then fortunately because so many cities were grappling with this issue they've now extended it a year. So we got it implemented right away. But we'll have some time to work out the kinks. So just as a heads up. Well thanks to staff for being so on top of that and letting us be ahead of the time for once. Okay so finance committee report and recommendations item 5.7.

Tom are you taking this one? Council Member van Overbeek I mean. I'm back. No that's all right. I've been called worse. Even by you. Anyway. So we met to discuss the fees. So these are the fees. And actually what's on the table here are the building fees. There's permits that you need to get to build anything. And the city had proposed an 8% increase. I didn't understand why when inflation was 3%. We needed 8%. And we finance committee approved a 3% increase rather than an 8% increase. And we again we already talked about the HCI the street and stormwater fees 3%. all the other fees were approved as recommended by staff. All right. Questions? Council Member Goldstein. Yeah I know you're not working right now.

Go ahead. So are we just approving the report or is there an action item here? Sorry for my confusion. Okay. Thanks. All right. Do we have any speakers on this item? We do not. Let's see. All right. Any other questions for finance committee from anybody up here? No. All right. Received and filed. Oh yeah. If you want to. I'm sorry. That's. Council Member Hoff. Go ahead. Thank you Mayor Reynolds. Just on this item I would like to talk about cost recovery as one of the more fiscally conservative members of the city council. If we're not talking about cost recovery of city expenses then those expenses are in turn subsidized by the citizens of Chico. A great example is the sewer enterprise fund that we just discussed.

A lot of the revenue sources that help support that fund comes from development impact fees and the development impact fees that typically support the sewer enterprises are not supporting our sewer systems the way that they should be. And the reason that is is because we continuously see the cost of maintenance the cost of labor et cetera climb and our council does not have a reaction to that. So it's disappointing that this is what was approved earlier in the day but I'll leave it at that. Member Winslow. Thank you. Thank you Mayor. Yeah I'm reading this and I totally follow Council Member Hawley's train of thought there and I am thinking about this whole situation people are like how did we get in this situation where we have to raise sewer rates so steeply and it's like well obviously we didn't do it when we should have done it in the past and I'm seeing that last year based on the index of prices there was a proposed 23.4% increase and then this year there was a proposed 35.7% increase and in both years what the council decided to do was to do a 3% increase instead waiting on the nexus study and so like when the nexus study comes out we're going to be looking at like a 60% increase potentially and then people are going to be like why do we have this steep increase and I hope everybody remembers but am I understanding that correctly like we were likely to see over 50% increase after the nexus study is done because unless something dramatic changes in our calculations that's that's a question to me taking it from the the eye contact well that's to be determined obviously you know we go through the process at this point we're doing all the data collection and this fall we'll be putting together the draft report so hopefully next late winter early spring we're bringing that forward for public engagement there's a lot of different factors that go into that you know right now in the nexus there's a list of 300 million dollars in projects half of which are unfunded so we've delivered an exorbitantly high number of projects off of that list as well with a lot of grant funding and so there's a lot of different factors in terms of what those prices will be it's not just a direct reflection of unit pricing or cost per you know mile of roadway kind of thing so there's a lot of different factors and ultimately that would be a policy directive on what those fees ultimately look like so I'll just caveat it with there's a lot of different factors that makes sense just to finish up my thought like we have this roundabout going on an Eaton and Floral and somebody asked me like how are we paying for that and the answer is it's a lot of it's fees but fees haven't paid for all of it so this is drawing out of our general fund drawing away from the other projects that we would otherwise be able to do like there's a very real like delay and cancellation of projects as a result of deferring all these fees and it sucks to charge money I understand but this does not seem like you have fiscal conservatism at all Council Member van Overbeek yeah with all due respect to the deep financial experience of my young colleagues the when inflation is 2.3% there was no compelling reason presented why every single fee was raised 8% it was 8% across the board and what we can't continue to do is to just raise fees at some point we need to push back on the departments involved and say maybe you can be more efficient with this I mean do we really need to go through a whole permit process for water heaters and solar installations we don't and so I don't want to bring it up now but we need to go look at this whole permitting process and see if we can do it more efficiently Council Member Hawley ad hominem fallacies are not very convincing to me but the fact of the matter is is that labor costs have gone up between 4% and 5% for operating engineers and laborers on top of the HCI index considerations which was already said earlier today Caltrans and other public governments have to adhere to different regulations than private contractors have to adhere to so that creates larger costs for infrastructure upkeep there's also increases in year to year consultant rates so there's a myriad of factors where we are losing out on revenues and like Council Member Winslow already said those monies are directly coming from general funds from Measure H funds that were were promised to be used for for other uses so I know there's no decision here I'm just trying to maintain a record of when 20 years from now the city council looks back and says man it's too bad about the long term under financing of our infrastructure revenues that they will have a place to point to that this council has continuously made the decision to continue that long term under financing at the expense of the residents and the taxpayers and the citizens of Chico and at the expense of the city council that's going to try to be grappling with this 20 years from now council member Windsor council member Hawley said pointed to the thing I was pointing at but I will just with all due respect to your extensive experience in reading reports on the bottom of page one of this 146 page report it says that the 8% increase is related to increased employee salary and benefit costs brother we approve those salary increases and now we're refusing to approve the thing that compensates them for it we're putting ourselves in an impossible pickle and it's going to be passed down just a little bit but not even that far like in a few years we're going to be deferring projects and canceling projects because we don't have the money because we're making decisions like this and I hope people remember Madam Mayor it is 10 o'clock I see that and there is this is an information only item and we will be back in two weeks thank you thanks thanks!

thanks!

Thank you.