Council adopts 2026-27 city budget

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We are 1 o'clock, so I will call to order our budget session. Riveting, I might say, budget session. We were going to have our invocation, but I'm not seeing Eileen, so I think we'll move that to 6 o'clock when we come back and our pledge as well. So, speaker card announcement. Anyone wishing to address the council on items listed on the agenda should first complete a speaker card found at the back of the chamber. Once the card is completed, turn your cards into the seated clerk, and the speakers are taken in the order the cards are received. Once the first speaker begins, no additional cards will be accepted. We will be going through the entire budget and taking speakers at the end, just so you know for that.

So, Madam Clerk, can you call our roll for us? Council Member Goldstein? Present. Council Member Hawley? Here. Council Member O'Brien? Here. Council Member van Overbeek? Here. Council Member Winslow? I'm here. Vice Mayor Bennett? Here. Mayor Reynolds? Here. All right. Budget presentation. Mark Sorensen, City Manager, take it away. Thank you, Mayor and Council. Boy, that microphone's noisy when you move it. Don't do that. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. In accordance with City Charter, Section 701, it's my honor to present to you the proposed fiscal year 26-27 draft, City of Chico budget. The budget is the product of literally hundreds of hours from all of these folks, and most particularly Barbara and Amanda and their team.

As noted in the budget message, we continue to have concerns about the stability of the economy. We expect year-over-year revenues to be virtually flat for this coming year. And meanwhile, we have a lot of inflationary pressures that are causing us great concern. So I think you'll see all of those economic realities reflected in the budget, the way it's constructed, and provides you all with some options to make adjustments as we work our way through the next fiscal year. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to our budget expert, Ms. Martin. Thank you.

I don't know what that is, why that's doing that. I won't touch it anymore. I think it's when it's grabbed up on the thing, if you grab the back part. Yeah, there you go. Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for being here this afternoon. I'm sure after lunch, when you guys are all looking for a nap, this is no place you'd rather be than to listen to budget information. But we're glad you're here. We have an agenda for today. Can we get the slides? Sorry. So we are providing to you today information about the proposed annual budget for fiscal year 26-27. Is this going to move anything? Okay. Okay. A little bit about our agenda for today. We're going to go over the budget document with some changes that have been there today.

I'm going to go through a financial overview, and then the departments will present their budgets and their information about their requests for the year, and then a discussion, and then your consideration for approval of the proposed budget. If the proposed budget is approved this afternoon, then we will bring the final budget for final approval at the next council meeting. Before I move on to the next phases of the budget, I just want to, while I have your undivided attention, give some thank yous to some folks. First and foremost, I want to say thank you to Mr. Sorensen. This is his last budget with us, and he has provided tremendous leadership for all of us, and we appreciate your dedication to the city.

So thank you very much. And to all the department heads and their teams, you're only as good as the team that's around you, and we really have a great city staff. So thank you to everybody who's participated in this. Special thanks to my small but mighty budget team, Heather Childs, our accounting manager, Yasmin De La Ocelinas, who's our accounting technician, Justin Ernan-Wine, an administrative specialist, and of course Amanda McGar, budget and treasury manager, many hours spent putting this document together for you, and especially to Amanda McGar. She is always striving to make this document and the process a more improved process and a more readable and a better experience for all of you.

So she really puts in a lot of extra hours, and she probably spends a little bit of her sanity, leaves that on the table while she's doing this process, but it's really appreciated. So thank you. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Ms. McGar. She's going to talk a little bit about some of the new things that are in our budget document so that you have better information for you all and kind of a better experience. So Amanda. Mayor, Council, hello. I know you guys have a long day ahead of you, so I'll be quick. Quickly, I wanted to point out a few things that are new this year. First is the navigation, the look of the budget and how you can get around is a little bit different. It has more of a PDF-style appearance and fill compared to last year.

We feel it's more functional this way and easier to navigate. Last year we had some scrolling options with the different tabs and such, so that's been eliminated, and hopefully this is easier for you guys to get around. Each section has a drop-down menu on the left that you can choose, section, introduction, budget overview, et cetera, and then from there you can drop down and look at the total appropriations or five-year projections or whatever it is that you're looking for. So that's just a minor difference this year. Also for our capital section, we created a capital summary by type. So under the capital improvement plan, and if you're looking at your budget binder, it's page 321, there is a tab, and we have three capital summaries that list all the capital projects in their five-year budgets summarized by department, by fund, and now by type.

So if you wanted to see how much the city is spending on roads or another category, it's a quick look to see that number there. So hopefully you guys find that to be helpful. Moving on, we also added a schedule of interfund transfers. That's on page 42 of your guys' binder, and in the online version, it's under the introduction tab. This table provides a consolidated view of planned transfers between the various funds within the city, and it's designed to illustrate how the funds support one another. So we summarize this information on one table with the goal of transparency and ease of use in mind. We also have a total appropriations tab under the budget overview section that gives us a quick big picture of all the appropriations by department, separated out by operating and capital, and then gives you the total appropriations included in this fiscal year 26-27 proposed budget.

So that's just to provide a snapshot of that data. And then one more item that's not live yet, and it comes with a little bit of caution. We've not activated this feature yet, but we're planning to when we post the final budget. We tested some common data. There's a new chat bot that ClearGov, the software that we use to create this budget, has. I say that we have a little caution with it because it's AI, and I don't know exactly what people are going to ask and what answer is going to be generated. So there is that caveat that always refer to the official report for full accuracy on that. That will hopefully be live when we post the finance, the final version on our website. So you can ask a question there at the bottom, and then it'll generate an answer, and it'll tell you where you got it, and then, yeah, go from there.

Our finance department is always open to feedback, and we continue to look for opportunities to make this budget as digestible and transparent as possible. So with that, I will turn it back to Barbara for our financial overview. Told you I'd be quick. Thank you. Okay. I will as well try to be somewhat brief, but I want to give you the information that you need and make sure that there's opportunity. If you have anything that I'm going through over the next slides, if you have questions, please stop me. Happy to answer them. Happy to have the discussion while you guys are still engaged in what's going on here. So the financial overview. When we go through this process, we are always keeping the City Council strategic initiatives in mind, having a safe community, that we have long-term viability with our infrastructure, and that we protect and enhance our primary community assets.

So that's always in the forefront of what decisions are made and what is funded and what not. Just keeping that out there. This kind of shows you where the dollars are going. It's a little bit of a... It can be interpreted in many ways because many of the things that we fund can fall into many categories. So we kind of did our best to show you all where our dollars are going just on a very high level. However, one could argue some of these other things. You know, the pie could switch, move in different directions depending on what item you're talking about. As Amanda mentioned, we have the new page that outlines our total appropriations. This is what we are planning to spend this next year. It's listed by the different service areas, so the different departments, separated out by operating capital, and then the expenditures on the general fund measure H, that $107 million is what is planned to be designated for spending that is general fund discretionary dollars.

And most of what I'm going to be talking about on the financial side are those discretionary dollars because the other dollars are items that are special revenue or specific to a grant or something where we have very specific requirements for spending. So the general funds. On page 231 of the budget document, there is our five-year projection. Don't worry, I don't expect you to see what this is. It's just to show you what it looks like in the actual budget itself. The revenue that comes in through the general funds are our tax dollars, our discretionary dollars, and this is just kind of showing you where all those different revenue sources come from. Our most dominant source is sales tax. So while that is our biggest, it also can be our most volatile and unpredictable, depending on what the economy is doing.

So we're always keeping an eye on what the trends are and kind of doing our best to forecast while keeping things in mind that things can change along the way. Our second biggest is property tax, and then we have the other taxes and revenues that come with it. To show you where we were as of last year on our five-year projection when it came to revenues, we were estimating that our budget revenues for 24-25 were going to come in at just over $100 million between all the different sources, and then we built our proposed budget based on those numbers and looked at that to be just about the same. What we saw was actually in 24-25, we had some increases in different areas that ultimately ended up being about $108 million in revenue.

Part of that significant change, we had some predictions for sales tax that there were going to be some business changes for some significant drivers of sales tax in the area. Those haven't happened yet. We are, you'll see later that we are still predicting that to happen. It's just coming next fiscal year, not where we predicted it to be when we first initially had the information about it. Our utility users tax and our transit occupancy tax and other taxes outperformed what we expected, and then we also got some one-time funds. You'll see on the bottom the other revenues. There was about $6.4 million in other revenues. That's mostly intergovernmental revenue. We had just about $400,000 from our conservation credit with the solar project that we've been doing over the last few years, and then we also had a lot more in interest over all of these funds due to high cash in the funds and better interest than what was originally anticipated.

So those are all good things in 24-25, and then our estimated final for this year has also been adjusted with what we expect now compared to where we are. So we are now, in this budget, it reflects $104 million as revenue for the 25-26 instead of what we had in the original budget of $100 million. So with that, that goes into what we predict for next year, 26-27, and the out years. We still are looking at a pretty flat revenue stream, at least in the short term, because we are still anticipating a decrease in our sales tax. You see we're estimating at just over $27 million for this year. We're looking at just under $26 million for next year for sales tax. Measure H is staying pretty flat, and then the other tax revenue sources are growing incrementally as they normally do.

Just to kind of show you where we were, this is our sales tax, the Bradley Burns, which is the non-measure H sales tax. When we came to you last year, we had originally, in May of 24, we thought that our sales tax were going to be that blue line, and then last year for our budget, we were provided information, and we lowered those projections down to just below $27 million, which is that red line. And what actually happened last year is that darker line, so last year and what we predict for this year. But then again, we are still being conservative with our projections for next year and still anticipating some changes in some economic factors that is going to lower that baseline. Once that does occur, then we anticipate to have incremental increases in our sales tax, but we haven't hit that place yet.

Measure H funds, same May 24 is the red line. May 25 is where we thought we would be as of last year, so this kind of went opposite because it was a new tax. We weren't sure what it was going to look like as of May 24, and then May 25 it was increased. This is where we are now. It's kind of flattened out a little bit, and then again, as the economy straightens out a little bit and begins to increase in the out years, we hope to see better improvement. And these graphs are really just to show you with this being such a big revenue stream for us, we do our best to take in what we have HDL, which is our consultants, and they're kind of the experts in the state industry of sales tax and where things are going, and we rely on them heavily to provide us with this information.

A lot of this information isn't available right away. We just got our December quarters information, and here we are almost at the end of the fiscal year, so we're always kind of behind the game, but it's just to let you know that we rely on that and it can change, and it can change for better or for worse, and with that in mind, we're always trying to be on the good side of those estimates, not on the bad, so we don't want to overestimate what we think we're going to get and commit those funds and then not see that revenue. With property tax, it's a very stable stream. It continues to increase because it has inflators. As people sell their houses, the only time that we see reductions really is when there's a market adjustment with the properties and people go through a process to revalue their homes down, then we can see a decrease, but that's rare, so that continues to increase.

And then just looking at our overall, this year we're looking at about a 0.5% flat increase in revenues and then about a 2% to 3% in the out years. Our expenditures are, as predicted, for our biggest stream of expenditures is our salaries and benefits, as we all know, so we do take into account the factors that make those increases. And then finally, what we are looking at on the bottom line is that our net operations before capital expenditures is balanced. And this is really important because the operating expenditures are the ongoing costs. These are the things that we've committed to and they're going to keep going. And so we want to be sure that going forward that in the out years that we have the funds available to pay for those things.

Capital expenditures are more of one-time items. So they, you know, if we need to pivot, those areas are more able to do that without making personnel cuts or changes to our overall services. Our biggest driver of expenditures, as I said, is salaries and benefits. So I do want to go a little bit about what that means. What we have in the budget is all of our known scheduled salary increases, the contractual increases through MOUs. We have an estimated 10% increase as of January for our insurance. This has been fairly a good estimate over the years. We did see a slightly higher increase over this last year, but we don't expect that to be something that's common. And then CalPERS and our other benefits costs are driving those costs.

And then CalPERS, I do want to touch on a little bit because we are constantly talking about the unfunded accrued liability. These are based on actuarial information, investment return, mortality rates, the number of retirees in our pool. And this is something that has a high balance, but again, it has a long-term payment structure. So now CalPERS bases their annual payments on a 20-year span. So any of those unfunded liabilities are not expected to be paid all at once. For 26-27, our annual payment is just over $16 million. That includes both safety and miscellaneous. We have two different types. The target rate for the investment return for CalPERS, this is one of the largest drivers of what our unfunded liability will be.

They have a target of 6.8%. If their returns do better, then we get a bit of a break on our liabilities. If it does worse, then we have to pay more. This big drop back in 2009 was what spurred the pension reform that happened. And then subsequent PEPRA employees and new ways of CalPERS doing their investments and their new amortizations. So this is a big driver of how CalPERS does their business. Over the last, since 2009, since that time, the average rate of return has been 7%. So they're doing fairly well with where they expect it to be. This is a chart showing what our annual UAL payments are. This was as of our last actuarial report, so this does change a little bit, but it kind of gives you an idea of where we're headed.

We are about to approach the highest points of our payments every year. The bar that's just below the tip of the arrow is for 26, 27. So you will see the next between 2028 and 2032. Those are the highest payment years, and then it should start to decrease after that. And then theoretically, we will have little to none of a payment come 2044, because this amortization line is paying for all of the past and stuff that happened. So with PEPRA and with the new structure, theoretically, those costs will be mitigated going forward. So what are we doing to help with these costs going forward? We have two funds. We have our Section 115 Pension Trust Fund, which as of the end of this fiscal year, will have just over $10 million in it.

Sorry, this slide got a little messed up. And then in our unfunded liability reserve, we have just under $12 million in there as of 25, 26, and that's funded by payroll contributions every pay period. So we've been kind of paying ourselves for anticipated higher costs as the years go on. So if we do get into a place where we have to use some of those funds for the higher years here, we have in our reserves now over what an annual payment would be. So that's a good, safe place to be in terms of our unfunded liability. And then the other piece of the pension costs is our normal cost, and this is a normal cost percentage that is directed by CalPERS every year, and it's paid for both by employees and by employer and applied to their paychecks kind of like Social Security would be.

This is a good news area because as the rates remain stable and as we blend into more PEPRA employees, you'll see that as the years go by down on the bottom, our actual rates are going down, so that is mitigating some of the cost of the unfunded liability going forward. So as a reminder, what we do to make sure that we can afford these things that come up and aren't caught by surprise, we have many budget policies around fiscal prudence, and then we also continue to have a conservative approach when it comes to our budget. We have a fully funded emergency reserve. We have a budget policy about dedicating surplus in the general fund to future liabilities and pensions, and then we do have those pension reserves, so that's all very good.

Turning our focus back to the five-year projection, after expenditures, we are looking for a target to be above an operating reserve, and the operating reserve is 7.5% of a previous year's operations. So over time, we are meeting that, and we will continue. That's our kind of ultimate goal is to be able to fund our emergency reserve to the level that we have set, and then also to have that operating reserve. And then looking a little bit beyond our operation costs, I want to just give you kind of an overview of where our streets and roads expenditures have been and where they're headed. The actuals information through 25, those numbers come directly from our annual streets and roads report that is provided to the state, and you can see the different sources and how much we have spent on streets and roads over the years.

This last fiscal year, you can see that we had more than we've ever had in terms of expenditures on the road side. And then this year in 25, 26, that 143 million, it's a little bit of a misnomer because what happens is as we fund capital projects, as we are going along the projects and haven't quite spent those dollars yet that we, say, funded in 22, 23, we roll those forward every year until the project is done. And then if we don't need those funds, then we allocate that to something else. But that's why these dollars are so high for 25, 26. You will see that 26, 27, it's a bit of a reduction. We don't have any grant funds programmed for this next fiscal year. That may change as we go along.

But a lot of what our dollars are spent, we use our local dollars and our discretionary funds as leverage and as match for grants. So it's an important tool that we use to get more dollars to be able to do bigger projects. And you will see that we have funding sources from our gas tax funds, transportation funds, development impact fees, and then grants and then general fund dollars. So just to show you, our gas tax, that has increased over the years. It's been, it's looking to be pretty stable in the next year. We get biannual information from the state about what we expect those to be. And so that's pretty stable. What we are concerned about, though, is our transportation funds. This is funds that are funded through the state that go through BCAG for transportation, local transportation funds.

We have been notified that our piece of that pie is going to be reduced this next year. BCAG uses dollars for their operations first, and then they spread the rest of the dollars based on population. So typically, CHICO gets a bigger part of what's left, but that what's left has shrunk. So again, this is less dollars for capital projects, and we also have some one O&M operations and maintenance employee that is funded with these dollars. And then development impact fees is another big driver. These are all dependent on construction and new builds and that sort of thing. So we do keep an eye on this and what it can supply. So with that, that's all kind of the general fund information and big high-level stuff.

I'm going to turn next to some funds that we need to keep our eyes on. Before that, do you guys have any questions before I move on to other? Just because you were just on it, how much are the TDA funds down this year? It's hard to tell because there's all the rollover in the longer-term graph that you have on there. Yeah. It is. Next year, it's just supposed to be about, what is it, 2.5? Down. Yeah. Yeah. So they took away about $1 million. So this high-level, 24, 25, is just over $5 million. This year, it was less to just under $3 million. and then we're going down to $2.5 million. Are we expecting a comparable decrease next year, too? Like another million dollars down about? TBD. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, we don't know the exact amount, but we've been totally anticipating those numbers are going to keep going down as transit costs go up. Okay. Thank you. Can I comment, Director Adobani, is this what we were just discussing at the BCAG transit planning? Yeah. That these funds are primarily supposed to be used for transit and that if the city wants to have our transit routes serve our community better, that we could also reap some benefits from that if we plan for that. So, Barbara, on slide 33, which is the total projected UAL payments, I'm just curious, why did that spike in 2043? Do we know? That's the final payment year of a 20-year amortization for a bunch of, they used to have a 30-year amortization, they shrunk it to 20, so there were a bunch of bases that kind of led up to that wall and as they don't meet their targets, that wall increases until it falls off.

Gotcha. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. I will move on to real quick to I don't want to belabor these too much but do want to make sure that you are all aware of the funds that we're continuing to keep an eye on and should be no surprises but just making sure everybody is aware and that we need to keep diligent so that we're not tapping into reserves, et cetera. We have our sewer fund where the cost of materials, our capital projects, maintenance, et cetera is outpacing our revenue. We've talked about that at council meetings. Our parking fund continued to have lower revenue which is using reserves. We have a reserve fund that is supposed to be funded with some of those revenue dollars for capital projects and we haven't been able to do that.

Our private development funds, those are the funds that are driven by construction and so the trends in construction themselves affect those funds. And then our airport, that's kind of an up and down item. It's dependent on lease revenue and we do see some positives in that area but we do have to strike a balance between those and operations. So just to give you a quick overview, we've talked about this before, the sewer operating fund we continue to not be able to, this is a page directly from the budget, but our revenues that we have coming in so far we are continuing to have to transfer in dollars from the reserve to help balance this fund. So our reserve fund by the end of 26-27 is looking to be at about $2.2 million where that is the main place that we are hoping to be able to fund major capital projects.

So as that dwindles we won't be able to do that. And then our parking operating fund, again, revenues are not keeping pace with our operations. It's looking in 27, if everything comes to fruition we're going to have a negative balance of $700,000 and then our reserve fund only has $300,000 in it so we're out of balance. So at that point we're going to have to decide whether the general fund is going to eat up that balance as budget policies require or if we're going to have a different plan. This just shows you the blue line is revenues since 1920 and then what our operating expenditures are. The 25-26 and the 26-27 budget those are budget dollars. Typically there's savings that don't happen with the budget that's why it looks higher but nonetheless you can see you can see that big dip in 2021 that was COVID when all revenues ceased for a period of time.

So we are keeping an eye on that. And then with our parking revenue our biggest are our parking meters and our street revenue has kind of flattened out and is not getting into a positive trajectory. And then the same with our lots it's actually dipping down a little bit more than the streets. The trends are showing that it's going down further than the street meters are. So again keeping diligent on what that will mean going forward. forward. And then looking at our private development funds these are our four funds 871, 7273, and 7474. This is wrapped up together because they all have the same funding sources. So our permit fees and our planning and engineering fees that come in supply the revenue for these expenditures.

You can see that going into the out years and going into 2627 we're heading on a downward fund balance trajectory. Last year 2425 was the first year in a while that we've had a negative revenue versus expenditures situation. So we are just keeping an eye on it. We do have a budget policy well not a budget policy it was a council directive back a while back where the general fund is supporting 10% of the revenue stream of these funds and so continuing on through that we are supplying through the general fund $400,000 to $500,000 every year for that function. And with that we do have a user fee study that is in process and I believe that's almost done so that could affect the revenue going forward.

So looking at that and then again just remaining diligent about what that means going forward. These are funds where in the high years we get a high fund balance in order to be able to afford the low years. That's just the way these funds run and so we just need to keep an eye on it. And then finally our airport fund through the years this fund since we don't have commercial service has been supported on and off by the general fund because operations cost more than what we get in our revenue. Most of the revenue is related to rental and lease income. We do have flowage fees and landing fees but that's not the big driver. We did through the after the campfire and in the years after that we had a large lease rental from Cal OES as they were using our airport for a lot of those activities and after the fire so that helped this fund quite a bit during that time.

But again we're past that now and we're kind of resetting what the out years are going to look like. So this is since 23, 24. We had an increase in 24, 25. These are adjusted in the actual numbers you'll see some higher numbers in rental and lease. There's some financial statement requirements that cause a booking of data that makes the actual cash in for these leases look higher than what it is so this is adjusted for that. We do have a little bit of a decrease in 25, 26. There were a couple leases that weren't renewed that ended but then again in 26, 27 with the new contracts that are out there we are looking at it going back up. So that's a positive thing and we're hoping that that keeps going in that direction.

Again we do have a budgeted transfer from the general fund of just over $150,000. We budget it every year so that it comes out to zero. If we don't need those funds we don't use them but they are budgeted in there to secure those fundings if we need to. And with that that's my financial piece of it and we will turn over to department presentations. I have a quick question on the airport. What are purchase services for $200,000 approximately? Those are contract services typically and I'm not sure the specifics of what those pay for. Professional services typically it's our air service development consultant, marketing consultant for air service development comes out of that line item. And then utilities for $400,000 is that just keeping the power on at that building out there that's empty?

Yeah, that's their piece of the allocations for different for our internal costs, so facilities costs and just out of the airport. That's just out of the airport. That's just seems like a lot of utilities for Well, it's not just utilities, it's for internal service departments, you know, finance, HR, facilities, those internal service department costs, that's what makes up that dollar amount. Okay, thank you. Council Member van Overbeek. First of all, thanks for putting together this document. It's a lot of work, so great job. question on the private development funds. I thought the general fund was funding 20%, and did you say 10%? 10. Did that change recently, or I've just always been wrong about it?

No, it's always been, it's been 10 since 2012-ish. time. Yeah. Yeah. Anybody? All right. Okay. I don't see any other. Okay, thank you. Just because you can't get enough of me. Now, we're on Department of Transportation. This part will be quick on my part. Just give you a little bit of an overview of administrative services. We encompass finance information systems, which includes the radio communications, and then human resources, risk Management, all the fund supporting things. So this is our strategic goals for the year. Many things. Basically, what it really ends up being is that we are here to make sure that we give you accurate information and timely information so that your decisions are made with good information.

We are looking to support our other departments, both in terms of administratively with the employees and then also personally with employees through our human resources. And then we are protecting our assets, including our cash and our finances and being able to continue on with what our missions are throughout the city. Initiatives for 26-27. This is in the budget. I won't go through all of these, but human resources really is focusing on recruitment and retention and providing good competitive benefits for people interested in being employed. Like I said before, our team is what makes us, and having good employees is really important to our success. Finance, what's before you, developing a budget that funds your priorities and also complies with requirements that we have.

Information systems, we have a new fiber utility, which I'll speak about a little bit in a minute, and then continuing the support throughout the city of the different systems. And then risk Management, we are doing what we can to mitigate our risks. Risk Management encompasses both workers' comp, so employee risk, general liability, which is risks in the city that would become a liability of the city in terms of financial and et cetera. We have 36 positions. One of those positions is a contracted position actually right now for grants, but our total budget is just under $14 million. And we are mostly general fund and internal service funded. So the only things that are added in the administrative services department, we are continuing.

It's not an addition of new, it's just continuation of what we have going. This year we have had very good success in all of our divisions of using interns in the different areas. They have, they're eager and they're willing and they are great employees for us. And then we also have an annuitant that helps us with some special projects that was our former payroll manager. So she comes in and helps us out there. And then new funding, we have a maintenance contract for our P25 radio system. That's our safety radio system. We haven't had a maintenance contract yet and this will help mitigate costs and keep us updated and that sort of thing. And then increased funding to support our ongoing service contracts and maintenance agreements, et cetera.

There's annual increases that are just part of doing those, those businesses. And then finally we have an existing project, which is our fiber utility. We are nearing completion of the first area that is being constructed. And you'll see in a later agenda item later tonight, a request for an interfund loan. And I'll explain that more later this evening. But just want to give you a little bit of an update. This is the area that is being completed. The pink area is the downtown area and that's getting ready for construction soon. All those different lines and things are all the conduit and et cetera that's all throughout these areas. But it's slated to be able to serve just over 9,000 residents in this underserved area of the city.

It's funded by grant dollars. So no city funds have been used in any of this as of yet, except for ARPA funds, which were designated through those grant dollars to help the Broadband Master Plan and to start this project. project. So far as of now, we have just over, just under $200,000 linear feet of conduit installed and then just under $130,000, $30,000, $130 linear feet of fiber installed so far. So it's been quite a project and it is going fast. We'll be ready to light it up, as they say, turn it on in early summer. And the next phase is to onboard the customers through either internet service providers, which we'll be engaging with and getting RFQ kind of things going on with those. And then we also have an option to do it direct.

But in order to do that, we need to be able to have some upfront cash. And so that's where I'm speaking of the interfund loan, basically requesting some dollars from our workers' comp fund to be able to fund that temporarily so that we can get these customers going so that then the revenue stream starts to be able to pay for itself. So with that, I'll take any questions about admin services and then you can be done with me. Council Member, now we're back. Yeah, so I'm looking at fiscal year 26 compared to 27 and there's a 14% increase in 27. And almost all of that is, looks like workman's, the workman's comp up 40%. Is that possible? It's gone from 1.7 to 1.8, roughly 1.8 million to 2.4, 33%.

Oh, those are new costs projected for both claims that we're settling and then salaries and benefits. We always have a budget of higher than what will happen because what we anticipate is that we're going to have to pay either claims and or we have a budget policy that if we have extensive claims with employees charging to it. So you had a backlog of those which you're clearing. Well, there's a backlog, but also we over anticipate what we will have to pay and it doesn't usually come. And then the second part of it, the increase is purchase services. So is that IT related? Yes, most likely. There was quite a big increase with all of the different software products that we have. The annual increases are just for the maintenance agreements are quite extensive every year.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Council Member Winslow. I don't know how specific this can be, but I'm really interested in North Valley fiber and I love to see that we're moving forward with that. And I just wonder if you weigh in on like the long-term plan with this. Like is it going to sit under administrative services for its entire lifespan? Do we intend to like once it's scaled up and we have like maintenance of things and stuff? Is it going to move somewhere else? So there's some kind of like pivot point discussions we'll have about potentially expanding beyond what we currently have grant funded. You know, there are other providers that are expanding really rapidly. It looks like right up against and into the service territory that we're looking at.

And I wonder if there's things that we should be thinking of. Yeah. Yes. The future. Yeah. I mean, I think that the ultimate goal is to be able to provide these services throughout the city because it opens up kind of a competitive market for everybody and does do a lower price point for a lot of these services. Our directive when this first came up was use these funds that are allocated and see how it goes. So we're kind of at that point now where we're really seeing how it goes. We have had about out of the 9,000, there have been consistent interest in at least 400 customers so far. So even getting those people on board, it's going to take some dollars because we've got to connect them to the service, to their homes and all that sort of thing.

So it is really kind of we're at a point now where we need to see where this goes. We have a five-year commitment to keep the infrastructure with our grant. And after that, if it looks like this would be better served to sell it off to another provider, then that would be a decision point at that point. Or if we want to expand, then we need to look at funding that and how that looks. Yeah. So we'd be pretty reliant on like higher level government funding for future expansion, just like we have been up until now. I'm sorry. We'd be more relying on like future federal or state grants probably. Well, theoretically, the revenue stream that would be coming in would be paying for future infrastructure.

It's just how fast we want that to go. I mean, if we just want to see how it goes and kind of take it as it comes, it could be a 30-year. Or if we want to put some dollars into it and really go for it, then it could go much faster. Yeah. It's great. I love it. I love the forming competitive marketplace. I'm thinking of the solar panel sales people that would go in and say like, you know, you'll pay for the solar panels, but it's going to, you're going to save more in your energy costs. And if we can make a similar case and then we help customers get connected. Yeah. That'd probably help us in the long run. We'll know a lot more this fall once we actually start connecting people and gaining revenue.

Right. Yeah. I'm looking forward to that. And get an understanding of what the take rate is. Right. Exactly. All of our projections are based on about a 30% take rate. So we're not expecting all 9,000 customers to be on board with this. But that's a manageable estimate at this point. Is that early summer time frame still accurate? Or I heard you say fall. Are we more looking at? Yeah. They just placed the hut, which is the central place where they, sorry, Josh Marquis is usually our knowledge base, but he's had a family emergency and couldn't come today. So I'm doing my best. Hut has been placed over at our municipal services center. And now they're just doing all the things they need to, to get that live.

And then basically flip the switch and see that it's all on. Awesome. Thank you. All the stuff's there. I don't see any other questions. Okay. Okay. I will turn it over to our city clerk.

Thank you, council. I'm not going to touch the microphone since it makes weird noises. And I'm responsible for that. Thank you so much for allowing all of us here to present some of the things that we do on an ongoing basis. And it is an honor to serve as your city clerk. And I feel like I have a very small but mighty department. And we work really, really hard. I'm not going to recite our mission statement, but you recognize that we are here to support the organization, the council, the citizens, and making sure that there's transparency and public trust always. The funding sources for the city clerk's office is obviously the general fund and the PEG fund. And I want to talk a little bit about the PEG fund.

That really is, that's public education and government access funds that comes through Comcast. It's a percentage and it's only to be allocated towards equipment. So the new technology that was implemented recently, the ongoing improvements that we're going to talk a little bit about later on this evening, that is all from PEG funds. And so they're very limited in use. They cannot pay for salaries or anything like that, just the equipment so that we can ensure that the public has access to all of your deliberations. Currently, we have, I have four positions. I'm asking for an intern at the cost of $25,000. And I'll talk a little bit about that in the next slide. So for strategic goals for this upcoming fiscal year, elections, obviously I have an election in November for districts two, four, and six.

I don't anticipate at this point any measures, but I don't want to like put that in your head so that you guys think about that. Anyway, we did have our recent meeting last week with Keaton Denley from the county. He's indicated the costs have gone up somewhat due to postage going up and some of the other things. They did get new equipment. So while my budget did go up in terms of the election side, that is to, there's no way for us to quantify what we're going to actually get billed. And we don't receive that bill from the election in November until February the following year. So obviously we're going to be working. We're in full swing now that we have the information from the county to facilitate that 2026 election.

We'll be spending a lot of time working and making sure that our candidates know what is needed, what's important, what they need to have, what requirements that they need to meet in order to become a qualified candidate. And then obviously we will be probably responding a lot to some citizen calls because the county has indicated that they're not going to have their ballot boxes at the university because of some work that's going on and the libraries. And so we're going to have to help them try to find new locations. And that is somewhat confusing for citizens. Those ballot boxes have to be under a camera so that they can be viewed at all times and monitored for security reasons. So we'll be working with them as we move forward.

City staff reports. We recognize that the staff reports that you're given at every single meeting from every single department comes from my office. And we work really hard to ensure that they're clear, concise, and they have all the options, they have all the attachments, and they have everything that you need to make an informed decision that can benefit our community. So we take great pride in that. We believe that our role is here to assist the staff members who are writing reports. And so we are recognizing we changed recently. We used to do paper copies that we would review and then send back all the edits. And now we've gone to SharePoint. We've gone electronically. We're now looking to also do further refinements.

We need to take in ADA requirements on our staff reports. And so we'll be assisting staff with that. We're going to come out with a new staff report. We would love to include not only that we have the fiscal impact portion, but we want to be able to include your strategic goals and how the item that's before you and being considered meets those goals and which goal and which process. So we believe that that will be imperative. With that comes training with staff. It's long overdue. We have lots of new staff members. Perhaps they're not writing staff reports right now, but we want to capture them so that we can give them the tools necessary so that they can write staff reports in the future. When we talk about digital access for public meetings, obviously there's another item on the agenda later to amend AP and P1010, which will include SB 707 requirements.

And I'm not going to go into that a lot here since we're going to talk about it tonight. But obviously the state continues to look for ways to improve citizen input and process and access. So we're going to be including ADA requirements. ADA requirements. Angie, I have to commend her, worked really, really hard because it was supposed to go into effect at the end of April for ADA requirements. She got it implemented. She got the equipment here. It was working. It is working. But then the state said, well, since other cities are struggling, we're not going to implement that for a year. But we're ahead of the game. So for the city of Chico, I'm very, very proud that we are ready to go with that.

And then Zoom integration. That's what is later on this evening. We're going to talk about, I believe it's SB 707 that implemented hybrid meetings. And so we are going to have to include some type of either phone interaction or some type of a technical platform. We are going to use Zoom. We're going to have people in the building. We're going to have people attending via Zoom. And that has to be implemented by July. So Angie took that on as a project. She also took that into consideration when we did the upgrades in the council chamber. And so we're ready to go and continue to refine the way citizens access their government. She's also working on developing a long-term plan on how we implement technical upgrades in here versus waiting for something to crash and burn.

So we'll be coming forward with a plan on addressing that. And then always, we look for ways to develop efficiencies and streamline processes. We want staff to be able to access our department. We feel like we are support staff. And we want to make it easy for them to come to us when they need help. And I think that that improves the processes. It improves the documents that get forward. And then when you take action, all of those actions are then taken by my department and we implement, whether that's a code amendment, any type of a resolution or an agreement or anything like that. Under records Management, I've inserted that because I know I've talked a lot about that and it is important and it's not glamorous.

I admit that. And I know that I think there's inward groans by all department heads when we talk about records Management. However, it is so critical. Right now, we have received over 900, I believe, 908 PRAs on documents. And if we do not retain our documents and get rid of documents when it's time to get rid of them, we have to produce them. So for an example, if, and I can tell you, administrative services would never have this. They were on their documents right away. But if they had, if we got a PRA asking for 20 years worth of Office Depot receipts and we still had those, we would have to produce those, even though we might only have a two-year retention policy on those. So it's imperative to continue with our records Management.

And that is why I have been fortunate enough to include an intern who helped us digitize documents and work with other departments. That is the one request that I've put in for the hourly employee of 1,000 hours to continue that big task, that heavy lift. And it's so critical. And that person will be going into the other departments to assist. Because I recognize records are not glamorous and you don't like them. But we're going to have someone help you like them. And so I think I'm really excited about that and hope that the council will support me in that endeavor. So there were some increased membership dues. The League of California Cities typically goes up either 3% to 5% every year. Part of my budget is your budget.

And those are all consolidated in. And again, what was new was the part-time position for an hourly employee. So I'm open for any questions that you might have. Council Member van Overbeek. Thank you for that great presentation. So my question is about documents. So they're scanned and then are they stored on some kind of optical media? Yes, we're using LaserFiche right now. And they're all searchable? Searchable and it's amazing. And once staff starts really using that, I had to do some research the other day and I actually asked my intern to look it up. And she had it in like 10 minutes. It does, like you could put in one word and if there's a resolution with that word in it or council action, all the minutes have now been uploaded into that program and platform.

So the research capabilities are amazing. And also just being able to retain them. One thing that part of the digital process that we've been working on, Angie took the lead on this as well as a records manager. She worked with a firm, Co-File. Is that what it is? Co-File. And we have those beautiful books that many of you have seen that are all done in calligraphy from the 1800s coming forward. And that room that I have them stored in is not fireproof. And so we could lose those documents. But we have now sent a couple of them out to see what that might look like. They digitized them. They are putting them in new books. And they're putting them on paper that will be, you know, can be preserved.

And I can tell you that that is a great weight off my mind. I never, ever wanted anyone touching those books before because of how the historical importance. So you're scanning all the historical documents? We are. We are. So why wouldn't we go back? I don't want to get in the weeds, too deep in the weeds, but 10 years or so? Because the frequency of searches declines over time. And at some point, I would think it wouldn't make economic sense to scan the really old stuff. Well, we have scanned everything because sometimes councils go, what happened back 20 years ago? So I will say that we had all the documents out in Building 400. And they were being destroyed because of the mice and the heat.

And it's not, it wasn't temperature controlled. And so preserving all of those. And there are things that are required by state law that we have to keep, like the agenda packets, and being able to do searches on those. And so we have documents how far back on the agenda packets? Angie? Yeah. So from the 1800s. So we would be able, and those are supposed to be kept forever. But now they're searchable. And so we're really excited about that. Great. Thank you. Any other questions? Vice Mayor Bennett? Vice Mayor Bennett? Could you please refresh my memory? You receive a great many PRAs. Yes, we do. Much more so than other communities. But is it because there's individuals within our community that constantly ask for that?

Or is there some other reason? I can't remember. Well, of the 900, 600 of them were for PD. And the remaining 300 were for all the other departments. And whether someone wants an incident report or they want a fire report or they want to, you know, they make all kinds of requests. I wouldn't say that. It's one group of people. I think that it runs the gamut. We're averaging three PRAs a day. One project that I am working on and I'm very proud of, Danny Rogers, our deputy city clerk, is actually working with PD to help them with next request and to help develop some efficiencies over there so that they can handle. They get the biggest bulk of PRAs. And while one PRA for us could be thousands and thousands and thousands of pages, PD definitely has their work cut out for them.

So we're having Danny work with PD and we're going to try to mitigate some of those impacts. But I will tell you that you just never know. Every day you can open up your computer and there's a PRA. Sometimes it's someone who bought a house that want to know, do you have the plans from the original plans? And so we have to answer those. We have 10 days to answer them. So it's a big job. Any other questions? I'm not seeing any green lights. I think you're good. Thank you so much. You guys want to do a quick break or do? Can we do a quick break before you take off? Sorry. Tried to catch you before you got up. Oh, it's.

And so that's that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Love that microphone. Good job, Debbie. A little bit about the city manager's job. It's primarily provide fiscal leadership to the entire operation of the city as well as organizational leadership and whatever you all want done to make sure it happens and happens in the best way possible. Year over year, very little changes. And that's all I have for you on that. Unless you have any questions, I'm going to turn it over to the fire department. I guess we could have let you go before we went on our break. Does anybody have any questions for Mark? No. Okay. All right. Mr. Hack. Fire's on. No pun intended. I think I'm going to lose the friendly wager to see which one of us is more efficient up here, Mark.

That was very impressive. I wanted to take it in a little bit. I wanted to take it in a little bit because this is quite possibly the last time you'll see my smiling face up here. It's been an honor and a privilege to be the interim fire chief here and to be selected to lead and represent the citizens of Chico and the fire department. I'm honored to say that we have a new fire chief, Wes Matroka. We'll talk to him a little bit more and give him a chance to speak at a later date. Just to let you know, he's been here for 20 years. He started out here with the Chico fire department. And my numbers may be a little bit off, but I believe he's only the second fire chief to be an internal candidate here since 1930, which is an impressive thing.

So we're very fortunate to have him. Also like to recognize staff. I think her technical title is Management analyst, but she's really the supreme commander of the fire department. She knows where all the bodies are buried, where all the accounts are, and she is the brains of the organization. And I say that in 100% truth. Actually, I've never used this thing. I don't even know how to get to the next slide. How about enter? There we go. Okay. I just want to say I'm transitioning this fire department to Wes's leadership. And frankly, I got it in great shape for the most part. The staffing levels are where they are recommended by our last standards of coverage. We have, because of the action of the council earlier this year where we restaffed engine one, we're now staffing the appropriate amount of apparatus that our standards of coverage recommended.

The only thing we have looking forward to into the future, and that's one of our goals for this year, is to start looking for a station six site on the northwest side of town, because there is a little bit of gap in our response capabilities out there that we're all aware of. So this year's accomplishments, we've done a lot. This thing does not like me, does it? There we go. I'm gonna skip through this so I can be a little bit quick too, Mark. We've done a lot of things. We've updated our radio systems. The most important thing that we did was we staffed engine one. We've purchased, thanks to the help of our fleet and facilities folks, we're in the process of completing the build on two fire engines and one tiller truck.

Those apparatus will respond within the city for the next 20 plus years. And our fleet is in a great shape. For the most part, we didn't request many things. If you looked at our budget, most of them were CPI inflation costs that totaled for the entire budget about $192,000. The one thing that we did ask for that didn't get moved forward was the floater fire positions, the three. If you recall, we'd talked about those when we staffed engine one and I said that I would bring them forward at this point in time. They didn't get moved forward. I expect that if we don't do it at an upcoming date, that's something that Chief Matroko will be reaching out to you guys to discuss because it is a significant and profound assistance to us.

In the month of April, we had 60 firefighters held on duty for the month of April alone. So an average of two a day where people thought they were going to get off work and they were told, no, you have to stay for another 48, 24 hours. So with the floater positions, there will be a commensurate reduction in overtime. But we can discuss that at another time or Chief Matroko can discuss that at another time. The goals that we have for this next year are fairly simple. The first one is to start the process for funding Station 6. There are some different options and opportunities out there that Chief Matroko will be bringing towards to you. The other part is we're always for continuous improvement of our performance.

There are some things and you'll see it. It's kind of interesting doing the budget here. So tonight you guys will see our annual report. One of the things in there that is critical for us is to expand our data analysis capability and to improve our data reliability. The data that we've had for the last couple of years is lacking and we need to be making data-driven decisions. Now I like that when I say something people believe me and trust me, but I want to have the data that demonstrates that, not just my smiling face and the trust in me. So we'll work on those things. But frankly, our department is in good shape. Thanks in large part to you guys. With that, I'll answer any questions. So I just want to thank you, Bill, Chief Hack for stepping into the gap.

It's never easy. I'm sure you're enjoying retired life, but to come in when we needed you and provide your leadership, which was essential. I just want to commend you and thank you for that sacrifice. Thank you, Bill. Truly my honor. Yeah, I would say those to that as well. I do have a question on the expanded technology and data analytics. I really like that because data-driven decisions are wise decisions. Is there going to be a large need to purchase some sort of infrastructure to do that, or is it just capturing the information and tracking it differently? And you already have the whatever software, hardware you need to do that. At this point in time, we do not anticipate any need for any software or costs associated with that.

It's mainly a refocus of our personnel on what data matters and how it matters, and then to identify when we have extraneous data and figure out why it's there. One of the other things that you will probably get asked to do at one point in time, we have never formally adopted our performance measures for the fire department. So a performance measure, for one good one, for example, is our standards of coverage and what I tend to use, the standards of coverage recommended back several years ago, was our goal is to respond to all emergencies with six minutes driving time on 90% of the calls. We always use a 90th percentile measurement because 10% on either side, that's not necessarily justification for the whole system.

If you look at the 90%, that's a good measure. It's the national, what everyone uses. We've never formally adopted those or had those discussions. That will probably be something in the next year or two that Chief Matroka brings to you is formally adopting what you believe the performance measures for our community with obviously our recommendations in there. Dale, did you have a question? It didn't come up on my screen. It's not working. Okay. Vice Mayor Bennett, go ahead. So we keep running into each other, and I've always enjoyed that, so I look forward to the next time we run into each other. Thank you. And congratulations, Chief. Councilmember van Overbeek? Yeah. Can I call you Bill now that you're stepping down?

Yeah. Thank you for stepping up and doing this. You were the perfect guy in the circumstances. And Chief Matroka, I could not be happier that you are the new fire chief. I mean, I was at the Citizens Academy, I don't know, six, seven years ago, and you did the hazardous material presentation. And I was just so impressed. And anyway, I'm very happy for you and I'm happy for us. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I don't see any other green lights. Thank you. Chief Aldridge. I don't think I can be as efficient as that bill. So I'll do my best. Mayor, Vice Mayor, members of council, thank you for having me here today. Unlike that bill, you will see my face around here for a little bit longer. So I look forward to future budget presentations.

I know we all love them. So I want to first acknowledge that when we build our budget within the police department, I always consider several factors. Number one is what does this community need to have a full service agency, police agency? And that's how I present my budget to the city manager in terms of here's everything that I feel we need as an agency. You tell me what you can afford within our budget and we'll make it work. And I always respect the city manager's decision on that because he works directly with the finance staff and the seven of you to determine what we can afford. So as I build my budget, I also consider, you know, council's strategic initiatives, the safe community, long-term viability, protect and enhance primary community assets.

And I think that as we built our budget, we consider all of that and have a plan in place that will give you an outstanding police department for years to come as we continue to lead through the issues that we have in our communities. So next, I want to thank the city manager and the finance team for helping us through our budget. I know it's not a small task with the largest budget in the overall organization and for, you know, the time they give us to ask those questions, those tough questions. And also, I want to acknowledge Crystal Pepys, who is my budget analyst. Like Bill has his keeper of the secrets. We too have ours, and that's Crystal. She is the one who controls the purse strings from the police department perspective, and she does an amazing job.

And then next, I just want to start right into our presentation. So is this it here? All right. So we know what our mission is, is to create a safer, cheaper, and improve quality of life by partnering with our community and providing dedicated service. I do my best to meet with as many people out in the community as I can to get their voice, to let them be heard, see what's important to them, what's important to our community, has to be important to our police department. They drive our mission. And a lot of what we do is based on the things that I hear from our community. So I want to recognize that our mission statement is still accurate to this day. We do partner with our community. So what's new in our budget?

Most of our budget is just increased costs, to be honest with you. With the increase in, as Barbara put it earlier, with services, we're seeing that all around in every area of the police department with our purchased services. Even down to the training requirements that we have for the police officers and other professional staff, that training cost is going up. So speaking of training, we have right here our post-update instructor training, $30,000. What that is, is based on 37 internal instructors that have to be certified every four years. And we have to get that done by December of 28. So with that looming deadline on our horizon, we've started planning those trainings for every one of our instructors.

And that's an increased cost above and beyond our current training budget. So that would get all 37 of our instructors or most of them through that training, get them certified so that we can continue to have our in-house training. Task force fees, we know that $5,000 of this total amount is due to our drug task force participation fee that's going up. The remainder is going to be going toward a use of equipment for the task force of the county's bomb disposal unit. We're looking at having to switch over our Chinese drones to American-made drones by law. And in order to do that, we have to upgrade our tracking program that allows us to seamlessly track both the Chinese-made drones that we currently have and the American-made drones.

This program will talk to both of those. If you've been on our website and seen the program air data, it's how we log all of our flights in the city for the transparency of our community. This upgraded program will ensure that we have no issues when we start that switch over. And then it communicates to both types and still provides that information to our community. And then we talked about PRAs earlier, the amount, you know, Debbie talked about that in terms of the police department. Just so you have a perspective on that, the city received, you said you received $900 in your office? Yeah. So in the police department last year, just PRAs, we got $5,906 into the police department. And then when you include all the other things that come in that are considered PRA, that's like another agency doing a background on an employee, other agencies asking for police reports, our community members coming in asking for police reports and things of that nature.

It ballooned up to 6,601 for last year. And so we have to have a mechanism to manage that. As Debbie alluded, we are utilizing Danny and creating our own internal PRA unit. And Danny's going to help us out tremendously with that. But we have to expand our programs that allow us to process those requests. So that's where that $10,500 comes in for that portion of our budget. All the expenses you see here are just annual increases. The only one that really isn't truly a service increase, so to say, is the background expense. The reason I requested $10,000 in that is because as we've built back the police department, we've done a record number of backgrounds. And those are quite expensive to do.

So we are consistently over budget in that area simply because of the unknowns in a background process. You don't know how many people you're going to have to go through before you get someone who can actually pass a background. And here lately has been a lot, to be honest with you. So as we go through those backgrounds, you know, for every, you know, 10 you do or so, you might get one or two potential employees who can pass a background. So that cost just continues to go up. And this is just a request to put more in there with the number of employees that we've requested in this budget cycle. The remainder of those items are simply just cost increases from the consumer level. Likewise, in these requests here for the animal shelter, again, these are all annual increases.

The one that I want to speak on specifically is the cremation services at the animal services division. The request there is $7,400 because we have to have upfront costs paid. Although that is a revenue generating source for the city, the money comes back to the general fund. If I'm not mistaken, Barbara. So we have to pay that upfront. And so we're typically over in that. So although we're requesting money for that increase in services, we do make it back on the back end when the payment is made to the city and the general fund. Our request this year came down to one community service officer for the red light camera project. That should be a cost neutral request there as we continue to progress through that program.

And then two community service officers who will be assigned to the target division to help with not only the target officers who are out doing the warrant enforcement and processes, but also to help out in the parks. We want to have some CSOs trained in interpretive skills and working in the parks. So that'll be all assigned to target. As I did the AB 481 presentation this year, we requested additional funds for replacement of service handguns and the optics. The current budget was $31,000. And just like anything else I've said so far, we have an increased cost in that that is happening. Also, the approval of the replacement for the patrol rifles that we have on hand. We didn't have any money dedicated for that service or those service weapons.

So we want to make sure that we plan accordingly and start saving for that replacement. They all have life cycles. So we want to make sure we have the money on hand when that time comes. Our most important function in the police department, the heart of the operation, not only for police but also for fire, is our dispatch center. A 24-7 operation and something that you would never really think about are replacing their chairs. And we buy them really nice chairs because we want to make sure we reduce the likelihood of work comp claims from lower back injuries, chairs slipping out from under them. We want to keep them comfortable so that they can work comfortably in their areas. And so the current budget, you see there's roughly $3,000.

We're requesting that increase of $11,800 in the 26-27 cycle so that we can set aside or start purchasing those chairs now. They had a seven-year life cycle, but we're at year five, and they're completely spent. As the city manager puts it, oftentimes they have fully depreciated. So we would like to get those purchased sooner rather than later so that we can prevent those potential work comp claims. And then set aside a little over $5,000 a year for those future replacements in the capital. Overhead expenses. What we found out is when we were budgeting for these different line items, we weren't actually budgeting for the 3% finance overhead. I had no clue on that. Crystal educated me on it. We learned about that when we started coming in exactly 3% over each time.

It's like, well, hold on. What's going on here? We thought the funds were actually budgeted into the amount for those line items, but they actually weren't. So finance charges us 3% overhead for all of that processing of those payments and the contracts and things of that nature. So we're just requesting 3% overhead be applied to those five line items so that we can ensure finance has the funding they need to support our operation. The forensic examination computers, as you know, everything is stored on people's phones nowadays. And there's programs that we have where we extract data from cell phones for evidentiary purposes. And that information comes out of those phones in a very large amount of data.

And so what we have learned is working with IS is that we have to have specific computers to be able to run those really big programs to extract that data. And then we have to be able to store that data securely. And so we have requested to purchase these forensic computers. Initially, IS has agreed to purchase them. And then what we want to do is set aside a little over $5,000 a year for their replacement. They cost roughly $20,000 each. And if we start now, once we buy these new ones in the four-year life cycle is, I believe, what they said, we'd be able to purchase those without coming back to you for another supplemental request. Our bomb squad equipment, the equipment that's actually owned by the city of Chico has started to age.

And so there's several items that we need to purchase to ensure that our EOD techs are doing this job safely. And I'm not going to go through the list there, but roughly $30,000 worth of equipment, that would be equipment that's actually owned by the city of Chico. And it will be housed in the bomb vehicle that's within the storage area of the city of Chico. It would not be at the county. And then lastly, we have our request for the UAS vehicle. And I just have this picture here because that's the back of our standard patrol Tahoes that we have been working out of with this unit for quite a while now. As I presented in the, or Captain Pena presented in the AB-481 presentation, we're using pop-up tents, you know, foldable tables in inclement weather.

It takes us quite an amount of time to get through setting up those pieces of equipment when we need to get them rapidly deployed and in a safe manner where that equipment isn't damaged, where people can work effectively. And so these are some of the reasons why we had requested that new vehicle for the UAS team. If you recall, we did request three different types of vehicles. We have dropped that down to just one request out of respect for the budget this year. So, and with that, I believe that ends my presentation. And I'm happy to answer any of your questions or concerns. Councilmember Hawley. Mr. Aldridge, really simple question. I remember you went over this in the initial military equipment use report and community feedback session.

But those drones that will be needing to adhere to federal policy to change from the Chinese made to the American made, I forget what year that compliance needs to be met. Was it just? I can't recall off the top of my head. I want to say it's 2030. Okay. I can't remember exactly. I can get back to you on that. Okay. Not super critical. I was just curious. Thank you. Councilmember van Overbeek. Chief, yeah, I just had a question on why we're replacing all the sidearms for the officers. Is there some problem with the Glocks they're using now? No, that request was to set aside for future replacement. Okay. Yeah, so every service weapon has a service life. And, you know, they put hundreds of rounds, thousands of rounds through them in training.

And so we plan to replace those. I believe it's every 10 years is the life cycle on them. And so we set aside that amount in a capital so that when it comes time, we just have it available and we can make that purchase. So there's nothing new here? No. Oh, okay. Thank you. Councilmember Winslow. Thank you. Yeah, I had a couple questions on the new staffing positions. One is a CSO for the Red Light Camera Program. And we hired somebody for that now. But we need to add an additional one since we have extra cameras going up. Why is it this year and not in the past year when we were setting up the program? So we have one in the position now. But, you know, in a sense of robbing Peter to pay Paul, I took a CSO from another area, moved him into that because of the retired annuinted issue that we ran into.

We thought we were going to be able to use them to run the cameras. Post changed the rules and said, absolutely not. You're not going to do that. So we pulled a CSO from another area of the department, moved him into that position for now. So I need to backfill that. So in theory, it's that position. Okay. Okay. Okay. And then so the two for target, we don't have a lot of park rangers on right now, right? I mean, so what's the reason in having CSOs that are more targeted towards parks rather than trying to fill in our park ranger positions? Sure. Good question. We currently have one park ranger and, you know, we did have two. One decided to move over into being a police officer. They go through the same academy, the same field training program.

And then once they're done with that training, they typically change out of the blue uniform and go over to the tan and green. He did that for several years and that he decided, no, I want to move over to the blue side. And so it created a vacancy. Historically, we've not been able to fill those positions. We recruit for them. We send them to the academy. And once they get into the academy, time and time again, they decide, you know what, I want to be a police officer now. And they switch over. Or they come into the training program and have failed out, you know, to be frank about it. So we are working with the city manager, HR, and finance on a different direction. And then it may be a little premature to discuss that topic right now.

Yeah, okay. I just want to express my observation because I'm not the only one who's noticed that the park rangers, we've been unable to hold on to them and fill in the positions. We've had some vacancies for a while. And, you know, it seems appealing to them and, you know, maybe for a variety of reasons to move over to PD. But also it's just that this is before my time on the council, but we made park rangers sworn officer positions. And so now we have, like, park rangers will move to be sworn officers. Or in some cases I think, you know, some didn't really want to do that, so they left. But now we're coming back around to have a community service officers do what sounds like a lot of park ranger work.

And it feels like that's like a full circle where they're like non-sworn officers, you know, don't carry a firearm. But now they're doing the work that we used to have park rangers who were not sworn officers do, you know. Sure, I see what you're, the way you see it. So let me explain it. Maybe you'll see it differently. So as we looked at the park ranger position, we figured out that we had park rangers doing jobs that should have been more of like civilian staff, non-sworn staff. There was a whole gamut of things that our park rangers were doing that we said, you know, we can do that with CSOs. We don't need to have a gun-toting park ranger checking the bathrooms that they're, you know, making sure they're open or changing toilet paper or checking out garbage.

Hopefully not. Opening gates, things like that. We can have cheaper staff doing that and have the sworn staff actually focusing on safety. How do we deploy them and focus on that safety? And so that's why we've had a little bit of a change in that perspective. And it's why that I was able to take a CSO. We're going to be able to take CSOs and move them into more of that interpretive services, doing some of the lower level work that we shouldn't have sworn peace officers doing in the park. Wait, sorry. What is interpretive services? I heard you say that before, and I don't know exactly. Sure. For sure. Talking to the animals? No, Ranger Bob, if he was still here, he would be proud of me because I'm about to tell you.

You know, there's a lot that goes on in the park. And we have one of our only park rangers right now who is really good at it is explaining the history of our park, explaining what, you know, the different vegetation is like in the park, the animals that we have up there. You know, all kinds of informational type things about the park itself. Yeah, kind of like guide to visitors. Yeah. Yeah. Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, if you will. I love it. I have one more question on a completely different topic on the chair fund. So I remember it was in 2023 we'd introduced a capital, like, fund for chairs. And you're saying that they expended their useful life sooner than anticipated, but that was only three years ago.

And I'm just wondering what accounts for that. Also, I think there's an increase in the overall allocation for that, and that's because there's a shorter replacement cycle now, or is it because we're getting different chairs? So a couple different things. I think what you're seeing is when we requested the increase for the capital fund to replace those chairs, we are already in the life cycle of the chairs prior. Okay, so the funding existed already. So we're adding to the fund to build it out to replace them earlier down the road, but we need to replace the ones we have now immediately. So they kind of trail each other. There's the overlap, right? That's the way you want to have it so that we have the money there, the life cycle's up, we replace them, and it starts over again.

And the money's there down the road, down the road. So, yeah, they're just – and then you take into consideration that we were working at near minimal staffing and dispatch for a long time, and now we've brought that staffing all the way up. And so those chairs are getting used a lot more by a lot, you know, different people. So it's just wear and tear. Yeah, yeah. So it is the same chairs that are being used? Yeah. Thank you. That's a very interesting topic in dispatch. They are picky about their chairs. I don't blame them. Council Member O'Brien. Yeah, those dispatchers earn everything we can provide them, and certainly comfortable chairs is a small measure of that. I just want to thank you, Chief, for highlighting the mission statement of the department and core values.

In fact, I think you put that together for me a few years ago. So they are timeless and enduring, and I want to acknowledge that and thank you for that as well. Yeah, you're welcome. Do we get the extended warranty plan on those chairs for the price that we're paying for them? So we only got five years out of a seven-year chair. Like, do we get a refund or a rebate? Yeah, I really hope we can, but I don't know. Check the fine print. Yeah. Anyways. Thank you very much. Thank you for that. And without further ado, our Community Development Director, Brendan V. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor Reynolds, Vice Mayor Bennett and Council. Pleased to be here. Just a quick reminder. The Community Development Department is made up of the planning, building, housing, code enforcement, and GIS divisions.

And so while I think the department's responsibility is touching all of Council's goals, the ones I think are the most primary are housing, economic development, and creating a desirable place to live. So to support these goals, the department has its own strategic goals. Those include ensuring the general plan and the municipal code are up to date and consistent with state legislation. Excuse my voice, by the way. We'll have this fixed in about a week or two, so just bear with me a little bit. We'll have this fixed in about a week. Efficiently processing development applications in accordance with local, state, and federal regulations. administering affordable housing programs and funding, providing up-to-date GIS data and information, ensuring all construction is consistent with California's complex building codes, and finally, maintaining and improving the quality of the community through enforcement of local, state, and federal regulations.

So I'm going to start off and go division by division. Starting off with planning, it's funded with private development funds with some support from general fund as well as some special revenue funds. At its core, planning seeks to implement the general plan and apply the city's development regulations to propose projects that ultimately help the city meet its housing and jobs needs. In addition to serving the city council, we serve the Planning Commission, Architecture Review and Historic Preservation Board, the MAP Advisory Committee, the zoning administrator, and the Climate Action Commission. So what Debbie does for you, we do for all those boards and commissions. Not as complex as Debbie's work.

So, currently, planning is deeply involved in processing the entitlements for Barber Yard, which is one of Chico's special planning areas. This infill brownfield project will propose over 1,200 residential units, reuse of existing historic structures, as well as 60,000 square feet of commercial uses. Very soon, the CEQA-required final EIR will be put out for final review by the public, and we plan to have the Planning Commission and Council review the project in the summer. Long-range planning is also very active. Another round of residential readiness code amendments will be before you later this summer. implementing recommendations from your ad hoc Growth and Community Development Council or committee, as well as commitments we made to the state through the housing element, and as well as some other commitments we made to HCD as part of our pro-housing application.

The goal of all the amendments are to streamline residential permitting, as well as promote housing production. I think I want to give a little update on the state pro-housing designation. I can't share any final news, but I think we'll have good news to share with the council and community in the coming month. And I'm also confident that we will receive HCD's pro-housing incentive program funding to help support existing housing and capital projects. On to the housing division, mostly funded by federal funds, the affordable housing fund, as well as fees collected. This slide right here reflects a lot of individual projects that were recently completed and celebrated with ribbon cuttings, as well as some projects that will come online later this year or that are under pre-development.

But what I wanted to highlight is this figure here, which highlights an unprecedented level of affordable housing production in Chico over a five-year period. Here you can see 17 projects the city was going to add nearly 1,400 affordable housing units to the city's inventory. I think you all know what I want to just highlight. Affordable housing requires extensive coordination and triage. And our housing department division worked with Public Works and Engineering, O&M, the Urban Forester, fire, planning, and building to keep all of these projects on track. The success of these projects is a direct result of the collaborative efforts of city staff across all these departments working together towards a shared goal.

This has been a monumental effort and shows what Chico can do when funding and tax credits are made available. Quickly on to the GIS division. They're funded by several enterprise funds with some general fund support. GIS supports every city department, whether it's staff answering questions from the public, field crews collecting data real-time on mobile devices, or the engineering department tracking the condition of infrastructure. GIS also supports critical data for outside partners like Chico Unified, Cal Water, and PG&E as part of their master planning. Last year's funding from the council helped complete the cloud portal transition, and now all city divisions are served from that platform.

We have a GIS team, though, that currently is harnessing the real power of GIS. They are saving departments money, they're automating public noticing, and helping staff be more productive. Upcoming work includes making the ADA, or the GIS site, ADA compliant, creating applications so that field crews can collect and correct data real-time using their phones and tablets, and also making the city's GIS more available and helpful to the community. The building division is entirely funded by the Private Development Fund. They make sure that construction in our community is built consistent with the California Building Code. I want to highlight something very important. Over the past year, the city has achieved 100% building plan review in-house.

That means we're no longer sending plan reviews out-of-house using third parties. In addition, they are usually utilizing pre-construction meetings to help keep larger commercial projects on track. Building continues to see a steady pace, both in residential and commercial development. In 2025, there were 330 new residential units built. This is a slightly this was a week's back, I'm sorry, slightly higher pace this year, especially from the area of affordable housing, which will add to the multifamily. In addition to plan review and inspections, this year, the building division will develop and implement an over-the-counter permit review program for smaller projects, continue enhancements of the city's online permitting system, finalize the user fee study, which we'll be bringing to council, and also providing training opportunities for our local contractors and design professionals to increase efficiency in their application submittals.

Finally, we have the code enforcement division, who are primarily funded by the general fund. As I think you're all aware, they play a very important role in maintaining and improving this community's well-being by responding to small concerns before they turn into larger problems. quickly, I'd like to share some highlights. In 2025, there were approximately 1,582 code cases opened, and 96% of those were closed based on voluntary compliance. That incredible volume was accomplished with three code enforcement officers and one supervisor, and does not include the other major community improvement programs like weed abatement and drop-and-dash. Last year, council adopted a massage establishment ordinance, and this year, the department of the division has received 70 applications for permits and is beginning enforcement on some of the illicit businesses.

Later this year, code enforcement plans to present council with an ordinance regulating tobacco retailers in an effort to reduce youth tobacco initiation as well as to curb the sale of flavored products. So that was just a quick overview of all the different divisions and where their funding comes from. This year, CDD is not looking for any new positions. I do, however, plan to work with our HR department to create a more sustainable department infrastructure. This effort will, of course, not include the new positions, but will focus on creating division leads where we don't have them and also enhancing career paths for employee retention. So with that, I'm available for any questions. Council Member Hawley?

Mr. V., congratulations on all the achievements of your department the last couple years. Just all the efforts in affordable housing and the 100% in-house building inspection and permitting shifting away from contracting is really exciting. I wonder if you would like to elaborate on how those changes to more in-house of inspection and permitting has affected the capacity of building and kind of forward thinking how we can address those capacity changes going on in that specific department. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, honestly, it was at the request of some of our local developers that we bring a lot of that in-house. Less triaging, less working with third parties and consolidating, but we don't have the redundancy that you might have in other departments or by using the third party.

So if someone's out on training, if people are sick, we don't have as much of an ability to catch up when we fall behind. I will say, though, as part of that effort and having it brought in-house, we are cutting the turnaround times for first-time plan reviews. It used to be about a 20-day turnaround. Now we're at a 10-15 turnaround time for residential and also the second go-around. So the irony of our building department, something people don't know, is they are in control of all the reviews. We sent them out to fire, you know, development engineering, the urban forester. So there's a lot of triaging and herding cats to help us meet our deadlines. So it's something that we're proud of, but it's something where we need to build particularly capacity, I think, in the plan review.

We have a young individual that's joined the team and he's being trained by the right people. When our building inspectors maybe have a slight drop-off in some of their inspections, they can come in. Most of them have the certifications they need to also do plan review. So we're using all of our resources as best as we can. Great, thank you. Anybody? Yeah, I'll jump in, Mayor. Thank you. You know, we think of these things as just happening like they're on autopilot or something. Brendan, I just want to thank you. I know they're not and there's a lot of work that goes into this and you never know of the hard work typically or sometimes acknowledge it until something happens. so I just want to do that before something happens, not that anything is going to happen.

Acknowledge that hard work by you and your staff, the excellent job you're doing and I really was impressed with the 96% rate of compliance regarding code enforcement cases. That's pretty amazing. so thank you to you and all your staff. I do appreciate you and I want to do that publicly. So thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. I don't see any other green lights. Public Works. Skylar. All right. Thank you, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, staff, members of the community. Thank you for the opportunity to present today. Honored to serve our community here as your Public Works Director. We'll go ahead and jump right into it. So in Public Works Operations and Maintenance, we have 12 divisions. I like to say you have to know a lot about a lot.

As you can see, we have quite a diverse range of work amongst those 12 different divisions. Internal servicing departments, external servicing departments, some of them touch both. And it keeps us very busy. As you can imagine, our admin staff, our office, and then, of course, all of our managers. You can be speaking about one type of infrastructure within the city at one moment and then, you know, several moments later speaking about a completely different type of infrastructure. Funded by multiple sources throughout those 12 divisions, there's our total budget request, $35 million. Total personnel costs, $14.5 million. Current number of positions, 101. And I would be remiss if I didn't thank those folks, those 101 folks there, for their hard work in this community.

They really care, and I'm grateful to work for one of the best teams in the city. They like to leave it better than they found it. Amongst the total budget requests there are capital projects. There's a total of 46 capital projects that we manage in operations and maintenance. The overall request is essentially flat. So kind of, I hate using the term status quo because I think our folks are nothing short of excellent, something way beyond status quo. But it's a relatively flat budget. Ask this year, we have just minor adjustments for actuals and increases based on inflation. So what you'll see here in the next few slides is just kind of an overview of our initiatives. So we aim to enhance infrastructure and recreation and facilities to be world-class, inviting public spaces.

We deploy a rapid response service delivery system focused on a sense of urgency in all functions. Deploy projects to ensure long-term sustainability, accessibility, and opportunity. And we establish economic development opportunities and partnerships to ensure a robust local economy. Jumping right into one of our divisions, the wastewater treatment facility, here's a handful of our initiatives for the current fiscal year. So you'll see we want to treat and discharge the water at a standard that not only meets but exceeds the national permit discharge elimination system. We want to continue to rehabilitate the primary clarification tanks, finalize the phase 3 SST energy project for new boilers and co-generation unit, use resources to optimize sewer investment within both the collection system and the wastewater treatment plant, and install new software servers and field components for SCADA upgrade while continuing to provide reliable instrumentation performance.

That's a security enhancement at our water pollution control plant facility. That last item there, as you can imagine, security vulnerabilities move very quickly nowadays with artificial intelligence, and so we want to make sure that we keep the infrastructure that you see in that picture there safe. In our right-of-way and street cleaning maintenance division, we want to coordinate repairs with Public Works Engineering. Our colleague here, Director Auduboni, with upcoming annual roadway capital projects he'll be speaking about in a moment. Our crews actually complete the labor-intensive digouts, crack sealing, and surface preparation. We try to do that six months to a year in advance of these capital projects.

That's why occasionally around town you'll see road-like digouts or crack sealing that happens well in advance, and a lot of folks might say, hey, is that it? Are you done with the road? Well, no, there's a plan in place, and often that plan is scheduled a year or two out. And so at that point, our engineering colleagues may come in behind with a capital project to do a slurry seal over the road, similar to what we see happening on forest right now. We extend the life of our city streets by placing 40,000 pounds of crack sealing material. We started out placing zero years ago, so that's a huge improvement, and replace at least 15,000 square feet of sidewalk. Maintain clean and safe city streets to meet our municipal separate storm sewer or MS4 permit through regular street sweeping and the annual leaf collection program.

Parks and Open Space Division, implement and maintain the parking Management program for Upper Bidwell Park, initiate ongoing fuel reduction projects throughout Bidwell Park greenways, and renew our dedicated investment in trail maintenance. Street trees and public planning's initiatives for that division continue implementation of our urban forest master plan priority actions, manage no net loss of tree canopy to maintain a baseline of 33,534 trees in the public right-of-way. Maneuver from reactive calls to proactive urban forest Management and continue to develop a strategic program of tree pruning to achieve a seven-year cycle. Traffic Safety Division, we think it's important to have a rapid response.

We want to respond within an hour to any sort of emergencies involving knockdowns of our streetlights or our signals or our pedestal signal cabinets. place approximately 25,000 pounds of high-visibility thermoplastic to enhance roadway markings, improve visibility of lanes, crosswalks, and traffic control features throughout the city, upgrade signs to meet FHWA retroreflectivity standards, and continue our regulatory and warning sign replacement program. Regulatory and warning signs are the kind of really important ones that you see, the red and the black and the white signs, stop signs, one ways, things like that. Underground Division, this is our sewer collection system division. Clean at least 50% of our collection system.

Comply with the Sanatory Sewer System General Order Permit. Maintain the collection system so there are zero SSOs. And if one does occur, respond within 30 minutes of a notification. Inspect at least 25% of the system. Integrate new fleet software to maximize reporting capacity. Actively report to the California Air Resources Board on the mandated clean truck program. And in our fleet services division, we want to endeavor to plan and expand our electrical infrastructure for current and future needs of electrical vehicles in our fleet. In our building and facilities maintenance division, I'll summarize these a little bit for you, but we want to continue to enhance and modernize all of our facilities to serve the public.

It's important to capitalize on building automation to help us all do our jobs well and more efficiently. We can respond quickly to proactive maintenance and operationalize our asset Management system that we use throughout all of our different divisions and our different buildings and include our parks and water pollution control plant as well. And we want to deliver significant energy efficiency projects through the SST program that will be wrapping up with phase three this year. In the airport division, we're going to continue to renew older leaseholds at current market rates, expand leasing and development opportunities at the airport, market the airport to increase general aviation, aerial fire suppression, and work with community stakeholders to maintain our revenue guarantee fund and competitively position Chico for the return of commercial air service.

And we plan to continue to design and fund the local share of upcoming airport capital improvement projects, ACIP projects, which our primary amount of funding comes from the Federal Aviation Administration. In our outreach and engagement division, in our encampment cleanup division, work with community partners to evaluate and assist in securing sheltering options for those experiencing homelessness, work to clean and restore Chico's parks, greenways, open spaces, and others, and follow council direction for post-warren level of service. A handful of highlights for the new capital project request, a few airport projects there, TSA Modular, Taxiway, R, Rehab. Facilities projects include landscape irrigation repairs at 411 Main, Children's Playground, Animal Shelter, Roof, and Painting, Water Pollution Control projects, Washer Compactor, Replacements, Bar Screen Rehab, Aeration 6 Tank Upgrade, and some new equipment that will help us do our job in asphalt paver and industrial mechanic truck.

So to conclude, Public Works continues to deliver service that directly improves the quality of life by preserving the community's greatest asset, its public infrastructure. And I believe this proposed budget reflects a fiscally responsible investment in the essential work that keeps Chico running every day. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Council Member van Overbeek. Great job, Skyler. Thank you. Thank you, too. Two questions. The first one is, is there any update that you can share with us on the status of getting a commercial air carrier to the airport? At this time, there's no new update. We continue to engage in the kind of air service marketing world. I know that Assistant City Manager Gustafson recently attended a conference where they get to do a little bit of air service dating, if you will, with some of the air service providers.

Don't tell them any details, please. The response we got was, you know, continue to stay relevant and continue to show up at these events. If you, Eric, want to add to that. Yeah, thanks, Skyler. I could add that, yeah, we continue to have a competitive package. We continue to be on their short list. As Skyler noted, a few weeks ago, I attended an air service development conference in San Luis Obispo for a couple of days where we got to engage and meet directly with a handful of airlines that wanted to meet with us, too. So that was SkyWest, America and Alaska and Allegiant. And so, you know, for the last several years, I've heard, you know, hey, you guys are doing great. You're doing all the right things.

Keep It Up. We'll continue to keep an eye on Chico and hopefully return service to someday, you know, for some of our larger connecting flights. But you hear things such as there's a pilot shortage or a plane shortage. Those problems have been remedied. Unfortunately, now we're hearing, you know, high fuel costs, federal department of transportation requirements on airports such as O'Hare and Chicago that have historically had some delays are now being forced to reduce their employments for O'Hare's example is by 30%. So that's sending shockwaves throughout the aviation community. In fact, United was slated to be at the conference and pulled out two days before because of the issues with O'Hare and how they're going to deal with a 30% reduction in employments at that particular airport.

It cascades throughout the nation, of course, globally. So that's what we're hearing now. However, you know, the takeaway for me from the conference was airlines aren't going to come to us. You know, I always kind of thought that in the back of my mind. Hey, when there's a really strong business case, they're going to come to us and want to create service. Airlines go to the most lucrative spots on their own and those are at larger airports. That's when they, you know, get an extra gate space at Denver or an extra gate space at LAX, for example. But they rely on regional connections like us to feed those more lucrative opportunities for them. I think all the communication I received from airlines was, again, you guys have a great business case.

We think we could be profitable with air service to Chico. It's not going to be one of those lucrative scenarios where what they're going to go to on their own. So again, the takeaway for me was we still got to remain at the table, be the squeaky wheel, if you will, and continue to put Chico first and foremost with our engagement opportunities with the airlines. So we'll continue to do that. But again, we heard, hey, you guys are competitive. You have a great case. Good plan. Good incentive package. You're on a short list and we'll continue to monitor. But we are dealing with these larger nationwide issues such as fuel prices and then employment reductions at larger airports. Thank you. Mayor, if you want to add one more.

So we exchanged an email about this, which is mitigating the fire risk, the dry grass and down trees and limbs in Bidwell Park. And you listed that in your presentation. Can you expand on specifically what you have planned? Because that scares the hell out of me. Yeah, there are two different capital projects in this current fiscal year budget. They total $428,000. Those two capital projects are the Lindo Channel Defensible Space Project as well as the Vegetation Management Project. That Vegetation Management Project is really kind of just an ongoing one. It's $125,000 ask every single year. That's what you see getting the GOATs and the CCCs into areas like the park where we have that urban park interface area there.

In addition to those two capital projects, we also have ongoing collaborations with the Butte County Fire Safe Council and BESER, the Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve. So some kind of bigger partners in our region. More to come on that. There's discussions about some larger projects that could be funded at a state or federal level for our region. And then even in addition to that, we were successful in receiving a grant for the CCCs to clear 22 acres in the Canyon Oaks, Bidwell Park area behind Whispering Winds. And that project's wrapping up right now as well. So not just the capital projects that you see here, but there's always a lot of work ongoing and particularly in that kind of eastern urban interface area of Bidwell Park.

So are we knocking down the grass? I mean, the fires tend to start next to roads. People throw cigarette butts and, you know, half-smoked marijuana joints, whatever. Are we knocking the grass down on like 30 feet on either side of the road on South Park and Peterson? Yeah, we do. So we typically mow that a few feet off of the edge. That's really typical. They continue to keep that mowed kind of throughout the year, but especially this time of the year. That area, while it is a concern and it might look like it's a big concern, there's actually a higher moisture content just next to the creek along South Park and Peterson Drive. So yes, it's a concern, but, you know, the greater concern are probably those, you know, steeper terrain areas where you have a lot of ladder fuels and it could get into the canopy.

Kind of thinking of that area, we were just working along whispering winds there. So the answer to do you cut all the grass in Bidwell Park is it depends, right? It's a park. It has its value, you know, to the flora and fauna as a park and to us, but it did burn in the past. And so I think there's a level of Management there in between the two. I would love to see more prescribed fire burns in the park. I would love to bring some more of that in and use that even more. I know we partner with fire and typically burn a pretty good sized chunk there near Horseshoe Lake and the entrance to the park every year. That's been really successful as far as keeping that from turning into, you know, kind of bigger fuels that could really take off on us.

So I'd love to see more of that. Councilmember Winslow. Thank you, Director Lipski. So I've gotten kind of tired of people asking me, you know, they have a pothole and they send me an email and I'm like, well, you send it to this four-word email, right-of-way maintenance to you can see it. I wonder, are you getting the tech support you need to develop a way for people to submit requests like that without having to just go through an email or a phone number and then somebody, an admin person writes it down? Something a little more efficient. There's an app that I believe the city of Oroville uses. Maybe we look at something similar. Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, we want to be accessible.

We want people to be able to get the infrastructure needs to us so that we can do something about it. We have looked at the idea of an app, you know, kind of a city 311 pothole app or whatever you want to call it, an app, right? Typically, those city apps do so much more than just public infrastructure. And so, really, I would kind of, you know, maybe begin discussions at kind of an executive team level to see if that's something we would want to do. There's functions for all departments on those apps. And so, I would hate to have someone have to download an app just to submit a pothole. To me, that seems like more of a pain than just sending an email, right? Or making a phone call. Could we make the email a little shorter?

Sure, maybe we could do that. Yeah. Those are all good ideas. Thanks. Another one was in the urban forestry section. You mentioned we're adhering to a no net loss policy. And it says, you know, we're pursuing these initiatives as part of the urban forest master plan. But part of that plan is to increase the canopy. I think it's from like 36% to 40%, if I remember correctly. And are we, we're not issuing any grants to be planting trees. Like we used to have some small grants for local organization to promote tree plantings. But that's not happening right now? Yeah, we have in the past. We did have a Cal Fire Seed to Shade grant, and we planted, forgive me, I don't know the number of trees, but it was a lot of trees.

I hear about it nearly every day from our urban forest manager, Richie Bamlet, that all of those new baby trees need to be watered, and that's one of the most important things. as we continue to plant those trees, there's still a need to deal with our aging urban forest as well. I'm sure we all got a taste of it here in the latest windstorm. These trees do need to continually be maintained, and we have older trees to be removed from the inventory, and obviously we would replant those. Yeah, okay. Thank you. Vice Mayor Bennett. So how much is in the revenue guarantee fund? Two million. Two million? And then last year, I asked for $300,000 for mitigation of the Linda Channel area, and I'm going to ask for half a million dollars this year at appropriate time.

for the continuation of that in Melindo Channel, Big Chico Creek, and Little Chico Creek, all of the areas, as well as a piece of equipment for you, which it's a cab crawler with a masticator on the end, which I think you could use. So I'm going to be asking for those. Very good. Thank you. Councilmember O'Brien? Yeah, can we add a pothole function to the parking app? We might get more downloads that way I'm thinking. I do want to just thank you. We take all the things that you and your team does for granted. We expect when we turn on a faucet, flush a toilet, whatever, that things just work. I know it doesn't happen by accident. I just want to acknowledge that, Skylar, and thank you and your team for what you do.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. I don't see any more comments, but on the asphalt paver, is that a piece of equipment that we already have, or is that something you're looking to purchase? It is. It's a replacement. Replacement for one. Our current paver is about 20 years old. That's all? That's all. I'm guessing that's fully depreciated as well. And then some. Okay. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. Engineering, welcome. Brandon. Good to go. I'm going to try and touch this. All right. I'll be the caboose this afternoon. So, good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council Members. It's an honor and privilege to present this afternoon. Obviously, we've got a great group of professionals and experts here.

You heard a lot of collaboration. We work so closely together. It's really great to see all this stuff come together. And for us in engineering, we get to do projects like this over the, I think this is my 10th budget. Getting to see a lot of the work that we do be put on the front page of the budgets is always an honor that our work is recognized and we get to truly impact the quality of life in our community on a daily basis. So, this is our team and we're lean and mean and we deploy the approach of work hard, play hard. So, a lot of hard work goes in, but we also take the time. We had our staff meeting at Five Mile and go over the different projects we work on and stuff like that. So, we try and balance that for our team.

You've heard over the years, this team has done a lot of record-breaking things. Two years ago, we shattered records in terms of the amount of volume of work, over $60 million in construction contracts. This current year, this summer, we're going to break another record in terms of the number of projects we're doing. Not high as a dollar figure, but it's 13 projects that we're doing valued at approximately $36 million. So, we continue to do amazing things and it is this team that leads the way and does so many different things behind the scenes to make that all happen. So, super proud to be a part of that team and see all the things we get to do for this community. Some of our strategic goals kind of come down to three primary things, performance, excellence, and creating a culture of leadership.

So, we really try to invest in our people, create a culture where there's autonomy to do their level of expertise and their personal approach to things. We focus on project delivery. Not just in our capital projects, but also in our development projects and fostering processes that can get projects through quickly. And then strategic infrastructure planning. So, thinking long term of how can we build towards build out conditions and incrementally build out to reduce future costs and inefficiencies and quality of life for the community. So, from a cost standpoint, those are our total personnel costs, $7.5 million. 37 personnel. What that equates to, though, is much more than that, given that our capital project, when you add up rollover costs plus this year's budget, we're at about $121 million.

And so, we leverage a significant amount of consultants. We did a presentation earlier in the year on the leveraging of our consultants. And so, you could triple that cost in terms of what we do with consultants on an annual basis in order to deliver these types of projects. In addition, the construction costs, we put out to bid and hire contractors to perform a lot of work. And so, that comes with additional investment in jobs in the private sector, local community. So, some of our challenges. We have 37 positions. We have nine vacancies currently. The engineering profession is a hard one right now. Every agency, private and public, have really struggled. And so, we're doing our best to deal with what we got.

And where we have those vacancies, we're using different resources, whether that's staff augmentation or other consulting services, while also trying to dig deep into our bag of resources to recruit and retain people here at the City of Chico. Our total capital improvement program is 86 projects. And that kind of fluctuates up and down. But it's a large volume that we're constantly managing in the near term and the long term needs of our community. And then, I mentioned 121 million. So, when you add up all that, it's above the 125 million for our five-year CIP. But again, all the work that goes into organizing, developing, planning, and then ultimately delivering those projects as a constant day-in and day-out effort.

Some of our goals for the upcoming year, obviously, with the Measure H road rehab investment is, again, get those projects out the door delivered so that the community can see those benefits. Leverage those local sources to even get more money, to get even more money with grants through the state and federal programs. The last roughly 10 years, we've garnered over $125 million in grants that we've secured into our community. Coordinate, review, and approve development projects towards build-out conditions. facilitate those processes so that we're incrementally building out and maintaining our quality of life as we grow. And then analyze, assess, and potentially implement council directives. So we've had several this past year that will continue into this upcoming fiscal year, things like the parklet program, parking initiatives, micromobility, sewer rates, our municipal code updates, and e-bike safety.

So I'm going to touch on some of our projects that are active. Ceanothis, behind PV football field there, started last week. Once school gets out, it's going to be like gangbusters to get all the work done in advance of school starting in August. And so that's underway, and that'll be a great project to incorporate curb gutter, sidewalk, and obviously rehabilitate the roadway there. Franklin Construction is the contractor working on that. Eaton Floral Roundabout started last month, so building a roundabout at that intersection. Knife River Construction is the contractor performing the work there. This project will go through the fall time and hopefully be completed before the end of the year.

Pomona Bridge Replacement, we just began this. So this is a, the technical term is functionally obsolete, and so we'll basically be removing the existing bridge and building a new wider bridge to facilitate the existing roadway dimensions. There's a lot of utility relocation happening now. Franklin Construction is also the contractor on that project, and that'll be a two-season project due to limited work windows within the Creek Channel. Fair Street Road Rehab, so this is a project funded with our CDBGDR funds from the Campfire, and Knife River Construction was just awarded that as the low-bid contractor, so that'll be beginning after the Silver Dollar Fair is completed. So we made sure to put that into our specifications that they couldn't work until after the fair was completed.

So you'll start to see that take place later this summer. South Park Drive, obviously last year we did Peterson Memorial Drive. This year we're working on South Park Drive. R&R Horn is the contractor selected for that and should be beginning work here next month on that project. North Cedar, Mountain Cascade is the low-bid contractor there. It's a $2 million construction contract that'll rehab North Cedar from West Sacramento to Fourth Avenue, including, again, curb gutter, sidewalks, and landscaping improvements. And so that's another one that's been in the works for several years, and we're happy to see this one come to fruition. East 20th Street, road rehab, so we're going to be starting that here in July, and that'll be from Highway 99 to Notre Dame Boulevard, and that'll be full rehabilitation of the existing pavement conditions.

And that is currently out to bid right now, so the contractor is to be determined, whoever the low bid through that process is. And last kind of project to highlight is our primary clarifiers rehabilitation project. That's W.M. Lyles, $6 million contract, rehabbing our primary clarifiers due to the condition and improvements out there at the water pollution control plant. Two-season project due to the fact that we have to maintain a certain capacity over the winter flows that get increased when we have significant rain events. I'm not going to go through all these ones, but here's other projects that'll be completed this year and then also next year because this is a fiscal year 26-27 budget.

Much of these funds will go into 2027 construction contracts. So by budgeting it through this fiscal year, that allows us to advertise for construction in the winter, get good pricing, and again, it's a long list, and the amount of hard work that goes into each of these is obviously not nearly highlighted enough with just a line for each one. And so, again, super proud of our team, of all the work that we've continued to do and looking forward to doing more of them. That concludes my portion of the presentation. Available for any questions. Oh, boy. Council Member Goldstein. First, thank you. Sorry I haven't individually thanked all of our department heads, but this has been really informative.

So thank you, everybody, and Director Otto Bonney. My main question is with our capital improvement plan, and I'm glad that this year it looks like we will have funds to be able to continue the good work we're doing at a reasonable pace, but do you expect that at some point we will want to reevaluate our progress on the 10-year plan that we'd established, and when do you think we'll have that process? Yeah, if that's something council would like to have a review of, we can certainly come back when the council feels. Right now, we had the 10-year plan adopted in October of 2023, so we're three years into it, essentially, and so the funding from Measure H, including this budget, will allow us to continue to perform on what was originally adopted in that 10-year plan.

Okay, I think that would be useful, at least for me, because I wasn't on the council at that point, and as we go further along, we might have changes in the plan, so will that need council direction to reevaluate that, or is that something that you anticipate will just be brought back to us? I guess I would ask if that's something council would like to have that direction to us. We weren't planning on bringing anything for it. It's just a 10-year plan that we're going to be implementing, and so, yeah, whatever the council's desire is, we can certainly... Well, maybe we start with... As far as I can recall, we're in line with that 10-year plan. Correct. Yes. Yeah, I guess that's my first question.

Nothing new to report. Have we fallen behind because we had less funds than anticipated for roadways last year? No. We have reduced the scope. For example, the 20th Street project got reduced scope. Okay, but that hasn't set us back, that we have to make up for that? It has, ever so slightly. Sure. Okay. Okay, ever so slightly. But I would think, you know, in the scheme of things, when you look at the magnitude of what's happened, it's pretty miraculous. All right. I do appreciate the description of pretty miraculous. And I would just add that... I take it for granted all the good work you're doing. Yeah, I'd just add that it was... We weren't going to fix every road in the city in 10 years.

It was just kind of an initial 10-year. When we have 330-plus miles of roadway and we're rehabbing, you know, two to five miles per year, you know, it adds up. But it's going to take a lot longer than 10 years to go through and really make significant... We seal another five or so. What's that? We seal another five. Correct. For sure. Okay. Well, of course, we'll keep talking about our progress. But that's good to hear that you believe that we're pretty much on track. I'm sure there's opportunities that if we had a lot more funds, we could move faster. But we'll talk about this as needed. Thank you. Vice Mayor Bennett. So I want to thank you for the Cianothis. It's in this much worse condition than I used to ride my bike on Cianothis to go to PV a few years ago.

And then also the Eden and Floral roundabout is really needed. And that'll be a great way for people to travel through that intersection. So thank you very much. Those are both in District 3. Council Member O'Brien. Yeah, Director Adoboni, Brendan, we seem to give you the most challenging assignments almost every time. I don't think that's by accident. And when you step in that arena, I know you take a lot of blows. I just want to acknowledge your leadership, professionalism, and dedication to our city and to our community. It does not go unnoticed. I appreciate you. I think this council appreciates you. So thank you for all your dedicated service. You have stepped up in some really tough situations.

Handle yourself very, very well. I guess I don't think you were chosen by accident. So thank you. Thank you. I just had one quick one. I noticed for June of 2026 is the Valambrosia Pedestrian and Bike Safety. We can talk about it later at some point, but I know there was some very vocal neighbors on that street that had some definite concerns. Have you done neighborhood meetings and has that all been... We haven't. This has been... Yeah, it's been a known problem for a long time. And so it's right there like morning thunder. And as you come over the pedestrian bridge from Annie's Glen area, creating a more direct connection to basically get across the street. And so we haven't done any community engagement on that one, but we do anticipate doing the improvements this summer.

So we can certainly... So it's lower Valambrosia, not going up towards the park area where I think we've talked about... Yeah, those were the Wells Fargo's on the opposite corner. It's that intersection. So because we have... Well, I know like... The junior high. Track and field and junior high, high school, like run across there. There's bikes that kind of shoot across that intersection. And so this will improve the connectivity and the safety to get across that intersection. Okay. Thanks for the explanation. I just want to make sure we don't forget... Yeah. Yeah. I think if miracles keep happening, I think Valambrosia is scheduled for like 28? 2028. 2028. Yes. So the road rehabilitation of Valambrosia is scheduled for 2028.

That would be from Mangrove all the way to Manzanita. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. It's very much needed. Okay. Anybody else? All right. Thank you. I think you're good. All right. So with that, is that... Do we have everybody? Okay. Mark or Barbara? Well, that wraps up our presentation. So now it's... The ball is in your court. The ball is in our court. Do we have any speakers? We have one. Okay. Should we take that now? Okay. Well, I want to thank everyone for... Everyone in the room for all the services. And I wish more people would have been here so that they could see the big picture of how the city runs. I mean, it's amazing. It was really... I'm impressed. As you prioritize our city's needs within this year's limited budget, I urge you to place the following priorities at the top of your list.

One, create a managed campground for unsheltered residents, as Charles Wuthun and the North State's shelter team have requested for many years. Number two, repair roads. And I did witness all the road work, but there's so much more to do. Starting with those near schools, the library has a terrible road right there. And major community thoroughfares, and bicycle and pedestrian safety should be included in these improvements. Provide the support needed for Butte County behavioral health to meet community needs and mental and emotional support. I think I've heard that they're getting big cuts. And after hearing that, the PCAG transportation funding will be reduced, I recommend supplementing funds in this area.

I also ask that a portion of the Chico Police Department budget be reallocated to support the following. Increased support for officers after severe crisis situations, including any use of force incident, to protect officers' mental health and promote public safety. It has been reported that Officer Williams said trauma involvement in one of the Chico police killings contributed to later sexual misconduct. Additionally, to increase support for officers, provide more de-escalation training to help prevent further civilian deaths. And from my financial standpoint, the city could avoid costly settlements to victims' families by shifting the Chico Police Department toward community policing rather than further militarization.

Settlements can total hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. A community policing model can build trust between officers and the residents of the community, reduce crime, save lives, reduce trauma for victims' families and friends and reduce costs. Number four. Yes, for dispatch chairs, but the projection of $424,000 for the UAS unmanned aerial system vehicle is much too much to fit in our budget. A little bit more. A Yale study of community policing in New Haven found that positive non-punitive interactions with the public significantly improve trust and attitude towards police if community policing is better. That's time, Diane. Thank you. I didn't know that was time. Okay. Thank you so much.

Thank you. That's it that we have. Council Member Winslow. Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. And thanks to all the department heads and Barbara and your whole department and everybody put together the budget. It is really impressive work. I've been through a few of these now. Everyone is clear to me, but I continue to learn things. Thanks, Chief Aldridge, for always answering my questions. Every budget comes around. I usually have more questions for you. It is probably proportionate to the overall budget, but I do appreciate you graciously answering all the questions that I come with. And, yeah, I've reflected on past budgets and my role and the kind of conversations that we've had. And something that I came to recently, I sort of, like, I would do some things differently.

I think initially we kind of had some disagreements about, like, the allocations of infrastructure funding. Like, are we putting a bunch of money into, like, there was a bunch of fences the first year. And I was like, why so many fences? And now I see things in a sort of bigger picture and I'm taking a different approach. Like, if we're investing in infrastructure in some way, I think that that's great. And I think that the pressure that we will face is similar to most other cities is that we defer maintenance overall and that we take money away from our infrastructure budget. And when that money is there, we see it as more or less a slush fund that we can pull from for all sorts of other things.

We always find excuses to do that. It's not unique to us. It's something that all public agencies face. And this is why it is pretty miraculous that we've been able to do what we've done with infrastructure in these first few years of us having Measure H and having a source that can be used for those funds. But I don't want it to continue being miraculous. And I've been thinking about what we can do to lock down some of those funds and stop seeing it as a flexible use of revenue. It was really impressive that the budget came out this year with as much money for infrastructure and Measure H because it's a nearly $5 million increase from what was there last year. Granted, we move funds around.

That is like how we got there. And I did my dive and I kind of figured out where that went. But regardless, I think it is good that we can identify those funds as being used for, in this year, primarily streets and roads. And I think that's great. And I wanted to continue that way. And so I was thinking of how we can try to make a decision now that would assure that that continues to happen. We're not seeing it as miraculous that in the future we stick to this capital improvement plan. And the capital improvement plan counted on about $10 million a year out to 2032. But that was also assuming that we would get these TDA funds that we're not really getting anymore. So the $10 million is probably going to be undershooting it if it wasn't already undershooting it because everything goes up in price more than we want.

I also was considering... So I'm considering proposing a budget policy that we lock down some of the funds out of Measure H for, in particular, what says in here, streets and bikeways, but it's really sidewalks too, but that general transportation investments. And I was considering putting out a certain sum of money like to match that 10-year plan. But then I don't want us, if there's a downturn in revenue overall, to find that we just don't have the funds to make it and then we have to give up our budget policy. I want it to be more firm. So a proportion is probably better than that. And so I want to propose that we adopt a budget policy that we do dedicate as a rule initially a certain proportion of Measure H funds towards streets and roads and that we keep that consistent.

We don't see it as money that can be used for other things as they come up. Right now, I think it's 13.8 out of 27 million overall for Measure H. That is a very rough amount, but that comes out to just over 51%. And I think the 51% is a pretty fair amount. I'll tell you that my concern with this, thinking it over, is that this ends up being a ceiling and not a floor for funding for streets and roads, that we end up essentially allocating everything else out there. But I think about it, and I think that if we didn't have a floor, that the floor would go lower because there are those pressures and every city deals with it and we end up deferring maintenance and we end up allocating money towards different things.

And things like streets and roads can get deferred because people don't notice it as much until later. So that is something that I want to make a motion on, that we recommend that we adopt a budget policy dedicating 51% of Measure H in the future to streets, roads, sidewalks. I'll second that motion. I actually have a question for the city attorney with Measure H being passed not as a, it's a general fund. We didn't do it as a specific. We stated when we were passing it that it would be public safety, streets and roads, which we've done well on. What would setting a budget policy for a general fund after we passed it then saying that we have to use it on a certain thing when we didn't pass it that way when we put it past the voters, does that put us in any jeopardy?

Yeah, obviously you can't, you can't adopt a policy inconsistent with what was already passed. If there's still room for them to coexist, it could work, I guess. I guess I don't know enough about what's in that fund to know whether this policy would impact that. But you could, I guess, adopt the policy and if you had, if you had to violate one of the two, you couldn't, you could violate your policy before you could violate what was adopted by the city. Well, it was a general tax. Yeah. So I don't see a conflict there. Yeah. Four votes would override any budget policy. We don't need a supermajority to override a budget policy. So what it would do was would lock us in. So essentially in order to cross that, one staff couldn't do it or wouldn't recommend it without our consent.

And then if it came to it, then we would have to say, well, we're going to violate this budget policy and it would just be a little more difficult than it is right now. Gotcha. Yeah. Council Member Ranoverby. Yeah, I'm against tying the hands of staff. And so it's very easy to say at this point, gee, we should spend 51% of measure rate money on infrastructure, roads and bikeways. But if we get into a situation where we have a significant contraction in revenue, it means, and we've locked in a certain amount of spending for roads and infrastructure, it means that we have massive layoffs or people have to be, their compensation needs to be cut back because there's no free lunch here. So I think this is a very bad idea.

And in general, I think we need to trust our staff to deal, to wisely make the choices with the resources available, which they have done and particularly under the guidance of our city manager. So this is City Manager Sorensen's last budget. And I see your hand in this through all these departmental presentations, the hand of restraint and experience. And, you know, you did heroic work. It's not an overstatement. Back in 2012, the city was going to go bankrupt. So thank you for everything that you've done. And I hope who comes after you is equally as prudent. Thank you. Council Member O'Brien. Thank you, Mayor. So I concur with my colleague, Tom van Overbeek. I'm not into handcuffing staff or, quite frankly, this council.

It's ultimately our prerogative. Staff brings us their recommendations. It's our duty to make those calls where that money needs to go. And infrastructure does matter. I completely agree with you, Addison. I understand the need and the importance of that. But if a community is not safe, then quite frankly, they're not going to care about the condition of a road. We never know what's going to happen in the future. I think we need to remain flexible. And that 51% does not give us that flexibility. I'm going to vote no on this. Council Member Hawley. Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. It sounds like since this received a second before we go to a vote, I want to be really conscientious of what vote I cast.

I'm not necessarily opposed to a budget policy allocating a certain percentage of measure age dollars to a certain purpose, especially because that 10-year plan was built out with a lot of intention and a lot of purpose behind it. But I just want to ensure that this 51% is not an arbitrary number that has been thrown out, because it sounds good. So could you go into a little bit of detail of what kind of collaboration you did with staff and our department heads, especially Public Works Engineering, to land on that number? I'm going to get everybody once and then come back to you. Council Member Winslow. Council Member Goldstein. I support the 51% number because it's a majority so that we can be true to our voters who voted for measure age because they wanted to see a significant amount of their tax dollars for this going to fixing the potholes in the streets and roads that people, at least on my side of town, are very passionate about getting fixed.

As for trusting staff, I trust our staff. I don't trust the political pressures that affect our council, and we don't know what that council is going to look like in the future. Of course the council can still override, as we discussed. But setting a guideline for how much of measure age gets spent on infrastructure sounds like a great idea to me so that we know what we can expect, not just from our tax dollars that we pay in, but also so that we can kind of have something we can expect for every year that goes into our roads fund. Because I am worried in the future we might not be as lucky as this year where we have 13 million. We might end up just only having a few million like we did last year.

So I do support this, and I think that 51% sounds like a very reasonable number. I don't know how much time there's been to consult with staff on this, but interested to hear, and I'm sure there will be more consultation. Council Member Winslow. Yeah, I'm not so concerned with staff and city administration being the pressure for us and them needing to be handcuffed in some way. I mean, who knows who the next city manager will be, but where I've seen a lot of the pressures come is from council-directed spending. For example, last year, there was pressure to hire some new staff, and that money was taken specifically at the council direction in the motion out of the Streets and Roads Fund. And I think this is something that happens, whether it's specifically set to come from there like it did in the last budget, but this is something that would happen, I think, again and again.

And whether it's because we create this, it has to be an arbitrary number for us to preserve some of these funds now, or we allow for runaway spending to take off anyway. In any case, if we continue to increase the amount of operational spending that we have in the last several years, we're going to be looking at freezing vacant positions and layoffs. That is the reality when we see a downturn. And I would rather stop us now and maintain a situation where if we ever look at that, and I would try to avoid that, and this is what the kind of fiscal discipline I'm trying to instill with this would do, that we would still have an infrastructure budget before we get to that point, rather than getting to a point where we don't have an infrastructure budget and we're looking at layoffs.

This is just the reality of managing a city budget, I think, is you have to make decisions like this. I would rather do it now than then. And as far as collaboration with staff, again, it is an arbitrary number. I don't know what number you could pull out that wasn't arbitrary, but I was trying my best to create something that made sense. And like I said, I was looking at the capital improvement plan, essentially a promise that I think we made as a council in 2023 that we've, I think, all, I mean, as individuals probably would confirm we want to stick to that. And last year, we fell under the funding commitment that we made. This year, our staff's been able to pull that back for us. And because of the TDA funds declining, I think that the intention in order to stick with that schedule requires that we have about $2 million on top of the $10 million.

And it was only so much above that. It's $1.8 million, approximately more, and that's the current allocation right now. So if we were to move it down to 47%, it would be probably no less arbitrary than if then, at the 51% here. But I do think that I've heard from a lot of people that they think that Measure H was primarily for infrastructure. And yes, like infrastructure for police and fire too and safety and operational expenses. Maintaining the number of police officers is what it was said in the advertisements for that. But I'll mention another discussion as far as a collaboration that happened in 2024 about dedicating 70% of Measure H to streets and roads. And it was passed by the entire council.

But it wasn't a budget policy. It was just passed this direction. And it was probably soon after forgotten about. And bygones can be bygones. But I'm looking at where we're at now and I'm seeing that 51% seems to be a reasonable number of what we can maintain. And it will require like smart budgeting. It will require staff to make some decisions in order to try to preserve that. Or it will require us to make a decision in the future to override the budget policy because four votes is all it takes to do that. But I think for us, the best chance that we have to maintain and set a level of fiscal discipline now for the future, future councils, future city manager, I think the best thing we can do is adopt a budget policy and then try to commit to sticking to that in the future.

Councilmember Hawley. Yep. Absolutely hear your point, especially with staff just pointing out how volatile one of our largest revenue sources, which is sales taxes, can be. So I hear you for sure. And I do wonder if you would be partial to amending your motion to be rather than staff returning with a budget policy next council meeting, or I guess it would be two council meetings from now, if you would be open to just having a more hashed out discussion of it. Just as well, it would be arbitrary for us to change it later, but just as good as the number that I came up with today. Did that answer that? I don't know. I don't know what that answer was. I mean, yeah. You're saying we can bring it back next time and talk about it?

Right. I mean, if you're talking about changing the number, then we can change the number, of course, you know, but having some sort of budget policy that is dedicating a portion of Measure H is what I'm asking for. I'm not necessarily asking about changing the number. I think I'm just asking for a more hashed out conversation about it. But not just about the number. What else would we hash out differently? I would just like to hear more opinions from staff when they're more prepared and not just hearing about a budget policy being proposed today and trying to think of any adverse impacts that could come out of that and rather give them some time to prepare answers for us. Does that make sense?

Yeah. I mean, yeah, yeah, sure. Like, we can have a budget policy drafted that says one number or another number and we will have the discussion to ultimately adopt it at a subsequent meeting. Okay, I see what you're saying. Okay. And I would assume staff can provide their input when they return with that too and could even provide some input now if they have it. Council Member O'Brien? Yeah, just a reminder that that increased staffing funded Engine 1, which is public safety, and I was proud to initiate and support that. And by the way, also, Measure H is earmarked already for public safety and roads, essentially. I think if we go any percentage on any of those, we're splitting hairs unnecessarily.

We need to remain flexible. I trust our staff and I trust Council to make a sound decision, but we're splitting hairs unnecessarily where we need flexibility because we don't know what the future is going to look like. We may spend more on infrastructure than 51%. I don't know. But to make a decision like that right now is premature and inappropriate in my opinion. All right. Council Member Goldstein, then we have a motion in a second. I just want to clarify that it sounds like we would be making a decision to have staff come back with a proposal, essentially. Is that what the motion directs us on? Can I say, City Manager, I mean, is this sufficient direction for us to have a little bit of flexibility based on some staff input in the future?

Do you think this is a terrible idea and we should throw it in the trash? No, it's not a terrible idea. But I can tell you, even short of a budget policy, you know, it's not accurate to say we only talk about the budget once per year. We hear you all year long. That's one of the reasons there is $10 million going into infrastructure. It didn't just happen arbitrarily. So, no, it's up to you all. And I did just look that up. It was March 21st of 2025. I see where that discussion was agendized, but I haven't found the discussion yet. Sorry, which discussion are you referring to? To dedicate 70% to infrastructure. But it was Mayor Coolidge. He was off the council by then. By 2025? No, 2023. Did I say 2025?

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. You're right. Okay. Earlier than I thought. Yeah. Councilmember van Overbeek. Sorry. And then I got you. I think there's a very important principle here, and that is that we have to trust our elected officials and our staff to use the resources they have without artificial constraints. And I'll give you an example of what happens when you artificially allocate money for things. You know, a couple of weeks ago, I finally saw the second bike on the bike bridge over 20th Street. And this is what happens when you arbitrarily allocate money for purposes that may make sense to you at the time and may make sense in the current circumstances. But if we had a 20% contraction in sales tax revenue, which is about what we had in 2012, there would have to be some real scrambling of priorities.

And so this is a very, very bad idea in general. We have done very well trusting to the expertise and restraint in not only the council but our staff. and I just think this is a terrible idea. Thank you. Vice Mayor Bennett. So I remember the conversation with Andrew Coolidge about that 70%. And it was a recommendation. It was never formalized. So it was just, it did go away with everything that happened. But we never pushed it further than just a recommendation. And I believe we have the power now to make a decision about H and how it's spent. We do have that authority. We do have that power. So adding to it, I kind of like your idea that I just don't want to formalize, I don't want to create any more rules and regulations about how we spend H.

a future council may have different ideas about how to spend it. And I think we just make that decision on an annual basis when we look at the budget. All right. Vice Council Member Winslow and then we've got a motion in a second. Yeah, just my last point. As far as like, you know, in principle with trust elected officials, I think the 51%, whatever percent, is 100% on the principle of not fully trusting elected officials. And because we see this in town again, after town, in Chico and other places, we defer maintenance. There's pressure to do that. And so setting this is just a, sets us up for some prudence in the future. And as far as other councils may make different decisions, exactly. That's why I'm asking to set a budget policy.

So if other councils come in and they want to take Measure H and put it towards some pet projects, that we have a principle that they have to explicitly override. And I believe that this is in line with what the community wants. And I also believe that it's in line with us balancing other objectives. It's not 70%. It's less is what I'm asking for because that's where I'm looking around at our budget and our needs right now. And I'm seeing that's where we're at. Okay. So can you repeat the motion so we know what everybody's voting on? So I have a motion by Council Member Winslow, seconded by Council Member Goldstein to adopt a budget policy to lockdown, measure each funds, dedicate a certain proportion of it, 51% to street roads and sidewalks.

I did hear a friendly amendment requested by Council Member Hawley to return in a couple meetings, have more of a discussion. I didn't hear where that amendment was accepted. Thank you, Mrs. Presson. I can withdraw that amendment. Okay. I think our conversation resulted in bringing this back to Council would already result in a conversation regarding our budget priorities. Thank you. So that is the motion and 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, thank you. Mayor Reynolds? No. It fails 3-4. Okay. So we have a resolution to adopt the fiscal year 26-27 proposed annual budget.

We need a motion on that. I'll make a motion to approve with a great appreciation to our city manager and the finance staff for doing a fantastic job on this budget. All our directors, really a lot of work, a really heavy lift and it's outstanding and I thank all of them for that. Second. Vice Mayor Bennett? So I have a request to add half a million dollars for the remediation of fire prone areas in all of our creeks. So what is the proper procedure for that? I don't... Is there... Well, that would be amending the motion to include this change. It would be helpful to know where that half a million dollars is coming from. General Fund. So I think we would be dipping below our budget policy reserve at that point.

Yeah, our estimate is that we have about $330,000 above what our desired reserves are right now. $330,000. Why don't I make it $330,000? I'm flexible. Yeah. So is that a friendly amendment, Vice Mayor? Yes, it is. I will accept that. And as long as it includes the portion of Lindo Channel, which is in my district, which is great need for fire remediation. May I ask a clarifying question? Yeah. You approved $300,000 last year for a project like this. We haven't spent that yet. Is this in addition to that? That has not been spent? No. Last year's work, and I think this year's work, is grant funded. Correct. In that capital project, we've spent $253,000 that was grant funded, so there's still a remaining balance of $300,000 at this time.

Oh. There is. Well, that's a surprise. Well, then we don't. Then I would say let's round it off at $400,000. $300,000 is, well, excuse me, you still have $300,000, so let's drop it to $100,000, so that makes it $400,000. How does that work? Understood. It works for me. Okay. Does it work? Administrative Director Martin, does that work for you? Those funds are currently available, yes. $100,000, yes. But I believe last time the project area was defined Manzanita to Highway 99. It was. It was. So I'll, let's change that. I'm going to, can I change something that already passed? This would be the time to do it. Okay. Then we'll change it. So I'm requesting $100,000. We've got $300,000. That's $400,000.

And I'm also going to change my prior request to include all three of our waterways and specifically to remove fire-prone grass and whatever materials. Vegetation, yeah. Vegetation. So you're... Vegetation. Thank you very much. You're talking about the entirety of Lindo Channel, Big Chico Creek, and Little Chico Creek. Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you. So again, that's a friendly amendment. Vice Mayor? Or change the motion. Can we just... Yes, it's a friendly amendment. I will accept that friendly amendment as noted. Thank you. I've got two speakers. Council Member Hawley. Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. Yeah, that's a significant proportion of money. And before we vote on this, I would love to have the same exact conversation about where we came up with this number and exactly where in our fuels mitigation plan and our fire mitigation planning documents that these specific areas have been identified as the most severe fire risk areas for our city and that we're not basing our decisions upon whose district it's located in and also that this amount of money has been spoken about with our department heads.

That just, to me, seems like a pretty substantial amount of money without a lot of hashing out on the dais before we vote. Council Member Goldstein? Yeah, I agree with the spirit of this and I also agree with Council Member Hawley's concerned questions about this. I would really love to have some staff input. It's great to hear that it sounds like we have funds available, but I am wondering how this fits in with our planning effort that staff is, you know, staff is already addressing fire mitigation in our city and in the similar spirit to our concerns in the previous motion that Council Member Winslow had made, we don't want to micromanage our staff. We don't want to tell you to do something you're already doing.

So I'm curious if our city manager or other relevant staff could weigh in on how this would affect their work and planning. I'll let staff answer in just a second. Let's get Council Member van Overbeek and then we'll have staff. This work's already been done. The fire chief a year ago identified the areas that were high fire risk. So this has all been done. There's no mystery here. Vice Mayor Bennett? Did you want to speak again or do you want to stop? I was going to ask the fire chief, could you use the money to make it to good use in reducing our exposure to fire in our creek, reduce the vegetation? Could you use it? So in general, his department handles most of that part. However, I will speak to it.

Part of our goal in the fire department is community risk reduction. Anytime you're, you know, our goal is to reduce the risk of the community and then provide a standing firefighting force to cover the risks that we have. As we do vegetation Management programs, there are significant waterways in our community that are overgrown and need to have work. I have not specifically evaluated either of those three projects with Skylar. However, there is significant work to be done in Big Chico Creek, Little Chico Creek and Lindo Channel. And so any money put towards that would reduce the risk. Frankly, as the fire chief, my biggest fear isn't lower park fire, isn't upper park fires. My biggest fear is a fire in Lower Park burning by Lindo Channel with a big wind day like we had the last three days.

That would be significant and profound and we have not done any significant community risk reduction vegetation Management in Lower Park in my career. So there is work to be done. However, for me to specifically speak to the dollars would be premature. However, that can be done with work with his department. I was looking for your input. That's why I put you on the spot. So I don't see this as being complicated. It's pretty simple. I'm asking for some additional money that you can use to reduce our risk of fire due to vegetation. We could use a million dollars and I think we could use it up pretty quickly. And this is $400,000. So that's it. Council Member Windsor. Council Member Goldstein had a question for the city manager, right?

Yes, I did. And any other staff who would like to follow up on it, I would love to have you weigh in. Yeah, it would just be something that Public Works O&M would look for to put together projects to draw upon those funds over time. Obviously this year it's too late to do anything in addition to what's already planned this year. So we would be talking about future years. That's great input. Thank you, Mark. And I would love to hear our O&M managers' input too. Yeah, absolutely. So I would recommend to Council if they do choose to, you know, I guess fund additional vegetation Management that they do fund our vegetation Management capital project. It's a little more generic and its intent is to implement the vegetative fuels Management plan.

That gives us some flexibility to use those funds not just within Lindo Channel defensible space which is what that capital project is defined for. that particular capital project just speaking more to the $300,000 that's existing. We are, we have just now received a draft routine maintenance agreement from CDFW and that was kind of the final piece that we needed, a final agreement from them in order to go in and actually do the rest of the work in Lindo Channel. Spend that at that $300,000 that we have. That'll be over a number of years as well. There's a plan to kind of graze and clear certain areas more than once over time. Okay. Council Member O'Brien? I just had a comment. I just passed it off to staff.

Oh. Council Member Winslow and then Council Member O'Brien. So we have a, we have a community wildfire protection plan that we're not referencing here. It's based on the vegetation fuels Management plan that we're not referencing here. And this, this sort of the road that we go down here which we went down when this request was first made a few years ago to have a district specific infrastructure project asked for during a budget cycle. And this sort of tussling over what are explicitly projects focused on our constituents as opposed to the community as a whole leads us to a total deterioration of the decision making process for the community as a whole. It's exactly the lack of fiscal discipline that I was trying to get over with the proposed budget policy and the reason why it would be miraculous if in 10 years we actually see substantial improvement in our infrastructure with a council like this that makes these sort of off-the-wall decisions just to please your own constituents.

Councilmember O'Brien. So this is not an off-the-wall decision and it's not a decision because it happens to be in District 1. I happened to walk that channel, that portion of Lindo Channel because there was a fire there that could have wiped down an entire neighborhood except for the quick response by our fire department and the conditions were not quite right to do something differently. That's significant. That's why I'm supporting this not just because it's in District 1. I support fire mitigation efforts throughout our community. I happen to know of the one in my district because I walk that and I talk to neighbors and I understand their concerns. That is why I agreed to that amendment.

Councilmember Hawley. I just wonder, I'm trying to feel the room here if rather than specifying exactly where that additional $100,000 will go, if we can pass it along to the capital improvement projects outlined in those planning documents referenced by myself and Councilmember Winslow so that staff perhaps can return with a proposal based off of their recommendations on these planning documents that we spent a whole lot of money and with a whole lot of experts to compile for that to guide our decision making when allocating this additional $100,000. Is that something the rest of our counselors would be partial to? Councilmember Goldstein, go ahead. Well, actually, I haven't gone yet, so hold on just a second.

Sure. And then I'll let you pause. I think what I heard Mr. Lipski say is it would be helpful if we were going to do that, that we'd put it in the wildfire mitigation fund instead of just using it for the channels. That way you can use it where it would be most useful for you throughout the community. Is that what I heard you say? That's correct, yeah. It's the Vegetation Management Capital Project 50438. Gotcha. And just as a note, Lindo Channel runs through three different districts. It's not just District 1. It's 1, 2, and it might even be four districts. So we're not talking one particular district here. I don't feel like this. There's homes all along Lindo Channel. Any home that is along Lindo Channel is going to be affected by this, and it's way more than one district.

So I don't feel like this is a district thing. But thank you for clarification, Skyler. Councilmember Goldstein. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. And I agree with that. It sounds like adding these funds to that wildfire mitigation fund and letting our O&M department figure out exactly what they're spending it on makes sense. I think that it's in the grand scheme of our budget, a small enough amount that I don't want to, you know, micromanage them and have them come back with how to spend that $100,000. I think O&M can figure that out. So I would support adding this to that wildfire mitigation fund. Councilmember Winslow? Just sometimes, you know, look, I'm asking as a historian with some things here, but I made a request two years ago when this request was made specifically for the Linda Channel to include some of the other creeks and allow the fire department to determine where were priorities.

And the answer that I got from now, Vice Mayor Bennett, was no. So that would be better to just say that we're going to follow the plans, you know, and just fund the plans that we already had that we paid consultants to develop for us. That is a better idea. I will say that I recommend if you want to have a higher likelihood of passing this, that you would make a substitute motion and sort of divide it from the overall approval of the budget because maybe more people won't vote yes on that. All right. So we have a motion to approve the budget with a friendly amendment. I'm going to tell us where we're at so everybody knows it's clear, Madam Clerk, where we're voting. So there wasn't a substitute motion.

You were just recommending someone make one. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So the motion is to adopt the, wait, wait, wait just a second. The resolution that is adopting the 2026-27 proposed budget, amending it to take $100,000 and add it to, and change, add it to, let me just read what he said. Amending the budget to take $100,000, amending the remediation in the fire-prone areas, change it to include all three waterways originally, fire-prone vegetation. Then staff interjected and said, would recommend using the wild, wildland vegetative Management fund to help guide the cleanups. And that's where I believe it is at right now. Is that correct? So that was staff recommended. Then that was never reflected or a friendly amendment.

Right. So that's not in the motion, but that's what staff had indicated would work so that it would go wherever needed. Okay. Does someone want to? So I do want to hear from the vice mayor. You made the friendly amendment. I want to get your thoughts, please, Dale. This is far more complicated than it should be. And I apologize for making it so complicated, but I was merely looking for additional funding so we could address some vegetation Management. So I'm happy with whatever we have before us and just let's move forward. Let's get this done. So to be clear, are you or are you or are you not accepting staff's recommendation? Oh, excuse me. Are you or are you not following the recommendation to approve the budget with the amendment that this $100,000 rather than go specifically to these three waterways go to what Director Lipski had suggested of that Wildland Vegetative Fuels CIP project?

What was it? Fund 50... 50... 50438. 50438. 50438. Okay. So can that be reflected in the friendly amendment before we take a vote on this? I believe that would be you. Yes. Okay. Okay. So I will accept that as long as Gwynn Bridge area of Lindo Channel gets addressed. Just teasing. I will accept the amendment as noted. Okay. Sorry. No, I think that reflected what you want because then it takes staff's recommendation. Okay. Thank you. And then Mayor Reynolds, just one more question if I can. I just want to make sure with the city manager that this amount of money would not significantly deviate from having a balanced budget. Okay. So you wouldn't recommend that we take action on a... Okay. Great.

All right. So we've got a motion and a couple of great friendly amendments and... 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. Carry 6-1. Okay. We've got our speakers. We are going to recess to closed session. Do we have any speakers for closed session? I don't see anybody here. No. No. And we have any council disqualifications? I don't think we do for anything on tonight. Okay. We will reconvene back here at 6 p.m. that.

All right. Sorry, we're going to call us to order just a minute late here. We are going to start with our prayer from our chaplain, Eileen Brunwell. Welcome. Good evening. Please go with me in prayer. Father, Mother, God, source of all wisdom, known by many names and honored through many paths, we gather today with gratitude for this community, for Chico, for the opportunity to serve, and for the shared hope that brings us together. We recognize the sacred responsibility carried by those who have been entrusted with leadership and public service. May this council be guided by wisdom, integrity, compassion, and courage. May every discussion be rooted in respect, every decision shaped by fairness, and every action aligned with the highest good of all people in Chico.

Help us remember that beyond our differences, we share a common humanity and a common desire for safety, dignity, opportunity, and peace. Inspire us to listen deeply and speak thoughtfully and work cooperatively for the well-being of this community and all who call it home. We hold in our hearts the families, workers, teachers, first responders, business owners, elders, children, and all residents of this community. May those who feel unseen be remembered, those who struggle find support, and those who lead remain humble and open-hearted. May this meeting be productive, peaceful, and guided by clarity of purpose. May the wisdom prevail where there is disagreement, understanding grow where there is division, and unity emerge through our shared commitment to the common good.

With gratitude for this opportunity to serve and to build a stronger community together, we offer this prayer in the spirit of peace, cooperation, and love. And so it is. Amen. Amen. Thank you. All right. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Salute. Salute. I pledge allegiance to the pride of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, and liberty and justice for all. All right. We are reconvening from a riveting budget session that we've been here since 1 o'clock for, and closed session. So 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 chamber.

Once completed, please turn in your card to the city clerk. The speakers are taken in the order received, and once we start speaking on an item, we will no longer accept cards on that item. Persons demonstrating rude, boisterous, speaking on matters outside the jurisdiction of the city council, or engaging in otherwise disruptive behavior will be called to order. If such conduct continues, I may call a recess, requesting the removal of such persons from the council chambers, adjourn the meeting, or take other actions as appropriate. Can we have our closed session announcement from our city attorney, Ryan Jones? Yes, happy to provide that. There were three items that the city council discussed in closed session, just prior to this meeting.

One was a conference of labor negotiators, and direction was given to the labor negotiator and staff by the council. There were several real property items for real property negotiations. Direction was also given to staff from the council. And finally, there was a conference legal counsel on whether to initiate litigation, and direction was given as well to legal counsel on that. That's my report. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Consent agenda. All matters listed on the consent agenda are considered routine in nature. It can therefore be enacted with one motion. Do we have any no votes or council disqualifications? I want to pull item 2.2. 2.2. All right. We will pull 2.2. And do we have any speakers on closed session?

I'm sorry, on consent agenda. No, we do not. Okay. Do I have a motion? Move to approve. Second. Okay. Move to approve except for 2.2. All right. All right. Council Member Goldstein? Yes. Council Member Hawley? Yes. Council Member O'Brien? Yes. And good job on 2.5. Chief Aldridge? Yes. Council Member van Overbeek? Yes. Council Member Winslow? Yes. Vice Mayor Bennett? Yes. Mayor Reynolds? Aye. Carry 7-0. All right. Item 2.2. So what this is is about striking something out of our AP&P, that's Administrative Policy Procedure, about room reservations, in particular in this building, but it does apply, I think, to other buildings as well. And the reason I pulled it is maybe I don't understand well enough where we're going with this, but I understand that there's some costs associated with public use of these facilities.

Our fees for usage don't cover it. We've had some flexibility with Council Members using them. And I just feel like I can't get behind what I feel like might be precluding public access and use of these facilities, which we maintain in any way. And just in the spirit of they are public facilities, even if it costs us some money, I think it might be worth it. Or even if it came to us just setting fees that were high enough to cover the costs, I think that's more worthwhile. But I do want to pass to Madam Clerk to explain this and see if either we can give some more firm direction as far as what policy we want developed ultimately. But I just want to make sure that we actually have a conversation about this.

Thanks. Okay. Thank you, Council Member Winslow, for the opportunity to explain it. APP 10-2, room reservation for the Council Chamber and the OMB, and both conference rooms in this building. And they've pretty much been in place since 1975. They've been amended over and over and over again. Originally, Wins started, it was anyone could use the room. It was open from in the morning until 10 o'clock at night. There were no costs being paid for by citizens. And it was a great opportunity to be able to share an official space. We didn't have the technology that we have now. We didn't have probably the same safety issues that we now face. So over time, I believe it was in 2008, I was asked by the Council to reevaluate that.

We had outside agencies that paid $28 to use the room every single month. Yet when we used their facilities, they charged us $1,000 because they needed to cover true cost. So we did a true cost analysis, and we raised the fees. And some agencies left because they didn't feel like they should be paying for it. So in addition, we had wonderful groups, the coin club, the paddle club, lots of different groups using the facility. On the weekends, we had PD officers who would come over and unlock the door to allow the citizens to come in. So now we have, this is 20 odd years ago. We now are in a different space, a different time, and our needs have absolutely changed. We have a $400,000 piece of equipment out in the lobby or $100,000 something, I think, in terms of that metal detector.

And then that's not even counting the cost for security guards. We've had the building left unlocked. We have found citizens, not citizens, but homeless citizens sleeping in between the aisles. Our housekeepers, our janitorial service has come in and actually found them. We've had damages done, windows knocked out. And it's unfortunate. It really, really is. And was it a gift of public funds when we do not charge to cover actual costs? And so while I recognize that it's a great facility, it comes now. We just did a $400,000 installation of new equipment in this room. We have not had a room reservation because the fees, no one wants to pay for the fees. They want to get a council member to cover it.

We've had one in probably four or five years use the facility and pay for it. So the intention is not to prohibit use by council members and our staff. That will continue. The OMB, if you think about what's over there, we have information systems over there. They have a lot of equipment, our servers, a lot of protected pieces of equipment over in that building. And when you open a building up to the public, you have to leave the front door open. So there's really no way of controlling unless you have a staff member monitoring the doors. In addition, I'm sorry, the allergies are getting to me. So it was thought that since we're not utilizing it now for outside agencies and for outside groups, that we start thinking about how do we protect the infrastructure that's here in this building.

We just built and put a lot of money in conference room two. We have technology in conference room one. And when you have someone who's going to rent the facility, you have to have staff here. There's no way that they can work the microphones. I know that I was called over to turn the mics on and to make sure that we had access for a town meeting. So this does not preclude the council from using it and staff. They would still go through my office. I've been handling room reservations for 26 years. It would still continue to happen. There are related meetings that have to happen with outside agencies that staff is here, and they're able to unlock the doors, lock the doors, monitor it. But when you do have a public meeting and you have individuals coming in, no one is usually monitoring that front door.

And so in order to protect the investment that the city has made in the technology in this facility and in the OMB to protect the integrity of those servers, it was thought to eliminate AP and P10 to do an internal policy about how does a council member go about using a room. And we have conference rooms available in the municipal building as well. And so we've been very, very flexible. People, I think, have always found rooms to use. And so that was the intention behind it. It's not being used. I've only had one person or one outside agency use it, and it wasn't too long ago, and it was very, very difficult. We were right in the middle of the installation of the new equipment, and that agency from Sacramento wanted to come in and look at it.

They wanted to touch the equipment. They wanted their own people in here touching it. And I'm a little protective. So I'm happy to answer any other questions. So that makes a lot of sense. Can I just ask, because in the recommendation here, it says that an internal policy will be created. And do you have an idea exactly what that's going to look like? And would it be reasonable for us to postpone actually striking this whole AP and P10 until we can see what the internal policy would be? Well, I guess, you know, council, you can do anything that you would like to do. I would tell you that we're currently allowing room reservations to go through anyway. When a council member calls me and says I need a room, we make sure that it gets scheduled.

We have an internal process already. What I would do is memorialize that, and it would still be an AP and P that the city manager would sign. It would go out to all of staff because we want to make sure the staff isn't coming over here on the weekend and having movie night. We had that one time where some staff wanted to come over and thought the facility would be great to do that. And so we want to make sure that there are guidelines and guardrails to protect the facilities. But there's already an internal policy, although not written, on how council and staff actually reserves the room. And that would just be memorialized. I'll throw it out to other council members if you have any comments.

I've got no other comments. Council Member Goldstein. I saw this on the agenda, and I read through it. And I mean, I share some of the same concerns as Council Member Winslow, that I've been able to have a conference room that I could reserve if a group wanted to meet with me. And it's a little more than makes sense to have at a tiny coffee shop table or whatever. We need more privacy. Like, it's really nice to be able to reserve a space for that. So I would like to make sure that there's still some amount of conference room availability. Maybe that could be in the other building if needed. And also, I love the idea that a community group could reserve this space. But I absolutely hear the concerns with the actual costs of having staff here, the security of our equipment.

So I understand the need to create this policy. But I'm hoping that there's a way that we can come up with some kind of compromise here. I don't know what that's going to look like. I think that it's very doable and it's feasible. And I think I can give you a couple examples of where it's already working. The PBID, the board, is meeting here in our lobby on the third floor. We also have DCBA sometimes using that facility. We've always found room whenever a Council Member has said that they needed to. If you were coming over here and not making your reservation, then I didn't know about it. But, again, there have been times when people have used this facility and not made sure that the doors were locked.

And there is some concern for that. But in terms of having a lot of space, we really do recommend using the municipal building now because the technology is not the same over there. And you have the whole third floor that has gigantic conference room tables. As well as an additional conference room now by my area, as well as in the city manager's office. And then there's offices that are available. So I don't think it will limit the ability of Council to meet with individuals at all. It will just – you'll continue to facilitate it the exact same way you do right now, and that's by contacting my office. Council Member van Overbeek. This is a mice-nuts issue, and we have a very long agenda. Can we wrap this up and move on?

Council Member O'Brien. Council Member van Overbeek. No, I understand everyone's concerns. But the reality is this infrastructure is too critical to put in jeopardy, and it's already been put in jeopardy. We have a responsibility to take care of it. And I think the municipal building is the perfect place to have many of those meetings. So I support striking AP and P10-2 in its entirety, allowing the city clerk to come up with an internal policy. I'll make that a motion. I second. Council Member Goldstein. Yeah, I had a clarifying question. Are there – do we have hours allowable for use at the municipal building? There was in this – in AP and P10-2. It was usually in the evenings. And that's been problematic over in the OMB because of all of the equipment and moving staff over there.

However, if there's a meeting being facilitated either by council or by – and council has actually held meetings in the big room, as well as staff, then staff is there and they're monitoring the doors and then making sure people are leaving. Okay. I'm just wondering if a group wants to meet at 6 p.m. after everyone's done with work or whatever, is that fine to do at the normal municipal center building? Well, the doors are locked at 5. And so, again, if a council member was meeting with someone and you wanted to have – If they reserve the room. If they reserve a room, you would either have to have staff stay so they could open and close the doors. Yes. So, that would be difficult. Yeah, that would be difficult.

And even this facility in the last three years, we've had thousands of dollars in vandalism. And we found the place unsecured. So, we just feel duty-bound to stop that. Yeah. I think I support the initiative to make – to change something here. I just would like to make it more feasible for council members, especially if you have a day job, to be able to meet with people after hours at some kind of official facility. For now, I have an office I can go to, but – Yeah. Of course, City Hall, your access card works. Yeah. Yeah, true. Yeah. Council Member Winslow. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if I was in violation of some rule whenever I've had meetings here. I always lock the door. I don't think it was me that ever left it unlocked, I don't think, right?

I feel you would have told me that probably. But sometimes little meetings in the conference rooms. But one time, just an example, I haven't used this room a lot, and I wasn't thinking particularly for council members, but more for broader public use of – you know, we only have so many spaces. The university similarly has steep fees for usage. There's a group of international educators. Council Member Hawley and I have a few times met with them, and we kind of give them, like, lectures about Chico in here. And one time, you can turn this lectern around, give a PowerPoint to a crowd right there. It's pretty neat. And I think that it's worth using. I also just think that there is, like, a checklist and reasonable expectations we can set to make sure the building's secure.

But I don't want to belabor the point anymore, so I'll defer. All right. We've got a motion and a second. Council Member Goldstein? Reluctantly, 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. Carry 6-1. All right. Public comment. Any members of the public may address the council at this time on any matters not already listed on the agenda and are within the jurisdictional authority. The council cannot take action on anything you spoke about during this meeting on requests made under this section. How many speakers do we have? We have 10, and I think that there might be two individuals who wanted to speak on the budget but didn't realize it was earlier.

Okay. So will you allow for them? Yeah. Okay. So there's 10 of them. And I'm going to call the first three names if you can line up in the middle aisle. If you could be very gentle with the microphone and touch it by the metal part, not by that green light when you pull it up and down and get as close as you can to it. Thank you. So the first three speakers, Ann Perry, Olivia Henderson, followed by Sharon Johnson. Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Can you hear me all right? Okay. Okay. My name is Sharon Johnson. I'm five hours late for your afternoon meeting. I'm sorry about that. I'm here representing the Chico Peace Alliance. And we heard the words develop or dominance, which brought us thinking of Chief Police Aldrich's plan to establish the Police Community Advisory Board for the purpose of reviewing and making recommendations on matters pertinent to the police department, areas such as significant community issues, budget and program review, community outreach assistance.

They are within the board's realm of responsibility. Today's meeting on the budget provides you and the chief with an opportunity to hear and listen to the larger community that military-grade equipment creates an atmosphere of dominance. Military equipment does not make us feel safer, makes us more fearful. The Chico Peace Alliance supports CRJ's messaging to dissuade you in the conclusion of increased military-grade equipment in the city budget. With 50% of the city budget directed towards the Chico Police Department, while the rate for violent offenses of armed robbery, aggravated assault, homicide, remain comparatively lower. We ask you as our governing body to please take seriously our entire community and Chico's needs.

We ask that you allocate city funds for community-based solutions, including investments in health care, housing, education, violence prevention programs, of which we know that there's over 1,000 domestic violence cases that are reported annually to Chico. These programs demonstrate positive impacts on the outcome in community safety and well-being. In support, by no means is this a suggestion to defund the police. We understand that law enforcement duty has always been and continues to be hazardous. We know most people respect law officers. We want all lives, our lives, nonviolently. Both police officers and community in active cooperation and trust. We know this because we support Chief Aldridge Police Community Advisory Board.

More military equipment is not the answer. We believe police officers have earned and deserve the opportunity to have a yearly paid retreat to heal from their daily experiences of witnessing the impacts of mental health, poverty, and human darkness. They have difficult jobs. Police officers need to be protected through respect, rest, and relief. More military-grade equipment is not that answer. For the people, practicing democracy is a tool for a fair budget. It takes courage to develop and not dominate. I thank you for listening, and peace to all of you. Thank you. Okay, thank you. And will the real Ann Perry stand up? I'm sorry. So I'm going to call another. So we have Ann Perry, Olivia Henderson, and Marie Patterson, if you can line up in the middle.

And I apologize. That was actually Sharon Johnson. Okay, go ahead. Good evening, Madam Mayor and council members. I am here tonight to put a request before you to place trash barrels along the stretch of Humboldt Road adjacent to the preserves and also from Highway 32 to Skyway. I dedicate myself to five days a week, probably two hours a day, picking up litter from those areas. The environment is very important to me, as hopefully it is to all of us. And there is not one trash receptacle anywhere out there. And it's a heavily used area. I see many bicyclists traversing Humboldt Road. And I see now that the improvements have been made to Bruce Road with the sidewalk. I see many pedestrians walking.

And that's great. But there is not a trash receptacle. And let me tell you, there is a lot of litter out there, a lot. So it would be very helpful if you would consider the placement of receptacles in those areas. And I would greatly appreciate it. And I'm sure people would use them if they were there. So thank you for your time. And please give that some serious consideration because we have a lot of litter in our city, unfortunately. Thank you. Thank you. Olivia Henderson, followed by Marie Patterson, and then Adam Fidelli. Hello. I'm Olivia Henderson. I am with Waste Management. I'm also here to give a little trash talk. I just wanted to talk tonight about some of the community projects we've been doing.

We just completed our waste sponsorship with Chico Bello at the Wildflower Ride. And I'm excited to say that they had their highest diversion rate ever this year. They generated 1,805 pounds of waste and only 1,689 pounds of that. We diverted all of that. Only about 100 pounds ended up going to the landfill. That's a 93.58 percent diversion rate. So it was a great success. I'm really proud of them, their dedication to being sustainable and bringing a sustainable event here to Chico and to Butte County. Some other projects we've been working on with DCBA, Chico Certified Farmers Market, and also the new event Live on the Lawn at Children's Park. We've been working with them to have waste containers at each event to help collect all of the waste, keep the litter off the streets.

And we look forward to doing that for years to come with them. Also, been working a lot with Charlene for this year's drop and dash. Today was the first day of the drop and dash. The second one is coming up next Thursday on the 28th. Last year, we were able to keep 11.07 tons off the road and out from illegal dumping. The purpose of that event is to capture all the students moving out. We don't want couches, mattresses, overfilling the property manager's dumpsters. And that event has been really successful in preventing anything being left on the road. So if you want to continue trash talk, I will leave some of my cards over there. And we can talk about any service needs, any ideas that come up that you've been hearing from your constituents.

We're always open to talking about them at waste Management. Thank you. So, Olivia, great timing. So the speaker before you just suggested a receptacle on Bruce Road between 32 and Bruce. Maybe at no cost you guys could provide that? I think that is a great idea. And Skylar and I can talk about adding that to the city routes. Thank you. So Marie Patterson. The city's ever solved anything. I'm sorry. Marie Patterson. And then Adam Fidelli. It's not. Are you Jonathan? Jonathan? It's not your turn yet. Okay. So Marie Patterson followed by Adam Fidelli and then Carol Wallen. Hi. Good evening, Madam Mayor and Council Members. So my name is Marie Patterson. I am chair of the construction Management department at Chico State and also the director of sustainability.

But just to confirm, I am not the official representative of Chico State. And I am coming to you as a Chico local patron of downtown Chico and local shopper and supporter of the downtown revitalization project and alternative number one. I ask that you please reconsider your vote of no and to bring the project back to the table. And though has officially rescinded their concern, that had several council members concerned that restricting down to two lanes would impede their response times. It's also been noted that delivery trucks hopefully can be solved using the daylighting spaces. And we can coordinate that near intersections that can then transition to parking spaces in the evenings and on the weekends.

And while I'm a member of the Safe Streets Coalition, I remind you we're not just about supporting cyclists. We're supporting access and better sidewalks and pathways for all, young and old, for strollers, for wheelchairs. And it's something that's very, very important for us. I've lived near very many downtowns. Most of them have single lanes of dual traffic or just two lanes of traffic. And they have somehow figured out the parking, delivery trucks, and emergency vehicles, just as I'm sure our city engineers and planners have. A total of 685 supporters have wanted the downtown revitalization back on the agenda to allow the submission for the June 22nd grant deadline. You'll hear tonight conveniently about the DCBA and how they will quote that increased foot traffic directly supports local business revenue and positive perception of downtown, as well as how increased foot traffic helps drive economic activity for downtown, reinforce downtown as a safe and welcoming area, and to shift the public perception and highlight positive experiences.

And these are similar things that many of us in the community want as part of the downtown revitalization project. So after several years and many meetings, there's been overwhelming feedback for alternative number one from public comment. No, I don't believe alternative number one is perfect. I believe that there's some recommendations and changes to make it more approvable and accessible for everybody. But if we can get an active transportation grant, we can renew and revitalize downtown Chico with as little cost to the Chico taxpayers as possible. So I hope that you reconsider your no vote and request the downtown revitalization project be put back on for the June 2nd agenda. Thank you. Thank you.

Adam Fidelli, followed by Carol Wallen, and then Jonathan Milos. Good evening, everyone. I'm going to read for a friend of mine who can't be here yet a rough day medically. So this is from Mike Trollender. So good evening, Mayor and Council. Downtown Chico is one of the most important economic and cultural assets our city has. It is our front porch. It shapes how visitors see Chico, how residents experience Chico, and how businesses decide whether or not to invest here. Downtown today faces increasing pressure. Parking challenges, infrastructure concerns, public perception issues, business turnover, event coordination, cleanliness, safety concerns, the continuing impacts of homelessness and behavioral health issues, and competition from the changing retail and dining habits of the public.

The problem is not that nobody cares about downtown. The problem is that no single person wakes up every day with the authority and responsibility to coordinate all these moving parts together. Right now, responsibilities are fragmented across departments and Organizations. Public works handle streets, infrastructure, and parking. Planning handles part of the permit process. Building handles another part of the permit process. The fire marshal has authority over many operational issues. Police handle enforcement and safety response. Economic development changes. Depending on council direction and priorities of events are handled separately. And while the Downtown Business Association and PBID work hard to promote downtown businesses and events, they were never designed to function as a centralized downtown Management for the city of Chico.

And that is the key issue. A PBID can help fund promotions, maintenance, and marketing, but it cannot coordinate city departments or implement citywide downtown strategy. The Downtown Chico Business Association cannot direct infrastructure priorities. It cannot implement parking strategy. It cannot streamline permitting. It cannot manage cross-department downtown operations. And it cannot provide long-term institutional coordination between councils, staff transitions, businesses, and property owners. We also have to honestly acknowledge the impact unresolved homelessness and behavioral health challenges have had on downtown businesses, employees, residents, and visitors. This is not simply a policing issue, and it is not simply a social services issue.

It's a coordination issue. Business owners, property owners, police, public works, service providers, and city departments are often responding separately instead of through one consistent downtown strategy and point of coordination. What Chico lacks is not passion. What Chico lacks is a centralized downtown Management system. Successful downtowns across America now follow the Main Street four-point approach. Organization, promotion, design, and economic vitality. Chico already has pieces of all four. That's time. Thank you. Sorry, Mike. I did my best. That's okay. I believe he sent all this to you as well. He did. He sent us an email. Thank you. Carol Wallen, followed by Jonathan Milos, and then Jesse Horgan.

Good evening, and thank you for your time. I, too, am here to request a reconsideration of your no votes for the revitalization and to re-agendize the motion. I want to again reference some key components of the downtown element of the City of Chico general plan, beginning with a quick recap from the vision statement. Downtown is walkable with supportive parking facilities, and new development is designed with pedestrian and bicyclists in mind. To achieve this, the plan goes on to describe the following recommendations. While downtown relies on adequate traffic volume to maintain its vitality, traffic should not disturb the pedestrian experience. Encourage the active use of sidewalks by expanding their allowed uses to include outdoor seating and dining while maintaining space for a path of travel.

Now for the concerns. Three lanes of traffic for EMS and delivery. Per the general plan, staff is to facilitate an effort among downtown businesses and delivery companies to develop downtown loading and unloading guidelines. With the objective of reducing vehicle congestion that can discourage pedestrian and bicycling activity. The study included in the staff report recommending Alternative 1 states the upcoming truck loading and parking study will help to optimize locations in time periods of commercial loading and unloading. In regard to emergency vehicle traffic as stated, that has been solved. I worked as an EMT for Enloe for six years and have driven Ambulance Code 2 and 3, and people move.

The real issue is failure yield, and I would 100% support elevated targeting of that periodically to remind our citizens of that. Mr. O'Brien, you said our staff and consultants were given an impossible job. I would say they were given a nearly impossible job, and what they delivered was a thoroughly researched and brilliantly developed plan to revitalize our downtown while honoring the general plan vision and balancing the needs of all of its citizens. As you stated, this is Chico, and we value our character and icons. I agree with you, Mr. O'Brien, and I agree with the experts hired by your staff who conducted this study and believe the implementation of Alternative 1 would enhance that character and reestablish those icons, not destroy them.

If you will not consider a re-vote on the issue, I request Council make a motion to direct staff to establish a downtown loading and unloading set of guidelines as per your general plan. Thank you. Thank you. Jonathan Milos, and I believe he wants to speak on the police department budget, followed by Jesse Horgan and then LaDonna Kaniki. I'm unfamiliar with the proceedings. Is this the time and place to address the police budget? It was actually heard earlier today. The meeting started at 1 o'clock, but the mayor and the council has graciously allowing you to speak on it. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. What's leading up to today's presentation. We're not at all reassured that anything changed as a result of that public hearing.

Number one, there doesn't seem to be any effort to economize or shrink or compact those requests in response to the limitations of the Chico taxpayer-funded budget. Number two, this year's statement of departmental desires for equipment and weaponry is larger than last year's, which is larger than the year before that. Increasingly, our local department, a civil function is becoming militarized and weaponized. No credible rationale for armored attack vehicles in this small college community has been proposed, yet here they are in this year's request. Finally, council members, is this the best use of discretionary funds in our town? No doubt, our men and women in blue need to be adequately funded to protect and serve us.

Adequately funded, not excessively. Thank you. Thank you. So it's Jesse Horrigan followed by LaDonna Kanigi. Good evening. I am coming this evening also to ask for a reconsideration of the Downtime Revitalization Project. I have been part of a group invited by UC Berkeley and California Walks to do an analysis of crashes around the university. And in that I got access to a system that the California Office of Traffic Safety has done with the UC Berkeley collaboration to do a transportation injury mapping system. And I narrowed it down to just downtown and pulled a report since 2014. There have been 92 crashes. 93 people have been injured and there were two fatalities. Of those people, 43 of them were under the age of 30.

There was recently a study, a meta study, that looked at 13 years of cities all over the United States that put in safe infrastructure for pedestrians and bicyclists. They got between 30% and 50% reductions in injuries. The average over that 13 years was 44%. So if you think about if our downtown put in safe infrastructure, we could save 40 people from being injured. And one of those people who died may not have died. And so there's all sorts of tweaks that can be made to the plans. There's all sorts of adjustments that can be made. But we can improve safety and prevent injuries. Not only for pedestrians and bicyclists, but people in the cars are less likely to be in crashes if the infrastructure is safe.

I also wanted to say that there's all this talk about bicyclists as a separate group. But in downtown, 39 pedestrians have been struck by a vehicle while they were in a crosswalk. So that means they were following the rules. They were doing what they were supposed to do. And a car still hit them. We can design infrastructure that removes a lot of that danger, slows down the traffic, and makes it safer to walk downtown to the businesses. So please reconsider, add this back to the agenda, and put some safety features into downtown. Thank you. Thank you. LaDonna Kanegi, followed by Ann Palivka. Hi, I'm LaDonna Kanegi, and thank you for giving me some time to speak. And I'm here as a downtown shopper and somebody who lives in Chico and also works at Chico State.

And I'm here to request that you reconsider the downtown revitalization vote. Some of the things that caused the vote a month ago, four weeks ago, have shown to be incorrect. Enloe has stated that they are not concerned about safety downtown, so that's been cleared up. I think that the safety and just the walkability and the idea of making downtown a desirable destination warrants revisiting this. We have two council meetings that could be revoted on, I think the second or the 16th, before the grant's due, which is really putting you guys in a pinch. But those active transportation grants only come every two years, and the funds have been getting tighter and tighter on them. So this is an opportunity to have Chico not have to bear all the costs of this and have a more beautiful, walkable, and safe downtown.

So I implore you to support alternative number one and revisit that vote. Thank you. Thank you. And then our last speaker is Ann Palivka. Good evening, Mayor and members of Council. Last March, several community members and members of Concerned Community for Justice challenged the Chico Police Department's request for more militarized equipment, including $1.25 million worth of three incident command vehicles and seven Psionics SAR-15 assault rifles. We challenged them to prove that those pieces of equipment are actually necessary. CPD administration has not yet provided evidence that its current vehicles were inadequate to their task. Council should ask the police to describe how the current vehicles proved to be inadequate and how many times that happened last year.

Ask what cost, benefit, and risk analysis was done to provide and determine need for these outrageously expensive vehicles with luxury interiors. And the additional seven assault rifles. Why purchase more of those rifles when the last time one was used was three years ago? We're not in a war zone, and Council should demand that the police not treat its inhabitants like enemy combatants. The last time a Chico PD officer was killed in the line of duty was 1938. It's almost a century ago. Another question. What are the hidden costs? Even if funding for purchasing the incident command vehicles comes from outside instead of city funds, there still are personnel, storage, fuel, and other associated costs which the city will be forced to cover.

Meanwhile, our townspeople have basic needs that we want the Council to prioritize. Affordable shelter for our unhoused neighbors, affordable mental health care, as well as infrastructure upgrades like the roads and the sewer, especially, without raising our taxes and fees. We've had to budget more for vehicle repair as we do daily runs over potholed roads. Not to speak of the dramatic impending increase in sewer fees due to the city not performing proper Management all along. The city has repeatedly pushed our needs, our basic needs, to the back burner, while we've had to live with on our own means. Now it's time for Chico City Council to draw the line and require that our police live within the city's means.

I'm a family nurse practitioner. I've practiced for over a decade with Butte County Public Health, so I think prevention all the time. Imagine if our city made sure that everyone could access adequate shelter and mental health care, just for starters, how many fewer police, civilian problematic incidents would likely occur, meaning likely fewer officers needed, meaning savings for the city. Savings could go towards mental health support for officers who work a really stressful job or a stellar de-escalation training program. It could be a win-win all around. Thank you. Thank you. She was our last speaker. All right. Public hearings. Hearing to review and approve the 2026-2027 annual action CBDG funds.

And we have Mary Jo Alonso, our housing program manager, to take us through.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council members. This is the final public hearing for the 2026-27 HUD annual action plan for the use of federal community development block grant, CDBG, and home funds, including review of the public service funding recommendations, as directed during the first public hearing that was held on April 21st. As a recap, federal housing and urban development funds must be used to benefit low-income households and neighborhoods for activities that meet the goals listed in our 2025-2029 HUD consolidated plan. Those include affordable housing, homeless prevention, homeless services, neighborhood revitalization, and economic development. The final head allocations were released last month and include a slight decrease that I had anticipated with CDBG funding and a slight increase for home funding.

These amounts are listed up here. And changes were made to the proposed annual action plan. That is included as attachment B to your staff report. All changes are shown in strikeout. All changes are shown in strikeout. This slide includes a summary of CDBG activities to utilize the funding for housing programs and services, economic development, code enforcement, program administration, and public services, which is included here. These were funding recommendations provided by the CDBG Citizens Advisory Committee, and that the proposed funding is for six agencies. I will say that the funding was slightly reduced due to lower than anticipated HUD CDBG funding. So tonight's public hearing concludes the 30-day public review and comment period.

All comments received to date have been incorporated into the plan. Any comments received tonight will also be considered and included for consideration to HUD. And at conclusion of tonight's public hearing, the City, the Community Development Director recommends that Council hold the public hearing, consider any public comment, approve the final annual action plan, or if changes are made, and then authorize City Manager to execute agreements and documents in order for us to implement the plan. All right. This concludes my presentation. Do you have any questions? All right. Any questions, Ms. Alonzo? No. Council Member Hawley? I believe all my questions were answered the first time this came before Council.

I just wanted to thank you and your team, Ms. Alonzo, for compiling this into such a great report and for all the work you do for the benefit of our city. Thanks. I had a quick question. Under the proposed activities, economic development, is that just that we support the SBDC, or what exactly, how is that falling in there? That's an amount set aside to support services that SBDC provides to low-income residents. So it's both counseling sessions that we subsidize across the counseling sessions, and also for, like, one-on-one counseling that SBDC provides. All right. Thank you very much. We will open the public hearing. How many speakers do we have? We do not have any. All right. We will close the public hearing, and I will consider our motion.

Move to approve. Second. Council, I have a motion by Council Member van Overbeek. Second by Council Member Hawley. 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. Regular agenda item 5.1. Council Member Hawley, request of the sewer rate program for low-income. Take it away. Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. So this was agendized collectively by Council as a response to really what we're facing, a need to fund capital improvement projects for our wastewater treatment facility and other sewer projects. So coupling that with the impact it's going to have on our cost burden, we need to see that increase in sewer fees for residents should also move forward along with a need-based sewer fee program that can promote more equity among our low-income and fixed-income residents.

So I'm not going to read through my whole report. But a few important things I did want to point out before we go to further council questions and public comment. But this is very complementary to item 5.3. Of course, with any loss in revenue, which having a need-based program would result in a loss in revenue, we need to plan for how to recoup those funds. So item 5.3 would provide a loss in revenue recovery plan through means of delinquent sewer service charge collection when we face inevitable customer non-payment increases, which will likely occur due to the sewer fee increases across the board. And other alternatives to making up for those lost revenue would be digging into the general fund or trying to initiate a donation fund.

Those are ways that other cities have addressed it. But I really think that customer non-payment recovery is the best route to go. And I've talked through this with staff as well. I also want to say that we have a couple of options when it comes to qualifying eligibility criteria. As you can see, I analyzed Sacramento Area Seward District, City of West Sacramento, Redwood City, City of Cerritos. And I know staff found a couple of other examples that we can pull from. But what they do oftentimes is rather than having our administration staff looking through, are they at the federal poverty level and processing applications to prove that? Or are they at a certain percentage of the area's median income limits?

Instead, they'll kind of pass that administrative burden on to other rate assistance programs' eligibility criteria, such as PG&Es or CalFresh. But when we're considering which eligibility criteria we want to adhere to when pursuing a need-based sewer rate fee, I will say I think we should recognize the changes in CalFresh eligibility criteria that's happening at a federal level. So I would caution against this body pursuing that. And I think with that, I'm open to Council Member questions. Council Member Winslow. I just think this is really clever. I like the way of rather than us mean-testing ourselves and creating this big administrative burden, we look at, like, eligibility for, like, the care program, PG&E, because it means we would incentivize more people in Chico to access the care program, meaning that less of their money is going to PG&E.

And there kind of becomes this double whammy of keeping money within our community. Council Member van Overbeek. So I have a question for Council Member Hawley. What percentage of rate payers do you envision qualifying for this low-income help? See, that's really up to the Council. I would hope that staff would return to us with possible recommendations and how that would impact the future of our sewer fee increases. I mean, you don't know whether it's 10% or 40%? It's up to the Council. I mean, if we base it... Well, do you have a recommendation? I don't. I think that we... The best... Sorry. That's okay. No, I... The best round is the PG&E rate assistance criteria, in my opinion. Okay. So the next question is, don't you think it's a conflict of interest?

You're low-income, right? So this is going to put money in your pocket. I actually don't qualify for the PG&E rate assistance program, so... That's wonderful. The answer is no. Okay. Well, that's good. Council Member Goldstein. Oh, gosh. I forgot after that what I was even going to say. Just kidding. Interesting. Great report, Council Member Hawley. Well-researched. I'm excited to discuss this further. One question was how this... How will you foresee this interrelating with the agenda item we have also tonight on non-payment, how we're collecting those fees, if you've... And if you don't know, that's also totally fine. Yeah. Great question, Council Member Goldstein. So the reason I say that item 5.3 relates really closely to this is that when we're looking at a loss of revenue due to a need-based fee program, that has to be made up somehow, so we're not continuing to underfinance, and historically underfinance, this really important fund.

Initially, I considered pursuing raising the rates slightly for all other customers who don't qualify, which is, you know, what private agencies can do. But because we're a municipality, I actually emailed our city attorney, Jones, about this, and we determined together that because of Prop 218 constraints, that would be an equitable implementation of charges, so we had to pursue other revenues of cost recovery. And that was an example that other cities had pursued, is addressing customer non-payments in delinquency fees, and then collecting those delinquency fees would feed into that lost revenue. Does that make sense? Yeah, thank you so much for answering the question that I was having trouble phrasing.

But, yeah, that's great, and that's great further context that it sounds like what I was kind of worried about is that some people would be subsidizing others. Sounds like we're not going that route. We're going to be using the late fees for something good. Yeah, and I want to apologize because that is what I said in my introduction to the solution portion. I just didn't end up amending that sentence. No worries. Okay, yeah, I like the idea that we would be putting our late fees back into something that's good for our community. Cool. Council Member O'Brien? Thank you, Mayor. So I do commend you, Council Member Hawley, for the spirit of this. I think you're trying to find ways to soften the blow to some of the most vulnerable members of our community, and that was really why I think we wanted to revisit the 180% increase in sewer rates and try to find some ways to do just that to soften the blow.

So I think if this was part of a broader comprehensive effort to really look at which staff is going to do, they're going to bring us back that report. If we want to include that as part of that report, I would support that. But absent that, I think it would be a little premature and piecemeal to do that without that other comprehensive effort, in my opinion. Council Member Winslow? Just agreeing with Council Member O'Brien in that I think that this is a thing that should be rolled in with the overall sewer rate increase we're doing. I think this is the way that we got to talk about it was bringing it up this way. But because we are looking at significantly re-evaluating our sewer rates overall, that this should be a component of that to alleviate some of the worst impacts and what would certainly lead to increased homelessness in our community, in particular thinking like seniors on fixed incomes that are also facing increases in rents and mobile home parks, and such.

And also there's a lot of different directions to go, and I don't know how many. I actually think that for care program eligibility and PG&E, I think it's really high here. It's like probably somewhere north of 30% of Chico that qualifies for that. So we'd have to consider all that, and that requires some more staff input and stuff. And so I think directing staff to kind of come back with some options or recommendations in the broader sewer rate study that we're revisiting already in a month or less, that's the way we should go. And sorry, just to address Council Member O'Brien's comment, I hear you on the piecemeal portion, and that's exactly why I agendized this now, because I did hear from staff that it would likely be administratively easier to do it in conjunction with this new sewer fee update rather than multiple years after that moves forward.

So this is trying to work with staff to make it as little burdensome as possible. All right. How many speakers do we have? We do not have any. Can I just clarify real quick? So it sounds like if we were to discuss this tonight and move it forward, it could be rolled into our general sewer fee update. Cool. Great. Just clarifying. Thanks. Sorry, I was just checking to see if we had any speakers. No speakers tonight. No speakers. Okay. So, Council Member Hawley, would you like to make a motion since it's your item? Not to put any staff on the spot, but I did want to give an opportunity to make any clarifications based upon what I've said this far. Okay. No, we can include those considerations.

Okay. Some of the information. If that's the council's direction. Council Member van Overbeek. Yeah, we keep layering tasks onto the staff. That's kind of point number one. Point number two is we need to raise $135 million in the next five years to cover the capital costs, the various costs related to upgrading the sewer system. And we can borrow some of that money or we can do it all with cash. I think we decided we're not going to do it all with cash because nobody believes, or I don't believe that 180% increase is a palatable increase. But the idea that we're going to use bad debt, people who haven't paid as a way to fund this, is we need to fix the collection problem. That's a separate issue.

But the reality is if we allow a certain group of people to pay less, that means there's another group of people that has to pay more. That's the simple arithmetic of it, and there's no free lunch. So I think it's a very bad idea. All right. With that, I will make a motion that the city council pursue the creation of a need-based rate program formulated with staff guidance regarding eligibility criteria and whatever criteria that will be applied to qualifying customer bills. So in short, continue this conversation. Well, okay. Can you restate that? Because it sounded like you're saying to create the program, not to have staff bringing back more information on the program. So sorry, can you just restate that?

Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that. I don't think I said it very eloquently. I'll make a motion that council direct staff to return back to council with some guidance on eligibility criteria and implementation of a need-based rate program for our sewer fee. I'll second that motion. And that would come back with the conversation of the greater sewer, or shortly thereafter. I don't know that it would necessarily come back coupled with the sewer fee increase. I just, I've received feedback that these moving forward in conjunction would be simpler than it coming back at a later point. Okay. Council Member Goldstein. First, did we have any public speakers? No. I wasn't looking. Okay. Oh, surprising. Okay.

But also, maybe staff can confirm that if they're able, if that's a feasible thing, that this could come back with the staff, the general staff recommendations. Okay. See a nod. Council Member O'Brien. Thank you. So I'm a little confused. Are we then, are we combining this with the comprehensive plan that we're looking at all the sewer rates? Is this a standalone? I'm still unclear on what we're, what the motion says. I mean, well, it can't really be coupled with the exact sewer fee rate increase. We haven't taken action on that. That's on this agenda still. We don't know where that's going to go. All I'm saying is we can continue the conversation with staff that we will discuss the eligibility criteria for low-income and fixed-income individuals for a program that is need-based.

So I hear that as just getting more information later down the road on what it would look like. If it truly is just getting more information, that's fine. I think it is part of the broader conversation because one affects the other, and we have to know what the numbers are. So that's fine if it wants to come back, needs to come back, or does come back in different meetings. But the reality is it's all coupled. It is something that we need to look at comprehensively. But if we want to do that standalone, it's not that big of a deal to me. But ultimately, we've got to look at it all comprehensively. Yeah, let me explain it this way. If there was no sewer fee increase happening right now, nothing was changing with that.

I think a municipality could still make a response to a community need for implementing more need-based rate programs. So I see what you're saying. The reality is we're going to have to do something. I don't know exactly what that something is right now, but it is going to be part and parcel of the broader conversation. But I hear what you're saying. Vice Mayor Bennett. So I'm going to ask you, and it's entirely up to you, to delay or postpone this conversation until the June 16th meeting, at which time we're going to take a look at things. I'm going to have to respectfully decline that request. I really feel strongly that now is the best time for this. And I'll keep my motion on the floor. This wouldn't be coming back.

Council Member Winslow. I just want to say whether it's the exact same agenda item rolled in or on the same time, that would be ideal because we'll have a full sewer discussion. But I think that we just want more than an hour of staff analysis in order to have a more sophisticated discussion of this and try to make a decision the next time we discuss it. Council Member Goldstein. I guess similarly, my impression is that if we direct staff to bring back guidance, that it would come back if June 16th is when we're looking at the next sewer fee update discussion, that it would come back then. So it sounds like that's basically what's going to happen regardless. Can we confirm that? Is that accurate?

Could staff confirm that this will come back in a month with the rest of the sewer fee update discussion? Yeah, we can include that. As mentioned, we're already coming back at the June 16th meeting for the sewer rate considerations. Okay. And it sounds like there's some discussion of whether this will be the same agenda item or a different one on that agenda. Does it matter? Do we care? It should be a different one. Okay. Mark says it'll be a different one. Because one is a 218 process. The other is not. Okay, fair. But all the public commenters will be there and be able to comment on that. Mark your calendars. Yeah. So you are accepting Council Vice Mayor Bennett's allowing it to come back on the 16th.

I'm sorry. I think I misunderstood that he was requesting. We delay this moving forward until that point. Yeah, I interpreted that as him requesting that we table the motion. Oh, yeah. Which is different than directing staff to come back. Yeah, so I think we're ready for a vote. Yep. Got a motion and a second. And that is without it coming back on June 16th or coupled with the discussion on the 16th? But as its own item. But on the 16th, right? Yes. Okay. Okay. As its own item. Got it. With more information. Okay. Council Member Goldstein? Yes. Council Member Hawley? Yes. Council Member O'Brien? With those changes, yes. Council Member van Overbeek? No. Council Member Winslow? Yes. Vice Mayor Bennett?

No. Mayor Reynolds? Aye. Carries 5-2. Council Member van Overbeek's request to talk about Bidwell Mansion. Can you hit your speaker when you have a minute, too? So, I think we all remember the night that Bidwell Mansion burned. It was a tragic situation. There's senseless vandalism. The Bidwell Mansion was a real icon, symbol of Chico's history. You know, whenever people would come to town, it's one of the first places you would take them. It was also a great example of architecture from that era. At any rate, even though the state owns it as part of a state historic park, it is a civic or was a civic asset. The state was responsible for managing it. And because they did such a lousy job and didn't have adequate security, the thing burned down.

And they have a responsibility to rebuild it. That is my view. However, I think it's very important at this stage in the process where they're trying to decide what to do, that the council, as the elected representatives and citizens of Chico, express its will and let the state know what it is we would like to have happen there. And I think we can discuss what the options are. One option is to rebuild it. Second option is not to rebuild it. And the third option is to rebuild it, but with some other aspects. But maybe there's some other options. I'll throw it open. Anybody have any questions or throw it open? I have a question. Sorry, Mayor Reynolds, did anyone hit the button? Okay. Yeah, I was just surprised not to see you at the November 14th stakeholder collection.

Collection feedback session. Did you go to any of the pop-up events that California State Parks hosted? I'm asking for the council to express its will on where we should go with the Bidwell Mansion. Okay. Right. Any other questions for Councilmember van Overbeek? Councilmember O'Brien? Yeah, so I think maybe it would be helpful to spend a little bit of time. And maybe it's even premature for this because of some of the dynamics at play. But having State Parks coming and actually presenting to us again, I think would be helpful as part of that conversation. Councilmember van Overbeek? So if you're in agreement, I think that would be a good way for us to get more information. Absolutely. Councilmember Winslow?

It seems like there's a lot of new information. They had like a report that analyzed the structural integrity and what's left or what's not left. And kind of at least got like a gist of the different costs. Which is also like a big factor in the equation is how much money do we have, right? I mean people ask me this like six months ago or like a long time ago. And I'm like I don't know what we can do because I don't know how much money we have. That's a big part of the equation. But we've had a little conversation about like the idea of using the structure, whether you rebuild it as a full replica, stabilize ruins or something like that. But then also including some of the other space on the site and you've discussed using like a Machupta Village site.

I think you were in the newspaper talking about it too. I think those are really neat ideas. And I think if the council had like enough kind of like we had a similar opinion, we felt like people that come to city council meetings have a similar opinion than us weighing in makes sense. In any case, hearing more of that more recent information would be great because I have not been able to go through it all myself. I've mostly just read the enterprise record. So the state should pay for it because it was their property, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Point number one. For sure, yeah, but how much? Point number two is whatever structural state it's in now doesn't matter. It needs to be reconstructed.

And if we can reuse some of the existing structure, that's great. And if we have to rebuild it from scratch, that's fine too. And so I remind people that there are 21 missions in California, 19 of them had been completely just basically destroyed. They were made out of adobe, so they melt if you don't put paint on them. And between about 1905 and 1925, there was a big push to restore these missions. And so when you go visit them, I've visited most of them. You don't know whether it's original or not because it doesn't matter. It represents a – they've done a great job of faithfully representing what they look like and felt like. And we can do the same thing with Bidwell Mansion. Before they started the remodel that they were working on when it burned down, they did a 3D mapping of the inside and the outside.

We have exact as built for that structure, which is one of the good things. Anyway, so yeah, it doesn't matter. What matters is that we have a new creation of 4.4? Council Member Goldstein. Well, I support the idea that the city has say in what goes on within our city and at this state historic park and the idea of the state historic park paying for it. I think we might have some different feelings about what exactly becomes of the site. I have my own thoughts, but I don't know that we represent everybody in the city super well right now. So I'm glad that the state historic park is doing their community outreach and their engagement sessions, which Council Member Hawley mentioned. I think those will be more fruitful for getting a wider perspective on this site.

And yeah, I wouldn't want us to make any decisions on this without more information presented to us, at least from state parks. My initial thought on the idea of fully rebuilding the mansion is that's going to cost a lot regardless of who pays for it. And my gut reaction is my constituents in my district would probably rather that we repave Humboldt Avenue or something. I know it's not the same pot of money, but I just don't know that the optics of that would look great for some of our constituents. But we'll talk more. It would cost less than the bike bridge. All right. I don't know. Irreplaceable. Do we have no speakers, correct? No. No. Okay. So does somebody have a motion? So it's okay. I'll make a motion to have state parks come and give a update and presentation on the status of the Bidwell Mansion and allow us to ask some questions and look at what this actually could become.

You okay with that, Council Member Reynolds? Yeah, I second that. That's great. All right. Thank you. And I've got Council Member Hollywood next to speak. Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. I strongly feel that this is adjacent to when we recently heard of one of our commissions wanting to have oversight of a mural that was proposed downtown and that commission wanting to have a say in what it looked like and what theme it adhered to. We're getting out of our job description here. This really is a state jurisdiction, and although I think it's important that we were elected to represent the people of Chico and that the people of Chico and our body should have a say in this, I think that this state has really adequately created an avenue for us to give our input already, and I would be more inclined to support this if I saw the rest of my colleagues interacting with those sessions.

Council Member Winslow? I think that the state parks is doing a great job with community outreach, and us having a discussion on it would complement those efforts. I agree with Council Member Winslow. The state has asked us to give our input, and as the city council, I think we're obligated to give our input. But I do agree it would be great to hear from the state first and see where they are and what they have up their sleeve, and then we could make an intelligent, informed decision. All right. We've got a motion and a second, and I have no more speakers. Okay. 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. Carried. 6-1. All right. Let's take a quick break before we go to our next item.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And kind of, you know, in the United States. you know, you know, a photo, you know, and you're in the and you're in the, you know, and you're in the, you know, and you're in the, you know, and you're in the, you know, you're in the, you know, that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that so that interpretation for this tree. You can often find the kids underneath the canopy, looking at the owl nest that's there, all kinds of stuff. So it's really wonderful that this could become a heritage tree. A lot of the students did come to the Bidwell Park Playground Commission when this was considered there, and they gave an outstanding accolades and a mini presentation to speak to why this tree should be nominated. So again, with the four reasons why it could be considered, this tree is a native oak of minimum 36 inches, and it's actually 67 inches diameter.

I also said it's otherwise unique, mainly because it's on the campus of a school. So you know, the amount of love this tree gets, and just the fact that it's a living laboratory, just to me that makes it otherwise unique. So I think this is really my favorite tree from these three, just because of that connection with the school. And then on to the final candidate. For those that don't recognize this building, 488 East 3rd Street, this is the property fondly known as the Enloe Mansion. To the right there, you can see the tree in question, an American chestnut, sorry, American elm, 95 feet tall, 68 inch diameter. And this tree is another state champion. So this is the largest of its kind in the state of California. Given that a lot of elms have been ravaged by Dutch elm disease, it's really a minor miracle that this tree is still standing. So we're very proud to have this tree here. Those of you that may remember the initial tree canopy at the city plaza, that was the similar species of the large American elm species. And all of those trees eventually had to be removed because of decay and Dutch elm disease. So this tree also has a connection to John Bidwell as well. So just a few more photographs showing it at different seasons. And really, these photographs don't do it justice for how massive this tree is. It really is. So again, looking at the four reasons why this tree would be considered.

This tree is an outstanding specimen of a desirable species, and also of historical interest. So three really great candidates. It's been many years that we've had a new heritage tree inducted into our special club here in Chico. So the final recommendations, myself and the Bidwell Park Playground Commission recommend that City Council approve all of these three trees for consideration to become heritage trees. And that concludes my presentation. And I would be happy to answer any questions that Council has. Thank you, Richie. Thank you, Richie. Fabulous presentation. These look like awesome trees. Hopefully in the future, we can nominate some more trees. I know I've talked to you about a one that I like near me.

And I just wanted to make a little joke. I know that the elm tree at the Enloe Mansion, they call it Elmira. So I was thinking maybe we could call the Magnolia Maggie. And maybe, what's the other one? It's that Amanda way. We could call it Amanda. These are just ideas. You don't have to take them. Maybe. Yes, you are correct. I'm glad you mentioned that the owners of the Bidwell Mansion, Anna and Dustin, yes, they have the fond name Elmira or Elmira for that tree. But yeah, maybe we could make that into a contest that people can come up with a name. Name that tree? Yeah. Do we have the authority to name the trees? Is that what we're given here? I'll let the elementary school kids do that. I'm not including that in my motion.

Yeah. Council Member Winslow. You're not asking us to rank the trees because only one of them is in my district. So I'm great presentation. Thank you. Anybody else? No. All right. Do we have any speakers? We have no speakers. All right. Consider a motion. I will move to approve these nominations. Second. Council Member Goldstein? Yes. Yes. Council Member Hawley? Yes. Council Member O'Brien? Yes. And thank you, Richie. I appreciate the report. Council Member van Overbeek? Yes. Council Member Winslow? Yes. Vice Mayor Bennett? Yes. Mayor Reynolds? I, and I just noticed that you wanted to speak, can go ahead. I'm sorry. Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. The queue's not working quite right. Yeah. Just full disclosure.

I apologize. We really do have some powerful lobby groups in Chico and the children of little Chico Creek Elementary School. People, you know, they killed it. I was out there for the Arbor Day tree planting and they relayed all this information. It's used for the jog-a-thon. They play hand games under there. And yeah, I'm glad we just took the vote because that was a really contentious one, I thought. Wow. That's a very special interest group. Yes. High-end, VIP, exclusive. Those are all the words that come to mind. All right. Thank you. 5.6, policy on disruption of telephone or internet service during a council meeting. And this will be our clerk in elections official, Ms. Debbie Preston. Thank you, council. Sorry, it's not going to be as interesting as the trees. And I do love trees.

But it is something that is important. The Senate Bill 707 was enacted in October of 2025. And it basically amended the Brown Act to include a hybrid version of our council meetings. So starting effective July 1st, we will be integrating Zoom into our meetings so that the citizens will have more access. In addition, the reason this APMP 1010 is really the policy that governs all of our meetings. And that's where we place this information. The bill was specific. We could not adopt this on consent. Had to actually talk about it. So anyway, it needs to be noted that should the technology go down and it be for like an hour or any longer than an hour, then we would need to cancel the meeting and continue it, continue all the items. You cannot conduct a meeting now if your technology goes down. They do give you a little bit of a timeframe in order to fix it. We would work diligently with our service provider. But it is something that they found to be very, very important in order to ensure that the citizens have the opportunity to participate. So I'm open to any questions. It's just basically an amendment. It is mandated by the state and it's included in APMP 1010.

All right. Council Member Winslow. Do you think that North Valley Fiber hooking up this building is going to help us avoid that ever happening? It could. It could. This is just part of the marketing for North Valley Fiber. It's going to be available to hook up here pretty soon. All right. How many speakers do we have? It's not riveting. So now I didn't get any. I find their wording in here kind of confusing. It says we must recess for a minimum of an hour, but then it says we can come back earlier if it's restored. So it just seems like it's right. It's the wording that they did provide us, but it really, if it goes down, we would take a break and hopefully we would fix it within an hour. And if not, we would then continue the meeting.

Could not continue the meeting. We would continue it to a future meeting. Yes. We would take all the items and move them to the next meeting. Gotcha. Okay. Well, I guess we need any other speakers? Move to take a motion. Move to approve. Move. Second. Who was the person who made the motion? Council Member Winslow. Thank you, Council. 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. Thank you. No idea how we would run our meetings without the state telling us what to do. 5.7. Consideration of post-Warren versus the City of Chico options regarding the alternate site, Genesis, and enforcement.

And we have a report from Eric Guffstason, our Assistant City Manager. Thank you, Mayor and Council. All right. This is in presentation. Thank you. Our speaker's loud. We have to adjourn the meeting. Yeah. Sorry. We will fix that microphone. Well, I was, no, I thought it was because it was being grabbed up here and he actually grabbed it down below, so. I know it's. We'll fix it. Yes. I'm not worried about it. It's a little rock. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Okay. I'll go through these pretty quick. So this is the first of likely several discussions we'll have regarding post-warren options, the post-settlement agreement options, and how to maneuver after the settlement agreement terms in January, on January 14th of 2027.

So just a quick overview, we're going to talk briefly about the alternate site, the Genesis Emergency Sheltering Operating Costs and associated grant funding. We're going to review enforcement and some recommended code changes potentially, discuss service resistant individuals, Genesis updated rules, and then we'll seek council direction as the ending slide. So as we all know, the Warren versus City Chico settlement agreement started January 14th, 2022 and expires in about eight months on January 14th, 2027. Settlement agreement required the city to establish the Genesis Emergency Shelter, utilize the tourist shelter as an additional sheltering option, establish the alternate site to accommodate individuals who do not qualify for either of the two options, and then it has to do with the number of animals they have or a portion of their criminal record.

We had to perform individual assessments with multiple documented attempts to offer shelter to individuals during an enforcement operation, and then a pretty robust notification period, including a 17-day notification before any enforcement or cleanup of public spaces can commence. This is an important slide, I think, to review. After expiration, the city will no longer be bound by the specific settlement agreement sheltering requirements and will regain full discretion on how to address encampments and enforce our municipal code provisions. And this is largely due to the Supreme Court's ruling in June of 2024, in the decision in the Grants Pass v. Johnson case that held that enforcement of applicable bans on public space camping does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment, even when no shelter space is available.

Essentially reverse the 2018 Martin v. City of Boise decision, which had previously prohibited cities in the Ninth District, excuse me, the Ninth Circuit, including us, from enforcing anti-camping laws if no shelter beds existed. So we'll jump right into the alternate site. As you know, the alternate site was a surprise from ending negotiations between previous seat attorney and legal services of Northern California. It was never intended to be a long-term solution from staff's perspective. Alternate site lacks necessary infrastructure to support safe and sanitary habitation. Camping or open camping environments create serious public health, environmental and public safety issues, not just for the adjacent property, but for the occupants as well.

And many of the complaints and health and safety issues we received were from occupants authorized to be at the site. Non-service-based camping requires infrastructure, significant staff resources, and many role requirements. So with that said, considering the resources and effort we put into Genesis, tourist shelter, and our outreach and engagement efforts, staff recommend the immediate closure of the alternate site once the settlement agreement terms. Just a couple photos of what it could look like rather quickly. It doesn't look like that now. We've got it reduced down to about five individuals, but without proper supervision, it quickly turns into something like that. To the contrary, Genesis emergency shelter remains an important component to our homeless approach for now.

We feel that with updated rules and requirements, it will likely organically reduce occupancy and thus costs over time. So we're kind of looking for a soft landing here once the settlement agreement terms, if you will. Originally, we were going to bring options to council, just numeric reduction options such as what does this look like reducing it by 50 occupants? What does it look like if we reduce it by 75 occupants? But after lots of discussions, looking at the budget discussions with the site operator, there's many fixed costs associated with operating Genesis, whether there's one person or 200. So we kind of learned that immediate occupancy reductions may not necessarily result in proportional cost savings due to those fixed costs.

So that's why we're taking a different approach and recommending some rule changes and requirements that I think organically over time will reduce occupancy, thus reducing costs. So these are a snapshot of the rules that we're proposing to change post settlement agreement and our site operator, the executive director of the Jesus Center will talk about those shortly in more detail. I wanted to touch on the costs. These are commonly asked questions. This is looking at a full fiscal year where we close the books the last year, fiscal year 24-25. For outreach and engagement, Genesis maintenance staff, those are maintenance workers that maintain the facility. We budgeted about $277,000. We came in at $231,000.

For site operator services, which includes security, three meals per day, laundry service, shower service, site operation service, that's case Management and whatnot, portable restrooms and hand washing stations, we budgeted $4.1 and we came in at $2.9. And then for other miscellaneous costs, utilities, waste Management, Cal Water, internet, and then materials and supplies, we budgeted $335,000 and came in at $358,000. However, we look at, on average, each year in operating Genesis, we're about a 25% to 26% savings compared to budgeted amount. In fiscal year 25-26, the fiscal year we're in currently is trending the same way. With that said, we've been very aggressive at going after grant opportunities to offset Genesis costs, and we've been pretty successful over the last few years.

In 2004, we received an Encampment Resolution Fund grant of about $2.6 million. It was kind of a joint application with the county. $1.5 went to city services, $1.1 to county services. There's a round four, excuse me, round five opportunity. Applications are due in June, end of June. So we intend to continue our efforts and apply for round five as well. We also received a permanent local housing allocation program grant awards the last few years. You can see those numbers there. And then we also received an HHAP grant award of a half a million dollars in fiscal year 24-25, all of which has been used to offset Genesis costs. So just something to know that in order to continue to qualify for grants, the city must comply with Housing First requirements.

And basically that boils down to a no drug testing requirement upon entry. And we can't force mandatory case Management while occupants stay there. However, with the new rules, our site operator is highly confident that we continue, we can continue to meet the Housing First requirements while implementing the rules that we intend or at least that we're recommending to implement. Next item is some possible code changes. So as you know, currently we're mandated of a 17-day notification process when we intend to enforce and clean an area. First, we have to give Legal Services of Northern California a seven-day notification. Once that terms, we give the occupants on the ground a seven-day notification.

That's when we start the five attempts in the outreach and engagement process with occupants on the ground. Once that 14 days total term expires and we're into a 72-hour notification. So 17 days total before we can enforce and clean. Currently, Chico Mini Code 9.20055 requires at least a 24-hour notice before personal property is removed from public areas. So we recommend keeping that code section intact. We might want to consider a code addition to require a zero-hour notice in high-fire danger areas during high-fire danger times. We kind of felt since this is the initial discussion at the council level publicly for post-warrant options, code changes might be a lot to bite off tonight. So staff suggestion is for council to provide direction to the city attorney to review related code sections and bring back any recommendations at a future council meeting.

So staff recommend a phased programmatic approach to enforcement. You know, we want to have a process prioritizing sensitive areas, but also working from the center of the city outwardly, likely downtown outwardly. And this is for several reasons. We want to have a programmatic, efficient approach that's sustainable, if you will. Otherwise, we're zigzagging all over the place and it's just not efficient and becomes costly at that point. So we want to have a strategic, programmatic approach, working from the center of town outwardly, post-warren, to attack our enforcement operations. It's also to manage expectations. I think once the settlement agreement terms, there's going to be a high level of expectations to get any public space that's out there cleaned immediately.

And we just simply won't have the bandwidth to do that. So part of this programmatic approach, phased approach, if you will, is to also manage expectations. We want to continue with an O&E process to manage shelter referrals, minimize an unorganized drop-in scenario, and connect with individuals to connect them to the appropriate services that they may need. Also maintains accountability. And we're also able to try to attempt to proactively manage the service-resistant individuals that continue to be out there. Speaking of service-resistant individuals, we kind of recommend a focused approach to those. That's what you see a lot of now. We feel that the service-resistant population out there will likely continue immediately after the settlement agreement terms.

State and county resources such as the care court and conservatorship are still evolving and not quite at the operational level yet. So we recommend forming a high-utilizer service-resistant team. This could be formed with existing target team, O&E and public works O&M resources, so there's no additional costs, no additional staff time associated. It's just kind of honing the approach that we're utilizing now. Excuse me. We'll coordinate across multiple service providers, deploy targeted intervention strategies, improve accountability, reduce repeat offenders, and the overall goal is to clean and sustain Chico's public spaces. This is modeled after Chico PD's focused effort several years ago to really do what they could to address the top 25 individuals with the highest frequencies of arrests in the city, and that program deemed to be very successful.

So we're modeling after that program that Chico PD did several years ago. With that, I would like to hand it over to Ms. Amber Abney-Bass to get in more detail on the proposed rule changes for Genesis. I'm so scared to touch this. Good evening. Great. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, thank you for being here for the work you guys are doing, and I would just say that I think we should talk about trees at some point in every meeting. This is very therapeutic in here, so that was nice. Is, Eric, how do I get this up? That's weird. I oppose mine. There we go. Thank you. All right. So we're going to go over the proposed renovation and operational updates that we have put together based on the last four and a half years of operations out at Genesis.

Where's the mouse? Oh, the other mouse. Sorry. I've got it. Okay. All right. So the goals really tonight of this presentation, I just want to be really clear about the things that we've sort of considered, is that our goal really is to improve the quality of life for our entire community. We recognize the intersection between the housed and the unhoused population, and so we are just wanting to make sure that we have all of those groups in consideration. We also want to improve safety and occupant accountability at the site. We'd like to see improved outcomes for the folks that are choosing into shelter, and we'd also like to reduce barriers to entry for people who are interested in seeking shelter.

Before we do that, I think it would be really helpful to just go over really what's gone on over the last four and a half years out at Genesis and through the outreach and engagement process that the Warren v. Chico case really brought to us. From there, we have actually assessed 783 individuals camping and public spaces in the city of Chico. From those folks, 758 of those people did accept a Genesis shelter placement. And again, April 25, 2022, was our day one. 58% of the people who have come into shelter are identified as chronically homeless. There's a really specific definition of chronically homeless down at the bottom here as defined by HUD, but it will just tell you that these are folks who have lived in a place not meant for human habitation for at least 12 months, either continuously or across four-plus occasions within the last three years.

So I just want to make sure that we are all understanding what that portion of this population means. 67% of those that have come into Genesis report living with a disability. 33% of those are physical. 14% are developmental. 37% report having a mental health disorder. 51% report having a substance use disorder. Just to break that down, 68% of those folks say that that is related to drug use. 6% to alcohol. And then 24% of those folks are having both drugs and alcohol-related addictions. We've also served 19 veterans at this site. One of the things I would like to add in here is that should have been here that was missing, but is really critical as far as the success of the shelter, is that we have had 46 people move into permanent housing during the four and a half years of operations out of Genesis.

So despite all of these things that you see here, there are still folks out there that are engaging and showing, even with this complicated composition, that change is possible and that there are some healing properties of that space to help people get to the next space in life, which is something I think that we should all celebrate. There's often questions around who is utilizing Genesis. What does the typical person look like? I like to include this to let folks know. Probably some of the disturbing data on this slide are the number of people that are 55 or older. I think the other thing about this slide lets us know that there is a variety of interventions that have to be considered when you are sheltering such a large span of people.

So of the folks that are in there, we are seeing that from 18 to, we've had several people in their 80s. That is the broad age of people that are accessing shelter out at Genesis. 45 years of age and older is just about 40% of this population. So as we sit here tonight, we have 219 people that are currently in shelter at Genesis. So when we're contemplating what comes next with this site, I think it's helpful to just imagine that there are 219 individuals that are out there. 53% of those units out, 53 of those units out there are shared units. We have 10 available today. Also, the length of stay for the folks that have come into shelter. We are seeing, really it's interesting that there's a balance.

We've got the same percentage of folks that have been out there for less than six months. But we have 28% of people that have been there more than three years at this point. When you look at these numbers, nearly 40, 40, 50, over 60% of these people have been out there now in excess of one year. So we've got folks that are going out there that are staying. But as we're seeing, their outcomes, their exits to housing are still being interrupted by some of the disruptions of the site, some of the ways that we have been restricted through the process of Warren v. Chico in the five-year compliance period. So with that, my hope is that you understand or that you recognize that this is why renovation and policy updates are needed.

If I specifically consider the different areas that I'm trying to focus, we really have unauthorized access and security concerns at the site. We have storage and fire safety compliance issues. I know that this group knows that we have had fires out there. But it has been an issue. There have been a couple of fire code changes that have come into play since the opening of the site that I think were not contemplated at the opening. For those of you that remember, we opened operations. And on the Thursday following that, we actually had a hearing where personal property and the sort of the restriction of property, personal property was a very large topic of conversation. We were not successful in restricting those items in the manner that we had hoped to.

And so it is from that we have storage and fire safety issues, including rodents and all other sorts of things that I will spare you the details of. We also have a limited accountability structure. It pains me to say that, but I think it's really the truth. We've had our hands tied in some ways out there that I would say that are not consistent with providing social services in a way that the Jesus Center historically has. By contrast, in the other two shelters that the Jesus Center operates, last year we had 250 people move into shelter with less number of available beds than Genesis offers. So we do believe that an accountability structure does result in improved outcomes for people. We also have some neighborhood impacts.

Some of the ways that we had, you know, attempted again in that hearing to mitigate some of those concerns. It is a very important commerce area for our city. We also have some neighbors that have some important infrastructure, obviously Cal Water being one of those. And so we would like to see where there is some tie-in between, you know, utilizing this site that is reliant upon incredible city and public resources and having some reciprocity and just being comfortable with that tension. Because I think it does make a difference in our community. And then, of course, the last one being the need for improved safety and operations. So these are our primary goals that we hope to achieve. We do hope to increase utilization of available shelter units.

We have seen some ebbing and flowing of those. And we want improved accountability and occupant expectations. Again, we want to strengthen our relationship with neighbors. We would like to lower barriers to entry. We have had some feedback. When Judge Newman came out in June of 2022, just six weeks, I believe it was, after opening, the non-enforcement shelter list was, at that point, about 400 calls behind. It was incredibly impacted. So I am interested. I don't have all the answers for that. But I am interested in looking at ways in which, for folks that are wanting to enter shelter, that it is not nearly as cumbersome or it doesn't take as long to be able to get those folks in. I think when people express an interest and a desire, it's important to us that we create a good space and opportunity for them to be able to come in.

And, again, we do want to improve exits to housing and independence. I want to just highlight that one of the grant opportunities that Assistant City Manager Gustafson talked about was the IRF grant. And IRF III allowed for a significant investment in Oleander housing. And 11 of the people that were housed all went into that housing program. So that connection between some of these other grant programs is also critical and tells a story in terms of the exits from the program. And, again, wanting to enhance safety and operational effectiveness. I think that we all have our eyes on that. Going a little bit deeper into that. That's really small. I apologize. But, again, trying to incorporate ways for self-referral into the shelter in a way to just sort of respond to some of the frustration and bottlenecking around the non-enforcement calls for shelter.

Strengthening safety and accountability. This is really where we start getting into a little bit of the weeds. I would like to have some improved fencing and create a much better controlled access point into the site. After four and a half years, it has become very clear that there are methods in which people use to distract and to get in. Oftentimes, we've got folks that are coming around the backside entering the shelter. We just really need to make some improvements so that there's really just a streamlined single point of entry to be able to get into the site. One that makes it really difficult to avoid that entrance where we have got security and people doing personal property controls.

I would also like to include allowing metal detectors to be used at the site there near the shelter entrance. We have growing concerns around inoperative bicycles. The current settlement agreement says a bicycle, but it does not dictate whether or not that bicycle be operative or not. And I would like to clarify that it needs to be operative. I would also like to have zero tolerance for violating fire code. Fortunately, the night that we did have the fire that we had, there was a very small amount of personal property. Nonetheless, it did result in damage to several units. And I had a very quick responding staff. We had actually very recent to that incident undergone fire extinguisher training, annual training again with the Chico City Fire Department.

And so I think that that proved helpful. We'd also like to clarify that there are no replica guns that are allowed on site. We have had that scare several times. As Mr. Gustafson said, being a Housing First compliant site means that you cannot connect sobriety with shelter. But what we can do is that if we discover that somebody is using or drinking on site, that we would like the authority to be able to immediately depart them from the shelter. Modified unit inspections. My staff is currently doing probably in the range to three to 340 unit inspections a month. And so the way that process works is weekly for the first six weeks that people come in, those units are inspected, and then after they go through that first six weeks with no violations, those are converted to monthly.

I think it is important that we have our eyes on what is going on for those first few weeks. We are primarily looking for any ways that people are tampering with those units that would lead to safety or health concerns. So we're looking for smoke detectors, which tends to be the single largest reason that people fail their unit inspections, and I don't need to explain the risk associated with that. But I would like to reduce from six weeks down to four weeks. I think we have found that if people are not compliant in the first four weeks, odds are they're not going to be for two more. And so I think my staff would be greatly appreciative of limiting that to four weeks. Again, tampering with a smoke detector, I do think that that rises to the level of an immediate departure from shelter.

As I mentioned, we have over 200 people living at that site that we are responsible for and a large staff. We have learned that those units, when they go up, they go up quickly, and it's not always super obvious from the outside. We learned that in some of those exercises where we just wanted to see how those units would respond to fire. We also have a process right now where people can actually fail their unit inspection four times before they are departed from the site. That feels a bit generous to me. My request would be that we reduce that down to two failed inspections. Just to sort of clarify that, when somebody fails an inspection, my staff is out there. Two members of my staff conduct every inspection because we do want to limit the idea, the opportunity, or the perception that my staff is out there doing something that they shouldn't be doing, that they're not accurately capturing what's going on.

With every failed unit inspections, we also photograph every single one of those. And so we have had, over the course of the four and a half years, where we've had occupants who have failed inspections, we have received requests for documentation and files and been asked to provide those. And with all of those, we are able to show the actual images that were health and safety code violations, large amounts of personal property that are leading to, you know, pest problems, health and safety, blocking of fire exits, and all those sorts of things. And so I feel like giving people two opportunities to remedy failed inspections is sufficient. I'd also like to incorporate a curfew. I think that we are, again, we are not new to sheltering.

The Jesus Center has been doing this for a very long time. We already have policies and processes in place to accommodate working, people that are getting, you know, going to school, people that are in the process of receiving medical care. And we also have an approved pass process that says, all right, you know, if you need to leave, if you need to come back at different times that are not compliant with an 8 o'clock curfew, we have a way in which to accommodate folks for that. We're not trying to micromanage people, but it's important to the safety and the security of the site that we know who's there and we know when they're there for a bunch of reasons. We also currently do not have a nightly attendance requirement, another unique feature to Genesis that is not currently offered at any other emergency shelter.

For the first reason being is that we have no lack of need for shelter in our community. The idea that we had a 72-hour currently, as it sits, people have 72 hours that they need. For every 72 hours, they need to be back to the site. So what happens is we're looking at that and we're seeing that Bob left and on Thursday, he was there at 2 o'clock. Bob could have technically been there for 10 minutes and I have to continue to hold his unit for him for 72 more hours. If Bob comes back and checks in, there is currently no mandatory requirement that somebody be sleeping, staying, and utilizing that unit. We have had several occasions where we have folks that have been really leveraging their shelter space into a free version of storage.

And those have been really uncomfortable conversations, but that is not an appropriate use of the resources. And again, we have no shortage of need. And requiring people return to the shelter at night, again with the PASS process in place, we have a PASS process that we've used for years at the Jesus Center that includes both overnight or three-day passes. Those are all things where, you know, people are proactive, they schedule that, they let us know, and we work together. Again, not intended to micromanage people. I'd also like to incorporate a 12-month maximum length of stay at the site. One of the things that we have seen, and I've got it in a later slide, you will better understand sort of what the composition of the occupants at this site has been over the last four and a half years.

This site is not intended to be a destination. It is intended to provide resources and supports so that people who are experiencing homelessness can come in. They have access to county services that include behavioral health. They include housing navigation, you know, general assistance. There are a plethora of services there, NA, AA, case Management. We have several unique teams from Butte County Behavioral Health that are coming out and doing outreach. The goal here is during that length of time that people are engaging, that we're understanding and learning what's going on with the person so that we can address what their homeless issues are and work with them to be able to solve those things so that we can have improved outcomes.

I already mentioned this, but we would like to update external visitor areas to mitigate visitor issues. We have folks that arrive on site and then don't leave because they end up in spaces that we, even though we have as restricted sites, we currently just have visiting, the visiting section being underneath the hospitality tent. But it's difficult to, you know, keep eyes on all of these folks. We're not there to babysit them. You know, these are grown adults, but it has proven that we do need to figure out a way to have some external visiting areas, perhaps just outside of that perimeter of the fence that I've mentioned. We have had an issue, and I don't want to suggest that Chico Police Department and that Animal Services have not been responsive, but we continue to just have some challenge policy-wise around how Animal Services can respond to abandoned animals at the site.

And so I would like some direction on that and some support because we have folks that leave the site, even though it is against the rules, to leave your animal and go wherever it is you're going. They leave, and then my staff is left to be concerned about people's pets. We do have a way that if a pet owner has business off-site, we do have a way that they can sign over and somebody else during that time of them being gone, during the day, it is not intended to be overnight, can sort of assume responsibility for those pets. We see more and more often that that has created an opportunity for people to leave off-site for sometimes days at a time. And then those folks get tired of taking care of somebody else's animal.

And so we did have an incident, actually we've had it twice, where a member of my staff has become concerned. There's an animal that sounds as though it's distressed in a unit. They go in to respond to that, and they have been bitten by dogs. So the concerns, totally respect and appreciate, but I think we just need to figure out a way that when people do abandon animals on site, I don't think any of us are in support of the opportunity to do that. But we just do need to figure out how we can close that gap. Improved neighborhood expectations. I talked about this already. Negatively impacting neighbors, loitering. It happens down the driveway. It happens in the beautiful grassy area of the mini storage owner right there outside of our property.

It happens across the street. We hear about these things over in the Costco area. You know, when the Jesus Center was on Park Avenue, a condition of our use permit was to walk the neighborhood, be responsive to those challenges, but also to hold people accountable for those behaviors. And I'm not talking about just sitting down and enjoying a rest on a cool spring day. It's the accumulation of stuff. It's the interruption of sidewalks, the interruption of, you know, bus shelters and all of those sorts of things. And to our neighboring businesses, again, it's an important area of commerce in the city. So I would just like to see us be able to connect some of that egregious behavior to disruptions in their ability to receive services.

I would also like to remove the amnesty box. The amnesty box was an interesting concept that we adopted from a shelter down in the Orange County area. And while it has been helpful in some regards, it has been difficult in others. For instance, people bringing in chainsaws. Obviously, they can't take those things to their units. But the amnesty box was really intended to be a way to acclimate people to a housing-first environment where we recognize that they could be using or drinking things that are not illegal but are just restricted from the site. The amnesty box has grown beyond control. And I will gladly give Mr. Slater back the Connex box or the little knock box that he donated to the site as a result.

We also have an ongoing problem with parking. That looks a couple of ways. We would like to—we have limited parking. And we would like to prioritize those parking spots for occupants that are working, going to school, or who are disabled. We would also like to limit vehicles on site to vehicles that are actually operative and registered. We like to call those road-ready. This is not a graveyard for a vehicle that has not been registered since 1984. And despite our efforts to do that, there has been some challenges around that process. So we would like to say that parking on site is limited to those types of things. I would also like to update the departure process. Part of the settlement agreement, the shelter expectations, says that currently we have a four-step process.

So we give people a verbal warning, a first written, a second written, and then the fourth time they do something in a row, then we have the authority to depart them from the shelter. I want to be really clear. If it's a health and state—like, if it's a really dangerous situation, we definitely have the authority to depart somebody. But we're talking about some of the other things here. And I just honestly feel like four attempts to correct a behavior is, again, I think it's overgenerous. It's not leading to accountability, and it's not leading to some of the site control and improved outcomes that we're really—the goal here is to help people become housing-ready. And so the idea is that we are trying to address and support people correcting behaviors that will not be acceptable when they get into housing.

We don't want to see people slide back and come back into shelter. So these are some of the things that we can do during their stay. We would also like, as part of their intake, to do a housing support plan. For those of you who are not familiar with the housing support plan, this is just a document that lets a case manager know during intake, these are my barriers to housing, these are my housing preferences, these are sort of the things that have happened to me, this is my income. The great thing about having that information is that as opportunities come around, then our case Management staff can be proactive and go share those housing opportunities with folks. As Mr. Gustafson mentioned, requiring case Management is not compatible with housing-first practices, but this is a way to be trauma-informed, which is what the site is, and to learn the first time we sit down with people what's really going with all of these different elements in their life currently.

We don't have to continue to ask them. We do not require ongoing case Management because I think it is important, as we saw, the resources that we have leveraged. Those are state and federal dollars, and those currently are still adhering to housing-first practices. It has been a little bit of a struggle for our staff, but I know that work is being done out there. This is a great way just to organize that so that when a person is ready to come in and have another conversation, sort of all that hard, deep stuff has already been spoken, and I think it makes it a little bit easier for them to come in the next few times. Again, the goals, improving occupant outcomes. We believe that doing the housing plan at program intake will make people, you know, we're getting people to connect.

We're learning about them. We are hearing and seeing their story as a person and their circumstances, and not just that they are a person experiencing homelessness in the city of Chico. We're also hoping to use that to focus on stabilization and independence. We want to connect people to employment. The Jesus Center has an incredibly robust job readiness program that includes paid internships for folks who are interested in coming back into the workforce. You saw from that demographic slide there are a lot of people in here that are still of working age. Last week we hosted our biweekly open house for our job readiness program, and we had 12 individuals come in, sign up for Cal Jobs, and are pursuing positions, paid positions in that work readiness program.

So there is an appetite for it. We would like to see increased exits to permanent housing and, again, that long-term stability. And our community relationships are really about creating positive impacts for the city of Chico. You know, as taxpayers, as city council members, as community members, donors that support a lot of the philanthropic efforts in the city of Chico, I know that everybody wants positive program impacts, and I think that this can exist in this intersection of grace and truth. We have to have compassion, but we have to create an environment where people are going to make more accountable decisions and have changed lives. That's what I want. I feel like I've said all of this, so I'll spare you guys these four bullets.

Any questions? All right. Council Member Hawley. Thank you, Mr. Gustafson and Mrs. Avni Bass for the really thorough presentation. I remember at that Cal City's event hosted in Chico, you had a very similar one, always so thorough and informative. Really, my question pertains to the alternate site. So this, well, I suppose you both have been very involved in that, especially since the improvements have been made. But I am curious for the small number of individuals who are still living there. I know some of the reasons they were living there were not qualifying for the Genesis site, such as having more than two animals and other, like, previous criminal history designations that would prevent them from being housed there.

I am curious for the small number of individuals who are at the alternate site. Do we have any plan forward for, like, a city site that they could be housed at? Or is that just too into the nitty-gritty at the moment? Well, let me share a little bit. I know a lot of information about all five of those individuals. And I will just say that one of the individuals out there was assessed and has an opportunity to go to Genesis. There are some mental health challenges that make it so that that's not something, at least at this time, that they're comfortable with. But they have been doing an incredible amount of work and engagement. My case Management team is out there two days a week right now. They have been for many, many months.

They are seeing engagement from everybody that is out at the alternate site. So we have one person that is working on that. We have two of those campsites. One is a shared site. One is an individual. They all do exceed the number of animals that we could house in Genesis. The other one, we do have one individual out there that would be somebody that I would consider difficult to place because of some of the justice-involved issues surrounding that person. But that's really the composition of the folks that are out there. I think there are programs for that one individual. We have shared resources. We have let them know. There are programs both in-county and out-of-county that that person can go to.

But our goal through that intensive case Management and being on that site twice a week, even though there are only five individuals out there, has that exact goal in mind. So that when we get to a date, should it be decided to close that site, our goal is to be able to have all of those people on the road to what will come next for them, as opposed to just turning off the lights and wishing them well. Thank you. It sounds like that effort is continuous and will be continuous until January. Thank you. Council Member Winslow? Well, that was a lot, Amber. Yeah, clearly you did a lot. And I want to say that this dealing with homelessness since the campfire in Chico and even before has been such a mess.

And the settlement agreement has been such a mess in a lot of ways. But the fact that on our side, providing this service in this shelter has not so much is so much due to the fact that you provided this balanced leadership, be able to come in, bring in all these things like a deep level of recommendations for reevaluating things. I think a lot of these just would be in place if we were able to apply the common sense developed after a small amount of experience managing the site. But unfortunately, every rule was determined before there was any experience and before you were even in the picture, I believe. And I think that everything you brought up makes a lot of sense. I think that before we say yes to just everything that was in these slides, it's probably a good committee discussion.

And I'd like to make sure that there's some other voices in the room that weigh in on the potential adverse impacts of maybe some of these things. But I think it all made a lot of sense to me. And some of these things are like critically necessary in the short term as soon as we can. But I do want to ask like the most difficult question I can think of that I don't know the answer for. We talked about, Mr. Gustafson presented about the PD having a focus on service resistant individuals and this like allocation of services to try to like create a situation, that small minority of the overall homeless population that causes the majority of issues on the street. And so there's rightfully so like a lot of emphasis on service resistant and that small amount of population.

But if we install a lot more rules and are able to enforce them there and we end up with people who are departed from services, then what do we do about the departed individuals who are not resistant to services per se, but no longer qualify for any of the services that exist in town? Like how, and because we're talking about closing the alternate site and honestly, that's what it's been. It's been the last resort place for people that don't go anywhere else. And I would love for you to weigh in, but I think this is more of a question for like our city staff to determine like how, what do we do with people that don't have any place to go because of their inability to get along or any other reason?

Yeah. Yeah. I'll just add that, you know, I think that's the kind of the intent of that high utilizer service resistant team to address those, you know, the service resistant individuals, but also those that, you know, for behavioral reasons or whatever the case may be are departed from Genesis that are still around. I mean, we're going to come across them during enforcement operation. So I think, you know, that they'd be ideal candidates for this team to really spend some or deploy some special attention to, to try to find them a path forward. So the same note, you know, we've deployed a whole lot of compassion and I think there really has to be a time for accountability. And I think it's those folks that continue to behave bad and break the rules, don't want to get with the program.

There's going to have to be some accountability associated with it too. I mean, in terms of enforcing anti-camping laws at that point, we're talking about trying to send them to jail. Like, will the jail even hold them? You know, all of these folks have different stories, different reasons for being in the position they're in. So I don't think we could give a blanket answer. You know, that's where target team really shines because they typically know these folks on a first name basis and have a pretty good understanding of what their issues are and can at least try to get them moving in the correct direction. So I don't think we could sit here and give you a, you know, a blanket answer. There isn't a blanket answer.

Right. Yeah. That's probably the fairest answer to the question. And, you know, to quote that Supreme Court ruling about a multifaceted approach, which is just to say that we don't know exactly what we'll do. But I mean, maybe the best thing to do is avoid any blanket statements. I think I would just add just, just a slightly, you know, this, this concern around service resistant came up in every single homeless ad hoc committee meeting. And I was at all of them. And I think the thing is, is that it is a very nuanced term because there are people that are service resistant at the moment. And, you know, Officer Jukestock made a really interesting distinction at one of those meetings where he said that it was contaminated thinking, or it was contaminated thinking contributes to those sorts of spaces for people.

Right. And I will just share that, you know, at 10 o'clock this morning, I interviewed somebody that I would have considered service resistant for five years when we were on Park Avenue. And so I think the thing is, is that there is value in continuing to show up, continuing to have the conversations, nurturing some accountability. We're not saying never. We're just saying not right now. We are in the business of holding people accountable and having to remove them from shelter when their behavior is not compatible with a shared living environment. And so I don't think one excludes the other. I think that you just, it's a very, it's a very careful conversation to have. And I appreciate what city manager Sorensen says, where that is a unique skill set of target by the, you know, just because they have the amount of time to invest and to develop relationships.

Brian from the outreach and engagement team is also another great example of that. So I think that just some of those connections breaks down some of those barriers. You learn what's going on. And there is a difference between somebody who is just saying no way and who just doesn't have the ability to imagine something different for themselves. So I just want to make sure that we're not painting all of this population with a broad brush and that we're recognizing that it is a nuanced population. I think that's great. And I appreciate the level of nuance in terms of like what service resistance is within the context of like that person in that moment in time and the city and the continual care that we have.

I don't think that these conversations are exactly where we're going to like hash out, like what, what kind of different shelter option might work for some of those people that when the, when the Genesis is not the place. I think it's something that obviously there's a lot of conversation in the community about. And maybe with some more experience, we'll figure out exactly the best way to get there. But yeah, appreciate it. All right. Any other questions before we go to speakers? No. All right. How many speakers do we have? We have nine. Nine? Right. Three minutes each. Okay. Put it back on. Okay. I will call the first three. And if you could line up, Brandon Slater, followed by Robin McCollum and Charles Withoon.

Brandon Slater. It's coming. Robin McCollum and Charles Withoon. Thank you. Thank you. You could go ahead and line up. Thank you. Oh, I did it below. I know. I would probably not touch it at all. Hello, everybody. Brandon Slater, Chico Chamber of Commerce. We're just here to support this. We're just here to support this. We think that the recommendations that have been put together. We've been talking about homeless stuff for a long time. And the chamber's position on this. And the chamber's position on this is that, you know, Chico is a super compassionate community. We're super generous. We're super generous. But it's time for some accountability. And we would encourage you guys to make these changes and provide some accountability.

We are looking forward to moving this forward. I am also hopeful that this is a 7-0 vote here. I think that we can get there. So I'd like to challenge you all to that. But I think these are some great recommendations. And they're not perfect. But we need to really start, you know, like we believe that the city needs to provide resources and provide options for people. But at the same time, if our community is going to support these folks, that they need to be, they need to have some rules. And they need to be held accountable. Also, I just appreciate all the things that were said by Eric and Amber. So, yeah. Thank you. Bernie, can I ask a question? Just to be clear, the chamber is supporting continued operation of the Genesis Shelter.

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Thank you. I mean, all of the things that we, yeah, we've been talking about that. Got it. Okay. Just to be clear. Thanks. Yep. So Robin McCollum, followed by Charles Withoon, and then Greg Scott. Good evening, councillors. Got lucky on that one. What she said. I think that Genesis and the work that Amber has done is an outstanding example. I think that we need more of those. I speak of it, have been speaking of it in terms of camps. I think the big difference there is just the kind of structures that are provided. Rather than those prefabs, bring what you can or what resources we can pull out of the community somewhere or another. But as far as having rules and supportive involvement of agencies and a plan to move people through and to be successful and so forth, I think that's something we can all agree on.

But when I look around and see the number of homeless people out there, it seems to me that we're missing the largest number. However, we are accommodating a portion. I'm not sure what. The point in time survey has great difficulty actually getting an accurate count. And I think that what we've done so far with the three main shelters, that being Genesis, the Jesus Center, and Tories that I can think of, is probably something like a third, but probably less than half. And that leaves a lot of people out there that are not managed. And when I say managed, it's in the interest of the community as a whole, and it should be acceptable for the homeless people to be able to move into these camps. But to put them in places where they're not likely to, they're not over somebody's backyard fence, where they're not downtown with people tripping on them, where they have access to toilets and so forth.

And we'll bring the shower. If we can bring some more shower to them, that would be good, too. Anyway, I think we need more camps that follows pretty much the model that, if we can manage it, that Amber has accomplished with her work. And I'm very impressed with that. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Charles Wipoon, followed by Greg Scott and Tom Bond. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor, Council, staff. Thank you for this opportunity. Okay. Don't laugh. Just today, after the Action News Now story on North State Shelter Team, I made a phone call to the planning department, and we worked up a new site model at a new location. We have a revised safe spot community that will be working its way through the zoning and the planning departments in the foreseeable future.

We've made the email and the phone call today. I'm mentioning it because, at some point, our program will require the council to direct staff to utilize State Statute 8698. And Google, there's like 12 cities in California that are doing that, utilizing State Statute 8698 that waives a lot of the rules for the emergency shelter requirements. Other towns that have made progress in this, that have reduced the amount of unsheltered homeless include Oakland, Sacramento, Santa Rosa, Orange County, Culver City, San Diego, Sonoma, and Marysville. And the state has had a marked reduction in their homeless population at Chico. Ours has increased. We need every plan we can get our hands on. North State Shelter Team offers Chico a safe spot community of four tiny homes that we will pay the entire budget for.

We have a budget worked out. And this is happening not only in the towns that I mentioned, but also several churches. There's a church in Walnut Creek, in Livermore, in Eugene, in El Cajon, in Hayward, and in Redding, has a program going like the one we proposed to the city of Chico. I wouldn't be here tonight except that we meet with some of the service-resistant people multiple times a week for years. And we have developed a friendship and a trust. And so this four tiny homes might be homes for a couple of the service-resistant type that are such a tough challenge for the current situation. We have a wide variety of homeless people. We need a little bit wider variety of shelter options. I wouldn't be here except Candy died outside not too long ago.

And there's Jan, Lori, Tammy, Leanne, Elaine. That's time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Greg Scott followed by Tom Bond and then Lynn Overholzer. Mayor, counselors, all those were good ideas. I learned as I get older, I don't want to wait another eight months. What are we going to do between now and January? The problem we have, I'll go over a few of them, accumulations of trash and debris, biohazard, animal control violations, dogs off a leash, unvaccinated animals, fire risk, open flames, combustible materials, obstructions of entrances to businesses, sidewalks, public access, obviously property damage, vandalism. And every time we talk about it, and we've talked about it a lot, all we hear is, well, the city can't do anything because of the settlement.

And I just think that's incorrect. The settlement restricts specific types of enforcements, primarily the anti-camping. But it does not eliminate the city's authority, or more importantly, responsibility to address dangerous and harmful conditions. Even during the settlement period, the city retains the independent authority to address the conditions that threaten health and safety and public welfare, regardless of the housing situation of those who choose to violate those ordinances. The path forward here, the city should act based on the condition, not the status, meaning, no, you can't have an unvaccinated or unleashed dog in the park. If it's corrected, fine, you can stay where you are. If it's not corrected, then something else has to happen.

You have to abate it. This is a legal, defensible pathway to an action between now and January 2027. Thank you. Thank you. Tom Bond, followed by Lynn Overholzer, and then Lori Monroe. Good evening, Mayor Reynolds, Council members. My name is Tom Bond. My suggestions here will save the city millions if you pay attention to them and follow through. More than one half of L.A.'s homeless are not from L.A. According to Christopher Rufo in his morning's report today, that fatally undermines the housing-first narrative. Charles. Charles. I would be willing to estimate Chico's number is in the 90s due to the Warren settlement. Most of these homeless travelers are druggies. 92% say some reports. I do not support any catering to them.

The pallet shelter should be disassembled. Just look at what goes on at the street and sidewalk next to Costco. It's drug haven all day and night. At the end of the settlement period, I suggest the city consider handing each indigent traveler, after verifying their hometown, a bus, train, or plane ticket back, non-refundable. For those who refuse a ticket home, hire a bus company to run the indigents and their dogs to the courthouse steps in Sacramento. And no, I am not kidding. I want my town back. You could begin hometown background verification on January 2nd, 2027, noting their location in our parks, streams, creeks, sidewalks, and vacant lots. Thank you. Thank you. Lynn Overholzer, Lori Monroe, and then Adam Fidelli.

Try not to make that noise. I just want to say, wow, Mrs. Amity Bass is amazing, and Chico was lucky to have her. Anyway, I think I speak on behalf of the entire northeast corner of Chico when I say we are very appreciative that the city staff report is recommending to close the alternate site out on Eaton and Cohasset Road. I've been here many times. I brought up a lot of the issues that have been out there. It's in a B1 overflight zone. There's a school kitty corner across the street. They've had several lockdowns because of incidents on the sidewalk. The businesses cross the street. I've heard of threats of lawsuits. My street, two gun incidents involving my street, where I had to shelter in place.

It's on a flood control zone. None of the signs that have been there over the years have been followed in terms of the steps that are being taken to make it a better flood control zone. And then I just want to bring up one of the things. I mentioned this a couple years ago, but I think some of you weren't even up on the council at that time. One further thing about the airport issue. Why? Oh, I should have said this earlier. The reason I wanted to address this was because there was an idea floating around to, you know, make it a permanent managed campground. So that's why I'm addressing this. We, for all these reasons, we are glad that maybe that's not, that that's not, well, the site's going to close, and surely it will not become a managed campground at that location for all the reasons I just mentioned.

And one other one that I did bring up a couple years ago was regarding the airport. In July of 2022, the San Jose International Airport was threatened with losing millions of FAA funding because of the homeless camps that were within six blocks of their flight paths. So, you know, you can just kiss the commercial airlines goodbye if we have a managed campground right there. We are already violating the B-1 overflight zone rule. And I think the temporary emergency thing that happened there for a half years is a pretty long time. Anyway, and the last thing I wanted to say was some of you may not even know what that corner used to be. People used to come there at night and watch the amazing sunset over the mountains there, across the fields, the cars, there would be about five cars parked there, usually with a dog on a leash.

They'd take a walk down the levee, down the bike path towards the airport. It was really nice. During lunch, the cars from the businesses around there would park there and eat their lunch. It used to be a really nice spot, and we are really hoping to get that back. Thank you. Thank you. Lori Monroe, followed by Adam Fidelli, and then Rob Berry. Thank you. And I'm really happy about this report. I think it's a really good beginning. I'm glad to see the council starting to talk about what to do post-warren this early with seven months to go. Many of my friends have asked me what I think is going to happen next, and I don't know is my response. And now I've heard some information, and maybe if I get that question again, I can give them a little bit of a hint of what is coming next.

I have a couple of things I'd like to review. One is that Mr. Gustafson said that the primary goal for the city is to have clean spaces, whereas Mrs. Abney Bass said that her primary goal was improved quality of life for the community. And I hope you go with Mrs. Abney Bass' goal, because although clean spaces is a decent goal, it's not the only thing we need, and there's people involved in every step of working on this. And those people deserve some consideration by the city council. They are your citizens. The others, and there's one other thing I'd like to just kind of throw out there, and that's the term service-resistant. I don't consider that term trauma-informed, and I would like to challenge all of us.

I don't have a suggestion, but we need to come up with a term that is friendlier. I have been a nurse for almost, for over 50 years, if you count my time as a nurse's aide, and we used to always say that people that didn't take their medication properly were noncompliant. When I was a school nurse, I visited a family that had a boy that had seizures, and part of it was assumed because they were noncompliant. At the home, I discovered that the family didn't understand the instructions on the bottle because they didn't read English. And I was able to help them understand how the child should take the medication better, and his seizures ceased. The story is that they weren't noncompliant. They were nonadherent, and it wasn't their fault if they didn't understand the rules.

And it's a similar situation here with service-resistant. And so I'm hoping we can come up with a better friendly term that's acceptable to all. Thank you. Thank you. Adam Fidelli, followed by Rob Berry. Mr. Guffington, speaking for myself this time with my eyes up. So I wanted to come and support the suggestions of Mr. Gusterson to city staff and also support Ms. Avni Bass. And her suggestions because the common sense factor has been, you know, what we've not been able to access during the settlement. So I think we are moving cautiously, and that is a great thing. So we certainly don't want to get ourselves slapped again and have the same restrictions. We need our rule enforcement back. But it's also an enormous opportunity for creativity as we move forward.

So I would say let's keep that in mind. There's lots of different shelter options. There's lots of different solutions. Everybody's different as a human being. The broken people are still going to be out there regardless of dates. We're a city of 100-plus thousand people. A certain percentage of our population is going to be broken one way or another. So let's all keep that in mind as we move forward and keep up the good work. But we've learned a lot in the last five years. Bye. Thank you. And our last speaker is Rob Berry. Well, I'm not here to talk about our successes. Let's just all agree that Amber is a local treasurer and that she will do the absolute best with whatever she has to work with.

The problem-solving rests with our failures. So let me talk about that a little bit. First thing I want to mention is transparency. You know, as the impact and irreversibility and cost of your decisions increases, the decision-making process needs to adjust. And this is a terrible forum to have an in-depth conversation about the role that Chico should play in the homeless industry. But I only want to commend Mayor Reynolds for the meeting that you called where we had people that had expertise in various areas have a conversation, a deep conversation that lasted over an hour, where we were able to get into some of the depth of the issues here. The first thing I want to mention is transparency.

I mean, I think there's been fewer decisions than entering the Warren Settlement Agreement that has had a more costly and impactful result on Chico. And so I would hope that we would not make that same mistake again here as we're trying to make plans for what to do between now and January and what we're going to do after January in terms of our role. I think one of the things that we need to understand is that there's a difference between need, responsibility, and outcome. And we really need to take a good, hard look at what responsibility the city of Chico has for dealing with the homeless issue from a social services standpoint. Housing first is a condition imposed on municipalities or jurisdictions as a condition of grant funding.

So far, the Genesis project and a lot of the homeless costs that the city has incurred other than staff time and so forth has come from grants. And those grants impose conditions on our shelters that we have to comply with. Should the city be spending any of its general fund money on homeless services? My answer is no. As long as we have grants to offset costs, I think a soft landing makes perfect sense. And then finally, I would say, or at least another thing I would say is that regardless of the level of services that we have, we're always going to have the problem of what's now being called those that are departed from shelter. That creates a direct impact on the rest of the citizens. So until we solve the problem of what to do with the service resistant or the non-compliant or whatever we want to call them, those are the people that are causing us the most difficulty.

And we must find a way to assert our authority to enforce quality of life for the citizens of Chico. So thank you very much. That was, he was our last speaker. All right. I hate to do this, but I've got to take a break before we go into further debate. So let's take a quick break. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we got everybody here. All right. Council member, let's see, who wants to go first? Council discussion. Council member Winslow? Thank you. Yeah. So only through a really long line of bad decisions did we get to the place that we're at, waiting for the settlement agreement to end.

We carried out some mass evictions in the winter, in the rain. There was no shelter available, and I've heard this mistold recently a number of times. I was there, and I spoke to the police on site. The tourist shelter was closed because of the pandemic, and there was no shelter available. And we had an attorney who probably gave good advice, so we fired the attorney. We had the police sergeant in charge of the sweeps resign. We got probably the worst lawyer we could have gotten. We kept that lawyer for a very long time, and we got sued. We opened up a campground near the airport, and by then it was blistering hot summer, and this was on a treeless tarmac lot. But after all that, we opened the Genesis shelter, and the city, through the agreement, we would not tell people to pack a move without offering them shelter.

And we got the Jesus Center to run it, and it's worked very well, all things considered, given the circumstances we had. And I think that this would be a really inspiring story if it were not that we were forced into it by a court order. But it's not too late to become an inspiring story, and I want to really genuinely thank everybody on the council and in the community and the Chamber of Commerce for recognizing and appreciating the importance of the Genesis shelter and the principle that people need shelter and can't be made to disappear. Sometimes I think that there's a sense in the community, and maybe some people like to stoke this sense, that there is this vast divide as far as what people want out of this.

And I don't really believe that's true. I also hear everybody posture sort of towards the middle on this, like compassion with accountability, which seems to make sense to everybody, you know? But it wasn't always what we did. And I think the recommendations that we have here are very reasonable, but it is us acknowledging, perhaps, and you don't have to say it, but that what we were doing, that kicking people out with nowhere to go, is not the way that we should be dealing with homelessness. And even though a court says that we could keep people out with no shelter available, we should make an effort to make sure those services exist so that we can have a rational and humane policy that actually works to keep people out of our public spaces, but not force people into impossible situations with nowhere to go.

So I think that we are given the opportunity now to give some direction to staff to maintain some of that basic principle, what was introduced with the Warren Settlement Agreement, that people ought to have a place to go if we're going to enforce closure of all public spaces in the city. And I think that we all want our parks to be back in a place consistently where people can use them freely. Everybody can use them freely. And even places like where the alternate site is, which wasn't maybe technically listed as a park, but is a place that has value in itself. It's right on the side of the waterway. And I think that for that place in particular, we may find ourselves in a situation where we need something like the alternate site again, but we should never do it like the alternate site was done.

And we should learn the lessons that we've had that just a campground is not the same as a managed campground, as a well-managed campground. And we can start with something better whenever it happens. For that site in particular, I think we ought to plant some trees there. There was a big heritage tree that fell down. And everybody feels better with trees, I think. I can understand. So I don't think that there really needs to be a lot of controversy here. And I think that we should maintain a commitment to operating the pallet shelter, doing what we can to use grants to offset the costs, to reduce the costs where they're not – it's not totally necessary that we provide everything that people need there.

But I think it is necessary that we provide a place like that. And I think that the recommendations staff are generally in line with those. If we need to refine some stuff, if we need to have a committee to discuss some things in detail, I think that's great. I think there's a lot of intelligent people in the community from a diversity of backgrounds that would be happy to come together to guide us in the future post-war in what we do and how we handle homelessness. And I think that would be the best thing that the community could have is that we incorporate these people and come to an agreement and stop making this such a divisive issue when we all want essentially the same thing. Thank you.

Council Member Goldstein. Sure. First, thanks again to Amber and to our staff. Great presentation. I think it's really good to see so much of our community agreeing that the Genesis Pallet Shelter is a success, and it's a success that we need to keep supporting. I'm also concerned that we'll still have a lot of homeless people out there on the streets and on our bike paths. And so I hope that we can continue this conversation as needed to keep working with North State Shelter Team to help whatever that takes to establish safe spot communities. We could potentially support groups in establishing a managed campground or other proposals in our community because I think we all agree. There are people downtown right around us or in other areas of this city, and that's going to continue being an issue regardless of the good work that's being done at the Genesis site.

So that will continue needing to be a conversation. I would love to add more directives tonight, but I will see what the other council members think. So let's keep it going. Council Member O'Brien. Council Member O'Brien. Winslow stated, was a really bad council decision to abandon common sense and essentially enact an emergency suspension of enforcement of all our rules, and we lost control of our city. I was police chief when that happened. I can point you to the exact minute when that happened in our city's history, so let's not forget that. What happened after I wasn't here, so I'm not going to comment on that. Let's not forget the genesis of that particular issue. No pun intended. That was pretty good, wasn't it?

That was pretty good. But I'm really pleased to hear so many people on both sides of this particular issue use the term compassion and accountability. I may have heard that once or twice over the years. And so to see everyone come around to that point is very pleasing to me because it really is how I think we need to approach this issue. My friends on the compassion side, I appreciate all your efforts. You guys really have great hearts. I appreciate that. But accountability is not in conflict with compassion. We have to have both, and it's been proven over and over and over. So I think this approach, you heard in great detail from Amber and former assistant city manager, an approach to this particular issue that combines those two things is a perfect.

Of course not. We're never going to have a perfect solution as it relates to this issue, but at least brings some sanity to it. So I want to thank both of you for bringing that sanity to this community. We need that. I think you heard a lot of people on both sides of this particular issue come in support of what you provided. So thank you both. Council Member O'Brien Overbeek. So I'm not pointing this at you, Council Member O'Brien, but there's a lot of semantic gymnastics around what do we do after Warren. My son went to school here, which was in the late 90s. There wasn't a homeless problem. There were a few, you know, every town had a few vagrants. But we didn't have the kind of issue we have now.

So over the last 25 years or so, 30 years, under the term compassion, we've basically abandoned people in tents to die in those tents. Right? That's what happens when you allow camping in public spaces. It's a disaster for the communities. We've all seen what's happened in Chico. It's also a disaster for those people. They die in those tents. They die at five times the rate of the rest of the population. And that is not compassion. That is moral cowardice because we're abandoning those people and it's not acceptable. So the whole point of this conversation was to give the staff some guidance. And so I want to be clear, at least what I want to see, and that is there is no more camping in public spaces, period, after the settlement agreement.

And I would suggest that we notify people a month before so they know what's coming. So zero camping. And obviously you can't clear everybody out at once. We do it over a period of 90 days or something like that, but not a year. We have to do it immediately. And for the people, these are, this is a population of people who has demonstrated that they cannot manage their own affairs. And we are not doing them any favors by leaving them in tents, sleeping in the mud, in the rain to die. So until they are forced to go to the shelter, they won't do it. And if they refuse three times, we should send them to jail. But we cannot, we've, after 25 years, it's very clear what the results of this policy have been.

Disaster for those people, disaster for the communities. So we've got to do something different. And we need to look at the states. Would that have one-fourth or one-fifth the rate of homelessness in California? And that's because they don't allow it. And that's where we need to go. Councilmember Hawley. Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. It seems like there's going to be pretty unanimous support over closing the alternate site, continuing the Genesis site operations with the proposed updated rules that Mrs. Abney Bass has brought forward to us, along with Assistant City Manager Gustafson's recommendations. I do want to touch on what Councilmember Winslow brought up earlier, and just having little pieces of upgrading the experience at the Genesis site.

I remember when I was a community member watching this council discuss allocating funding to the Genesis site, and you made a recommendation to allocate funds for a little bit of urban greening, and that was shot down pretty quickly. And I really hope that this body, contrary to what the previous council made decisions on then, is more partial to, like one of our speakers said, trauma-informed approaches. Sometimes that can incorporate creative ways at upgrading a space and maybe making seeking services a little bit easier when they can lay under a tree and talk to their friend who visits. I'm really feeling optimistic about this. Thank you. Vice Mayor Ben, do you got anything? I'm just giving you the opportunity before we move on.

So I want to say thank you to Mrs. Bass. We could never have done it without you, so I will always be grateful. And Assistant Manager Gustafson, thank you very much. This is a great start, and I'm going to kind of take it from that perspective. This is a start of trying to work towards returning Chico to its citizens. And we're going to have to go – it's going to take a while. I think it's going to be – there's going to be some bumps in the road, as there usually are when changes are made. But this will be a start. I agree with everything that was presented tonight. We do need to close down alternate site number one as soon as we can, which will be January 14th, shortly thereafter. So – and I do agree with much of what my colleague, Mr. Enderbeck, has to say.

I think there's a lot of value in what you have explained. And, again, I think this is a start. We keep going forward, and we'll get to where we need to go and be soon enough. So I don't know where we're going to go with this, but I just would add I think we need to be very careful as we move forward. I absolutely agree with everything that we – most of the recommendations that are here. As long as we're able to still continue to get this grant funding, I think absolutely operating and keeping Genesis going and everything that was presented are very reasonable rules. And, unfortunately, yeah, reason did get thrown out the window, and that's not working right now. And I think it's the cities – our job is to more be in the regulatory position of what's happening.

So I don't think that we should be necessarily operational. If Mr. Withoon wants to do his tiny home thing, that's great. Like, let us know what you need. Go do it. And as a regulatory body, we can – if there's something we need to pass and we need to do, and we've already given staff direction to work on that, I think it's – that's the place where this body can do really well. I'm sure Mr. Bamlet has a ton of trees he would happily give us, and I think that would be a great project, a community project for either a school or a nonprofit or somebody to take on and put trees out there. There's nothing stopping trees from going in at the alternate site if that's something that, you know, Amber can manage to get them watered without creating mud holes and all the things that go along with it.

But I think it would be beautiful to have trees out there. We probably have some old planters sitting over in the storage yard somewhere we can use, and it would cost nearly nothing. And I know Mr. Bamlet has trees for us. So – and I also think this is a great opportunity for other people in the community to get involved, namely like our churches and things like that. You're providing three meals a day right now. Wouldn't it be great if every church in Chico picked one day a month and came out and helped with food as you're changing services and stuff like that over there? Like I think this is a great opportunity to have other hands on deck and help and support for our sheltering system, and it would help them to understand more, know what's happening out there, and feel more connected to it by being involved in it.

So with all that to be said, it does sound like there's pretty good agreement on most of the things here. The number four, provide direction to the city attorney to review the municipal code sections and return with recommendations at a future meeting. I feel like at minimum we need to direct staff to get going on that. The one thing I heard was the code for the fire-prone areas, and I really want to do that. We tried for almost a year last summer to get an emergency ordinance to be able to clear fire-prone areas. We're coming up on it again, and here we are, and we have no way to enforce our fire-prone areas. But that's a conversation for another night. So we definitely need to have that in there as we're talking about cleaning up earlier today in our budget session all of our waterways and reducing fire risk throughout the city.

That's a huge part of it. And, yeah, so I don't know where else we need to go from there, but I know that we do need to give staff direction on the, or I would like to give the city attorney direction to work on those codes and bring that back at a future meeting. Was there other specific questions, Eric, that you needed answered? Because it seems like the alternate site, Genesis, and pursuing grant funding, those are all pretty, I think everybody's in agreement on it. We haven't taken a vote. It would be good to hear on all of the points. Yeah. So do we want to go down each of these one at a time? That would be helpful. Probably a good idea. Okay, so direct staff to close the alternate site upon expiration settlement agreement.

Can we make a motion? Sounds good to me. You don't have six different motions on these? You just want to roll them all into one? I think that we're in agreement, like to make a motion to direct staff to close the alternate site upon expiration settlement agreement. Continue operation of Genesis emergency shelter with updated rules. Maybe some of those change in the future, but I think generally yes. Direct staff to continue pursuit to grant funding to offset Genesis operational costs. Provide direct to the city attorney to review the Chico Municipal Code section's return with recommendations. And specifically, one of the ones that was in here was about the expedited reaction time in a high-fire risk area.

And then direct staff to deploy a phase enforcement approach, working from the center of the city outwardly, using an outreach and engagement model. I think it's better that we provide minimal comments on exactly how they manage that process and trust them. But so it sounds good. And number six, direct staff to develop a high-utilizer, service-resistant team to address repeated service-resistant individuals. And that's the motion. Second. Thanks for taking that over. So I would like to make a friendly amendment, at least on number four. That says a future meeting. Are we talking about after the settlement agreement or something? I think that's urgent. I think that needs to be done ASAP. Yes.

And I would recommend that come back immediately. Deal. Yeah.

Or immediately upon, you know, give our attorney- Right now, Ryan. A month or so, but normal time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It can, it's not pending the expiration of the agreement. That can happen sooner. At least the law should be in place, right? Yeah. I mean, I've already looked at the municipal code and looked at some areas that we can work on. So it's not like we're starting from ground zero on this. But yeah, a little bit of time. But it wouldn't take that long to at least bring some ideas back to the council. Council, we've got a motion in a second, but Council Member van Overbeek, go ahead. Yeah, I just want to point out clarification. So what we're doing here is saying to staff, go ahead and proceed with these and we'll flush out the detail.

I think five is a little nebulous, but we can deal with that later. And then specifically four, we're directing the city attorney to look into the codes and the fire safety and all that. So we're saying yes to all of this and the city attorney will bring back in a month or so or whenever he's ready the code amendments for us to review at a separate time. Yeah, I'm fine with it. Yeah, four is going to shape five. Yeah, so those are both becoming back, but you have general direction to work on these things and bring it back to us. Ms. Presson, do you have that as a clear motion? I do. Okay, thank you. 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. 5.8, consideration of a resolution to allow alcohol service and consumption at the Chico Creek Nature Center. We have a report from Mr. Skyler Lipski, our Public Works Director of Operations and Maintenance. Thank you, Mayor. Council, the Chico Area Recreation and Park District card has requested an authorization to permit the service and consumption of alcoholic beverages during rentals and community events at the Chico Nature Center. At its April 27th meeting, the Bidwell Park and Playground Commission reviewed the proposal, received public input, and recommended that the City Council amend Chapter 12R.04 of the Chico Municipal Code accordingly.

The proposal would allow alcohol to be served and consumed at the Chico Nature Center under the following framework. Alcohol permitted only during rentals and community events approved by card. The requirement for a valid ABC license, use of temporary controls such as fencing and or signage, and compliance with all applicable city and state regulations. It should be noted that deed restrictions originally imposed by any Bidwell, including those pertaining to alcohol, are no longer applicable. The reasons in the staff report that you can see there. Historically, alcohol use was permitted in certain areas prior to the adoption of the citywide ban in 1994, and there are some exceptions. Of course, the Bidwell Park, municipal course, and City Plaza.

With that and the speed run through it, I'm available for any questions. Council Member Winslow. Is this specifically intended for a celebration of the end of the Warren Settlement Agreement? If you choose to rent the facility? Sorry. Yeah, I guess it's fine. You know, honestly, of all the things that we've loosened up restrictions on alcohol for, like in the plaza, I feel like there were others. This is what I'm, like, least enthusiastic about, but I'm not one to say no if a card's asking. I kind of trust that they'll be responsible. And I guess the deed restrictions don't apply, you know? People say all the time that the deed restrictions apply, but I'll take your word for it. Council Member O'Brien.

I assume I know the answer to this question. It's a good tactic, right, Ryan? Never ask a question unless you know the answer. The ABC license will go through the police department like it normally does to make sure that everything is done appropriately so we don't have an issue. I will just remind this council and everyone else, we have had an alcohol issue in this town in the past, and I do not want to revert back to that. So making sure that we have some compliance and oversight I think is still very important for those events. I'll take that as a yes. Thank you. Sorry. Was that a question for me or the city attorney? I got the yes. So I saw both of you nodding, so thank you. Okay. Council Member Goldstein.

I've just learned a new thing from this report, so thank you. I didn't know that alcohol use was permitted in designated areas of the park before 1995. That's good to know. In general, I think allowing for more things that can benefit our community is a good thing. Of course, alcohol usage, you know, we should strongly regulate, and it looks like this will continue to be well regulated here. So I support this. How many speakers do we have? None. We have none. All right. I'll consider a motion. I would make a motion to adopt the resolution allowing alcohol service and consumption at the Chico Creek Nature Center. I'll second. Uh-oh. We're tied. I'll let the vice mayor. The vice mayor got it. Got there quick enough, Dale.

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. 5.9. Acceptance of the Downtown Business Association DCBA Final Report in Downtown District Enhancement Program. We have a report from Eric Skufstason, our Assistant City Manager. Thank you, Mayor Reynolds. Council will be quick on this and appreciate the Executive Director, Celeste Kramer, for DCBA is here. Also, the Board Chair, Valerie Redderman. They've been sitting patiently through the entire meeting, so glad to get this one done. This item is regarding the Downtown Chico Business Association DCBA Final Report in Payment for the Business Enhancement Program.

March 23, after receiving Council Direction, City entered into a professional services agreement with DCBA to implement the Downtown Business District Enhancement Program using $422,400 of ARPA funding. The intent of the program was to stabilize, revitalize, and support downtown businesses following the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, while also strengthening long-term viability of downtown district. The program funded DCBA with 12 months of payments of 35,000, excuse me, 12 different payments over three years of $35,200 based on the submittal of required reports and invoices. Scope of the service focused on four primary objectives. One, organizational rebuilding for DCBA. Two, place development and placemaking.

Three, marketing and communication. Four, events and promotion. The requirements outlined in the PSA were intentionally broad in general and nature, focusing on the overall outcomes of service areas rather than prescriptive deliverables. As a result, the final report reflects compliance with the scope of services at a programmatic level. It's largely narrative, but it demonstrates the requirements were carried out and the general objectives were met. As part of the final phase and final payment of the agreement, after several verbal discussions, and somewhat reluctantly by DCBA general manager and board chair, there's been some verbal commitments to dedicating 15,000 of its final payment toward the development of a downtown Chico video marketing campaign.

This initiative is intended to expand digital and regional outreach promoting downtown businesses. It directly supports the marketing and communication objective number three identified in the PSA. General manager, general manager, general manager, Celeste contacted me yesterday, a little concerned that due to their purchasing requirements, this still needs board approval. And so I just wanted to recognize that to make sure she stays out of hot water with her, with her board, but it still would require board approval. A little bit of reluctancy due to, you know, they want control, obviously, of how I think some of this funding is spent, but also they produced their budgets in January. So a portion of this may be already allocated for, but it was an intent to pursue this effort.

So we hope that they're able to do so. Staff recognizes that DCBA has faced a number of challenges over the past several years, including turnover in board leadership, executive Management. These challenges have occurred during a period which brick and mortar businesses, both locally and nationally, have faced increasing pressure from e-commerce, changing consumer behavior, and really other generational economic factors. Lastly, over the past several months, there has been positive stabilization with organization, including seating a new board, nominating and seating a new board chair, and the hiring of the new executive director. Staff are encouraged by these developments and is hopeful they will continue to improve.

I want to acknowledge Vice Mayor Dale Bennett, who also sits as an advisory member on the board representing the city, as I do. And therefore, with that, recommend City Council, one, accept the Downtown Chico Business Association final report for the enhancement program, and acknowledge DCBA's commitment to utilize $15,000 of the final $32,500 payment for the Downtown Chico video marketing effort, consistent with the PSA scope of services. For staff, Council Member O'Brien. Yeah, I just want to thank Eric for this, but I do want to hear from our Vice Mayor, since he also sits on that, and just hear his perspective, if you don't mind, Dale. Thank you. So, I'm just going to be very fast. Congratulations.

I support this. I support you. I will always support Downtown Chico, the businesses, as well as the property owners. So, thank you. That was perfect. Thank you. All right. How many speakers do we have? We have one. Nicole Hill. I'm scared of this microphone. Hello, again, all. I'm coming to you tonight as a career-long Downtown Business employee. Thank you to Mayor Reynolds for those Shubert's paychecks many moons ago, and also as a former DCBA board member and marketing chair for the past three years. And, hey, look, we're talking about something other than Downtown Revitalization, although I'd be remiss to not urge you to reconsider that decision. But on the topic of the DCBA, I'd like to first thank Council and specifically staff for directing the DCBA to use a large portion of their remaining ARPA funds, specifically to Downtown marketing video content.

Through many of our recent conversations in this room and with downtown business owners, it's clear that downtown is struggling for a number of reasons, but lack of marketing support is certainly one of them. Excuse me. I should have drank water. While I respect and am so grateful for the immense community benefit the DCBA team provides through their events, and frankly, I think they're doing an incredible job at those events, my concern is that they're largely ignoring one of their main four objectives in their charter, which is promoting Downtown as a district and the goods and services sold here. Despite the many, many things that me and my fellow board members may have disagreed on in our time on the board, the unifying agreement was that we all needed to put intentional continued effort into marketing what makes Downtown Chico special, namely our businesses.

And it's disappointing to see most of their current leadership continue to not focus on that and almost solely focus on marketing their events, despite the pleas and feedback from many downtown businesses. I've sat in their seats, and I know what it's like to balance opinions and feedback, but ignoring whatever you don't agree with is simply not appropriate. And it's disappointing to see the marketing progress that was previously made by the board, previous board, feel like it's falling by the wayside. Excuse me. All that to say, I would like to specifically encourage Council to direct the DCBA that the committed $15,000 for video marketing services should be used specifically for marketing downtown businesses, the people, places, services, and spaces that make the heart of our city so special, and not solely focused on the events that is almost the sole focus now.

Thank you. She was the only speaker. Thank you. Council Member Windsor. Yeah, no, I'd like to support this. It seems like it's worth supporting. It does say on here, excuse me, this initiative has been intended to extend digital and regional outreach and says promote downtown business and something else. But so I feel like that is explicit in the intention there. And yeah, I mean, I'd make a motion to approve the recommendation. Second. Also, go ahead, Vice Mayor, that's yours. Thank you. Okay. I would just... Mr. Jones, it is okay for us to make a recommendation that the $15,000 of the $32,000 goes to that marketing campaign. Yes. Mr. Gustafson made me aware of it earlier today. I did research it to make sure the agreement allowed for that kind of flexibility, and it does.

Okay, good. I think that's an important part of me being a yes vote on this. So as long as we can make sure that that's captured in it, then I'm good with that. So 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. And we are at 10-04, so we either have to vote to set aside our rules, or we need to adjourn. If need be, I'll make a motion that we set aside the rules in order to hear Council Member requests for the first time in, I think, two, three meetings. Okay, we have a motion and a second to set aside our rules. Okay, second.

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. Okay.

that. Thank you.