[Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] way. [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] down. Hey [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] April 23rd, 2023. Madam clerk, please call the role. Mayor Go, here. Vice Mayor Core here. Council member Arias. Council member Gonzalez here. Council member Weir here. Council member Smith, I am here. Council member Coleman here. And council member Basher Tosh here. Thank you. In keeping with the council's resolution, public statements are received at different times depending on the item. I will call on the city clerk to call for public statements. If you wish to make a public statement, please fill out a public speaker card and place it in the tray next to the speaker's podium. We ask that you mark whether you're here to speak on an item listed on today's agenda or in a matter not on the agenda. Speakers who do not identifi identify a specific agenda item will be presumed speakers for the non-aggenda public statements. If you're here to speak on an item not listed on the meeting agenda, you will be called first to speak. Statements are given a two-minute time limit per speaker, 20 minutes total for all non-aggenda item public statements. If you're here to speak on an item listed on the agenda, I will call for you at the appropriate time. If public statements become disruptive and I have to clear the chambers to regain order of the meeting, you'll be called in one at a time to provide your public statement when your item is called. Everyone in attendance is expected to adhere to the rules of decorum established by resolution of the city council. Failure to abide by the city's rules of decorum, including any disruptive behavior that interferes with our ability to have an orderly and efficient meeting, prevents the city council from conducting the business of the city. Consider this a first warning to everyone in attendance that behavior that disrupts this meeting may result in expulsion and or the chambers being cleared. Behavior that disrupts the meeting includes repetitive statements, shouting, hate speech, interrupting staff or presenters during the meeting, speaking out of turn, outbursts from the audience, and surpassing the twominut time limit. Madam clerk, do we have any public speakers regarding items not on the agenda? Mayor Go, we have not received any speaker cards regarding items not listed on today's agenda, nor for items not listed on the agenda. Thank you. Listed on the agenda. Next item, please. Close session item 3A, conference with legal counsel, potential litigation, one matter. Thank you. Journ to close session. Are you here for Bakersville College? No. Oh, can't see who you are. Hi everyone, my name is journalist. Oh, sorry. Okay. I I know who you are now. I can see you. Sorry. [Music] [Music] [Music] down. Hey [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] I'm coming. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] feel. Hey Heat. Heat. N. [Music] [Music] Feel feel. [Music] something. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Hey, Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Hey, hey, [Music] [Music] hey. Heat. Heat. [Music] N. Hey, hey, [Music] [Music] hey. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] [Music] The grand [Music] You [Music] can hear me. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Okay. [Music] Okay. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] Beauty. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Everybody out [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] N. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I'd rather try and accomplish something great and failed try to accomplish [Music] nothing. I'll wait by [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I'd rather try and accomplish something than try to accomplish and slowly succeed. I'll find you for anything. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] ingredient and fully exceed all you have to fully exceed. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey hey [Music] hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] Hello. Hello. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] reconvening the special 3:00 meeting at 4:37. Madam City Attorney, thank you, Mayor. There's only one item under the special meeting, close session 3A, and there is no reportable action. Thank you. Thank you. And with that, the 3:00 special meeting stands adjourned at 4:37. And now we're going to start the sorry 3:30 meeting in just a minute. [Music] [Music] Our tech staff needs just a minute to make some switches and then we'll start the 3:30 meeting. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] The 3:30 p.m. meeting of the Bakersfield City Council is now in session. Good afternoon. It's my pleasure to call to order the 3:30 regular city council meeting of April 23rd, 2025. Madame Clerk, please call the role. Mayor Go, here. Vice Mayor Core here. Council member Arias here. Council member Gonzalez here. Council member Weir here. Council member Smith, I'm here. Council member Coleman here. And council member Bashier here. Thank you. In keeping with council's resolution, public statements are received at different times depending on the item. I will call on the city clerk to call for public statement. If you wish to make a public statement, please fill out a public speaker card, place it in the tray next to the podium. We ask that you mark whether you're here to speak on an item listed on today's agenda or in a matter not on the agenda. Speakers who do not identify a specific agenda item will be presumed speakers to the non-aggenda public statements. If you're here to speak on an item not on the meeting agenda, you'll be called first to speak. Statements are given a two-minute time limit, 20 minutes total for all non-aggenda item public statements. If you're here to speak on an item listed on the agenda, I'll call for you at the appropriate time. If public statements become disruptive and I have to clear the chambers to regain order of the meeting, you'll be called in one at a time to provide your public statement when your item is called. Everyone in attendance is expected to adhere to the rules of decorum established by resolution of the city council. Failure to abide by the city's rules of decorum, including any disruptive behavior that interferes with our ability to have an orderly and efficient meeting, prevents the city council from conducting the business of the city. Consider this a first warning to everyone in attendance that conduct that disrupts this meeting may result in expulsion and or the chambers being cleared. Behavior that disrupts the meeting includes repetitive statements, shouting, hate speech, interrupting staff or presenters during the meeting, speaking out of turn outbursts from the audience and surpassing the twominut time limit. Madam clerk, do we have any public speakers regarding items not on the agenda? Mayor Go, we've received one speaker card regarding items not listed on tonight's agenda. The first public speaker is Martin Mahia. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Mio. Were you here for the 515 meeting? Yes. Go ahead. mind. Go ahead. U welcome. Please introduce yourself. Thank you. Yes. Uh uh good afternoon. Uh my name is Martine Mahia and I'm a u uh property owner of two properties here in Bakersfield, California. Uh primarily 21104 Hagen Oaks Boulevard, Bakersville, California. Uh and as a property owner, uh I'm here to voice my objections to the city's proposed uh tax increase into the sewer rates. I uh as a taxpayer, as a community member, I understand the need for improvements. I understand the need to bring certain uh capital uh improvements, you know, uh in in par and uh that, you know, brings up qualities uh quality services into the community. I get that and I understand that our system is old and is to be uh improved. Uh however, I'm also concerned about the amount of the uh tax increase for this uh particular item. Uh $711 per year to a person that is on probably not me myself but many on fixed incomes or no income at all. Uh how are they going to make up for this amount? I think the timing of it is just uh bad uh given the economy. Uh high tariffs throughout the nation. Uh companies uh such as Boeing uh proposing layoffs or dousing of employees. China sending back airplanes into the uh uh Boeings that were uh purchased and else sent back because they don't want them anymore because of the tariffs. uh the uh the inflation that we are experiencing at this point in time. I think that in totality is just a horrible time to bring those uh rates into the community. Perhaps we should look at a lower rate. Perhaps we should look at expanding uh this capital improvement over a larger amount of years and make those increases reasonable to the taxpayers of this community. So, I understand out of time, but I thank you and I I hope that objection stays in the record. Thank you Mr. Mahia. And then just for clarity, Mr. Mahia, there are forms. Are they out there already? Uh there are official forms because if you want to register a formal 218 complaint, you'll need to fill out one of those forms or submit it in writing. That was my next question, but I run out of time, so I'll wait until 5. All right, thank you. And now, uh, next speaker, please. JC Yamas. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Hi, my name is JC Yamas. I'm a local business owner. Good evening, uh, mayor and city councils. I oppose of the increase of the sewer rate. There's a lot of options we can look and help our city. You are asking us to do a 300% increase of something that we already have that is being done by the leaders of our community. It's not a luxury. It's not something that's going to expand our city. Something that we already have to sign up the petition to cancel for this is very hard. And the way people is approaching it, they have no idea about this. Imagine telling this 80 year old veteran that can barely walk to go do this. They don't know where to send it, what to what the partial number is. It's making it very hard for them to sign up for this petition to be cancelled. A lot of business owners and families, they barely surviving this crisis right now. And increasing it triple without increasing the amount of u pay for our for our communities is not going to help us. It's going to keep us down. So I thoroughly uh one of the solutions will be um we need transparency on how we spending this bill. We need to bring the do department to oversee all the transparency how they spending the money who they paying all these contracts how they making this money if there any council members or mayors or anybody affiliated with this project. Are they going to have any type of interest in gaining this uh millions of millions of dollars that you guys asking for our community? Uh we need to see and have that transparency and see how they every penny is spent for this community. And I hope if the same way we vote people to be our council members, the same way they can let people know to vote on ads on TV and let them know how to cancel, how to accept it or how to propose something different or giving different alternative for our community. Thank you, Mr. Yamis. Madame City Clerk, I understand we only have one public speaker regarding an item listed on this afternoon's agenda. Is that correct? That is correct. Yes, Mayor. Yes. We're going to be making a change. We're going to go into close session and consider those items first, then we will come out and consider the report and it'll be after that time that I'll call on that public speaker. So, at this point, uh, a motion to adjourn to close session. We're journed to close session. Mayor Go, can I please read the close session items? Yes, please. Close session item 4A, conference with legal count council existing litigation on two matters. One, blast parah at LV city of Bakersfield and two, conference with labor negotiator. Thank you. And we are adjourned to close session. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] [Music] Oh no. Oh no. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] Hey [Music] hey [Music] hey. [Music] Got it. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] everybody. [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] N. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] N. Heat. Heat. N. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Down down down down down. Ow. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] N. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Hey, [Music] Heat. Hey, hey, [Music] [Music] hey. [Music] [Music] Heat. Hey, Heat. [Music] [Music] Hey, hey hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey, hey hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] Ooh. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. [Music] Hey. [Music] [Music] Hey, [Music] hey hey. [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] Hey, hey hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Okay great. Reconvening the 3:30 city council meeting. Madam city attorney. Thank you, mayor. There were um or are two items under close session. Uh we were only able to get to one of them. That's item 4 A1. And the city attorney was given direction by a unanimous vote. We have begun item 4 A2. And that is now going to be uh continued to the end of the 515 meeting. So we um we're going to continue that and and return. So we will not adjourn. Yes. And then also for those of you who are here for the report session, the presentation and any public comments related to that, that will be continued after the 5:15 meeting. So at this point, uh we're going to give technology services just a few minutes to switch out in preparation for the 5:15 meeting. [Music] [Music] [Music] Start reading. [Music] [Music] Welcome to the Bakersfield City Council meeting. This television broadcast is brought to you by the local cable companies, the county of Kerna, and the city of Bakersfield. You can watch the rebroadcast of this meeting Saturday at 700 p.m., Sunday at 10:00 a.m., and the following Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. You can download the agenda for this meeting at www.bakersfieldcity. us. Preciding over this evening's meeting, the honorable Mayor Karen K. Go. Good evening. It's my pleasure to call to order the 5:15 regular city council meeting of April 23rd, 2025. Madam clerk, please call the role. Mayor Go, here. Vice Mayor Core here. Council member Aas here. Council member Gonzalez here. Council member Weir here. Council member Smith, I'm here. Council member Kman here. Council member Basher here. Thank you. Welcome to all of you. We're so glad you're here to engage in the civic process. We have the pleasure tonight of having Pastor Jennifer Watt, who is the executive pastor of ministries at Canyon Hills Church. She'll offer the invocation. And we're just so grateful for Canyon Hills, their support of City Serve, an organization that reaches out to so many in our community, providing goods, providing all kinds of support to help those in need. And then also our new elevated apartments that will be coming up on F Street. Uh also providing a place for those who desperately need that type of care. And so we're grateful to have you, pastor. And then following the invocation, Katherine Chitz, who's a city hall fellow. She'll lead us in the pledge. Katherine is a fellow in the city manager's office, uh working in the dignity health arena. She's currently attending Bakersville College but will start Ohio State in the fall. She's going to major in business administration. She's completed a nonprofit internship, parks and mobile recreation internship and uh also is a leader with uh one of our local foundations. So now would you all please stand? Pastor opportunity and the privilege to pray for the city that we love. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you today with thankful hearts, acknowledging you as the source of all wisdom and truth. We invite your presence into this meeting and ask for your guidance in all that is said and done here today. Lord, we lift up the members of this council. Grant them clarity of mind, humility of heart, and unity of purpose as they make decisions that affect the people of Bakersfield. May they lead with integrity, courage, and compassion. We pray for our city, for peace in our neighborhoods, strength in our families, and opportunity for all who call this place home. Let Bakersfield be a city marked by righteousness, generosity, and hope. Bless this time together, and may your will be done in this place. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. Salute. Pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. And you may be seated. Thank you, Pastor Watts. And thank you, Miss Chides. We appreciate it. Here are a few guidelines to help our meeting run smoothly. We request that you turn off your phones. Please be courteous in the use of cameras and videos for safety reasons and as a courtesy to others. No signs are allowed in the council chamber or in the lobby. Applause is allowed during the presentations portion of the meeting but not during other portions of the meeting. Everyone in attendance is expected to adhere to the rules of decorum established by resolution of the city council. Failure to abide by the city's rules of decorum, including any disruptive behavior that interferes with our ability to have an orderly and efficient meeting, prevents the city council from conducting the business of the city. Consider this a first warning to everyone in attendance that conduct that disrupts this meeting may result in expulsion and/or the chambers being cleared. Behavior that disrupts the meeting includes repetitive statements, shouting, hate speech, interrupting staff or presenters during the meeting, speaking out of turn, outbursts from the audience, and surpassing the twominut time limit. Madame clerk, next item, please. Presentations item 4A, proclamation to the Bakersfield seek community declaring seek heritage month in Bakersfield during April 2025. We are so blessed to live in a community with such great diversity. I have two young people here. They're going to introduce themselves in just a minute, but it's my pleasure to be able to present this proclamation. Whereas Bakersville, California is a culturally diverse community with people of varied heritages, cultures, traditions adding to the richness of our city. And whereas an estimated more than 35,000 sicks reside in Bakersville and more than 250,000 sick call California home, making up 50% of the total sick population in the United States. and where sick Americans enrich the social, cultural, and economic vibrancy of our ca country making significant and distinguished contributions in many areas including agriculture, trucking, small businesses, healthcare, and many other areas. And whereas the sick community remains committed to uniting our diverse world by promoting goodwill, peace, and service to others. And whereas the month of April is designated as sick heritage month to celebrate the contributions made by sick residents in our community and promote understanding and an appreciation of the rich history and shared experiences of sick Americans. Now therefore, I, Karen Go, mayor of the city of Bakersville, do hereby proclaim April 2025 as sick heritage month in our city and urge all citizens to celebrate the contributions and culture of the sick community. And now I'm going to present this to our young people. I'm going to ask council member, vice mayor man core to introduce them and then offer comments. Thank you, mayor. And I want to thank uh just my council colleagues as well as the mayor for the recognition uh in April being sick heritage month. uh you know as we conclude April s heritage month is a month uh in which historically the kalsa was formed and today in places like Bakersfield six have established and formed a community and share their principles of vand chakra sharing in generosity with each we with each of our neighbors gauo having an earnest living and nam japerna and uh today we have her god and hervine god introduce a fellow youth and then we have members um from our local guruare our sick places of worship uh community centers really uh within the city of Bakersfield who are joined here so our young people um can uh offer us some remarks and share as they are uh the continued legacy uh of the sick heritage locally um and then we invite if we may mayor to have a photo with everyone and then we'll conclude our celebrate Excuse me. Celebrations. Go ahead. Thank you very much. Kaiki. Right next to me, I have a Ridge View officer from our sick honors service society and his name is Rhythm Singh. He's just going to say a few things before I speak. I just want to say thank you and we're all very grateful for this proclamation. Thank you so much. Um, Rhythm is a advocate in his community. So, at Ridge View High School, he serves as the finance chair. So, we we are learning from him. He's learning from us. We are honored to be in his presence and somebody is a young um young individual who's dedicated to the um advancement of our community. But with that, I would like to say it is truly an honor for um to stand before you all today to accept this proclamation on behalf of the local gordoas and jagata movement and the wider sick community. And I wanted to express my deepest gratitude um for this meaningful resolution. As man vice mayor uh kor said this is a very special month for our sick k our sick community. Um vasaki being the establishment of the kalsa is very important to us as a people. So this moment would not be possible without the efforts of those who organized tirelessly behind the scenes and advocated for this to happen. Um the sick community as vice mayor has already mentioned is an ever growing community and we're deeply woven into this fabric of this city. So from education to public service um from small businesses to agriculture I'm sure we're all familiar with our fellow um Punjabi sick neighbors and we show up in for this community in a very unique way um champions of justice, compassion and advocates of equity. Um this re resolution affirms that in many ways for us that while diversity is not something to be overcome but it's something to be cherished and celebrated and that although my non-sick friends and neighbors often ask me about our tenants and what are our beliefs and our practices our history our culture I think this opens the door to and it's a powerful step forward to learning that we're very similar and we actually have much in common and the deeper understanding and mutual respect. ect and um collective growth is is happening right here in our backyard. So as we honor sick heritage month uh we are reminded that our cultural differences may set us apart but those are precisely the what enriches our community in a countless number of ways. So thank you very much city council members and we're really honored to um accept this and humbled proud and absolutely elated. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Uh Vice Mayor, if you come down and then anyone that you have specifically asked, I think we can maybe fit here a little bit better. Yeah. So if you're here to celebrate sick heritage month, we invite anyone who would like to join our photo, but we've uh folks from the community who have joined us here. Um but we welcome everyone to join the photo. We'll do like to get it sort of narrow. [Music] Two rows. Two rows. Thank you. Let's give it up. In keeping with council's resolution, public statements are received at different times depending on the item. I will call on the city clerk for public statements. If you wish to make a public statement, please fill out a public speaker card and place in the tray next to the speaker podium. We ask that you mark whether you're here to speak on an item listed on today's agenda or in a matter not on the agenda. Speakers who do not identify a specific agenda item will be presumed speakers for the non-aggenda public statements. If you hear to speak on an item not listed on the meeting agenda, you will be called first to speak. Statements are given a twominute time limit per speaker, 20 minutes total for all non-aggenda item public statements. If you're here to speak on an item listed on the agenda, I'll call for you at the appropriate time. If public statements become disruptive and I have to clear the chambers to regain order of the meeting, you'll be called in one at a time to provide your public statement when your item is called. If you're here to speak on the proposed sewer rate increase, your comments will be heard during the non-aggenda item public statements. If you intend to protest the rate increase, please note that state law requires that you submit your proposal in writing for your protest vote to be counted. For your convenience, copies of an acceptable sample protest form are available outside in the lobby and at the podium. So, just to be clear, when you get called up for your comments, your public comments, if you want to protest, you also need to submit it in writing. You can either use the form that has been provided or if you've already turned it in, that would be acceptable or another format, but it just has to comply with all of those items that are listed. And so at this point, uh, madam clerk, do we have any public speakers regarding items not listed on the agenda? Mayor Go, we have received 13 13 public speaker cards regarding items not listed on tonight's agenda. The first public speaker is David Couch. Yes. And if you would just wait for a minute, I'm going to call on the city manager first to make a statement. Thank you, Supervisor Couch, for being here. Yeah. Thank you, Mayor and City Council members. This is, I believe, relevant to our public comment tonight. The city has received an extraordinary number of inquiries related to the recent Proposition 218 notice. And to provide the best answers and better serve our community, staff will be recommending that we rescend the Proposition 218 notice. At this time, we'll bring back this uh we will bring back to this council a revised Proposition 218 notice after further outreach with the community. I think it's important to reiterate that it was important to identify a challenge that we're facing. The scope will remain significant and that we need to address the challenge um but that we also understand the need to work closer with community and explore multiple alternatives that can address the issue. Uh we would uh propose presenting this as a deferred business item at your next council meeting. Thank you, Mr. Click. I'm going to ask um vice mayor to make some comments and then we'll uh follow by some other comments. Thank you, mayor, and thank you to our city manager. I think we've all heard from our constituents questioning the rate increase and I agree with your reconsideration and bringing forward the item at a future meeting to consider whether to resend the current proposed rate increase will give all of us and the public an opportunity to to discuss how to best move forward for the city. So, we are pausing and re-evaluating the proposed rate and increase. And as vice mayor, I'd like to tell the public we hear you and you are our greatest responsibility and we will and most most definitely must be do better by you. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor, Council Member Basher Tash. Yeah, I'd like to say that that starts with all of us, city staff and city council doing our jobs well and making sure that we dig and do our homework right by our constituents who'd probably rather be at home enjoying their life and family instead of having to show up here uh to tell us to do a better job at doing our jobs. And uh I'd like I I would I'd like to say a lot more. Um, I'm happy with the comments that you've made and uh uh I'd like to see us do better and can expect a lot more accountability uh coming uh down the road in regards to how we make our decisions and and how we come to these conclusions. That's all I have to say. Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez. Thank you, Mayor. Um Mr. Clay, thank you so much for that uh um uh recommendation. I just want to underscore a point for the benefit of the community. uh uh the to resend the prop 218 notice is a council action and so therefore it will have to be agendaized at the next council meeting for the council to take formal action. Correct. Okay. So, uh we will have plenty of time to discuss the merits of rescending the notice um at that time. Correct. I I appreciate that so much. I I I agree with your analysis. I think that is important for um the city uh to be very responsive to the community uh to answer all the questions and to provide as uh as much information as possible, good data uh so that the community can better understand uh what the city is up against and what are those alternatives. And uh I will reiterate the last two council meetings I have offered up uh alternatives um and I would continue to pursue those alternatives um as we uh as we continue to make this um issue um or consider this issue uh at the next meeting and I imagine um for months to come. Uh thank you. And now I don't see any other requests from council. They disappeared. So, sorry, Council Member Smith. They they disappeared. I don't see them on the screen, but Council Member Smith. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I like everybody else have had many conversations with the community and generally very positive communication. Once explained, the community understands the need for infrastructure. uh raw sewage is uh something that needs to stay in pipes and and at the treatment plant and be taken care of. This treatment plant number two that we're mainly talking about. There's there's other issues, but was built in 1958, uh 40 years old in the late 80s, and at that time in the early 90s, you know, that's probably when money should have started being put away to either replace or or do big repairs. you you had the recession in the throughout the 90s in California and then the great recession in '08 and then uh it just kept getting put off and nothing ever happened. So we have a serious problem but we need transparency, we need communication and so I look forward to having more communication with the community. Thank you, Council Member Coleman. Uh thank you, mayor. I just want to reiterate some of the other council members have mentioned um that there were we we acknowledge that there were some uh shortcomings on the part of the city over the last couple decades. um without uh addressing some of the capital improvement needs and making sure that rates uh were adequate to uh serve our needs. Uh but that really shouldn't take away from the accomplishments of uh those department managers that were involved in those decisions. They made very difficult uh decisions during that time. Uh I I just want to reinforce my confidence in uh the city manager and the staff uh that really do know this uh water sewer thing inside out. They really have a a good handle on it. Uh I think we where the shortfall was the city didn't do a good job of communicating some of this uh to the community and engaging the community before we made such an announcement. And I I think the council will take some responsibility some responsibility for that. Um I'm happy to hear what the uh uh city manager is proposing. Uh I I just want to reinforce that uh we're going to need to raise rates and we're going to need to do it pretty soon, but we need to do a better job of uh educating the public. We need to do a better job of studying what the alternatives are. And so I'm hopeful that we'll have an opportunity to do that. So I want to thank everybody that did send in letters already because I have some and I know all the other council members have received those. Uh the clerk has them. We're keeping track of those. And and I do appreciate the phone calls and the people that stop me on the street go, "Hey, I know you. By the way, I don't like you raising my rates. Uh I appreciate those those uh questions and concerns." And uh from my listening to other council members, uh we hear you. Uh they're all engaged in trying to find a solution. So, thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member Arias. Thank you, Mayor. Um, right there with my colleagues, um, and sharing that we appreciate, you know, the entire community reaching out and having conversations. And I think this underscores for me uh, that the work that the city has to do and the work that staff has to do and the work that this council has to do is not easy. And oftentimes we are put in very tough positions to have very tough conversations uh to take care of aging infrastructure um and and so many other difficult conversations that we have to do. Now that's the responsibility that we have taken on uh as part of our oath. Um but we also appreciate the fact that each and every one of you are here tonight uh to share uh your thoughts, your concerns. Um and we're here to listen um as always. And we know that right now it's pretty challenging times um for so many families. Um I know that even before some of the challenges economically over the past couple months, uh folks have really kind of always struggled generation to generation, certainly in my ward, certainly in and others across the city. And we know that, you know, these conversations and, you know, potential increases um can only make it uh a little bit more challenging for families. And so, uh, we need you. We need to hear from you. Uh, looking forward to hearing from you tonight, um, as we, um, consider, uh, what's going to be agendaized at our next meeting. So, thank you for for for being here tonight. Thank you. Now, Supervisor David Couch from the county of Kern, former city council member. Welcome. Glad I'm not there right now. Um, as you say, I've been there with uh where you sit and you have a tough job and I appreciate that. And um, I came here really I'm going to modify what I was going to ask for. I was going to first of all thank your staff for the time that they spent yesterday with me. Council member Kleman was very uh kind to put together a meeting on very short notice for me to sit down with your uh water department staff and some of your finance people and one of your assistant city managers and discuss this um the issue of of your sewer rate issue. By the way, great decision tonight. I think you're on the right track. Um I learned a lot yesterday. I know you're in a difficult situation. I know what you're up against. I think the the question is really how you get there, how you finance this. Um, you you know, all that stuff. Um, I was going to come tonight and ask that you come or your staff come to our board meeting. Some of uh well, everyone that you represent, we also represent. And we're getting a lot of we've gotten a lot of phone calls, a lot of emails, even gotten some protest letters at our office. So I wanted to invite you to come to our board meeting to make a presentation about the need um for your project and how you were going about it in the process. So whe so so we can give more u a little more airtime to to the project in the process. I still want to invite you to do that. I don't think there's a need to do that in May uh at this point, but I would like you to uh still consider uh having your staff do that at a later date as this gets fleshed out. And I really want to in uh ask that you include our county public works department in those deliberations as you go forward. We are affected, the county is affected in a small way by this and we would just like to be at the table and have a little bit of input into the process as well. That is the end of my uh statement tonight and I appreciate the time mayor very much. Thank you mayor council and staff. Supervisor. Thank you very much. We are going to continue working together as a city and a county. This is our community together and so we appreciate your reaching out. Madam clerk, next speaker please. And just uh to let all speakers know, we have a number of people who would like to make public comments. So we would just ask that you keep that in mind. Keep your comments succinct and uh avoid repeating. Madame clerk Roman Mata. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Hello. Uh, I'm uh Roman Mata. I'm a local citizen here and uh I've had the pleasure of speaking to the city council several times last year if you remember me. And I came in here under the preconception that I was here to support the city. I see actually that it is going to be the opposite because I think that your recent comments just ahead of the sewer rate thing are wrong. I think that the sewer rate increase is not only justified, it is necessary and it is the result of decades of flaws with our tax structure and the way that we have run our local government. I used to get into a lot of political disagreements with my father, you know, old conservative guy. And the one thing he always tried to instill in me is the lesson that nothing is free. You know, free healthcare, free university. I mean, I'm a progressive guy. I like these things, but I know that they're paid with tax dollars. And the sewers are the exact same way. That sewer, those power lines, the power grid itself, that's all paid for by the city through local tax dollars. And study after study has confirmed time and time again that almost everywhere in the United States and really across the world where suburbs exist, those single family spread out residential homes, they are tax burdens on the city. Every single one of them is a burden that on our tax revenue and on our budget. It limits our choices and the longer it goes on, the more it strains our public services. California is actually uniquely harmful for this because of the existence of Proposition 13 and the way it challenges our ability to collect equitable tax revenues, shifting the tax burden away onto newer home buyers. It restricts home choice and ultimately I am here after months of absence to say really holding back anger here that I think the state of California has prostituted itself to the nimbies of this world for far too long and it's time for the city government to assert itself. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please. Karina Funes and Natalie Santa Maria. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Good afternoon, honorable mayor, city council, and city staff. My name is Karina Funes and I serve as co-chair of the tobaccof free coalition of Kern County. I'm Natalie Santa Maria Prom and I serve as one of the executive members for the coalition. And I'm Bernardo Choa. I am the chair of the tobaccof free kern in collaboration with students working against tobacco. Our coalition is conducting a series of interviews to gain a deeper understanding of how we can shape a healthier future for our community through effective tobacco prevention strategies. We're especially interested in exploring ways to prevent the next generation from starting tobacco use through proactive policies and early intervention efforts. We truly value the past collaboration between our coalition and the city of Bakersfield, particularly during the successful implementation of the tobacco retailer license ordinance. Since its adoption, we've observed a significant decline in youth access to tobacco products. This progress inspires us to continue working together and build on that momentum. So to help us keep on that momentum, um we would appreciate having a meeting with each of you to hear your insights on the future of tobacco prevention in our community. We have a contact sheet listing um the coalition members who are looking forward to connecting with each of you. Um I believe all of them or most of them have already reached your your offices. So if you could just please you know return those those messages to us. Again, thank you for your time and continued support in creating a healthy Bakersville. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Munz and Senator Maria. Madam Clerk, next speaker, please. Raphael Lopez. Welcome. If you'll just wait one minute while our guests uh leave, I'll let you know when we can start. I'm sorry. Welcome. Go ahead, introduce yourself and go ahead. I'm here because I would like to express my concern for the sewer rates. Um, I'm retired now. I've committed my life to service, public service, over 50 years with county of San Diego, Tari County, and more recently with this county, Kern. Um, I have no problems with it with the tax increases myself. But I'm not here for myself. I'm here for others that are going to be impacted by those increases. It's not it's not the homeowner always that's going to have to bear the burden. It's going to have to be the renters as well. We already have a problem with housing. We don't need another nail in the coffin. Over my years in public service, I keep track of the statistics throughout the state. and every county that I've worked for, it's a guide for me to address the things that my teams need need to work on. I can tell you, and I'm sure you already know, the statistics for Bakersfield are not very good. Out of 58 counties, we're usually in 57, 56, or 58. addiction, respiratory diseases, you know that this is just another thing that's not going to help for those that need the help. I don't need it. I don't care. To me, it's a small amount of money, but to those that I ser have served, I just feel sorry for them. And I just hope that you're able to look at alternatives, make the magic happen. Where can we come up with the monies to do this? We have to do it obviously. So, thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Lewis. Madam clerk, next speaker please. Johnny Aligz. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Johnny Olz. Uh I had a whole thing planned but then after said that I'm not going to say that anymore. I'm going to say thank you for reconsidering the uh rate increase. Um yeah I was going to say some other stuff. Um but I will also say you know just some ideas. Uh you guys have probably heard of digesttors anorobic digesttors right some of you. Um I'm very familiar with those. I'm in the trash industry. So I really I highly recommend you guys look into that. uh that would not only reduce the amount of waste that the city has to take to the landfill, but you can actually create that use that for energy. So, you can either make methane, you could also make uh I can't remember the trucks, but anyway. Yeah. So, but yeah, thank you. But yeah, if you guys uh Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Olegas. Next speaker, please. Jacquellyn Aguilar. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Uh, good evening, honorable Mayor Go and council members. My name is Jacqueline Aguular, and I'm here on behalf of the young Democrat leaders of Kern County. We understand that the upgrades to the wastewater treatment plant are necessary and that the system is outdated and investments need to be made. Um, but how we fund these improvements matter just as much as how we need them. A 300% increase in sewer rates from 239 to 950 a year isn't just a financial adjustment for working families. For young people trying to stay in the city for seniors on fixed incomes, this is a crisis. It adds to the already rising cost uh cost of living and puts a real strain on individuals who are just trying to get by. What's also concerning is how this has been communicated to the public. The process to protest the proposal is confusing, inaccessible, and has left many unsure of their rights. The city must do a better job in making this process transparent and easy to navigate, which includes also adding the post rate study to the website for public review. We're not saying don't fix the system. We're saying do it in a fair way. Spread the cost over time. Perhaps w work with the community and create a plan that doesn't just place the entire burden on families who who can afford it least. Um want to thank and acknowledge city staff as well as specifically council members Eric Garary and Andre for standing with the community and pushing for a more feasible and equitable solution. Uh we urge the rest of the city council and the staff to listen to the voices of the community. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Auard. Next speaker, please. Angela Quas. Miss Quas, are you [Music] present? Doesn't appear that she's here. Next speaker, please. Ava Habbertock. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Good evening, Mayor Go and council members. My name is Eva Havvertock. I spent my whole life in Bakersfield and I attend Bakersfield High School. I care deeply about the issues surrounding this city. On March 15th, myself and a group of fellow environmentalists completed a 10-mi hike in the Kern River. We hiked in the riverbed from the Panorama Bluffs to Riverwalk Park to highlight the various issues plaguing our river. I was tasked with identifying and documenting evidence of the invasive species giant reed or arundo donx. Arundo donx is taking over a beautiful native plants and covering the entire perimeter of the river. After I first noticed the reed, I saw it growing everywhere. Orundo donx destroys native species, consumes extra ground water, and poses as a huge fire risk. Ordo Donx produces dry and combustible plant material which makes it highly flammable. Biggerville is not the first city to be faced with this issue. This plant has become a multi-million dollar problem for multiple other governments who waited too long to solve the issue when it first appeared. For example, in Santa Clara, the city has had to make multiple attempts at removing the species. And today, Arundo Donx is still present in half of Santa Clara River with coverage ranging from 5% to 100. This is an incredible danger to water levels and a huge fire hazard. Ventura County had a $400,000 project to remove Arundo Donax from only 5 acres of the riverbed. and the Ohigh Valley Land Conservancy spent three million on the same issue. The city of Bakersville has the opportunity to get ahead of this issue before it becomes a massive use of resources to fix. I ask that you council members allocate resources and solve this issue and engage the water and parks department to take the lead on this. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Miss Hvertock. Council member Gonzalez. Mto, thank you so much for coming to tonight's council meeting and addressing us and um quite impressed by your remarks. So, thank you so much. Um you're welcome to have this seat if you'd like. Yeah. Um but uh in all seriousness, I'd like to make a referral tonight to um city manager's office that uh we look into this particular issue and see um how we might mitigate it um in the future. Thank you so much again. Next speaker, please Misty Habbertock. Thank you, Miss Evertock. Next speaker, please. JC Yamas. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Good evening, mayor, council members. My name is JC Yamas. As a local business owner, resident, and future candidate for Bakersville City Council 2026, I'm here to oppose the 300% sewer rate increase. This proposal is not just excessive, is unjust, unclear, and unfair to the people of Bakersville. Let's start with the facts. This increase will triple the bills for residents and business, senior, low-income families, and working-class citizen will carry the burden, many of whom already struggling to afford basic needs. If the system breaks the people then the system is what needs fixing. Second, the process has lack of transparency. The requirement to send west signatures, partial numbers, and mail letters create various especially for our elderly and non-English-speaking residents. It's not public engagement. It's public confusion. Third, we don't see clear evidence of financial breakdowns. Who are the contractors? What are the salaries? Is there independent audit? We need real transparency before a single dollar is increased. Solutions. Craya independent sewer oversight committee made up of local resident business owner and engineers to review all the spending and contracts. Two launch dodge department of the government efficiency to audit every department identify ways and our tax dollars are spent wisely. Three, offer a tier of income based sewer rates to our seniors and low-income families and small business owner to make sure we are not paying the same as industrial facilities. Four, freeze this increase until full public disclosure is made available, including all financial contracts and political connections. This isn't about politics. It's about people, the ones who build this city, who work every day, who deserve respect, no surprise rate, heights, and confusion. Look, Bakersfield is here. We are not just showing up to fight this bill. We're showing up to fix the system that made it possible. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Yamas. Madam clerk, next speaker, please. Martin meia. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Thank you. Uh thank you. Yes. Um my name is Martin Mahia, a resident of Bakersfield and it looks like my objection is closed. Uh I already made an objection earlier today in the afternoon at 3:30. uh and this is in regards to the uh uh waste uh and the proposal to increase the rates. Uh therefore, I'm not going to go into detail, but I just want to say thank you to uh the council members. Thank you, mayor, for hearing our voices and uh deferring this matter uh for further study. Uh as I mentioned before, I don't object any new infrastructure that comes into the community that better the better the quality of lives of our citizens. However, as many of them have spoken today, uh I do have concerns over the amount of the proposed proposed increase uh into our taxpayers. I propose that we look at alternatives, better ways perhaps a lower amount to be uh attached to the tax bill as opposed to this, you know, uh astronomical $600 increase per year on somebody's tax bill, especially those that are that are on fixed incomes. Uh but uh having said uh I just want to say um once again uh thank you to u the council members and the mayor um and the uh the staff that took the time to actually listen to our concerns and I hope you guys take this uh matter back and uh bring it back with a adequate proposal that we can all live with. We know we need the infrastructure but thank you. Thank you Mr. Mahia. Next speaker please. Robert Hooks. Oh, hi, my name is Robert Hooks. Uh, I was here to talk about the sewer rate increase. Also, uh, in the interest of time and, um, in your statements earlier, uh, just want to thank you for reconsidering and, uh, look forward to true due diligence and true transparency. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hooks. Next speaker, please. Eric Orela Nia, welcome. Please introduce yourself. Hi, good evening uh mayor, vice mayor, and council members. My name is Eric Oriana. Um I am a resident of Ward 4. Um I grew up here in Bakersville, California, and I'm here and to express opposition to the water uh wastewater uh rate increase. I work in water policy advocacy as a my full-time job. I serve on the state water resource control board safe and affordable fund for equity and resiliences uh advisory group. It's a governorapp appointed position. Uh I also uh co-chair the uh state revolving fund uh stakeholder advisory group uh which uh directs funding for uh the state water resource control board's federal partnership around uh wastewater and drinking water. is the primary funding source for um water infrastructure in the state of California. And I just wanted to uh show up in opposition to the sewer rate increase. Uh and I appreciate the work from uh the the city staff to postpone the rate increase uh discussion. I believe that community outreach engagement is fundamental to this uh component. You know, I don't oppose making investments into our wastewater uh system. So I think it's important to invest in them before, you know, I work in with communities that don't invest in them and for uh decades and then the cost is much greater later on. So I do support us making investments, but I want to make sure that the city is making an investment that is not going to burden the most low-income communities in in the city. Uh and so I just urge you all uh to look at potential uh funding options. Uh to look at uh loans that the state of California has available. uh there are low interest loans that the uh SRF uh program can provide and hope uh that that's an alternative that you all look at. Uh and there's an opportunity to to uh get some loans if you phase a project as well. Uh that would hopefully address some of the concerns and hopefully that the sticker shock won't impact residents uh as dramatically. So I'm available to if you have any questions, I'm happy to be resources, but just thank you for the opportunity to comment. Thank you, Mr. Oriana. Madam Clerk, next speaker, please. Mayor Go, that was our final speaker. Thank you. We'll now move to the public statements listed on the agenda. If you're here to speak on appointments item 6A or items listed under consent calendar item 7, your time to speak is now. Again, each speaker is given a two-minute time limit and each agenda item is limited to 20 minutes total. The consent calendar as a whole constitutes one agenda item. If you're here to speak on hearing item 9A or B or new business item 12A, now is not the time to speak. You'll be given an opportunity to speak when those items are called later in the meeting. Madame Clerk, do we have any public speakers regarding appointments item 6A or items listed under consent calendar item seven? One moment, Mayor. We just received some speaker cards. Mayor Go, we have not received any speaker cards for items listed on tonight's agenda. Thank you. Next item, please. Appointments item 6A, two appointments um to wards three and five to the planning commission to terms set to expire December 31st, 2028 due to the term expirations of Caddy Cassie Bidd, W three and Allison Oliver, Ward 5. Three applications for appointment were received from Heather Roso, Cassie Biddle, and Allison Oliver. Thank you. These appointments are by Ward. Therefore, I'll call on council members Weir and Coleman to share their nominations for wards three and five. Council member Weir. Thank you, Mayor. I nominate Cassie Bill. Thank you. And council member Coleman. Thank you, Mayor. I nominate Allison Brandt Oliver. Thank you. Vice Mayor motion motion to approve appointments. You have a motion. Please cast your votes. Motion is unanimously approved. Thank you. And thank you, Miss Bidd. and Oliver for your willingness to serve and your service thus far. Thank you. Uh madam clerk, next item, please. Consent calendar items 7A through 7 I for approval. Thank you council members. I haven't received anything for separate consideration. Just want to confirm that with you or any items to recuse himself. No items. Um madam motion vice mayor motion to um approve consent calendar. Thank you. You have a motion. Please cast your votes. [Music] Motion is unanimously approved. Thank you. Next item, please. Hearings. Thank you. Our next item is public hearings. Each side will be allowed 15 minutes. It's 15 minutes for all speakers per side. So, it's important that you identify yourself, make your statement succinctly so others may speak. We'll hear statements from those opposed to the staff's recommendation first. Then, we'll hear from those who would like to speak in favor of staff's recommendation. If there's testimony on both sides, each side will be allowed a 5-minute rebuttal. There's a clock on the TV screens behind me, which indicates 15 minutes, please step to the microphone, identify yourself. After 14 minutes, a yellow light will come on. At the end of 15 minutes, a red light will flash indicating your time is up to quickly end your statement. You may ask questions during your statement, but they won't be addressed until the public hearing is closed. If you have written comments that are longer than your verbal statement, give them to the clerk and she'll provide copies to the council. Please be courteous to others who wish to speak. Madam clerk, please read the public hearing item. public hearing for the draft consolidation plan 2025 to 2030 and associated documents. Thank you, Mr. Kle. Thank you, Mayor and Council. I'll ask Jason Kedar from our economic development department to speak briefly to this item. Thank you, manager Klay. Good evening, Mayor, members of city council. My name is Jason Kedar. I am the um economic and community devel manager for the city of Bakersfield. And uh tonight we have the opportunity to present to you the uh draft consolidated plan action plan and the related documents for that submission. Uh this report is part of our annual HUD entitlement process. So as a city uh we are eligible to receive four entitlement processes through the department of housing and urban development. As part of that process, we're required to adopt an annual action plan to show how those resources will be spent and how they will work towards the needs that are met for our community. Um, every five years in that process, we're also required to adopt a series of other plans that help guide the next five years of implementation known as the consolidated plan, the analysis of impediments, as well as updates to the citizen participation plan. Um, so tonight we're going to have the chance to hear from our consultant who has been working with us since the summer of 2024 on preparing these documents. Uh, Diana Lrod has been uh a repeat uh partner for the city of Bakersfield. She helped prepare the consolidated plan in 2020. She's back again for the 2025 effort. She has over nearly 40 years of experience in this space and has prepared about 30 consolidated plans. So, she she's done this before. Um, and she's here tonight to present to you some of the findings and uh provide some information as we consider tonight's actions. So, with that, Diana. Thank you, Mr. Kedar. Welcome, Miss Elrod. Thank you and good evening, mayor and council members. Um, as Jason mentioned, thank you. Which is the which is the forward button? That one. Uh, as Jason mentioned, we do this uh five-year planning uh exercise that comes up with a strategic plan that uh looks at uh all of the data that we have available to try to understand what the needs are in the community. So tonight we're going to talk a little bit a fairly brief presentation of the background of what we're doing here are community outreach and the themes anticipated resources amendments to the citizen participation plan the proposed strategic plan goals um and then the annual action plan which is money that will be coming beginning July 1st of this year. So the background is what is this consolidated plan? It's as mentioned it's required every five years. It outlines the strategy for addressing those needs with federal funds and it in in basically four main buckets which is housing and homelessness, economic development, public facilities and infrastructure and public services. And the four big hitter programs are CDBG, home ESG and HOPWA. Um a little bit about the analysis of impediments to fair housing. This is a companion plan that has basically helps jurisdictions affirmatively further fair housing. It assesses both private practices and public policies. Uh it provides action step to remove or lower barriers to fair housing choice. It's also analysis of impediments has been required both by the federal and state law in your housing element. It essentially is a very similar document uh to what we did with the analysis of impediments and it complements the consolidated plan. Briefly the background of the findings are we found that the number of lowerincome households has increased since 2020 which is not unusual. Many jurisdictions have had that um had that issue partly because people uh who could move to other locations that were more affordable were able to do so. And because the number of lower inome households has increased, the need for affordable housing has increased. It's not really surprised there. Homelessness has increased 37% since 2018, but we do report in in the con plan that many more beds are now available for those folks. Uh minorities are denied mortgages at a higher rate than uh Caucasian or white people um or households I should say. This is also consistent with other areas. That's one way in which Bakersfield unfortunately is not unique. And the fair housing complaints primarily occur on the basis of disability followed by race and ethnicity. And by disability is people who need an accommodation to their home for some reason and the landlord does not want to provide that. We conducted a really robust community engagement process with community workshops. We met with partners um both in the city and uh within the county. We had informal presentation to the you the city council in January of this year. We had focus groups with partner organizations. We had online and paper surveys in English and Spanish. This is part of a 30-day comment uh public comment period which in which not only are you taking action today, but there has also been another previously I think last week another community meeting. Uh we've had one-on-one meetings with CA uh key stakeholders. We provided documentation in the consolidated plan about the outreach efforts that we um we conducted and then we're having the final public hearing today. It's probably no surprise that the three main uh community engagement themes are affordable housing or lack thereof, homelessness, addressing homelessness spec es especially with behavioral health services and economic development specifically in terms of jobs and job creation. the anticipated resources, we don't really know yet what what uh HUD will allocate to the city. Uh but over the five-year period between now and the end of this consolidated plan, there's going to be something on the order of $34 million. It sounds like a lot. It's not a lot of money, but it is helpful, especially for developing uh housing and for creating programs to meet lowerincome households needs. I should mention also that um the this the well I'll get to it when the when we get to the numbers. Hang on a second. Um we have proposed amendments to the citizen participation plan. This is basically something that says how we going to go about uh uh communicating with the community uh in each step whether they're statutoily required um what kinds of public participation are required and who makes the approval. The main change here, aside from some formatting and sort of ease of reading, uh, was we added language in if if there are section 108 loans through the CDBG program, that those were added, uh, as as specific formal actions to take um, consistent with the rest of the consolidated plans, citizen participation plan. Basically, the five goals that you see up here are relatively similar to the last of of goals, the five goals we had before. We've done some word smithing on them to really reflect a lot of the feedback that we received from communities from community stakeholders and residents, including, for example, the first one we included specifically homeownership opportunities. We also moved up uh and added more information about homelessness. This is a very strong theme in including a health and mental health and behavioral health supports for the homeless population, but essentially they're the same kinds of goals as we had before. I'm not going to go through this one by one, but this is the annual action plan projects. the list that's being proposed on the left hand side you'll see CDBG project proposals to the tune of $3.9 million and on the right side home HPA and ESG programs about $3 million these specific numbers may change um proportionately this is based on our best guess of what the city will receive from HUD in this coming year and I alluded to this before that um we cannot This the federal government will not allow us to submit until we get our allocation and these numbers are adjusted according to the actual allocation received. The recommendations you have before you tonight include approving changes to the citizen participation plan, approving the five-year consolidated plan, approve the five-year analysis of impediments, and approve the annual action plan. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Um just this is a one particular aspect of the um hang on a second. Where did that come from? I don't was this supposed to be here? I don't recall. Is this one supposed to be here? Okay. I think I this is just a detail that I should be in your packet. With that, I'm happy to go to questions. We'll go to the public first, but thank you, Miss Lrod, for a succinct presentation. Thank you for not reading every line to us. We really appreciate the overview. City Manager Kle, anything before we go to the public? No, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you. So, at this time, public hearing item 9A is open. Is there anyone who would like to speak in opposition to staff's recommendation? Please come to the microphone, identify yourself and proceed. Seeing none, is there anyone who wishes to speak in support of staff's recommendation? Please step to the mic, identify yourself, and proceed. Seeing none, I'll close the public hearing and return it to council for comment and action. Council member Gonzalez. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to thank um staff and our consultant team and all those who help u prepare the consolidated plan. Um, you know, these dollars that come from HUD, um, are are precious and they're critical for us to really address the needs of the most vulnerable in our community. Um, many of whom, uh, live in W 2, W, parts of W 7 and W 3. Um, and it is important that we not only have that citizenship part, citizen participation, but also uh that we're really uh being uh um clear about the needs that we're hearing about in our community and addressing them in a precise way. And so I really appreciate all the effort. I I I would be honored to make a motion to approve the consolidation plan 20 20 2025 to 2030 uh and the analysis of impediments to fair housing choice 2025 to 2030 and citizen participation plan and the action plan for 25 through 26. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Yeah, to echo Council Member Gonzalez's comments, um, you know, in times of just economic uncertainty, I am encouraged to see our steadfast efforts in and our commitment to um, building affordable at all income levels and that continues to be a commitment of the city council of city staff. So, uh, the work is much appreciated. Um so uh just on behalf of this council um motion to accept or he made a motion already. So yes, normally we would call on you to make the motion but you have a motion. I don't see any other request to speak. Please cast your votes. Oh, it is not working because of what we had to do earlier. So we're going to do a voice vote. Madame clerk. Vice Mayor Core. Yes. Council member Aas. I. Council member Gonzalez. I. Council member Weir. Yes. Council member Smith. Yes. Council member Coleman. Yes. And Council Member Basher. Yes. Motion is unanimously approved. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Next hearing item, please. Public hearing item 9B, master fee schedule. Public hearing to consider the resolution adopting fees pursuant to the cost recovery system and approving the master fee schedule. Thank you, Mr. Kle. Thank you, Mayor and Council. I'll turn it over to our finance director, Randy McKe. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McKe. Thank you, city manager Kle. Did you need to reference the memo that we provided to update Thank you. A staff memorandum was provided regarding item 9B um updating certain development service fees. Thank you very much. Uh good evening, Mayor Go. Council members Rand McKean, finance director for the city of Bakersfield. This public hearing item relates to our cost recovery system with the city and the related master fee schedule. The master fee schedule contains fees charged to the public community for services provided to multiple department by multiple departments across the city. The increases that you'll see in there primarily related to this consumer price index increase of 3.4% but there also were some reviews by department specifically development services and fire looking at those specific fees that are identified in the admin that they were feel they felt were not really recovering the full amount of the cost of that service. So in your admin you will see those fees increased and the explanation of those. Per the municipal code and state law a uh public hearing is required to approve this master fee schedule increases to the master fee schedule and uh per Munic code we are required to do that as well. Uh just as an as an aside uh we are we changed in addition to the the me in the memo that was referenced we changed the recommendation of staff. So we are moving forward with opening asking you to open the hearing then hear public comment and then what eventually closing the hearing and the resolution that's referenced will eventually be taken to council at the the June 28th the last meeting in June when we present the budget and that's when the resolution will eventually be approved. So right now we're just asking for the opening of the public hearing take the public comment and then closing that public hearing. Thank you city manager Kle. Anything further? Thank you mayor. No thank you. So, at this time, public hearing item 9B is open. Is there anyone who would like to speak in opposition to staff's recommendation? Seeing none, is there anyone who wishes to speak in support of staff's recommendation? Please step to the microphone and identify yourself and proceed. Welcome. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, council members, Dave Demahowski with the Homebuilders Association of Kern County. Um, we'd like to offer qualified support. Uh we received notice of the uh new master fee schedule only Friday before the Easter weekend and uh didn't have really enough time to uh develop a detailed response to it. But we we spotted a number of double-digit increases in the the B items uh relating to land development uh fees and and permits. Uh and double-digit increases uh give us uh give us pause. Uh Mr. Uh Kle was kind enough to uh make his staff available to us and they gave us a a pretty thorough briefing uh just yesterday on the methodology and some of the assumptions that went into the uh fee uh recommendations that are contained in in your staff report. But we haven't had really sufficient opportunity to um brief and get feedback from our builder developer members who are most affected by those those fee increases. But we hope to get to a position of support uh uh after we've had a little more time to review the the numbers, confer with our membership, and then get back with your staff before moving forward. So, uh thank you for the opportunity. Thank you, Mr. Is there anyone else who would like to speak in support? Seeing none, I'll close the public hearing and return it to council for comment and action. Council member Coleman. Thank you, mayor. I wasn't sure I'd use this thing, right? So, thank you for um because it said I was the active speaker and I wasn't talking. So, uh this a question for staff. Well, I don't know if it's a question or just a statement, but you know, this this was uh I I did have opportunity to sit down with the staff and review these things line by line and uh I I I assume there's some I I I believe there's some reasonleness to some of these uh fees, but you know, it is again where we fail to communicate to the to the public and you know, we these just pop up on the agenda and it's obvious that it wasn't prepared to go because there's additions that 5 days from when we publish it. We got to change it. Oh, we forgot something and then we're changing the recommendation on here. And so, um, you know, I say again and again that we don't necessarily require consensus from the public, but we certainly require communication. And I I'm just uh I'm just disappointed that we seem to be rushing this stuff through and we're not doing the homework and uh engaging with our community partners on these matters. So that's the only comment I have other than I if if there's an opportunity to make a recommendation, I'll recommend that we approve only the hearing period but not the rates. Yeah. Just for clarification, we don't need a motion tonight. We're not looking for the motion. I think that staff council member Kleman is aware of your comments and that's why we had made the blue memo the way we did so we could give um the public another month during the budget process to kind of get acquainted with these fees and speak up to the council in the next 30 days. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Coleman. Any other requests to speak? Okay, seeing no no other requests, I'll just uh the public hearing has been closed and we will move on to the next item. Madame Clerk, new business, item 12A, budget review and midyear adjustments. Thank you, Mr. Kle. Thank you, Mayor and Council. Um, thank you, Mr. McKean. So, uh, Randy and I will, uh, both provide some of this, uh, content for you. Um, typically our midyear budget review process happens a little bit earlier in the year. Um, but, uh, that is often because, uh, we may have some unanticipated savings, uh, additional revenues, and in recent years, council has chosen in in many cases to put that into reserves, but also look at some capital projects. This year we had no additional uh funds to uh present to the council and uh so uh we wanted to get a good understanding of our budget situation and this so this will be both an early preview of revenues and you know we're going to have budget workshops. We're going to have u memos. you're going to receive lots of information about the budget so that we're not trying to cover it all tonight, but you'll get an early look at our revenues and just some of our uh you know fiscal situation. But as part of that, we'll also provide uh a midyear overview. So, as we know, we're in uncertain economic trends. Unfortunately, for the last three cycles, I feel like that's been on our top bullet on our slide deck. Um also in recent years inflation has continued to be a big challenge and we anticipate and project certain cost increases but uh inflation in certain areas in particular uh insurance costs, workers compensation costs but even technology costs and vehicle costs have continued to rise greater than um all economic forecasts that we were able to look at in in recent years. Um and so uh our cost growth has been greater than our revenue growth and that is that presents challenges. In addition uh as we've shared with council um prior there was a tax remittance issue where there were sales tax revenues that were being collected in county unincorporated areas that were being remitted to the city. And this was not done as a city error. These are the businesses um themselves uh or in some instances individuals making purchases who selected which um tax measure to remmit their taxes for. The city's tax measures called public safety vital services tax and the county's tax measure was called the vital services tax. And so some were remitting taxes to the city that that were not um city revenues. And uh this was brought to our attention this year. Um it's an interesting uh circumstance that we have hired sales tax consultants to make sure that we're not losing sales tax leakage and that we're capturing as much revenues as possible. But unfortunately, they identify that there were these sales tax revenues that should be going to the county instead of the city. in this current fiscal year. That's in an amount of $6.5 million that we projected as revenue. That is not in fact revenue. And so we're recommending some adjustments that you'll see tonight because our baseline for that sales tax has to be adjusted downward. And we will reflect, excuse me, we will reflect some of those budget reductions as well as talk a little bit about other budget reductions that we've um pursued in preparation of our budget. We have a new budget officer and I would like to thank Randy and Robert, our budget officer, for taking a really hard look at our budget numbers. Um because we anticipated a tight budget year. Uh Robert took a look at every line item and did a 5-year analysis of our spend. What was our high? What was our low? What was our average to make sure that we're not over budgeting in some areas. And we identified some areas where we actually our spend was a little bit higher. And we asked the departments to help uh explain and understand why we were we had overspend and we had some areas that were underspent. and that allowed us to identify savings by making reductions in those budget line items. Uh in addition, we took a very hard look at some of the newer programs that have been budgeted uh through PSVS in recent years. I think your council is aware that in the general fund there have been very little increases in recent years because the general fund had no additional capacity and so there there have been some programs added through PSVS. We took a hard look at those where are we seeing important outcomes achieved that were goals of the council but also look at some areas that we've not had seen those same results and so some of those discretionary programs will be recommending significant reductions in this upcoming budget um to help balance the budget um and again also continued you know pretty in-depth analysis of what are our most essential services and what is discretionary and so our discretionary expenses uh that we'll be bringing as our recommended budget have been reduced by $10 million as a mid-year um consideration. This is not current year's budget but last year's budget. We had several projects that we that we budgeted as contingent and we've done that several years to be very conservative in our budgeting that we identified projects that if revenues came in less that we had pre-identified projects that we wouldn't move forward with as contingent projects. Last year we saw our revenues start to dip and so um I took executive action to delay three projects. Fortunately our revenues actually um didn't dip as far as um they could have but we wanted to stay ahead of issues and so we had three park projects delayed that total $1.6 million and that is savings but we have a couple of emergency issues. We have an emergency issue with the filtration system at Mc Merry that simply is a repair that needs to happen for McMerry to open. We also have tennis courts at Centennial Park that have a large crack that render them essentially um uh unable to be used. And one option for your council to consider in addition is with your priority of moving towards developing our undeveloped parks. uh we we have not been able to identify the design funding for all nine of those parks. This would be an opportunity as one-time savings uh to start that design process for one of our undeveloped parks so that we can start pursuing grants and and other funding opportunities, but would recommend uh that the remaining uh $700,000 um be uh recaptured as savings uh for our budget adjustments. Um, we these these are the items that make up a $8.5 million uh excuse me, the $6.5 million um reduction to account for our change in tax revenue. We have one project with uh 58.99 in partnership with Calrans that is not going to move forward this year. So we can delay it but that is under the understanding that we need to reprogram it for next year because we have a match that the CALR uh and the city are agreeing to. Um we have a couple of other just facility projects. We looked at all of our projects and said what can wait? Um I typically do not recommend waiting on certain deferred maintenance because it only makes things worse. But in the instance of this one roof we knew that we could wait a few more months. Uh the corpyard definitely was able to wait. Uh we have a a study that uh can also wait. And then uh we noted some savings in a former streetlight study that hadn't fully been deployed at half a million dollars that that we no longer need for that study and can recapture that small reduction to our grant match fund. We also took action to look at positions that could also wait. We froze 18 positions uh through June. Um we are going to by the way this is not you know in our our um uh details of the budget yet but we're continuing to look potentially at other positions that we uh these same positions or other positions that we may continue to hold beyond these initial 6 months as just part of the budgeting process. But this is what we recommended to at least achieve enough savings uh to have our balanced uh budget this year. And then we also identified operating budget savings in the economic and community development department uh that we um uh we've had some carryovers from prior years um that have allowed us to continue to work on the priorities of economic development but can make significant operating budget reductions in this year again to balance that budget. So, these are all items that um I am recommending that we do not fund this year so that we can balance uh that $6.5 million reduction in um sales tax remittance. Uh I'm going to actually pause here and see if there's questions. Mr. McKe is going to walk through our revenue assumptions. And again, you'll see that um our revenues um um are in they continue to be in u a a place that um allows us to maintain our programs and services, but challenged with the baseline reset. So, I'll pause and see if there's any council questions. Thank you, city manager Kle. Um, madame city clerk, do we have any public comments before we go to council? Mayor, we have not received any speaker cards. Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez. Uh, appreciate the presentation and the comments, Mr. Kle. Thank you so much. I want to look at the slide related to the fiscal year 2425 budget adjustments. Um certainly as we know as we look towards this upcoming fiscal year 2526 we're in some pretty tougher tougher times ahead. Um so I want to ask about the 18 positions that are frozen for six months. Can you I'm not asking for you to go into detail at each position but can you give the council a sense of what positions these actually are? Uh thank you uh council member mayor and council. These positions first off were vacant positions. We didn't uh freeze positions that had incumbents. So t we typically start with vacant positions. We also looked at positions that u we would deem as delivering a uh core essential service. So we have not you know frozen firefighters, police officer positions as example. Those are not frozen. So to be clear, we have some vacant police officer positions and we're not freezing those positions. Correct. Okay. Um but there were positions where and we actually you know debriefed with each department and said you know what are what are the positions that are going to uh that you really need to deliver on the highest priority you know services and and initiatives and triage some of those positions that you know while I will argue each of these as we've communicated with the departments we're seeing some service level impacts and some stretching of staff but that we could accomplish acccomodate by you know um reorganizing work assignments and you know reorganizing some of our shifts and just you know stretching the team to to work harder. uh it has you know caused some strain but uh these were positions that um that that um had the least impact on services but some of them are direct operations some of them are internal I would I think it's more than 50% are street level operational positions and some of them are supervisory positions and some are uh also internal you know support positions but it's across the board okay and when you uh identify a reduction in grant match. Can you can you describe to us what the impact might be there? Yeah, thank you. So, and what we're proposing is about $500,000. We had identified several different buckets for grant match. We had grant match for capital projects. We had some for uh traffic safety. We had some for multimodal. And uh we've been relying on each three of those buckets to help us use as match to go pursue state and federal grants. And we still have um more than $2 million in the grant match fund. And so that still allows us to um have some of that match available. We've used grant match in a couple of instances to be the gap funding where we got close to the full funding of the project, but we used a little bit more of the grant match to make up that last 100,000, 200,000, $300,000. So what it does, what it could do is it might mean that we have a little bit less to finish out some of our capital projects, but I think we have sufficient match to be able to continue to pursue grants. And ultimately, uh, I think we're going to be looking at our entire capital improvement program of any unfinished projects and really determine, do we need that project to move forward or do we reappropriate some of the funding of that un uninitiated project for some of the bigger priorities that that we see coming up in this upcoming budget cycle for council? Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Smith. Yes, I was just wondering about the roof repair. That's, you know, we talk about deferred maintenance and that's an item that if you really have a roof problem needs to be fixed. So, what's the situation there? Yeah. And if um M Mr. Meyer wants to weigh in a little bit more on that one, we just had a conversation about um you know, could it wait at this point another four or five months, reprogram it into the next CIP, and that was our determination. But um Mr. Mer, you want to add anything? Uh, honorable mayor, council member Smith, that's accurate. It's something that we felt we could wait. It's not going to create anything dire and that we'll reprogram it next fiscal year and make it a priority. So, we we do have a leak. It's just not going to rain the next four months. Again, we we can um do some stop cap measures that could buy us some time until we do the proper repair. Okay. Thank you, guy. Thank you. Any other council member requests? Uh, city manager, uh, continuing. Oh, council member Basher. Yeah, I would just like to say, uh, I don't think that's enough. That's all I have to say. I think we need to find more. City manager, if you want to continue in the presentation. Thank you. I'll turn it over to Mr. McKean. Good evening. Good evening again. Randy McKean, finance director for the city. So, as Christian was discussing, we've kind of got us through this upcoming fiscal year, made some cuts. So, now I'm going to look at where we are in 20 for 2020 2026 and as specifically looking at our general fund uh and looking at the estimates we have to get us through the upcoming fiscal year. So, we're going to look at all of the major general fund revenues uh and then kind of look at the trends what we're seeing. So, this first table basically shows us where we currently estimate we will be uh for this upcoming fiscal year. Estimated budget of an estimate basically $427 million. The first column of numbers is the actual revenue that we received in 2024. The next column of actual dollar amounts is what we estimate we will actually receive in in this fiscal year, $46 million. For some perspective, the actual budget for this 2425 was a $412 million. So we have this $6 million reduction specifically related to the revenue that Christian discussed related to the PSVS overage that was needed to be returned in essence to the county. Uh so I we're going to talk about those top three those major revenue streams uh separately but I did want to point out a couple things specifically the increase in miscellaneous or transfers in that number relates specifically to more money being required to cover the general fund from PSVS and the transient occupancy tax. So last year the transient occupancy tax fund provided uh $1 million for general fund operations. This year it's going up to $4 million. So that's a $3 million increase. In addition to that, the PSVS fund is covering general fund operations an additional $3 million going from $ 8.9 to 11.9. So that's why you see that increase from $13 million to $20 million. In addition to that, that beginning balances number, it's a $7 million increase from prior year. That I'm $5 million, sorry. uh that money is really what we we looked at savings from actually from 2324 and we didn't carry over revenue or projects in addition in essence to really provide additional revenue for this upcoming fiscal year. So that that savings that beginning balance is really just fund balance additional savings from budgets budgeted projects that didn't occur in that year. So we rolled that forward into the upcoming fiscal year to get us that to that $427 million. The next next slide provides a graphical representation of that table showing again property tax is over a quarter. That orange piece of the pie and then we have sales tax numbers. The blue and the dark the lighter the lighter blue and the red about half of our revenue from the general fund comes from sales tax both the Bradley Burns and the PSVs revenue. So we're going to talk specifically now about the revenues for property tax. Again that major revenue stream continues to go up. So, what you see here is a 15-year trend of our property tax revenue. The blues, the blue blue, the blue bars are the revenue, actual revenue we received. The orange is the revised estimate for this this fiscal year. And the green is what we project to receive in the upcoming fiscal year. That purple bar, the line is the increases or decreases over the years related to the that the bars that you see there. So what you see is we have 120 mil basically $121 million projected. That projection is based on review of the assessed valuations from the the county assessors office and that we see uh four about a five mill a 5% increase in assessed valuations. So we are projecting that increase to $120 million from 115 from the prior year. This next slide is the Bradley Burns the standard regular uh sales tax measure and this is a 10-year trend. So again the blue bar is our actual revenues that we receive every year. The green line is the increase or decrease orange is our revised estimate and the green is what we anticipate. So we are not as we move forward in this upcoming fiscal year uh the original budget was 96.7 last year. So we don't are not expecting we are not budgeting I should say an increase in this revenue stream because of the uncertainty in the e economic situation that we we're continuing to see out there we are only we are basically keeping it flat from the prior year. Uh really to provide some context to that we we Christian talked about HDLR sales tax consultant they actually projected an increase in our revenue for next year. We determined that we didn't want to we we viewed that as a little bit too aggressive. So we wanted to keep it flat. We we'll look at the trends. We'll get look at the returns each quarter. If it comes into what HDL provides provided, then we would do a mid-year adjustment. But right now, we want to keep it flat because we we know that there are a lot of uncertainties out there in the economy. This next slide is the PSVs. Again, blue blue blue blue lines or blue bars are the actual revenues and then the orange is the revised estimate. We already talked about this a little bit, but the original budget for last year, that orange number, it was $101 million. So, we had to adjust that down in really $8 million. a $6 million $6.5 million reduction related to repayments and a $2 million reduction just in estimates in the the HDL estimates were too high resulting in an overestimate for that for the last fiscal year. So we made adjustments of $8 million that that table that that slide that we showed of 2425 was actually $8 million in adjustments to get us down to that $93 million to cover it. So we we'd be covered and balanced. Again, this resets our baseline to $97 million. So we are we are instead of 101, we are reset to a $97 million baseline for PSVs. And we again are not estimating an increase. We are we are keeping it flat. It shows that 4% increase, but that's related to the reduced amount. If you look at the actual baseline, it's going to be $97 million. And we're going to keep it flat again because we want to make sure that those numbers come in. HDL gave us some numbers that were again higher uh about $99 million. I believe we kept it at $97 million again to keep be conservative. This next slide provides a review of the industries. Uh what we see here is from 2020 which is the COVID years we continued we saw some pretty steep ramping up of the industry specifically in autos uh general and consumer goods those types of things that green was the subsequent year. So we continued to see uh we saw significant increases right after CO but we as you look at those trends there are some that continue to drop down uh specifically autos uh banking I'm sorry uh building and construction uh food and drugs all of them have this this trend except for restaurants and hotels continue to eat out in Bakersfield and that county pool that county pool is really where the online sales are collected for the city. So online sales go through what's called the county pool and we continue to see people buy things uh through online service providers. So this is the trend that we're seeing and because of those trends we see some going up, we see some going down and some remaining flat. That is one of the reasons we continue to look to basically remain flat in this upcoming fiscal year. This next slide provides that same data specifically related to the PSVS. And what you're going to see there is those significant drops in autos uh business and industry uh somewhat more in in general consumer goods. Those are that that dip is related to the repayments that we had to make for the overpayments from the county. So that what you see in that dark blue bar is really in part related to the significant repayments of $6.5 million that we had to return in essence to the county. Uh so again we we kept it flat. We if you reset those those those those baselines they're about flat. Uh again we continue to see a little bit of decrease in auto sales. We continue to see a little bit of decrease in food and and and drugs uh um uh food and drugs and in in fuel and and the like. So again we wanted to be conservative. We there was an estimate of a pretty a somewhat of a a slight increase but we kept that these revenues flat for the upcoming fiscal year. And this next slide is our related to our transit occupancy tax. As I spoke to earlier, transit occupy occupancy tax is a separate fund, but it funds our a lot of our CIPs, but it also again is funding some of the general fund operations. Again, we moved it up to $4 million this year. But that revenue continues to have since co a pretty a pretty steady increase over the last uh couple years. the amount of uh actual budgeted last year was um 11.5 million dollars for so we actually are going to have a million dollars more in revenue in that revenue stream for this year and we are projecting a slight increase uh to that revenue in in the upcoming year as as well. Again, that has one of the reasons we're allowed to have the revenue to cover part of the general fund is we continue to see a transient occupancy taxes continue to rise. Again, if you don't know what transient occupancy tax, it's it's a 12% tax on hotel stays throughout the city. So that we continue to have individuals stay, lots of activity, lots of events still occurring within the city, and it's still drawing in individuals to stay at our hotels. So with that, that is my review of revenue. I'm available for questions if you do have any. Thank you, Mr. McKean. Mr. Kle, anything further? Thank you, Mayor. No. Thank you, uh, Madame City Clerk. Any requests from the public to speak on this portion? We have not received any speaker cards for this item. Thank you, Council Member Smith. Thank you, Mayor. I just had a question on the you had the baseline where you the 6 million. Can you go back to that slide? Did you you're talking about the PSVs revenue? Yes. There we go. So, you had estimated 101 and it went down to 93. That's an $8 million reduction. Yeah. But then you said baseline is 97 and you're going flat. Wouldn't the baseline be the 93? No, the the baseline is the baseline is if you the $6 million that we've repaid is if you add that back to that number, it's about $und00 million, right? But we're not going to get that next year either, right? No, no, we've already taken it out. They're they're taking it from us. So So the baseline is add you you add that $6 million to the revenue to get to a new baseline. Actually, it's actually $4 million. I'm sorry. So, uh, the overpayments went over multiple years. So, $6 million of overpayments, four million of them were in the current year. So, that's the new baseline of $97 million. I'm that doesn't So, the over payments weren't just one year. Yeah, they were multiple years of under overpayments and so they were collected over um this this upcoming fiscal year and next fiscal year. Okay, got it. So, we have in essence we have to really create a liability. So, 4 million was from previous from this 4 million was from 9495 and so that's the base that resets the baseline to 97 2425 I'm sorry yeah it's a long time ago yeah 2425 sorry okay thank you I got it thank you council member Arius thank you mayor um Randy I would appreciate if you could run through um so so that it's clear to me and to the public uh the the the transfers in um comment that you made earlier. I I suppose maybe I didn't realize how much was coming from toot um and PSVS to supplant and support um the shortcomings in the in the general fund. Sure. Sure. So last year we made that determination that the general fund was not going to be able to pay for the full amount of the staff staffing costs and operating costs. So, we we moved $1 million and $8.9 million to to supplement it. Uh we're we're we're continuing that same mode of thinking. The TOOT had available funds. We needed So, we have $4 million that we're now moving in from the TOT and we increased the the supplement from PSVs dollars by $3 million. Again, that's to balance the budget for the general fund. to just just give a little more information to the numbers when you mentioned the 8.9 that was from last year from PSVs to general fund was 8.9 the year prior was 8 and toot last year was a little more than a million and in this coming year and you haven't seen this yet but we you know this is part of our revenues preview is that to balance the general fund we're looking at the four million from toot and 11.9 million from PSVs. Got it. And so we we um intend to do that in this upcoming budget. Um we've we've done it last year. Um did we do it the year prior or not toot? Just for PSVs, but not for toot. And to your point, I would clarify this is city manager's recommended budget to council going into workshops, but it has not been decided by council to do that. Got it. Um, that's helpful for me to know. Um, I think that, you know, going back to Council Member Bash's comments, I think that it's important for us to really take a hard look at, uh, some of the overages in the general fund. Um, it's hardly ever, almost never, you know, uh, uh, the right thing to borrow from Peter to pay Paul. I think that there's certainly more opportunities for us to take a hard look. It sounds like Randy, you've got some help uh to look at each line item uh maybe a little more in depth. Um but looking forward to our conversations headed into the budget to figure out how we can better balance it today so that you know year-over-year we're not continuing to see additional transfers from uh funds supplanting the general fund. Thank you, Council Member Basher. I promise at my house I am the the good one that the kids come to. I'm not the the the but for some reason I just feel the need to uh just speak about the fact that I don't understand why PSVS is being used to cover budget shortfalls with the general fund. If if it's being used to cover and our general fund isn't enough, then we need to cut back. It's not our piggy bank. It literally is public safety and vital measure. And we've grown our friend circle huge when it comes to uh employees, but um we have a lot of issues that are not being taken care of. And I think that this is this is this is a a mild scrape of what needs to be done. Um we we we really need to get serious about this. And it it's it kills the public's perception of us every time they see PSVS being used for something other than PSVS, which is I want to feel safer. I want to transact in a safe way. I want to live in this community. I want to thrive in this community. And every time a dollar goes away from that, feeling that public safety and vital measure to the weight of a hund00 million, it it kills a perception. We have people show up frustrated. I'm here frustrated. I ran for council because I was frustrated. Not because I enjoy this whole thing and it's it's it's it's not fun, but it's necessary and it it has to be done. It doesn't need to be a conversation. It has to be done before we have zero trust or belief in in what we do and before deferred maintenance just continues to grow. I mean, it means that we have to get tough and we have to work harder and we just got to get through this the right way. Um, I listened to the PSVS meeting and and I think that uh Mr. Clayton made a great point of we are growing into our belt instead of tightening our belt. I I feel that that was a very valid comment and I think that we need to just be a lot more aggressive in looking at this. Uh, that's my comment. Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez. Yeah, a couple comments. Um, first of all, thank you so much for the the projections and I I appreciate the more conservative approach when we look at uh fiscal year 2526. um it's better to be surprised in a much more positive way with the surplus at the end of that fiscal year than to be having to make mid-year cuts which um are are very uncomfortable and that's where really um difficult decisions are are going to have to be made. We don't have a choice. Um I I do think there's a couple of things I I'd like to point out and that is, you know, as we review the midyear budget and as we're going to begin the exercise of this next fiscal year, it is sort of a one-year review. Uh what I would like to see is the city really perform some better analysis on, you know, multi-year projections. Uh both on revenue trends. uh I love this industry uh indicator here uh of you know what what industries are performing and how well and what are the trends over the last few years but I like us to uh perform some analysis along with some experts to see what what are the trends in the future and then also you know we're not just passive recipients of uh the sales tax revenue you know there are cities who are are are go-getters and and they're doing things to generate uh economic activity within their local region and why not us? What are we doing? What is the strategy for us to enhance the economic activities that in turn can generate more sales tax revenue? Uh I I refuse to just sit idly by and just accept the reality and just lament up here all day long about how sales tax numbers are going down. Let's figure out strategies so that we can be aggressive and generate new revenue. And to me, that's that's what it means to think about the city as a business. And that goes to transit occupancy tax as well. How can we increase toot? Toot is actually paid for by people who visit our community primarily, not people who live within our community. And yet the people within our community, our our citizens are the ones who enjoy that benefit uh to the tune of next year $13 million. How do we generate more toot? What is the strategy? How can we how can we develop plans so that you know specific action plans not pie in the sky you know studies that that take forever. I mean specific concrete action plans that we can start generating additional toot this next year. One idea might be to finally regulate Airbnbs. There's a half a million dollars in toot that is lost currently every year because we refuse to regulate those Airbnbs. they exist. We're not collecting toot. So I I think it's time for us to kind of get real when in terms of the revenue side and figure out how we can be more aggressive. And then also um when it comes to capital costs, our city continues to grow and we know that there are infrastructure needs. We talked about sewer for the last month. Uh and that's that's just one uh capital expense. You know, when we build out this infrastructure, they become real obligations for the city, real liabilities for the city. Eventually, we will have to replace those capital costs. There too, we have no choice. We have to replace them. And so, we have to have a better plan of action as to how we're going to address those capital needs in the future. So, I I really feel like, you know, the the the one-year outlook is good. Obviously, it's necessary that we have to go through this budget exercise, but we have to do it in the context of a multi-year projection both on the revenue side and then also on the expense side and have some real clear specific nuanced analysis um on specific items that we can enhance on that revenue side. Looking at key industries, for example, restaurant and hotels continues to trend upward. How can we help induce additional revenue in restaurants and hotels? I imagine there's people all over the region coming into Bakersfield. I know they're coming into downtown because you can't get a botonist anywhere else in the state. You come to you come to downtown Bakersville for that. And so, how do we in how do we induce some of that as a city? uh get behind our business community who are trying to make things happen that in turn will help benefit the city overall in the future. Thank you. Appreciate that. Just just to to to that point, Council Member Gonzalez, my budget officer is raring to look at some long-term projections. So, he he we really are planning to really get into the the weeds, so to speak, on that to really look at the long-term revenue and expenditure growth so we can actually have some really good numbers to look forward. I don't see any other requests to speak. We have to live within our means. We have to provide the essential services and infrastructure and that might mean that will mean tightening our belts. Uh next item, please. Oh, sorry. Motion to motion to receive and file. Motion. Please cast your votes. Motion is unanimously approved. Thank you. Next item, please. Council and mayor statements. I don't see any request to speak and so we are adjourned at 7. Yeah. No, but this meeting, aren't we going back for the three? Oh, right. We're going back for the 3:30 close session. We're going to come back and do the general plan as part of the 3:30 meeting. So, we're going we're going into the next meeting per the city attorney. I don't know. I thought we were jouring this one and then reconvening. All right, we're going back into um close session for the 3:30 meeting. [Music] 3:30. We three. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Wow. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Oh. Hey. Hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Down. Down. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] N. Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey hey [Music] [Music] [Music] hey. [Music] Oo. Hey. Hey. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] I rather try and accomplish something great and fail than try to accomplish nothing and fully succeed. I'll stand back here all night and wait in my [Music] I'd rather try and accomplish something great which has failed than trying to accomplish nothing and fully succeed. I'll back you all. [Music] The final accomplishment failed then try to accomplish nothing and fully succeed all night and fully succeed. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Everybody here. [Music] [Music] Heat. Hey, Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Hey, hey hey. [Music] [Music] Hey, hey hey. [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] What's up? Wow. Ready? [Music] Yeah man. [Music] Hey, hey hey. Deep. Hey. Hey. [Music] Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey, hey hey. Hey, [Music] [Music] Heat. Hey, Heat. [Music] I [Music] got you. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] N. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] [Music] reconvening at 8:14. Madam City attorney, thank you, madam. On the uh close session matter that was continued, uh the matter was actually continued again uh by a 4-3 vote. Thank you. Thank you, Madam City Clerk. Next item, please. Reports item 3A, general plan policy frameworks. Thank you, Mr. Kle. Thank you, Mayor and Council. I'll turn the time over to Phil Burns. Mr. Burns. Honorable mayor, council members, uh we're here today to discuss the frameworks for general plan. First want to uh acknowledge all of the uh time that the council has spent with me discussing these items in detail. I really really wanted to uh appreciate their time and um at this time I think instead of drawing this out I want to turn this over to Dela Costa with Ringcon who's our consultant. Thank you Mr. Burns and thank you mayor and council members. I am Dela Costa. I'm a senior project manager with Rancon Consultants assisting the city with general plan update and I will try to keep this as brief as possible and uh maybe skipping over some of the less crucial slides. That would be very good. Okay. So, as you know, it's been a very long road to get here, but we are now beginning to draft the actual general plan policy document. We've identified the issues and opportunities. We've established the community vision, and we have selected the preferred land use scenario. Your esteemed council members have selected the preferred land use scenario that is guiding the policy. So, the next step was to consolidate everything that we have heard so far into the strategies and integrate into the updated general plan. The frameworks are guided by a combination of state requirements, input from the community and from you and the alignment with the vision established at the beginning of the process. As a reminder, the vision is a highle direction that we are aiming to achieve with this update and the guiding principles are distilled priorities from the community. And um I'm going to skip over reading these, but you can review them on the bakersfield20245.com website if you would like a refresher. The policy frameworks are intended to be a bridge between everything that we've done so far and the development of the actual draft general plan. So they are not comprehensive of every policy that may end up in the general plan elements, but rather they are a site a set of guiding strategies for how to address the key concerns of the community. We created the frameworks by identifying the themes that came from all of the engagement we've done so far from conversations with you um and from the current conditions and concerns and the data that we've collected on the city and pulling those into goals and strategies. um or rather pulling in the goals and strategies that are in other Bakersfield plans to ensure alignment with what you've already been doing. And from there, we consolidated these strategies and filled in any missing gaps that were needed to comply with requirements and meet the community vision. Um I do want to emphasize that engagement has been an ongoing and comprehensive part of the general plan process. We've had a lot of workshops, popups, surveys, and focused conversations that all led to where we are now. That was all consolidated into the ideas in the frameworks, which were also used to have more specific conversations with local community groups, community leaders, city departments, and updated to reflect those dialogues. From there, you each have provided input on the frameworks individually, as Mr. Burns mentioned um which we very much appreciate and we are here today for any additional thoughts or comments to be included in the draft general plan itself. Uh this is a summary of the engagement that we have conducted with the framework. So we had pop-up events, workshop events, focus group interviews with community groups and community members, departmental interviews, and Mr. Barnes talked with each of you individually to get your input. Now on to the frameworks themselves. As I mentioned, we have your comments uh that you provided previously. So I'm going to just quickly go through each of the frameworks and pause on each one. And then please let me know if you have additional thoughts or input on how to ensure that the general plan elements will reflect Bakersfield and its need. We have the land use and design framework which includes placemaking strategies, complete neighborhood strategies, growth uh growth strategies, promoting the desired land use mixes and land use compatibility standards. This one is really designed to achieve the vision and the land use map that you previously approved. Annexation and infrastructure revolves around SOI future XOI expansions and annexation planning infrastructure for those areas and disadvantaged communities in those areas and it is aligned with the um municipal service review. Downtown includes land use and design specifically for the downtown area, historic preservation for downtown, transit oriented development and improving active transportation. quality of life. Uh, it is a rather hefty one. It includes public art and city culture, um, including disadvantaged community needs in response to SP 1000, the environmental justice requirements, water quality in the disadvantaged communities, air quality, healthy food and physical activity, and I'll add noise is also included in quality of life. Cultural and natural resources is uh talks about open space, climate adaptation, recreation and parks provision and services, open space and urban forestry access, Kern River management um in line with the Kern River element and citywide water quality and historic resources. Safety includes any hazards that Bakersfield faces such as heat and drought, climate adaptation, water conservation, um hazard risk mitigation specific to those hazards and hazardous materials. Mobility is public transit, active transportation, mobility technology and innovation and truck routes and shipping. Economic development includes promoting the desired industries, permitting and application process, streamlining utility provision for those industries and attracting them. And this one in particular is aligned with your economic development strategy and several other works done by your economic development department. And those are the frameworks. So now I'm very interested to hear if you have any additional thoughts. Thank you Mr. Costa. Um Mr. Burns, Mr. Kle, anything further before we go to the public for comment? No, I we're good. Thank you, Madam City Clerk. Is there anyone from the public who would like to speak? Mayor Go, we have not received any speaker cards. Thank you, Council Member Smith. Thank you, Mayor. Oh, we have Dave. Okay Mr. You have waited a long time. Come on up here. You deserve to speak. What a I know better than I know better than to complain about impact fees at this point. Uh Dave Damowski, uh actually not representing just the homebuilders association, but uh we've been uh in coordination with a number of different business organizations in the community and uh uh received a packet of information from Mr. Burn's office uh on on Friday that outlined I believe it was uh eight uh or nine significant policy uh areas that the general plan amendment will focus on. And we just wanted to make sure that we had uh some additional time to review and digest and comment on those specific proposals because there's a lot of benefits but there are also a lot of potential costs uh built into those recommendations. And so I wanted to make sure that this wasn't the last opportunity to to take a look at that and look forward to uh working with you and your staff and your consultants. Uh wanted to point out that uh we've been uh reviewing your housing element draft. Understand that you're getting very close to acceptance by the state of California. Uh we see a lot of benefits to the business community and particularly the housing industry and the housing element. Uh there are also some concerns about uh potential cost, but we do appreciate the focus on permit streamlining uh and and other benefits contained in your documents. So I'll close with that and wanted to thank staff for for sharing information with us and thank you so much for your efforts on behalf of our community and thank you for being such a trooper tonight and waiting. But thank you, Council Member Smith. Thank you, mayor. Thank you for the presentation. You you mentioned the Kern River element. I think I heard the term here. It was under cultural and natural resources and had conversation when I met with staff and we did have advocates who wanted a separate Kern River element. So, explain exactly how that's happening. Council member Smith. Uh there is a Kern River element uh that is being uh developed by a different company and we actually are meeting I have an internal meeting and with Ringcon on this Friday trying to kind of bring those documents together. Uh we will get with water department and see when we can get uh those draft elements to you guys also and that is will be part of the general plan. Correct. our our intent is to make sure that we're able to time it so that there's one environmental document. Um worst case is the the uh what we've put together with Ringcon would go separate and we would have to do an amendment to add the K River element into the plan. But we're hoping that we could pull these together and time them so they become one document. So it's Rencon's efforts and a mantra uh efforts will go together. Okay. Good. Thank you. Council member Coleman. Yeah. Thank you, Mayor. What one of the things that you spoke about was uh community engagement. Why? And you you said widespread engagement, but I know that on some of these elements, the actual number of people that were contact was really low. So, can you give us a little bit more input on to what what you're talking about, how much community engagement has really done in terms of numbers? I don't have exact numbers with me tonight. We can get back to you on that though because I do believe our team is tracking that. Okay. Thank you. I can tell you that we have done a series of pop-up events making sure that at least one event and in some cases two events were held in each of the wards. We've done uh two community workshops and as I mentioned we had individual focus group meetings with community leaders as well over the frameworks. Okay. If if Mr. Burns, if you could just provide that when you have that information, I'd like to see that. Please. Uh and Mr. Burns, where are we at with circulation plan? Council member Coleman, the circulation element is part of this process. Also, are you specifically referring to the roads or uh what was discussed tonight was the mobility element? The mobility element is really that that circulation element. I don't know how you define that but I haven't seen anything for circulation plan or circulation element that that uh you know combines the the roads and you know uh uh bike lanes and bus routes and uh you know potential for future uh light rail or I haven't seen any of that. Council member Coleman. Um the circulation map itself would have arterials, uh your collectors, um the highway systems. Uh there is not a uh current rail system as you're talking the bicycle paths that would be more tied to the active transportation plan. Uh I'd be more than happy to get you uh what we currently have. I will say there's still uh discussions going on between city of Shater, city of Bakersville, Kern County, and some land owners on the west beltway. That's probably the the most critical piece right now that that's changing. Uh last council meeting, you had a discussion of uh the Rosel Ranch and and what's going on uh through the Newark group. So, there has to be changes to our circulation uh element in those areas to facilitate that that size of a potential megaite property. And uh my last question is regarding the timeline where where we at uh give us an idea of what me give me an idea of what we projected the timeline because I thought we were going to be finalizing this stuff in June and uh obviously that's not going to happen. So, can you give me an idea of what the timeline proposed was and what the timeline is now to complete the general plan? We are anticipating completion including the environmental assessment and going to adoption early next year, spring of next year. Um, and as far as how that aligns with the original schedule, I believe we had a couple months delay to make sure that we got enough engagement involved in some of the different phases of the project, but we did originally project a I believe four-year timeline and we are at 4 and a half. So, we were always talking about 2026 completing those. We had originally said 2025 and because of that delay to conduct more engagement, we're now at early 2026. All right. Thank you. I have no further questions. Thank you, Council Member Smith. Thank you. He brought up the uh discussion on the active transportation plan and the circulation. Does it get folded in to your arterial collector map? Then you you show the bypass on that or they stay separate. The circulation element will have a single map that shows or it'll have separate maps of each of those transportation systems, but then we'll have a consolidated map that shows the entire transportation network. So, it does all get consolidated together. Thank you, Council Member Argus. Thank you, Mayor. Um, just really quickly, um, one of the conversations that this council has had, um, in prior meetings is to talk about a, you know, South Bakersville Beltway, um, and really starting to take a look at what it would take to make sure that we have a really efficient and effective uh, system as we see a lot more development and growth uh, in South Bakersfield. Um, Southwest continues to boom. uh certainly uh grown uh quickly um and and we're looking um at you know some additional growth coming to Southeast Bakersfield. And so I just wanted to see if that um what is already included in the document or is uh something that could potentially be looked into. Council member Harris, I will need to get back with you. There is a south beltway that's been part of the um circulation element for years, but I'm not sure if that actually addresses your your concerns or not. So, I probably want to provide you that document to see if it it addresses your concerns. If not, we can look into it. I would appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. I don't see yet the request to speak. Vice Mayor motion to receive and file. You have a motion. Please cast your votes. Motion is approved with council member Weir absent. Thank you. And council and mayor statements next. I don't see any requests. And so we stand adjourned at 8:31. Thank you everyone. [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music]