[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Somebody's going to [Music] sense of humor. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Oh, I know. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] I'm ready. [Music] [Music] I'll be back. [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey. Come [Music] [Music] [Music] on. Hey. [Music] [Music] Stare in the room. [Music] [Music] Wonderful. [Music] [Music] [Music] I think they so [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey. Hey. [Music] [Music] Hey. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] What's happening? [Music] [Music] Yeah. Sweet. [Music] Thank you. like [Music] 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 city council meeting of March 26, 2025. Madame Clerk, please call the role. Mayor Co. here. Vice Mayor Core. Council member Arius here. Council member Gonzalez here. Council member Weir. Council member Smith, I am here. Council member Coleman here. Council member Bash here. Thank you. Welcome to all of you. In keeping with council's resolution, public statements are now received at different times depending on the item. I'll 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 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're here to speak on an item not listed 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've declared 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 the 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, outburst from the audience, and surpassing the two-minute time limit. Madam clerk, do we have any public speakers regarding items not listed on the agenda? Mayor Go, we have received one speaker card for items not listed on the agenda. Thank you. Would you call that speaker, please? The first speaker is Eddie Lane. Good afternoon. Please introduce yourself. I'm I'm Eddie Lane with the Sarah Club. Um I'm here to give a commercial today. We um have the pleasure to announce that tomorrow afternoon at 2 o'clock, we're having a dialogue about trees with the city of Fresno. They have a very comprehensive urban forest management plan that we've talked about before and uh we have one of their top officials going to be talking to us on a Zoom call about 2 o'clock tomorrow afternoon. So, I wanted to give you a personal invitation. Uh we'll be talking about issues about um such as uh their very comprehensive uh development, how they developed their plan, uh heat island effect, uh their their policy, their practice of of uh planting 1,000 trees a year. That's a pretty pretty good goal in in Fresno and other aspects of what they're doing up there. It's always good to learn from other communities. So, we'll be doing that tomorrow afternoon. Everybody's invited. We'll do some little summary notes and send them around at some some point. Um, also I want to express uh my appreciation to um uh this the parks and recreation direct director who will be a part of that plan that discussion tomorrow afternoon. So, it's important that city staff are engaged. Also, I we're passing out again a copy of the November 6 uh letter that was sent by the uh Cal State signed by 125 people and uh among in those recommendations were discussions about City of Fresno. So, we're doing some followup with that. Uh, also next month we will be having a uh a Zoom session having to do with um Louisville and the trees that were planted there and it's the effect it's the healthy living effect that trees can provide for people. So I'll I'll keep you posted. Thank you for this opportunity mayor members of the council. Thank you for sharing. Madam clerk, do we have any other speakers in this category? Mayor Go, no we do not. Thank you. And do we have any speakers for items listed on this afternoon's agenda? Mayor Go, we have not received any speaker cards for items listed on the agenda. Thank you. Next item, please. Reports. Item 3A, administrative citations process update and automation proposal. Thank you, Mr. Click. Thank you, mayor and councel. This is a topic that has been raised in a committee and there was interest uh in another committee but at the wisdom of our city attorney we felt it was more appropriate to bring forward to the full council and workshop to discuss some possibilities related to administrative citation process and we'll turn the time over to our park ranger manager Billy Owens. Welcome. Thank you sir Billy Owens. I'm your park ranger manager for the city of Bakersville. Uh good afternoon, mayor, council members. Uh I'll be sharing a and city staff, I'll be sharing a short PowerPoint presentation with you. Uh following the PowerPoint, I'll be available for any questions. Additionally, I've invited representatives from each of the the departments uh who are here to answer any in-depth questions you may have regarding the program. So, why are the citations an important tool? Uh it comes down to it uh in the context of managing uh the natural resources uh and protecting the city of Bakersfield assets. The uh current departments that wish to utilize a an improved administrative citation program over what we currently have is the recreation and parks park ranger division, development services, code enforcement, public works, the solid waste division, the Bakersville fire department, and the Bakersville Police Department. Some of the advantages is the swift and efficient enforcement of the um uh violations that occur. Uh the staff has the ability to take immediate action. The primary goal is to educate the public and and encourage compliance to the rules or regulations and we hope that it can deter future violations by educating them. uh minor offenses uh are able to be held um um without requiring a court appearance or court involvement. Uh and staff has the discretion that allows them a tailored response to the individual uh situation at hand. Uh the uh uh administrative citation is more of a community-based approach than a criminal citation. uh you're able to address minor violations and it provides staff an opportunity to educate the violator and hopefully lead to a behavior change. Uh the administrative citation program is more cost effective. Uh it's less expensive to produce than a full arrest requiring court appearances, staff appearances at court even though they could appear at administrative hearings. and it does not require a police officer to issue the citation. The primary goal is preservation of city property and resources and long-term sustainability of the city assets. And of course, we hope to deter future violations. You know, the primary goal is to address the underlying issue that that created the violation to begin with. Some of the advantages to the third party processor is the data entry portion. uh assuring that the information is correct uh the codes are correct, dates, locations, etc. that's entered into the database. Um potentially including the data from various uh forms of citations. This program can be operated from a smartphone as well as an other electronic devices. uh the payment processing the uh service provider sets up online payment portals for the convenience of the citizens. They accept various forms of payments, credit cards, debit cards, etc. And they handle all the pre payment processing and reconciliation. The uh they also have a customer service center which they filled all the calls and and questions from the individuals that were issued the citation regarding payments, the options um of the payment and contesting and they provide support via phone and email. the uh reporting and analytics portion of it. Uh we're able to generate reports on citations and trends uh and rates um of compliance. It also provides some data driven insights for process improvement. Uh and I look at that as is there things that we can do to help educate the public in advance of the initial contact and then then later citations. Uh the service provider also prints and mails the citations, sends reminders, and they handle the adjudication through the online appeals website and ultimately an administrative hearing helped by an independent hearing officer if the case goes that way. They also utilize various collection methods to collect the revenue that's due to the city. Uh city staff and management has oversight throughout the entire process. uh of the citations, collections, appeals, and review for any hardship waiverss that may be requested. This is just a snapshot of some of the violations that it would apply to consistently through here. Any of the parking violations would be consistent with Bakersville PD fine structure, which they currently use, and that would be for any departments that utilize that. Uh for the park rangers it would be primarily for enforcing the park rules. For development services and code enforcement it would be the encroachment violations, parking, illegal dumping, zoning violations, vacant unregistered structures. Uh solid waste would be the mandated organic uh recycling of the uh Senate Bill 1383 which has its own set of prescribed violations for that. Uh, the Bakersville Fire Department arson unit for illegal fireworks, parking enforcement, and the Bakersville Police Department is the animal control, loud and unruly, vandalism, as well. And keep in mind, these are not exclusive uh to other sections that they that could be applied to. There's a lot of data on this sheet. I'm not going to go through each one, but if you think of column number one, that would be if they were issued a citation and they paid that citation. Column number two is if they ignore it, the process that it would follow. Column number three is if they would file an appeal. That would be the process uh through data ticket. And then column number four would be how that citation is adjudicated. Whether it was held up through the administrative appeal or or they move forward to a a superior court action. The next steps what we're looking for is direction from council to move forward with the staff recommendations to use the third party processor. Uh we would bring back any uh modifications to the municipal code needed to address fine structures and then each department would take changes uh in those schedules or or fine structures back to committee and then back to comm council for approval. Uh and then ultimately a contract with the service provider which the current currently the city has in place with the police department. Uh, Datate Techch currently processes the uh, parking citations for the police department. And that concludes that. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer. Thank you. U, Mr. Kle, do you have any closing comments before we go to council? Just to reflect again, this is a fairly common practice in other municipalities where they uh, contract out for the administration of their citation processing. It's something that becomes less of a burden for our local staff and these other uh companies have some economies of scale. We do feel like this is an efficiency measure that helps our staff stay focused on the you know the actual enforcement um and you know doesn't have a negative revenue impact. I would note we we feel strongly that we do need to keep a very close eye on this is especially as that would be something new to make sure that uh the appeals process and and some of the other uh steps in the process are reflective of our values but we again think that's a very strong efficiency measure. Thank you Mr. Kle and Madame city clerk just confirming that we don't have any requests from the public for this item. Mayor go we do not. Thank you. Council member Smith. Thank you mayor. I just had a question on the uh if they ignore the fee down at the bottom it says no payment received fines submitted to franchise tax board for collection what happens then that is one of the avenues that they they do the data does have the ability to to attach that fine to your state income tax as one of their methods of collection so it just be added to your tax The franchise tax board would take it out of your tax. Correct. Add it to that is one of the methods. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Smith. Council member Coleman. Sorry, Mayor. I think we have a potential clarification. Mr. Burns, you want to speak to the the clarification on whether it's a refund versus a regular payment? Thank you, Mr. CL. My understanding is if there was a refund, they would deduct that refund to collect that that fund. It was not an additional tax when we had talked to data ticks in the past. Correct. Maybe I I misunderstood what you were were asking. So if there's no refund, then we wouldn't collect that money until there was a refund. Correct. Thank you. Now, council member comment. Thank you, Mayor. So, it sounds like a great tool. Are we asking questions? Are we commenting? Whatever you choose to do at this point. Thank you very much. We have already passed the public comment part. So, all right. Here we go. So, yeah, it sounds like a a great tool, you know, to help streamline things, but you know, I I'm I'm a little worried about the consequence to the to the residents. Um and the you know we talk here about exercising restraint uh in enforcement and I'm just a little worried that you know we're going to have 50 other people running around writing citations for things and uh I'd like to see some policy from you know the city manager to staff about exercising that restraint And one of the my concerns is that that the number of citations somebody writes should not be a part of the performance evaluation. I'd like to see some kind of rule about that or policy about it. Just to clarify, council member Coleman, could you say a little bit more about um the the second piece? The first piece I I understand well um you know giving direction to staff about uh using you know good wisdom and discretion. Say more about the performance evaluation. Well I know that in the old days in law enforcement they used to evaluate police officers based on uh you know felony arrest, misdemeanor arrest and what that did is it encouraged officers to you know charge people felonies when maybe they weren't. And then that that policy went away a long time ago in law enforcement, but it's kind of human nature. You get what you can't. And so I would not like to see how many citations a a person writes being part of their performance evaluation. Understood. Thank you. And that is I am a little concerned about the res the impact on the residents uh if there's a a warning process or whatever. I mean, you know, parking and that kind of stuff, you know, we get that, you know, but, you know, if you're, you know, doing something in the park that is a violation of the of of an ordinance or something, I'd like to know that the people that are out there are advising the uh the residents about what the ordinance is and giving them an opportunity to remedy before we're writing citations. Yeah. Thank you, council member. I think that's good feedback and consistent with the conversations that we've had. Um, but I would invite Mr. Owens to just describe a little bit about how the park rangers are trained to approach those kind of situations. Absolutely. Thank you, council member, for the question. Uh, as part of our policy that we will develop for this, uh, you know, we maintain a education first approach. So there's not going to be any park rangers or I can't speak for the other departments, but I wouldn't think so. That would be out there in a citation first approach. So this would be another tool that if an education component, educating the people on the rules of the parks or whatever is at hand. If that didn't work, then that's where the citation program would come into play. And as part of that policy as it's developed, we would include in that as you know the the warning first and then initially on the roll out I know from my department that ability would only be given to supervisors initially on the roll out until we do our troubleshooting our problem solving in the process. So that way we have a very tight control over that in the initial roll out. Thank you. Thank you for that explanation. I like the idea of having a a consistent system that everybody's doing the same thing. So for that the reason I like it, but I have no more comments. Mayor, thank you. Council member Gonzalez. Yeah. Uh thank you for the presentation, Mr. Owen. I just want to clarify and provide some additional context. So, we're we're this council is not being asked to to consider any type of ordinance change as it relates to the types of violations that are cited. Um, and that that's not our question here. We we do that through various different other processes. Really, this is a a consideration of whether or not we're going to adopt this new process, right? Um, and so I I want to dig in a little deeper um with the administrative citation process currently. Um, what is the process currently? I know it's paperbased, but just kind of give us a sense of what that process looks like. Correct. Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez. So, the current process, if I were to issue an administrative citation, I have that ability today, but it's limited to a $1,000 administrative citation. So there's no leadway on that other than the wastewater department. They have a different fee structure adopted. So I would issue that citation today. Then I would contact the city attorney's office to schedule an administrative hearing for a minimum of 30 days in the future. I believe is the minimum. Uh and then that hearing would be scheduled in case that individual wanted to appeal that citation. uh for them to appeal that citation, they pay the fine amount upfront. So that individual would pay that $1,000, then file their appeal uh to get it to the hearing, and then based on that hearing is where it would go after that. One of the the downfalls in our in our current system is the collectibility and the administration of that collectibility because it's all done on an Excel spreadsheet by city staff. So that's that's kind of the Did that answer your question? It does. So Okay. So So then what changes for us at city hall with this new automated approach? So in changes to city hall, I I I understand you're asking what we would be bringing back to you for a decision on. My my question just is in terms of the process and how how um we improve the process because you know the the paperbased system um is a question of efficiency but then as I read the administrative report it looks like there's also a strain in resources uh when it comes to that appeals process and so my question is um are there you know maybe I should just get to the heart of it are there those uh violations that currently go unsighted as a result of the current process. I I think there's a lot of them, council member, and and I I will use fireworks as I don't want to put arson on the spot here or fire, but that's one of the probably one of the most common that lack of enforcement due to the in-depth uh of the process uh and and the lack of results if if that makes sense. the the difference in going with with a a process server or a citation manager, think of it as a management company. So, we're going to write the citation, we're going to scan it to them, and they're going to manage that process from then on. So, staff is not managing that and and there's two option on administrative hearings that can be contracted through data ticket uh or it could be an internal hearing officer. I believe the PD utilizes an internal hearing officer for their admin appeals. And this current process is in play right now at the police department. Uh I've talked we've had meetings with the assistant chiefs and the lieutenant over the traffic division. Uh they've utilized data ticket for an extended period and have relatively no complaints or issues out of them. So they currently manage the parking citation program for the police department. Thank you, madam city attorney. Thank you, mayor. Uh, council member Gonzalez, maybe a little bit more background from the city attorney's perspective. With regard to the fireworks, um, that's a very complex situation as the council is aware of. I mean, first of all, there is there is enforcement with the fireworks. We all know that. The issue is, remember, a law enforcement officer has to witness an infraction or a misdemeanor in their presence in order to issue whether it's a ticket or it's an administrative citation. They have to see it. So, oftentimes on the 4th of July and with the fireworks, it gets very difficult because it's dark out and we can't see the people that are using legal versus illegal um fireworks. Originally when we had the administrative citation process and we still do for again specifically the fire department with illegal fireworks it was a tremendous success tremendous success. But it was pretty then well known that when a homeowner had to pay the $1,000 and by the way by law that is the most that you can charge on an administrative citation. Period. End of discussion. It cannot go any higher than that. So we started charging $1,000. um gave the homeowner the citation. The homeowner soon figured out that a majority of the citations uh when they went to the hearing officer, which by the way, the city pays for the hearing officer. So, we have an independent person that's actually hearing the um citation, the homeowners quickly figured out that they weren't winning. They weren't prevailing. Um and so what would happen? They were out $1,000. We were collecting the $1,000. So the next year and the year after we saw the number of fines actually decrease, not because of lack of enforcement from the fire department, but because homeowners soon said, "I'm not going to pay the $1,000 for the appeal and you're not going to come after me." And you know what? We didn't come after them. Why? Because I didn't have a judgment. All I had was a paper product that said Jenny Janeiro owes $1,000 because she lit off an illegal firework. I then had to take that as the city attorney. I had to go to the Treasury Department. I had to go to small claims court. I had to convert that citation into a judgment. So now I have a judgment against the homeowner. Um the judgment still isn't going to be paid because it's $1,000. I don't have the ability to go to the franchise tax board. I was unaware that Datix was able to do that. Um I am a bit surprised that they're going to be able to do that on all administrative fines. Um but at the end of the day, it was too expensive, cost prohibitive for staff to then take that judgment. We would record it at the hall of records and it stays on someone's record for 10 years. A judgment is good for 10 years. Sometimes we would turn it over to HP Sears and usually on your agenda every now and then every quarter you'll see where finance gives you on your consent calendar where you write off judgments and you were writing off a lot of those judgments because it was cost prohibitive to go after and collect them. So I would tell you that while I think data tick is a wonderful tool and maybe it has worked very well for the police department, I would encourage the council to insist that metrics be taken and come back because you're going to want to find out who are these we're paying the hearing officer. Someone's got to pay the hearing officer. I'm already paying Datix. So let's get ready for the argument, right? that the data tick hearing officer is not a neutral party because I'm paying data tick and data tick has skin in the game every time I give them a ticket. And so the real issue is how is it getting paid? And it's not again for fireworks, it wasn't lack of enforcement. It was the process as a whole. And I'm not convinced that again that the fire department is switching to data tick this time. That may be something that this council wants to consider in a in a as part of a referral to a committee. That wasn't my understanding. Okay. I appreciate that. And I think we're headed down similar lines of thinking here. Um let me ask another question then regarding um this slide that indicates that there are various different um departments um that are involved with administrative citations and violations. That led me to believe that all of these departments were in fact participating in data ticks or and in fact the first slide actually calls out fire department, police department, solid waste, code enforcement, park rangers. Is this a tool then that all departments will be adopting? Are we going to And then I heard that BPD has still a hearing officer for their administrative hearings. So are there multiple processes here or help me understand what what we're doing. So yes, there is a desire by the listed departments and and arson is here. Uh I seen Bryce there if you want in-depth uh conversation or questions with Bryce. Uh but the departments there and we've met with all of those departments who could benefit from an improved process. Um and so yeah, that's um I forget what your what was your other portion of your question. The question was with regard to a comment that you made earlier um regarding BPD and the administrative hearings that they conduct. Um and my question is you know I understand that they have already adopted this system. Yes. For citations. Yes. For parking citations. So are we following the same administrative hearing process for all departments? Uh it would be the same because it's by the same service provider by data tickets. Is that that makes sense? So yeah it would be the same process. Okay. and and BPD does use a contract service provider just like data ticket has contract service providers or hearing officers. Okay, I understand. I'm with you. All right, then. Uh I will make the um motion to approve and authorize uh the automation of the administrative citation process. I'm sure other colleagues have comments, but I'll make that motion and I will make a referral also that we um send this back to committee for those uh for the development of those metrics of how we are um measuring the progress. I think that will also help us um speak to Council Member Coleman's uh concerns that were well put as well. Thank you. Council member, do you have any other comments? I see I don't see any other requests. Seeing none, you have a motion. Please cast your votes. The motion is approved with uh vice mayor core and council member. We're absent. Thank you. And now, madame city madame clerk, next item, please. Close session. Item 4A, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation regarding Jonathan Wharton v. City of Bakersfield at all. Thank you. We're agenda close session. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Back. Down. [Music] Down. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Julie, are you okay? reconvening the 3:30 city council meeting at 4:30. Madame City attorney. Thank you, Mayor. We only had one item on close session this afternoon and by a 50- vote with council members Weir and Core absent, the city attorney was given direction. Thank you. Thank you. And with that we stand adjourn at 4:30. [Music] [Music] Dirty. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Hey, Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. [Music] [Music] Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] feel. Hey [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Oo. [Music] Ooh. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] I'd rather try and accomplish something great and failed than try to accomplish nothing and fully succeed. All night [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I'd rather try and accomplish something great and fail than trying to accomplish nothing and see if you succeed. Heat. Heat. [Music] Try and accomplish something. Try to accomplish something and fully succeed. All night and fully succeed. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Hey, Heat. [Music] [Music] Yeah. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey, hey, [Music] Heat. Hey, Heat. [Music] Hey, hey hey. [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Here we go. Here we go. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Hey hey hey. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Hey, Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] Oh hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] I love [Music] [Music] Yeah. [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey. Hey bee. Heat. Heat. Hey hey hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] Danielle by [Music] [Music] hey every [Music] Heat. Heat. Hey hey hey. Hey, hey, hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] N. Heat. Heat. [Music] N. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey hey hey. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] shut. [Music] Go ahead. No, go ahead and start. 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 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 March 26, 2025. Madame Clerk, please call the role. Mayor Go here. Vice Mayor Core. Council member Aas, I am here. Council member Gonzalez, here. Council member Weir, Council Member Smith, I'm here. Council member Kman here. Council member Basher Tosh here. Thank you. Welcome to all of you. I see we have students from Bakersville College. Professor Holmes class. Would you just raise your hand? Thank you so much for your participation in the civic process and we hope that you'll learn something tonight and come back again. At this time, we have the pleasure of having Pastor Dr. Billy Rash. He's a pastor of Kern Christian Center to offer our invocation. Pastor, thank you so much for your service as a Marine veteran. Uh thank you for serving as our BPD chaplain and congratulations on your upcoming church's 40th anniversary. Also, uh thanks so much for your support of children and families with the Air Force Academy just working to develop uh positive values and develop a balance of physical, mental, spiritual health. Following the invocation, we have a very special person to lead us in the pledge. Anthony, seventh grader at Freedom Middle School, won first place at the National Silver Gloves Boxing Competition in St. Louis. He's been boxing for three years with 21 fights under his belt, bringing home 18 trophies and belts. He trains at the uh Bakersville Pal, and he wants to go pro. Pro really. Uh, not only is he an outstanding boxer, he has a 3.7 GPA and he aims for the Junior Olympics. So, uh, we're just so proud of you. Would you all please stand now? Thank you, Mayor, Councilman, staff, the rest. May we bow our heads for a word of prayer. Father, we thank you that we're so grateful tonight that we're here, not only in our city, representing our city, those that are called and appointed, that you've placed here at this time, in this hour. We're so grateful. We're grateful for your wisdom. We ask you for divine protection and safety for our leaders, for our staff, and we thank you for an anointing of wisdom to be able to guide and direct the people of this city, this wonderful, beautiful city that you've set us in, called us to, and appointed us to. So we thank you for your presence, your wisdom, your guidance, your direction in every area. And we ask this in the matchless name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. 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, and with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. May be seated, pastor. We receive that wisdom. Anthony, if you just stay there. I'm going to come down. Anthony, we are so proud of you. So, uh, I want to present this certificate of congratulations in honor of your winning first place at the 2025 Silver Gloves Boxing Competition and in recognition of your exceptional efforts and determination to pursue excellence. Congratulations on your outstanding achievement. Give it up for Anthony. All right, that's an achievement. And why don't you introduce your parents? Um, say how grateful you are. I'm grateful for my mom, my dad. Um, I forgot. Thank you, Mom and Dad. Stand up. Let's give it up for mom and dad. Okay, next time you're up here. Here are a few guidelines to help our meeting run smoothly. We'd 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 the 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 Jeffrey Gutierrez, um, president of DeWalt Corporation, declaring National Surveyor Week in Bakersfield during the week of March 24th 2025. Welcome. Thank you. Since the colonial days of the United States, surveyors have been leaders in the community, shaping cultural standards. Former notable surveyors include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, William Clark, along with our very own council member from Ward 4, Bob Smith. The city uses several firms for our surveying and mapping needs and today it's a joy to celebrate. I issue this proclamation. Whereas surveyors play an integral role in land development from planning to design of our building sites. Whereas there are over 52,000 licensed surveyors in the United States. more than 4,000 licensed land surveyors serving 40 million residents in the state of California and 59 licensed land surveyors in the city of Bakersville, including council member Bob Smith. Whereas surveying has been an essential element in the development of the human environment since the beginning of recorded history and is required in the planning and execution of nearly every form of construction. Now therefore, I, Karen go, mayor of the city of Bakersville, do hereby proclaim March 24th through 28th, 2025 as National Surveyors Week in our city and call upon all citizens to recognize and commend surveyors for contributing to the construction and advancement of our community. It's my honor to be able to present this to Jeff Gutierrez. Council member, why don't you come down? You can introduce Thank you so much. Congratulations. You may talk, introduce your guests, and if Council Member Smith wants to be celebrated, we will do that. Absolutely. I'll I'll shake Council Member Smith's hand. Fellow land surveyor. Um, honorable uh council members, thank you for this proclamation for honoring us. Um, surveyors, our profession, I think, uh, very correctly is stated in the proclamation that we're essential to the development and proper management of a city like Bakersfield. Um, I'm going to make one plea to you. Uh there are 4,000 plus or minus land surveyors in the state of California. We serve 40 million people. That's the worst ratio in the in the nation. Um the average age of a land surveyor in California is like 57. So we really see some hard times ahead of us with the numbers of land surveyors. I've been land surveying for 25 years. It's been a very great profession for me. I've been able to raise children and have a household with it. So, I want to encourage all of you that if you know a young person who um likes being outdoors, uh maybe is good at math, um uh encourage them to get into land surveying. Um I I think uh it's a great profession. I have with me today some land surveying royalty. This is Christia Sha. She works for Quadnoff here in Bakersfield, but um she's also the presidentele of the state chapter of the California Land Surveyors Association. So, I don't know if you want to address the city council. Good evening, council members. Karen go, mayor go. Sorry about that. I would just like to turn around and all the students that are here um for for the city council meeting to uh consider land surveying as a profession. Um, as Jeff said, it's a it's a great profession and it goes back a very long time and we need more involvement. Thank you. Yes. Uh roads don't get built, sewers, water, buildings don't get built. Nothing happens without surveyors. So great profession and uh more the better. Thank you for your service. Please take a photo. [Applause] Thank you. Give it up for [Applause] surveyor. Madam clerk, next item, please. Presentation item 4B, proclamation to Joe Turner, job spot administrator for the Bakersfield Adult School, declaring the week of April 7, 2025 as adult education week in Bakersfield. Thank you, Miss Jody. You can't hide back there. You're an integral part of adult education. So, come on up here, Mr. Turner. Here, come on up. It's always such a joy to go to um the adult school and see adults who are passionate about learning. It's sort of different from going onto a high school campus where they have to be there, but here you have adults who want to be there because they want to be there. And so, thank you so much to both of you for your leadership in helping our adults continue to advance their education. And it's my honor to issue this proclamation. Whereas the state of California will observe adult education week April 7th through 11th, 2025. And whereas the Kern High School District along with its board of trustees acknowledges that the Bakersville Adult School serves the changing economic and cultural needs of a vigorous expanding community. And whereas Bakersville Adult School prepares more than 6,000 students to meet their academic, personal, and professional goals by enrolling in one or more of their diploma GED programs. And whereas the 20 in 2024, 254 adults received their high school diploma, 61 adults earned their GED, and 617 adults at Bakersville Adult School and the Laro Detention Facility completed one or more career technical education programs. And whereas in 2024, 75 adults in Laro detention facility completed court-ordered parenting and neglect classes to reunite with their families. And Bakersville Adult School graduated another class of its 2-year vocational nurse program. Now therefore, I, Karen Go, mayor of the city of Bakersville, do hereby proclaim April 7th through the 11th, 2025 as adult education week in our city and salute the administration, teachers, and students at Bakersville Adult School and honor them for their efforts and accomplishments. It's my honor to be able to present this to Mr. Turner. Congratulations. You're welcome to offer remarks. And Miss Jody, you also whatever you would like to go ahead. I wanted to raise that. We're about to see that. Thank you, Mayor Karen Go and the city of Bakersville. It is a tremendous honor receiving this proclamation in recognition of the adult education week, the Kern High School District and Bakersville Adult School. We are truly grateful for the uh support and recognition for our efforts at the Kern High School District Baker School Adult School. We deeply are we deeply committed to supporting the students in their efforts and on their pathways to graduation. We are to empower and individuals through career technical education and enrich their lives personally and professionally. We would like to take a moment to thank uh our teachers and staff for their efforts and incredible work and empowering students, learners and their support and inspiring them and motivating students and on their potential uh way every day. In addition, thank you Andre Gonzalez for the We excited about the job spot opportunity the renaissance. It will bring a um offer a unique opportunity for a positive impact on the climate and the community of the area of Oldtown Kern. Together we can create a vibrant community of lifelong learning and celebrate the opportunity of growth that can be realized. Thank you again for the recognition and the ongoing support for the adult education and our community. Together we can continue uh building lives for a brighter future. Thank you. Well, they take a photo. I just want to say congratulations, Mr. Turner, and to all of your team at Bakersville Adult School. Thank you so much for all the work that you do. And it's appropriate that uh this month celebrates uh adult education because hopefully at the end of this month, we'll be opening the job spot at the Renaissance of Baker. This council uh for years has been focused on real opportunities to move people who are experiencing poverty into the middle class and beyond. And so uh there's nothing there's nothing more powerful than education and the resources that you provide at Bakersfield Adult School. So I'm very honored to partner with you and I know the full council is uh and the whole city is super excited about working with you in the future. So looking forward to celebrating Renaissance when it opens. Thank you. Thank you. Madame clerk, next item, please. Public statements. Thanks. In keeping with council's resolution, public statements are now 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, place it 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 portion of the meeting. If you're here to speak on an item not listed on the meeting agenda, you'll 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. Madame Clerk, do we have any public speakers regarding items not listed on the agenda? Mayor Go, we've received six public speaker cards for items not listed on tonight's agenda. The first two public speakers are Sophia Felix and Heather Panella. Thank you. Welcome. Introduce. Please introduce yourself and go ahead. Hi, my name is Sophia Felix. I am the current Great American Cleanup chair for this year 2025. I'm also a board member. I've been a board member going on 15 years this June. But I'm here today to give a little information about Keybill Beautiful and some of the events that we do throughout the year. Um, this is just some highlights from last year's 2425, which I was the chair of that committee or the committee for that year. So, we had over 6,000 volunteers. We had over a,000 I'm sorry, over 114,000 pounds of litter and illegal dumping cleanup. So, that's a lot of clean up. And that isn't just one day. That was throughout the whole entire year um that we did that. We had over um 15,000 pounds of recyclables. We had a mural completed that we've done. And then we've also had different um flower plantings and community gardens that we've been working with. The Greenfield walking group. And then recently we've reopened the I Street Garden, which is now called Compassion Community Garden. Um is underway. It's almost finished. So, I just want to give a few highlights that our main event is coming up. We have Great American Cleanup coming up um this April. It's going to be on April 26. So, we are taking registration for Captain Steel and also for members. So, if you are a team and you want to get a or have a team together that you want to get together, we still have that available. Um you can do registration all the way up until May I'm sorry, not May, Monday. Holy moly. Yeah, Monday, April 11th. After the 11th, we are doing paper registrations. So, you can actually sign up all the way until the day of the event, which is April 26th, but we'll do it by paper instead of um over the internet and registrations. So, just a few highlights um before I finish up. This year from the 2024 GAK, which is Great American Cleanup, we had over 2,000 volunteers over almost 70,000 pounds um picked up. And this is just one day, so it's not all the time, but just that one day. And we had over 80 locations that we picked up on last year's event. So, next I'm going to introduce um Heather, who's going to give you a little bit more information about that. Thank you, Miss Felix. Welcome. Good evening, uh, honorable mayor, city me, city council members, and aim staff. My name is Heather Panella, and I have the pleasure of serving as the 2025 vice chair for keep Bakersfield beautiful. I'm also Mayor Go's uh appointed official for the group and I'm here to talk about the mayor's great American Cleanup High School challenge. This I believe is our third year going into and this is an opportunity for our local high schools to get involved. Uh the winner is selected by the group that has the most volunteers that take place on the day of the Great American Cleanup. Margo herself sponsors the first place prize which is $500. Also, there is a perpetual plaque. Last year's winner was South High School, but we've also had BHS, Go Drillers, and West represented as our winners in the past. Second prize is 250. Those go to the schools themselves. Um, teams can register at the at keepbakersfield beautiful. us. Um, I also wanted to, while I have the opportunity to talk about if Great American Cleanup does not fit into your schedule, if you're here and you're listening, um, we do have opportunities year round. Uh, we are a year-round organization and we are here to serve the city, um, to find to leave things better than we found them. So, if you or your group are interested in doing a cleanup, you can always call us and connect. We can help you. We have the tools for that. Um, while we're here, also I would love to publicly thank our sponsors for the Great American Cleanup this year. Amazon is heavily involved. California Resource Corporation is heavily involved. Um, the city of Bakersfield is always supportive as we are a connected committee to the city. KV Print, Reyes, Coca-Cola, Clean California, California Water, Fredo Lelay, Telmundo, KG, Corin Maine, uh, Mayor Go of course. Um, and I failed this eye test at that bottom line, but please uh sign up and keep Bakersfield beautiful us. Thank you for the time. Thank you, Miss Panella and Miss Felix. And I encourage all of you to take part in this. Here's an opportunity for us to develop that culture of beautifying our community, cleaning our community, encouraging our young people to do so, and we look forward to seeing all of you there. Madam Clerk, next speaker, please. Johnny Aligz, don't worry. I'm not serving you. I have these documents here for you guys. Typically, government contractors, sorry, I'll start over. Typically, government contracts are fair unless people like your employee Kevin Peoples are getting paid off by contractors. It's an open secret in the trucking industry that Kevin has deals with Bowman Construction A and AMB Trucking. We all knew why he pulled my contract April 2024 because he wanted his two cronies to give him his cut, costing taxpayers an additional $500,000 this last year. I presented the bid results for the April 2024 contract that Kevin chose the committee to select the hauler. If you look at the scores, he conveniently gave A and B trucking 96% while the rest of the companies were given 80% or lower on their qualifications for the job. Now, the contract is back out this year for I don't know why. I don't know what reasons. So my question to you is will this contract that is out that is due next Thursday or Wednesday I believe will this contract be scored fairly or is Kevin's committee once again going to hand it over to Bowman Asphalt the company that just so happens to use A&B trucking exclusively. So who will choose the committee that scores the bid? And how will you ensure that Kevin doesn't cost taxpayers more money than he's already cost? Andre said that the goal was to move people those uh ex those experiencing poverty and moving them to the middle class. But that's not possible when you do what Kevin did to me and my business and my employees. So if you want to help people, look into Kevin Peoples. Thank you. Council member Gonzalez. Um, I just want to ask a question to staff if I can. Um, um, Mr. Kle, can you can you just briefly outline for the council and for the public what the process is for these types of contract bids? Yeah, thank you, Council Member Gonzalez, Mayor and Council. It depends on the type of expense. We have two typical processes although there are some variations within those but for a uh request for proposals there's one process and for uh what we call sort of a straight bid process there's another process. Um, we do uh create for the straight bid process, we create a pretty specific scope of work specifications and we post those on a an online page that folks can go to and review. And then we have a specific uh timeline in which people need to submit their responses. Sometimes for larger projects, we'll actually do a question and answer, a biders conference, so we can answer questions about those. And then uh we actually um have individuals uh open those bids and we actually um typic typically for our straight bid process it's blind process where we we we look at um the information that is um you know th those in those employees that are directly responsible for it. Um there's a panel that has multiple you know individuals on it um so that we have various diverse um reviewers um as well as um where we we're looking at just the qualifications themselves. So when you say there's a blind process you're I think that's an important point. So you're you're saying that the committee members or the panel the panelists uh are receiving the bids and the information but they do not have identifying information in terms of the bidder. That that is accurate on most of our bids. The straight bid process when we do a request for proposals of course you have to look at the content you're looking also at the qualifications. Sure. Um but for the straight bid process we just look at what is the low bid. Okay. And in terms of who is on that panel, the selection committee, um how does that how does that get determined within the city? Typically, uh we do have staff make those assignments uh to other uh staff depending on the nature of the project. We might actually ask a third-party, you know, member from community or or another agency, but typically it's city staff that are assigned to review this. But again, we try and have a diverse me, you know, set of individuals on a panel so that we have different perspectives. And in this upcoming bid, who will be on the panel? I look to Mr. Meyer if you can clarify that. Council member Gonzalez, the panel has not been determined at this time. Okay. But typically it is who? Uh it's for a panel like this, it would be a combination of public works managers or maybe other managers and other city departments that have a a very good understanding and knowledge of what's being uh proposed on. Right. So it will probably come down to um my discretion. Right. So they have to be sort of they have to have some level of content knowledge in order to assess the applications. I imagine that would be correct. And if we don't have enough staff within the city to make that assessments, as the city manager alluded to, we could look to other agencies for support like the county. Okay, I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, madam clerk. Next speaker, please. Chandler Weber. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. Uh, good evening, madam uh, Mayor Go and esteemed council members. My name is Chandler Weber. I am actually a public information officer with the US Small Business Administration deployed actually in Los Angeles County, but we're finding that not a lot of people understand the role that SBA plays in disasters. And so we're trying to outreach to all the contiguous counties. So my goal for being here this evening just kind of outline really quickly what our program is when it comes to disasters. And if heaven forbid there is another natural disaster moving forward, you understand that we are a resource is available and ready to help. So kind of what we are able to offer uh we are actually the largest source of federal funding when it comes to natural and man-made disasters. Um far greater than FEMA or any other Callowas things of that nature. And what that kind of looks like starting with physical damage, we actually are able to offer homeowners and renters is the majority of our assistance. So we just passed the $2 billion mark there in Los Angeles County. of that 1.85 has gone to homeowners and renters. So, if I leave you with nothing else, just know that the name may be small business, but homeowners and renters are our primary uh focus when it comes to natural disasters. And in that, we can offer up to $500,000 for physical damage that happened to the home and an additional 100,000 for personal property. So, anything from your vehicle, clothes in your back, all the daily necessities. And then to the business side, we're able to offer up to $2 million for physical damage that happened to a business. So again, moving forward, just keep that in mind. How that affects Kern County residents in particular though, we also have a loan called economic injury disaster loans or idol loans. and what that looks like. They're designed to cover anything from your working capital to um you know covering payroll, covering uh health care benefits, all the things to keep a business afloat if you suffered um any kind of economic injury. And that that loan is designed to stretch all the way out until October 8th is the deadline just because as we move into the summer months, that's when you know economic injury starts to become more readily available. So, just keep that in mind that if you see a business struggling to stay afloat, we are a resource available. All of our terms offer a one year of no payment, no interest acrruel on those and you can go all the way up to 30 years. Interest rates can be as low as 4% on those and we're here to stay in the long term. If you have any questions, please give us a shout. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Weber. Mr. Weber, if the public needs to get in touch with you, what's the best way of doing that? I can give my email address. That would be easy. Whatever you choose to do that. Is that okay for me to share that? Sure. Yes, ma'am. All right. So, my email address is going to be Chandler and that is ch h an dl e r.weber web at sba.gov. Or you can also Google SBA disaster. Um and there's contact information to get a hold of any of us. There's about 12 of us here within Kern, San Bernardino, Orange County, and Los Angeles County as well. Of course, Mr. Weber, thank you for making the trip up here and providing that information. Thank you so much. Have a good one. Thank you, Madame Clerk. Next speaker, please, Glenn Klepic. Thanks. Good evening. Good evening. Welcome and please introduce yourself. My name is Glenn Klepic. Um, I'm sorry I need to take up uh precious time here at a city council meeting. Um, I actually uh sent an email first, called the number on the website. Uh the person uh I spoke to said maybe I should try sending a letter doing it the oldfashioned way which I did. So uh as a last resort I'm here speak to you face to face. Um I recently went through uh the lengthy process uh application process to become a Bakersfield police officer. Um it includes uh of course the initial application written test uh physical test several interviews and then a lengthy background check. So, it's quite a process. Um, on October the 2nd of last year, I got an email saying that my name was removed from the eligibility list. It listed some reasons why any candidate might be removed from the list, but it did not say specifically why I was removed from the list. Now, I don't know what the policy is uh that stops them from telling me the actual reason, but I think that a little more transparency in this process would be a good thing. Um because if a person is removed from eligibility without a specific reason, I think it's human nature to start wondering was the process done without any uh undue bias or discrimination. Uh I just turned 60 at the beginning of this year and uh if that's too old to be a police officer, that's fine. I could get that. I could stand behind that if they'd just say, "Sorry, you're too old." or something. But I'd like to know what the reason is. Um, so I wasn't sure where else to go. If someone here could point me the right direction, uh, that would be great. Uh, check your emails. I did send it out an email and I'd love to hear back from you on that. Thank you, Mr. Klepic. Mr. Kle, is there what would be the appropriate way for him to follow? We'll have a staff followup. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Madam clerk, next speaker, please. Jessica Sierra, welcome. Please introduce yourself. Hello everyone. My name is Jessica Sierra. I'm here just as a mom. Um so, um I wanted to see if you guys could help our residential community with an issue we have. Um, we moved into new brand new Leonard homes in 2016. We chose that house specifically because I was pregnant with my first. And right across the street, there was supposed to be a park built. And to this day, my daughter is nine now, and the park still hasn't even gotten built or begun the process to be built. So, I'm just wondering what the process is, what we can do for that. Thank you, Mr. Anthony. Uh, would you be able to have somebody follow up? Uh, 93311 area. Uh, thank you so much, Mr. Anthony. Probably has some background information there. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Aras. Thank you, Miss Sierra, for coming tonight. I I think you raised a really important point that this council has been made aware of, which is that we have numerous parks where we've had land designated by property owners who've donated it to the city out of the kindness of their hearts with the intention of building those parks. Um, and I know that staff is actively working. Mr. Anony's going to provide you, I think, some really helpful information. Um, and I believe that there is an agenda item that is coming either at the next meeting or into the future. So, um, city manager Kle, can you shed some light on, um, any future pending items that are coming before this council as it relates to her issue? Yeah, thank you council member Mayor and councel not being aware of the specific location. What I can say about undeveloped parks is that we set aside um some funding in this last fiscal year to do the design work for one of our nine undeveloped parks. And then uh we have identified a couple of um capital projects that that didn't move forward in this last fiscal year. And we have a couple of actually emergency repairs at a couple of parks, but then staff will be recommending to council to set aside some of those um savings from those other projects to begin on the design of another one of our undeveloped parks. And so uh because we have so many undeveloped parks, it's going to take some time to get at them. But uh we've begun the process of working towards design of the first few of those undeveloped parks. and we'll look at future budget cycles to continue to do more design. Fantastic. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Click. Miss Sierra, um Mr. Anthony can meet you back there and just uh identify your specific area. Thank you very much. Madam Clerk, is there anyone else in that group? Mayor Go, that was our final speaker for non-aggenda items. Thank you. And now we'll move to the public statements listed on the agenda. If you're here to speak on items listed under consent calendar item seven, your time to speak is now. Again, each speaker is given a twominut 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, now is not the time to speak. You'll be given an opportunity to speak when your item is called later in the meeting. Madame Clerk, do we have any public speakers regarding items listed under consent calendar item seven? Margo, we've received two public speaker cards for items listed on today's agenda. Uh the first speaker is Joshua Champlain. Thank you. Thanks. Welcome Good evening, Mayor Go me, uh, not board members, council members. Um, my name is Joshua Champen. I'm speaking on behalf of the county of Kerna. I'm the Kern County Public Works Director. It came to my attention that item 7G4, I believe, on tonight's agenda is uh, setting a hearing for rate increases for sewer within the city of Bakersfield. I just wanted to bring to the attention of the city council that this does affect um residents of the county. Uh we have a agreement with the count with the city of Bakersfield and what we call county service area 71. We have over 600 residents in this area who uh per the agreement one of the agreements that I've given you uh they they're required to uh pay the same amount that city residents pay. Uh the only re the reason I come before you today is because this protest hearing that uh presumably would start tonight on on an approval from your from your board would would take place in late May. If that uh protest hearing is unsuccessful, that gives the county of Kern insufficient time to run our own protest hearing before the end of our fiscal year, which runs in concurrence with the city of Bakersfield. So what that sets us up for next fiscal year is a deficit situation. And so if if if that $700 per year rate increase happens uh in the city of Bakersfield, we're not able to get that on the tax roll in the county of Kerna. And so that's somewhere in the $450,000 range for next year alone. And and and then we would proceed to do a protest hearing. However, there's a chance that that's unsuccessful and then that leaves us uh I don't know where that leaves us. So, the county's request is that this item could be continued to a later board hearing so that we can discuss with city staff a solution for this. If not, um, pull this off consent. We can have robust discussion today about it in this chamber. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Champlain. Two of our council members have already requested that that be pulled off consent. So, there will be discussion further down in the meeting. Thank you. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. Next speaker, please. Matt Brady. Good evening, council and mayor. Um, I'm here to speak on item 7G4 um on the sewer rates uh that the public works director just spoke about. Um I'm glad to hear that uh two of the council members have asked that the item be pulled from the agenda. Uh for those who aren't aware, the um current sewer rate for single family and commercial uh buildings is $239 per year um assessed to the property taxes. Uh this would set up a Proposition 218 um protest election for a a rate increase to $950 per year, which is a $711 increase. Um, for most single family homes, I think that would be kind of an outrageous um, high increase. The median household income in Bakersfield um, as of 2023 was just over $77,000. That would bring this close to a 1% um, expense for for most households. Um, I I would urge the council to look at a bond measure for this um that requires a um an affirmative vote rather than a 218 election that requires a majority of the citizens to protest. Most um most citizens are just too busy to, you know, really pay attention to the mailers, every mailer that comes through the city and to understand the nature of how a 218 election works. Uh thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Brady. Madam clerk, are there any other speakers in this section? Mayo, that was our final speaker. Thank you. Next item, please. Consent calendar item 7A through 7 I for approval. Thank you, colleagues. Does anyone want to recuse themselves? I have not seen that this far. And now we do have a number of council members who have requested that items from the consent calendar be removed for separate consideration. Council member Coleman wishes to pull items 7D2 7E 4 7G 7 G4. Council member Smith wishes to pull 7E12. Council member Gonzalez wishes to pull 7E3, 7E5, 7G4 and council member Arius has requested that 7G3 7G4 also be pulled. So the items to to be pulled which have a lot of overlap would be seven items 7D2 7E3 7 E4 7 E5 7E12 7 G3 and 7 G4. Do we have anybody who would like to make a motion on the items other than those? Yes. As the former vice mayor, I'll make the motion to approve the consent calendar with the exception of 7D2, 73, 74, 75, 712, 7G3, and 7G4. You have a motion. Please cast your votes. Motion is approved with council member core and weir absent. Thank you. And now we'll go through those seven items. First we have 7D2 with a request by council member Kleman to be pulled. Thank you, mayor. Uh, I was just hoping staff could give me a little bit more uh background on this. U specifically this uh we continue to invest in homeless projects, but uh uh you know the frustration or the concern is that we're not going to be able to have the money to sustain them. Can you talk a little bit about I'm sorry I didn't see you, Miss Pyers. I didn't see you sneak up there. I apologize. Yeah. Uh, thank you, Council Min, Mayor and Council. I will ask Miss Buyers to address that topic. I think one of the reasons you see a large dollar figure in our grant ask is that it includes long-term supportive services. It won't cost that entire amount to do the re rehab of that property, but it includes some of those long-term wraparound services, but I'll let Miss Buyers add anything to that. That That's correct. So the home key plus it is to support the development of permanent supportive housing for veterans and individuals at risk or experiencing homelessness and those with mental health or substance use challenges. The program does require that the project be in existence for 55 years. It's a very long-term program. uh in order to get the services uh we are partnering with CAPK as well as California Veterans Foundation. The funding that we're requesting it is a grant amount not to exceed 35 million. A portion of that is for the construction but a lot of it is for our services as well. We're working with behavioral health. All of these projects require a lot of uh layering. At minimum, we need to show that we have enough services for 5 years and then the grant matches that as well. And so, uh, the request that we're asking is because we think we found enough funding for services for 5 years and then they would match that for another five years. And where is where is the five years where that money coming from? Is that from the general fund or is that from grants? It comes from a variety of sources. HAP is one of the funding sources that we utilize frequently. Behavioral health also has resources available through the Prop 1 bond measure. And so the services also are partnered with what CAPK does and the resources that they have as well as the Veterans Foundation. And so this is not a request for general fund resources to match. And and I'm I didn't know what the this designation was. 30 PSH units. What What does PHS stand for? Permanent supportive housing. Okay. All right. Okay. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Um, you know, we we really really need this transitional housing for u we had this conversation in the homeless meeting yesterday is that we have a backlog of people in the in the shelters in the Brundish Lane Navigation Center, the mission and the open door network u because they're not able to get them into housing. But we need to get them out of those shelters. we need to get them in more transitional housing so we can free up the shelter space. And so does this help with that or no? It does. Um so the Homekeep Plus, it is very specific for those that are the most difficult to reach that are homeless, those that do have substance use, those that do have mental health challenges. And so by uh having them all at one facility, we're able to have those on-site services. Um ways to get their driver's license, ways to become more productive, uh see if there's some family reunification. I think the city has done amazing job making sure that we have resources to connect them to family members. But this helps the journey of having on-site um mental health uh providers, health providers. Uh all of those resources will be available to them. They don't have to try and catch a bus to get to a therapist. Those therapists will be there on site really working towards uh becoming productive citizens. What kind of safeguards are implant? I don't I don't maybe you can't speak to operations but safeguards to be sure that the properties are maintained, people don't destroy rooms and that kind of thing. Before we go to Miss Buyers, uh city attorney wishes to make a comment. Thank you. Uh council member Kleman, I just wanted to clarify for you and for the public, this is a resolution to simply apply for the grant. Um, I can tell you that because I've worked closely with Miss Buyers on this and I've also actually worked on the agreement which if we get the grant then that would be an agreement and then some of those questions again I'm sure Miss Buyers can answer them now. Um, but the agreement that is in draft form right now with CAPK clearly indicates that if we don't get the grant, the agreement is not going forward. This is simply a resolution to apply for the grant. Period. End of discussion. Thank you. Can you answer my question before I move on? Uh, like she stated, we are doing this in partnership with CAPK and the Veterans Foundation as well as behavioral health. All of those are well known to our community to be good partners. And so by having this with them, they would be the ones on site making sure that the facility runs smoothly. uh we have had challenges when you uh first open up such a facility. You have quite a few people who have either come straight from homelessness or those that have come straight from having mental health challenges. And so in the beginning it it does take some smoothing out. But like the one at 889 Oak has shown they start to take ownership of their home because this becomes their home and so that helps in the process. Okay. Thank you. And and thank you city attorney for clarifying that for me. Uh I would if there's no other discussion, I would make a motion to approve item 7 D2. Thank you, council member. Council member Gonzalez uh has a request to speak. Before we take the motion, before we do, I just want to reshape this conversation a bit because I think is a huge win for the city of Bakersville and I think it's been understated and under uh emphasized and there's actually multiple wins. Number one is you know in in the community overall there are a number of community assets and there are many of community liabilities places that are underutilized or underutilized um places that have high volume of calls for service um and whether it be police or fire or code enforcement and the Ram Kabir the former Ram Kabir hotel used to be a huge liability for the city. There were a number of complaints or a number of concerns. There were people who were living there permanently uh in unsafe, unhealthy conditions um to the point where environmental health at the county actually uh closed the property along with code enforcement. Vacant buildings are huge liabilities in them in themselves uh throughout the city. Uh and we know what happens when a vacant building uh remains vacant for too long, especially in the urban core. the fact that a the city um at the request at my request and the request of many community members actually got to work and purchased that property right away was amazing. I was really impressed. It is a good example of of hard work and and swift action and agility that I hope to see a lot more of from city hall. Um so that was a huge win. Uh the second win is the fact that we're able to partner with a nonprofit community action partnership to actually find a a a solution or an opportunity to turn this building around into a more productive use. This could be a huge win not just for the property and not just for the residents who will now have a permanent home along with supportive housing, but it'll also be another step forward in helping us revitalize and turn around Union Avenue uh which is a huge uh issue for many of us in the community. So, um I am excited about this project. Um, I'm in full support and I just want us to um I just wanted to lift that up because I think it's it's really uh meaningful and in in a lot of ways monumental uh for us to move forward. So, thank you so much, Miss Buyers, and thank you to your team for all the work on this project. Appreciate it. You have a motion. Please cast your votes. Motion is approved with council members core and we're sorry absent. Okay, council member Arius. Thank you, mayor. I and I'm glad the motion passed. I just wanted to make a a point about uh grant opportunities and grant funds. Um, you know, these are dollars that are, you know, being sent to Sacramento and DC. Um, and each and every opportunity that we have to apply for some of those funds to come back into our community. I think it's a great opportunity for us to at least submit an application. And what better city to spend those funds than right here in Bakersville. So, thank you. Thank you. Next, we'll go to 7E3, which was pulled by Council Member Gonzalez. I am very excited to make the motion to approve 7E3 tonight. This is an economic opportunity area grant uh and agreement with MOO crearyy. Uh for those of you who may not be aware, uh Moo is probably the most popular restaurant in the city of Bakersville and it has been uh for quite some time. And uh they uh have decided to move to downtown Bakersfield. And downtown Bakersville continues to get better and better and better because of private investment uh from local business owners and and and property owners. And I'm super excited that the city will be able to support uh this project in a very modest way with a grant agreement of $83,513. We have the owner here tonight, uh Jessica Pounds. Thank you so much uh for being with us this evening. Congratulations on all of the success thus far with your uh restaurant and I know you are just going to kill it in downtown. And so we're all super excited and yes, we're working on parking issues and trying to address those issues because we know that so many people are going to come downtown uh just to visit MOO and what will be a very beautiful, beautiful space u for the whole community to enjoy. So congratulations again. Uh again, my motion is to approve. You have a motion. Please cast your votes. And Miss Pounds, I will be there for the Brussels sprouts. Motion is approved with council members core and we are absent. Thank you. And now we'll move on to 7E4. Council member Coleman. Thank you, Mayor. Miss Buyers, we're at it again. So, welcome. Thank you. So, can uh can you share with us a little bit about what's going on with that uh that grant uh termination? Yes, I can. So, in last year's, similar to what uh Miss Pounce applied for, uh we have the downtown competitive Turn that microphone towards you. Thank you. We have the downtown competitive EOA. Bakersfield Sound applied for it last year under our last year uh NOA. They were awarded 49,000 for rental reimbursement. Um, two of our sections in that agreement included the requirement that the business be located within the EOA and in operation for at least one year to be eligible for the grant funding. uh they did choose to go back to their original location on Rosto Highway which is in the county and because of that they were no longer eligible to receive the remaining funding of 9,000. So at this time staff is requesting council terminate the agreement and not pay the final 9,000 for the business that's now located in the county away from the downtown EOA. So, do you have any idea what the reason was that they moved out of the EOA? It's interesting in the downtown, and it's a conversation that we have frequently that it's a little bit more challenging when you go into these older facilities. Um, there's an item coming up on public hearing for actually the same location in order to get fire sprinklers. Fire sprinklers in some of these older buildings doesn't exist. And so if you want to have an activity that has greater than a certain number based on the occupancy load determined by the fire department, you're unable to have those. And so Bakersfield Sound wanted to have some live events. They wanted to have uh classrooms. There were a couple things that they were hoping to achieve when they relocated to the downtown that they just kind of struggled a little bit in the building that they had selected. And so they went back to where they already had um music rooms um and that kind of thing. So when we uh when we evaluate a business for one of these grants, aren't those the kinds of things that we re Well, let me back up. What What is our process for reviewing the grant application? And do we offer any kind of uh business operations management kind of assistance? Specifically what we have based on the grant application or the NOA in the competitive there's a scoring criteria and so it is scored by staff. All of the applications are scored by staff. Usually it's um one of the biggest things we have is reactivating a vacant space. That's one of the things that Moo Crearyy is doing. They're activating a space that has been vacant for a while where Bakersfield Sound had selected had been vacant. And so with them locating there, it was bringing new arts, new culture, which is some of the items that we have specifically in our making downtown vision. And that's how that one was scored. We thought it was a good project. Some of the things we do is coordinate meetings with all of the departments. uh we have to ensure that there's not prevailing wa if there is prevailing wage that for projects that are subject to that that they know the rules and requirements and how to get through that process with the department of industrial relations. Um if they need a building permit we'll coordinate a m a meeting with them sometimes in the downtown because the properties are at zero lot line if they want to do a sign they need an encroachment permit. So there's just a variety of rules to the different projects. We have done 73 um completed projects with EOA funding. This is the first one that hasn't um completed all of the items in the agreements and because of that we felt that uh we shouldn't pay that final $9,000. So, do we offer support services after the grants are initiated? Like during this period of time, are there support services? Is somebody, you know, reaching out to them? How's it going? You know, because it sounds like we we didn't totally evaluate the business and whether it would really work in that location before we give him the money. We felt that it could be a very successful book uh location for that business. They needed some building permits. They needed um fire sprinklers are just one of the unfortunate things that don't exist in a lot of our downtown businesses. Okay. Um are we at risk of losing some other businesses for these kind of reasons? Typically what we do, we work with them throughout the process. Um they meet with staff when they come in for invoicing. Um as um Jessica's about to find out when she goes to get her building permit, we are there for her to walk it through. We have the white glove team. We've talked about a lot of things with development services and public works. How can we coordinate this better for our businesses? And um in fact, I'm going to be requesting that we do that with both of you guys for a different project. But uh we will frequently meet with someone especially if we see that they're struggling to get through the process because our goal is for these businesses to be successful. It's hard to navigate through the process that we have and that's why we're looking to form that one-stop shop. Thank you. Um my last I I won't say it's the last question because it kind of depends on your answer. So, um, our agreement that we have with the business that we give this grant money to, who writes that document? Is that some kind of state thing or it? It's not. It's a city staff writes the agreement and then we work with the city attorney's office for the language. uh before we either bring it to city council with EOAs, but the authority is up to 40,000 for city staff to approve well for the director to approve. Greater than 40,000, it comes to city council. If it's greater than 100,000, it does require a public hearing, which is why you see a difference between the two that are on the agenda tonight. Anything that's greater than a h 100,000 is required by government code for an economic development subsidy and it requires a separate public hearing. So it's a process we work on with the city attorney's office. So is there no recourse in those agreements that uh you know you talk about that we don't have to give them the rest of the money or may not uh during that first year there's no recourse for the money we've already given them. Yes there is. We can sue them for breach of contract. And it's up to council if you'd like to do that. I'm more than happy to put it on a close session for discussion. That's what it is. It's a breach of agreement. Okay. They did not they did not stay in the location that they promised to stay in for one year um after receiving the grant money. Okay. Thank you. Um, yeah, I'm ready to make a motion on this. You can go ahead and make the motion. We have two uh requests to speak. All right. So, I I'm going to make a a motion to Well, I actually I think I'm going to make a motion to send this back to to staff and have this re-evaluated. Um, I agree with getting the 9 thou, not paying the rest of the 9,000, but I don't think that we should I think we should make an effort to collect the money that we uh that we have paid out. I think that we owe that to the other businesses that endure and uh you know, it seems awfully short shortsighted that you come into a business and and pick a spot and uh you know, you can't get through a 12-month period of time. So, I'd like to have that reconsidered. So, for clarification then, is that a motion to approve the termination and refer the remainder back to staff? Yes. Thank you. Thank you, council member Kleman and city me city attorney council member Basher. Um, is there a way in the future for applications or contracts that we can add some verbiage that has some contingency on them actually fulfilling a certain amount of time so that taxpayer money is not wasted? Uh, mayor, council member, we already have that in there for a year. If you'd like to change it to a different time period, uh, that, of course, that's a policy that's a policy question that can be um that can be discussed at at one of your committees, but that language is in there, which is why we're able to terminate, you're able to terminate and not pay the nine, and why you may have a breach of contract action against these folks for the for the for the remainder. That's perfect. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez. Yeah, I'm going to defend our small businesses for just a moment because it is very difficult. I've been with almost every single one of these applicants and grantees uh in their process. And it's very difficult to start a new business period or to build something new. And it's even more difficult to do a redevelopment project, an infill project in downtown Bakersville or in Oldtown Kern or in Southeast Bakersville. That's exactly why we have this EOA program to provide incentives for new businesses to come into the core. Otherwise, it's very difficult to sell these neighborhoods because of the aging infrastructure, because of the lack of accessibility, because of all of the off-site improvements that are placed upon uh new business owners, new developers. That's additional costs. And when you talk about replacing aging infrastructure, it gets expensive. And so we have to provide these EOA incentives for uh businesses if we want to see downtown uh continue to revitalize. Um and you know I I would argue and maybe we should send this to committee because I would argue that most of our applicants when they get reimbursed they actually fulfilled their contract agreement. They actually um did what they said they were going to do. This is all reimbursementbased. We award an amount they go out. they fulfill their obligation and then we reimburse them and staff does a great job providing due diligence ensuring that the projects are actually fulfilled. Um we know I think all of us can uh understand that not every business in the world succeeds and sometimes businesses fail um and sometimes businesses fail sooner than they had expected. Um and I I I just want to caution all of us to to understand the business climate. Uh we awarded contract or EOA grants uh prior to uh the pandemic. The the business owner didn't know that there was going to be a global pandemic and businesses were going to be shut down for months and they were going to have such hardships. So, you know, I want us to be businessfriendly and have this climate that we're leaning in in favor of business owners, especially those who are doing the right thing, that are getting their bids in, who have made it through this application process that I feel is already uh arduous and cumbersome enough um that we actually go in and try to support them as best we can. I agree with you, Council Member Coleman. We need to provide some additional supports and and white glove treatment, but it should be more of a support and walking with people and less of a, you know, we don't need another auditor on their backs as they're trying to make their business go. Um, it's very sad when businesses don't uh do well and when they have to move on. Uh, but we know that's a reality. Um, that's a reality. And um I I want to make sure that this uh city is in support of business owners and particularly those who are trying to do something uh really special uh in our urban core. Council member Basher, I would just like to uh say council member um I agree with everything that you're saying about empowering as a businessman. I agree with what you're saying. empowering businesses, helping them, wanting to see them thrive. I get that. I support that 100%. But this is $40,000 of taxpayer money that is gone. It's not an allowance. It's not your piggy bank or mine. It's the taxpayer money. And I think that we should do a good job of protecting our constituents when we have conversations about parks not getting built, wasting money on projects that it's taxpayer money. A business fails, it's my if my business fails, it's my money. I didn't waste taxpayer money. My business didn't shut down. It didn't affect I wasn't a bad steward of tax taxpayer money. Just want to remind you it's taxpayer money. It's 40 grand that's gone that taxpayers paid. That's it. Council member Arius. Thank you, Mayor. Um, city attorney, do we have as a government entity, do we have a legal obligation to file suit and to recoup those funds as it relates to any public gift of funds? Mayor, council member Arius, that's a very good question and um, frankly, I think with the motion by council member Coleman and the referral back, I'd like to look at it and I'd like to reflect a little bit more and I think frankly that's why you have these discussions in close session. um with regard to potential initiation of litigation and not necessarily um on the dis for the first time. So I appreciate the question. It's a valid one and I need to get you an answer all of you an answer and if we're going to do that I'd like to do it in close session. Thank you. I appreciate that. Um I I think that that's an important um that information is going to be really important as we consider whether or not to move forward. Um because there may very well be a legal obligation for this body to take action. Um, and I know that I think all of us on this DAS have a heart for our small businesses, but at the end of the day, it's important for us to make sure that we are uh protecting against all liabilities for the taxpayer in the city. Thank you. Thank you. You have a motion. Please cast your votes. Motion is approved with council member core and we are absent. Thank you. And now moving on to 7E5. Council member Gonzalez. A motion to approve 7e5. You have a motion. Please cast your votes. Motion is approved with council members core and we're absent. Thank you. And now 7E 12. Council member Smith. Thank you, Mayor. This is u an amendment to the agreement with Rencon for preparation of the general plan update and we've been working on the general plan update for seems like six years or seven years and it was going to be a two or three year process at that point and now we're extending it another year and a half and I know that's how things work and but I I'd like to address you know we've we've talked about we got the housing element part of it done and I've always said the circulation element was the next important item that that I felt needed to happen and and we do talk a lot about uh traffic fatalities and and you know perhaps changing our street system and the circulation element would help do that. So, I don't know if this is an opportunity to move the circulation element ahead of the rest of the timing that's happening if we could do that. And also, we've talked about the traffic impact fee and it was on the agenda a couple weeks ago and and I had discussions this week of with a business owner and those things are always coming up and you know I think that needs to be looked at with the circulation element. So, is that something that could be moved up or possible? Mr. Burns. Sure. Sure. Council member Smith. Um, this particular item tonight is to say just it's changing the the date because we're going to be on the the date in the current contract. The housing element, we are still in process. We're getting ready to go back with our fourth submitt. When we look at a general plan, uh, and April 23rd, we'll be bringing in front of the council the framework uh, for all of the elements, circulation element included. I have already met with a couple of the council members uh about the framework. I talked to you earlier today about making sure we we have that that uh meeting also. So I think the general plan is on u on course that it'll be back from this dice in the fall for approval of the general plan general plan itself. So if there's specific things definitely we want to get that input on the circulation element and we look forward for those conversations but uh those things are actively moving on our consultant is working on those items. I thought the date that I read in the administrative report was December of 26. So please keep in mind council Smith that that also is the time to for the EIR to be done. So we we'll finish the the general plan itself then the consultant will take about a year to process the EIR to bring it back to this body for overall approval and certification. So, back specifically to the traffic impact fee, that is part of the general plan update or no, councel Smith, that would happen after the general plan has been adopted. Then, we go back and start that process. So, you're probably looking in 2027 for that process. So, that's after the EIR everything is finalized. It has to be adopted and certified. And that's another EIR. That's another environmental document. Yeah, Mayor Council Member Smith. Um, as you know, that's a nexus document and times have changed over the years, but I would imagine that's probably another EIR. Whether we could tear off of the general plan EIR um is probably something that should be looked at um by Rencon. Yeah, we if we can tie it together, that would be good, right? Thank you. And with that, I'll make a motion to approve the item. You have a motion. Please cast your votes. Motion is approved with council members core and we're absent. Thank you. Next we'll go to 7G3 which was requested to be pulled first by council member Coleman and then council member Arius. Council member Coleman. Well, you know why we're here? We talk about the water. So, uh we can have a little staff presentation then we can kind of get into the questions. So, Mr. Kle. Yeah. Thank you, Mayor and Council. uh in anticipation of uh the questions on this topic, we do have a brief presentation that we go walk through related to uh this item. I'll ask our director Budak to do that. Um good evening, mayor, um mayor go and council. Um I'm here today Chris Budak. I'm the director of water resources, water department, sorry. Um, and I have with me the assistant director of uh the water department, Daniel Maldonado, uh, water resources. And so I'll call him up periodically if I feel questions that I cannot answer and I need support. So, [Music] um, sorry, let me step back. So, we're here today to talk about our, um, municipal water rates. Um our municipal water rate is included in the billing uh for the residents and it's included as a readiness to serve which is basically your meter rate as well as your usage rate. Um we have a need to increase these rates due to expenses incurred associated with operations and maintenance of the existing um system as well as increased cost to uh utilities and also increased cost associated with regulatory um regulations. uh for state and federal. The municipal service uh air um system is responsible for providing safe, clean uh drinking water to over 165,000 residents. We acquire uh pumped surface water and we utilize our wells to distribute that water into our distribution system. Uh we also acquire water from the Kern County Water Agency improvement district number four about 7 uh sorry 6,500 acre feet uh per year. And then we also acquire treated water from cow water uh to treatment plants in the northeast and one in the northwest. Um in addition because 70% of our supply actually comes from uh groundwater we're required to meet all of the regulatory requirements for water quality. Um they include uh 123 TCP um H2S uh POS is the latest one that we now have to treat for. And it's not just about the capital cost, but it's also about the ongoing maintenance cost. Uh the capital cost to install the vessels, but then the maintenance cost to change out the granular activated carbon as well as uh to monitor the um the the water uh jur as we use it to determine when we have to replace that that carbon. Um and then there's regulatory sampling because we have to do reporting annually. Um in addition in 2025 uh conservation uh regulations was implemented where we now have to look at our residential water use and we have a goal and a requirement to reduce our residential use by 40% by 2040. Um and so we have to implement a conservation program to be able to do that. Finally, sustainable groundwater management act. Um we have included costs in here because we are currently working with the state board. Um, we are not currently in probation, but if that were to happen, there would be additional costs associated with having a well, owning a well, as well as a cost to pump the water out of that well. Um, our system, uh, in general, uh, we have aging areas within our system. Um, and we have significant well rehabilitations at times as well as service line replacements. And those are just costs that are ongoing maintenance costs that we have to continue to um uh pay for. The city's domestic service area um is outlined in blue. Um within that area, we have 67 wells, 59 of which are operational, six storage tanks, uh 630 miles of pipeline, distribution line, as well as 50,000 meters um and service connections. Um uh I want to identify that the within the service area every single ward has a little piece uh within the service area. So the this increase will impact um all of the wards. It is important to highlight some of the significant costs associated with um the capital improvements as well as operate operation and maintenance. We have as of 2025 we now have to treat for POS. We've identified nine wells within our system that have to be treated. Um these nine wells have to um to be able to utilize them past April 2029. We have to have uh POS treatment on these wells at approximately $2 million per well plus the ongoing costs of changing out that carbon as well as doing sampling. In addition, we currently have about eight wells that have H2S vessels that that is a a corrosive gas and it basic basically eats the vessels from the inside out. So, we've evaluated that they have to be replaced and we estimate that cost to be about a million dollars per well. Uh we have identified four wells that also continue we uh to need TCP treatment. uh we did a large project of approximately 35 sites in the past and we have this ongoing uh requirement to continue to make sure that any wells that get identified with TCP are also treated. Finally, generators are part of our um American Water Infrastructure Act of 2018 to ensure that we if we have a power outage, we have the backup generators to be able to keep the wells running. um those wells are now being impact or sorry those generators are now being impacted um by various regulations and we would need to replace them. So we have a generator program put in place to replace those uh generators that we currently have on sites. In addition, there's our uh operation and maintenance cost, water quality, um lead and service line inventory uh in um uh before we used to you look at our lead lines as well as the line from the main to the meter. We're now required to look at the meter to the home. So, we have an evaluation where we have to go and identify if there's any lead service lines in the actual private property. Um again conservation has a reduction uh from 40%. Um with that advanced metering infrastructure AMI meters. This is a important program. We got a grant um for about 5,500 meters. These meters allow our residents to look at their water use in real time. So, if we're going to inter implement a conservation program, we really need to get these AMI meters into all of our um on all of our homes so that people can be looking at their water use when we're telling them they need to reduce, they can see it on a on a daily basis, real-time data. Um uh overall, we all know that electrical costs are going up and we also because we acquire water from treatment plants as well as groundwater costs for water are also going up. to determine our rate increase that's needed. Um we have worked through with our um staffing and our um superintendent and our and cow water and we all worked together and we've determined that there is um we developed a 10-year infrastructure master plan. This master plan will identify our capital projects and also help us meet our regulatory requirements. Um, we also looked at our operations uh line by line and we identified areas that we would need to increase as well as areas due due to um services that would be increased by a CCI or personnel that we just assumed a 4% increase over time. We inputed all this information into and identified all of our expenses and we offset that with our revenue. We then evaluated what the revenue would need to be to ensure that we can meet the requirements that we've set forth in our 10-year infrastructure master plan. As a result of that, we have identified that we recom or sorry, as a result of that, we um took this presentation to the water board on May 12th and at the direction of the water board as well as uh working with uh finance department and city manager's office, there's a recommendation to increase over 5 years a 34% increase in year 1. So starting 2025 fiscal year 25 26 6% in years um 2728 and then 3.4 sorry 2.4% in year 29 and 30. This allows us to stay above our target uh reserve which is the dark black line and um ensure that we have a healthy fund moving forward to address any concerns or issues um that are not identified in our 10 10ear plan. Finally, the dash line on this particular um slide shows that if we do not do anything and just continue at the current rates that are proposed um we will reduce fund balance um within approximately two years. Um we did do an evaluation and we looked at um comparing ourselves to the other water purveyors within the city of Bakersfield. Um we did utilize a 1 in meter rate as well as an assumed 15 CCF per home to um develop this chart. Um with the proposed rate increase would we would be just slightly above oil mutual but we would still be uh cheaper than Vonwater Cow Water and East Niles. And I covered a lot of information there rather quickly. Um, if you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer any questions on this item. Thank you, Mr. Mek. Back to you, Council Member Common. Thank you, Mayor. So, I want to thank you for uh sharing what you know about this. You've been very generous in talking to us offline. So, thank you for coming here today and and and sharing this with us. Uh you you can sense how frustrated the residents are going to be. When we were here less than three years ago and we raised the water rates and the presumption was that you know you did water you did projections of what the costs were going to be over that period of time and what the rate needed to be. So can and you kind of talked about it, but you kind of talked about it in engineering kind of terms. And so I'm going to ask you to be more clear about the impact of some of these unfunded mandates that have been imposed on us and what that true impact is. So um yes when we did the rate study a few years back um there was a recommendation and through the process of discussing it with the group it was decided to actually um implement a rate increase that was that was less than what was originally recommended. So um we move forward with the rate increase of a 10 10% the first year 6666 at that time we were not aware of the requirement for we knew that there was discussions about POS but we didn't know what the regulation would require we were sampled sorry what is that POS is a um water quality chemical that is within the water um I would not know they we just refer to it talk to your grandma Ah, explain it. There we go. Pat, can you help me? I think he just wants you to explain it in layman's terms. So, sorry. So, we have many constituents within the water. Um, I am not a water quality expert. Um, and we have um and that's where Matt was going to probably because he's been more involved with the legal side of it. It's a contaminant in the water. Yes. Let's get back. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Um, so because we have to remove that contaminant from the water like we do with 123 TCP or H2S, any water contaminant, we have to put in a treatment. Um, the treatment will be and there's actually a picture of it right here. These are vessels that are uh TCP vessels. Um, they look the same for POS and we put carbon in the middle and we have to basically run the water through and ensure that that contaminant gets absorbed in that carbon. So there's the capital cost of just the investment and then there is the monitoring cost. We have to continue to monitor the water quality uh to determine when that carbon stops working and then we also have to submit uh um reports to the state annually to let them know how we're treating for these contaminants. So uh we did 35 sites of TCP. We're now going into the evaluation of POS. Um, and this is just part of being able to provide a groundwater supply. And again, as stated, 70% of our water comes from the ground. So no matter what the contaminant is, whether it's arsenic, whether it's POS, whatever the maximum contaminant level is, that's defined by either the state or the fed um the federal government, we have to meet that requirement before we can provide that water to the people. Mr. Kle, would you like to elaborate? Yeah, thank you, Mayor Go, and thank you, Miss Budak. If I could just summarize down to three key factors. Okay. One is we did have some cap known capital challenges that we didn't raise our rates um as high to meet some of our known capital issues three years ago. We probably could have gotten by and stretched that out over a longer time frame. However, two very new regulatory requirements have been um landed on us and it is these additional contaminants that we have to address and it's the water conservation. Those two new factors are driving huge cost increases that just don't allow us to stay afloat at the same rates as we set the five-year plan two years ago. So, the water conservation is basically going to make us spend money to earn less money because we're going to spend money to upgrade our systems and then we're going to not get it we're not going to sell as much water. Very well stated. Yes. you you still have to maintain the system to be able to meet fire flow to meet pressures all those different things. So even though you may use less water, you still have to maintain the system that you have to be able to provide the water. So did you say there was a there the mandates for 40% decrease in water usage by residential homeowners? Only residential. Yes, it's a 40% reduction by 2040. And to be able to do that, we need to encourage people to to conserve. Um there's there is a uh program within Cow Water that we're partnering with to start really getting that out to our residents that we need to look at lawn to garden. Yeah. Lawn. Yep. Lawn to garden. Try to remove the turf. Um there's also a need to look at people's irrigation systems and see if we can't use less water with the irrigation systems. And it's it's a requirement by the state that we have to get there. We have 15 years to get there. And what what what uh what have you done to uh to project the true cost of these capital improvements? Is this just an estimate or you've had bids or what do you what are you doing on that? So we recently just bid a POS well CBK25. So we have that cost. We utilize that cost um over the first for the um evaluation of doing the first four wells and then we also put an inflator on it. I mean a CCI construction cost index. So we did not only use today's dollars but we also escalated them based on the and the information that we have. And do you anticipate this these are going to be project that are going to be managed by uh by your people or are you going to have to contract a project management company to to do those? Um looking at all the um improvements that we have, we do anticipate utilizing um some construction management firms. We are also looking at putting uh a construction inspector within our department so that we can have that person take on some of the jobs based on based on the workload. So, we're going to try and do a combination of both, but we do anticipate utilizing consultants. [Music] So, what uh what other uh areas have you explored to uh pay for some of this stuff besides raising the rates? Have have we looked for any grants or uh any federal or state funding to uh to take care of some of this stuff? Um um POS um a little bit mayor go council members uh good evening my name is Matthew Colum deputy city attorney and I'm assigned to the water department um I can give you a quick raise the microphone please excuse me I can give you a quick update uh on uh some of the the efforts the city has uh made towards what we just call the PAS issue um we are actually engaged in litigation uh we are as the city Bakersfield is a uh a a party to what's known as a a multi-dist litigation case. Uh I won't bore you with the details, but what it is is that there's a federal case that is uh being handled out of uh out of uh South Carolina. Um and the city is uh one of of hundreds of plaintiffs that are suing um uh 3M, Tao, uh BSF, uh BASF, and a number of other PAS producers. Um uh I encourage you to take a look at it in the news. Um we can also of course give you a more up-to-date uh uh uh status of this. My point in telling you this is that um there have been settlements that have been reached uh that are going to be significant. However, I can't tell you exactly how much money that's going to be. Um but the funds that will be sent to the city uh will be used to uh offset the costs of uh POS mitigation. uh just as the director uh has uh uh gone over u from what I understand uh the POS mitigation is mostly going to be uh um I think very similar to the TCP123 is that correct that's right so we'll be using GAC uh I think it's a granular activated carbon um again my point I might be getting past my baywick with what I know about uh the engineering side but there is money that is that we will that the city will be receiving as a result of these settlements as far as other grants Uh we have not pursued any of those opportunities. There frankly haven't been too many grants. There have been some uh uh funds I believe from the federal government. Um uh but at the moment, no, we have not pursued those. Those have just uh we have not. Um and if I may, Mr. Colum, I would just add, council member, that um typically there are very few grants for ratebased types of services. U many of the grants are more related to some of the discretionary or general fund type items. There are some revolving loan funds for large projects that if we enter into a big enough project, we could request uh assistance from a state revolving loan or or the federal government has WIFIA revolving loans that we could look at for some of our larger projects. But they're really uh for for utility rate based utilities, there's very few grant opportunities. Okay, thank you. Um, I think one of my last questions is um the financial burden on the residents, excuse me, the financial burden on the residents and um whether there are any assisting programs assistance programs for lowincome residents. Mr. Click. Yeah, thank you. So, um, one of the rules around rate supported, um, activities are that we cannot have one rateayer pay a greater share than another rateayer. And so, we don't have assistance programs allowed under the rate structure. That being said, if the city council wanted to contemplate general fund dollars in a program that would assistayers, that is a policy, you know, determination the council can make. Um I think uh in particular on this topic around uh water, you know, the the monthly bills as demonstrated on the slide um that you know that was up earlier, a fairly, you know, still a a notable increase, but one that uh is I think, you know, still within a reasonable range, whereas the next item that we're going to address has some pretty significant increases. Um I don't know that the council would necessarily, you know, want to allocate general fund dollars uh on this one, but it is a policy determination that you could do. I think the challenge is the sort of the ongoing nature of it. Um in in the past, the city did have a senior assistance program, but again, it was under the rate structure and it was no longer allowed. Uh but I think um as we uh go to the next item, there's some you know more significant increases that that may kind of u get over the the sort of the apex of consideration of does it make sense to to help uh folks uh with um those rates whereas this one's a little more modest. Thank you uh Mr. Kle. Um, you you heard from the county here today earlier in the comment section about uh him wanting to ask us to postpone our implementation process. Council member, that was sewer. I'm sorry. It's the next item. I'm sorry. That was related to sewer, not the water. Correct. Correct. Okay. Thank you, mayor. Do you have anything further, council member? Yeah, I don't I don't think I have anything further. I would like to make a motion, but I think I would like to wait and see whether other council people had to say. Thank you. Uh, council member Arius, you also requested that this be pulled and then we'll go to council member Smith after that. Thank you. Um, if I if we could pull up the presentation and I think it's back one slide. Um, I think that this I'm really interested in this graph. Can can you help me explain and and read it one more time? So, sorry, if I may, council member, what this is really saying is we have a structural imbalance. We're spending more than we're bringing in every year and in the next two years, we will spend all of our savings down and by 20 fiscal year 28, we won't have enough money to pay for operations. That's what I thought I heard. I just wanted to confirm. So, if no action is taken and we stay the course within just a couple years, there will be no money in this fund to be able to keep the system going. Sorry. And I I don't want to say no money. We won't have enough money to pay for all of operations, let alone capital improvements. That is correct. And it doesn't bring us pleasure to bring rate increases to the council or to our constituents. That just the reality of being good stewards of our operations and system is that we can't operate it at the same costs, revenues, excuse me. We can't operate at the same revenues as we currently have today and stay functional beyond the next couple years. Got it. C can you um Miss Budac or Christian walk me through the water committee's rationale behind this proposed five-year plan. The water committee council member sorry the I believe water board. Oh the water. Water board. Excuse me. I will I will respectfully council member. Do you mind if we defer to water board members for their rational? I don't mind at all. We could speak for them, but I'm not sure we want to. Council member Smith. No no no. Sounded like you were being called upon. Here's what I'm trying to get at is in the proposal over five years, the most significant impact is the 34% increase in year one. What what is the rationale behind biting the bullet early and seeing minimal increases in year two and beyond? The rationale is that we have to do something and you you could spread out you know 20 2020 20 you know you can spread it out if you want but uh you need to solve the problem. you need to be honest about it and sooner the better. The other thing if I may, what the other consideration is it only gets more expensive the longer that we wait. Uh so the capital expenditures only um that they don't get it doesn't get less expensive. It gets more expensive to actually uh construct some of these projects and um you know we again we can defer it but we will be paying more in the future. And so, um, it's, uh, it's, again, as Council Member Smith said, it's better to, you know, see that increase earlier. Um, and and that was, I believe, staff's, uh, primary recommendation to the waterboard when they presented it. Council member Aris, you have the floor. Go ahead. Thank you. Um, I I think that that's an important consideration. I also think from a resident and uh enduser uh perspective as you know uh all the all the households who will be impacted by this I think the number was 165,000 I don't know if that's the population or the um house number of houses that's the population the population thank you I I think what's important is predictability right and being able to and I understand that the 218 notice is going to give a couple of months. But we are also talking about if these rates were to go into effect, it would be during the summer, right, to start, which is also when folks also see the highest utility rates if they have PG&E um during the summer trying to keep their house cool. And if they can't keep the thermostat low, what's the other natural al alternative? Take a shower, cool the body down. And I I think that this is um this is this is a a tough pill for the community to swallow. I understand the impacts um of us not taking action. Um but I I think that I would like for us to consider alternatives in year two, year three, year four, year five so that we can give families additional time to prepare for those um those increases. But I did have a couple of other questions if I may. We did actually do different alternative different options and the other options that we showed actually put our uh revenues below our res um our reserve target. So basically we were using uh we were not keeping ourselves at our reserve target which is the dark line and we were falling below that and and those analysis were um a 20% 20% 5 and a half two and a half like we we tried to balance them out. We even looked at a straight uh 12% a year for 5 years. At 12% a year for five years we would not we would only have 5,000 or I'm sorry $5 million left in our fund balance. like it drops us right below our reserves. So we evaluated a variety of different options and in the end this was the only option that kept us above our reserves to keep a healthy fund. So we did have money available for emergencies uh which includes CIPs as well as operation and maintenance. So what if you were to do 1212 and the overall number that you increase in years three, four and five actually exceeds what's currently projected. you in total. If I may, Miss Budak, um there's two different considerations. Again, first it's it's sort of the compound um interest on on those uh or the compounding value of those rate increases. Even if the total number is still 50% but with you know more modest increases over time because we don't get that 34% upfront it actually affects the overall trend line to stay lower even though you have the same 50% cumulatively because you're hitting getting to that point later you still um struggle to have the total revenues be as high as we need to. The second thing I would reflect though is there there may be some options where uh we dip below the reserve balance for a year or two and then get back up above the recommended reserve balance. Not ideal. Um and I would never recommend to you a five-year plan that stays below the reserve uh line because um that is not good business and not good operations. But a couple of the options did dip below the reserve balance but then climbed back above it again by the end of the 5-year rate period. I I appreciate that and I think that that should be something that we should consider um because 34% again is really difficult especially coming uh during those um summer months where it's the hottest. Um, and those are all my questions at this point. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Smith. Thank you, Mayor. Uh, just a a question first on the conservation 40% less water. Is that a per capita? Is that a entire system because you're you're growing customers? What really is that? It is a um gallons per capita per day. So it's a reduction within the home but overall it's a 40% reduction. Okay. So it is it is per capita though. And then I I guess could you go back to the graph that showed the other. Um Oops. What did I do? Sorry. There we go. That one. Yes. So, I think it's important to realize even with the proposed rate increase, our average is $55. Bon water, which is mostly northwest Bakersfield, would be at $80. Cow Water, who's serves more people in Bakersfield, is is more than twice as much, 118. And I would say that probably most of our disadvantaged communities are in Cowwater and East Niles. So I just wanted to point that out that most of our residents are paying much more already. And as far as ways to longterm save taxpayers money, I I mentioned at the waterboard meeting that, you know, I think you mentioned the energy cost is $12 million a year. Uh the energy cost is uh this year we're projecting around $10 million for our um electrical cost within the department and going up to 12 million next year. And so again, I think it's time to seriously look at at some solar fields and and create our own energy and and save our users that way. So I I'm in I'm going to make a motion. I'm in favor of moving forward with what we've discussed. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Coleman, you also wanted to make a motion. Yeah. So, uh, yeah. So, my my motion was actually, let me let me back up just a little bit. I don't think we know enough to be able to make a motion on this. I think that one of my concerns is that we settled three years ago. We we agreed to a lesser amount. For whatever reason, we didn't adequately project what our expenses were going to be. Uh, and then we have these unfunded mandates come up that added to our burden. And I want to be sure that we're projecting our cost. And I get it. Beyond five years, it's a it's a guess anyway. I I understand that. But I I really want to be sure that we know what our expenses are uh for the next five years. I want to be sure that whatever rate we approve is going to be adequate for that period of time. And so I would recommend that we But one other thing uh to to Councilman Aras's point, um I would like to return this to staff for uh third-party evaluation of the projected cost over the next five years and the corresponding revenues and to come back with U alternate proposal for the structure of the rate increase. I don't know if that makes any sense. It does make sense. Um just a couple of things for council to be well aware of in changing our timeline and our process in order for these and these um rates um uh take a long time or excuse me the the process where we get out the notice to look at these rates takes a fairly long time to um produce those notices, get those notices out to the public, come back for public hearings, and we would probably make a final determination on this topic in June because sewer is in late May and this one is in June. Correct, Mr. Budak? Thank you. So, we would come back in June even if we started the process today. If we further delay the process, we're not going to make it before the budget adoption of this coming year. And so, if we wait 3 or 4 months to do further analysis, we're looking at probably next year until we can really change the rate structure. And at that point, it's probably a bigger percentage increase than it is today. I think another uh alternative could be that, you know, what's on what's before the council today is to provide the notice to residents of the Prop 218 hearing process. We do have to identify what the recommended rates are, but we could continue to go and do that further analysis while the 218 process is continuing forward. and then by you know June inform the council of additional you know analysis that we've done before council sets the rate in June. Um you do have you know some limitations on you know being able to you know just pick and choose a number come June but you could say we're ready to move forward based on the analysis or we don't move forward. Um, but I think if if we pause now, we're going to be um there will be some schedule just impacts that council should be aware of. For from my standpoint, I I think we're I think we all know we're going to have to have a rate increase. So, if it's a matter of continuing the 218 process to get public opinion, I guess personally I'd be okay with that. um you know the question is is the rate we're going to be asking for or going to be adequate for that fiveyear period of time and how we're going to structure it. And so that's what I'm referring back to staff in my motion, but the mayor's in charge of the motion. So, Council Member Smith, thank you. I just wanted to respond to a couple things. Uh the last of what you said is just I I guess my motion was just to issue the Prop 218 with the proposal rate increases that we are showing and if at the time of the hearing council agrees to do something different it can do something different at that time. Is that correct? Council member Smith. Um, I would tell you that it really depends on what it is that you decide to do different, right? Um, as a general rule, if it were less, if what you decided to do was less than what the Prop 218 notice indicated, then I would tell you that that's okay. But it really depends on how how that's going to change. Okay. Yeah, that's my assumption is that what we're showing is the maximum amount. Maximum. Correct. Uh I I would also respond to the language of un unfunded mandates. I think that you know there's new technology and there's there's new science and contaminants that weren't known are now known and we want the cleanest water that we can have. And you know because there are chemicals that modern society produces then modern society has to take those chemicals out and it costs money. And I would also state that it's not that the projections were wrong four years ago or when whenever it was that we it was like now the the political energy was not there to go forward with the recommendations of the consultant and staff. And you know we we decided to back down and and do less. And so now we have to do more. And so that's my comments and and my motion. Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez. Yeah, I just wanted to echo actually I was going to make the same point that Council Member Smith made and I wanted to um reiterate um for the benefit of the public. In 2022, the city contracted with the consultant to prepare a five-year domestic water rate study. The consultant consultant recommended a 5-year rate increase of 15% 10% 10% 3% 3% annually. But council uh approved a rate increase of 10% in fiscal year 24 and four additional years of 6% increases. It's a total of 34% at least 34%. I didn't compound it. um when the consultant had approved or had recommended 41% for us to to meet the need. So again, it wasn't that the consultant didn't have a good sense or that we didn't have a good sense of what we needed. We did, but we chose to kick the can down the road and now we're here in this situation. You know, I know this is a very difficult decision. No one wants to raise rates, but we also want high quality water in our domestic water system and we want to be able to deliver highquality uh services. We want to maintain our systems and so um because of that and because I feel a responsibility to the whole city um I am also in support of council member Smith's recommendation. So we have two motions. We'll go first. Council member Smith's motion is on staff's recommendation. Council member Coleman, yours was second and so we would take that first. Would you clarify your motion, please? I think I can help you, Council Member Coleman. I have written down a motion by Council Member Comman to return this item to staff for a third party evaluation for alternative proposals. So that is the motion that we will vote on. And if I may clarify, I assume that means we do not issue the 218 notices. Correct. Council member Coleman, is that what you had in mind? Because you said something else. I thought I thought we said that we were going to because it's the amount is not likely to go down. The the the amount is more likely to go up. My whole point is that I don't want to be projecting rates on unfounded numbers that it's going to cost us more to install the equipment we need or it's going to be cost more in fees or whatever it is. I don't want to be back here two and a half years from now and saying, "Well, we didn't collect enough money." And so to to Councilman Gonzalez's point, um you know, that wasn't on the consultant. the consultant recommended more and we we selected less. I would like to know what the consultant says now. And I I think that we may be too conservative in what it's going to cost to get through the next period of time because we're trying to make the square peg fit in the round hole. So, so what I hear you say, Council Member Coleman, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that you do not want to send out the Prop 218 notices. You do not want to send those notices out, which I believe me, with your motion, I think makes complete sense. I really, as the city attorney, I would advise us not to send out Prop 218 notices unless we really know what rate it is we're charging because you're just walking into the argument of, do we have to send out another Prop 218 notice? So, Council Member Smith has approved staff's recommendation. Council member Kleman, return to staff for return the item to staff for third-party evaluation for alternative proposals and do not send out the Prop 218 notices. Okay, there you go. Thank you, city manager. Uh, city attorney, sorry, and council member Arius. Thank Thank you, mayor. Just to clarify something that you said earlier, Christian, um if we were to move forward with uh council member um Coleman's motion, c can you reiterate for the benefit of the council and my benefit what that timeline crunch looks like? I'm actually going to defer to Miss Bodak to help us uh think this through. It's it's a little bit different because um these rates uh are charged on a monthly basis, you know, whereas our next item, the sewer, is charged, you know, on an annual or bianual basis. But if we if we um if we do not move forward with the 218 notice, we send it back to staff. I assume that means several months of analysis, then we're probably, you know, we would probably be doing this sometime in the fall or midy year of next fiscal cycle. We won't make it in front of the budget. Is that fair, Chris? Yes. Yes. Thank you. And so the soonest that it would come back to us is when again I would tell you again you you're going to have to go out to bid for a consultant and everything. I mean you're starting over again. I would tell you a minimum a minimum of 6 months. Okay. Thank you. Thank you colleagues. I don't see any further questions. So we have the motion that council member Coleman presented. You have motion. Please cast your votes. Motion fails with council members Core and Weir absent and council members Gonzalez, Smith and Basher voting no. Thank you. And now we'll take Council Member Smith's motion, which is upon Steph's recommendation. You have a motion. Please cast your votes. motion is approved with council members core and weir absent and council member Arius voting no. Thank you. Our next item is going to be rather lengthy I I'm assuming. So, let's take a break until 7:30. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Let's start gathering back so we can start at 7:30, please. [Music] I love it. I love I've been so busy trying to do my thing. So rewrites. Uh are you planning to move or stay? I'm staying here forever. Let's uh reconvene, please. Council member Coleman, it's 7:30. Let's please start. Um I'm going to ask before we move on. Well, I will say reconvening at 7:30. I will ask is there anyone in the audience who opposes the public hearing item 9A? Is there anyone in opposition to that? Seeing none, colleagues, I'm going to request that I'm going to ask I'm going to move that up unless somebody objects because I know we have people who have been waiting quite a long time for that item and I have a feeling that our sewer item is going to take a while. So, uh, city city city clerk, if you would, uh, let's move on just to the hearing item. And our next item is public hearing. Each side will be allowed 15 minutes. It's 15 minutes for all speakers per side. We'll hear statements from those first opposed to staff's recommendation. Then we'll hear from those who'd like to speak in favor. If there's testimony on both sides, each side will be allowed a fivem minute rebuttal. There's a clock on the TV screens behind me which indicates 15 minutes. Please step to the mic, identify yourself. After 14 minutes, a yellow light will come on and at the end of 15 minutes, a red light will flash indicating your time is up. 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. Please be courteous to everyone who wishes to speak. Madame clerk, please read the public hearing item. Public hearing item 9A, public hearing to consider EOA grant agreement with Arts Council of Kerna for $116,500. Economic opportunity area incentive program grant agreement for site improvements associated with the installation of a fire sprinkler system, fire alarm, water connection. Fees, permits, and other related work is required at 1018 and 10208 street ward 2. Thank you, city manager Kle. Thank you, Mayor and Council. As noted in some earlier comments this evening, this was part of the competitive downtown EOA process. That process is actually more rigorous than the typical EOA process where we call for proposals, review them all at the same time, competitively score those those projects were reviewed an initial time um by the budget finance and economic development committee and uh a result out of that uh was recommendation for this award for this project. Miss Buyers, anything else to add other than per government code five per government code 53083, anything greater than $100,000 does require a public hearing notice and we complied with that which was posted on March 12th. 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? Seeing none, is there anyone who wishes to speak in support of staff's recommendation? And I see that Janette Richardson would like to do that. So, Janette, this would be your time to come forward. Welcome. Please identify yourself and would you raise the microphone, please? I'm a little taller than you. Yes, you are. I'm Janette Richardson, executive director of the Arts Council of Kern U. Honorable Mayor Go, council members, staff, and our community members, those who are left. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak to you. Uh you may know us more for our mural work. We're the arts council of Kern County. We have recently done a lot of murals here in Bakersfield. Uh if you've driven down Garcus Circle, if you've been to Q and 204, and if you've been to Lenel Brahmo Park, we have been doing some work with parks and recreation recreation and parks. I always want to say that the other way. So, we're delighted to be here. I was talking to Jenny. I'm so sorry, Jenny. 25 years ago, Jenny and I are the only ones that were are still in this in this building. Oh, yeah. So, it's kind of fun that 25 years ago, we were working together. So, I'm delighted to be here and present the reason that Bigo Sound is gone. They didn't have fire sprinklers. They couldn't hold concerts. They couldn't do other things. And that caused them to not be able to pay their rent. And that's that's where we are. We are now unfortunately for them. But for us, we now have the opportunity to have melded the corner. We have an open space. We have the first building and the second building now all together with the sprinklers. We're going to be able to hold large events in our space. We're going to be able to uh bring more students. Right now we bring uh we have the options of 144 kids that come in from Panama Buenavista school. I mean they're teachers. They're teachers and their extended school. We're training them but we have to bring them in in small little sections because we can only hold 57 people in our 10,000 square feet. We need sprinklers. So I just want to give you a little bit of a history. Uh we've been around for 47 years. I haven't been running it for 47 years. Sometimes it feels like it, but I I just want you to know that we have the largest u public Let me see. It's the prison arts initiative in the state of California. We bring in lots of money to Bakersfield. We spend over $1.25 million on our employees and our contractors. So, we are a money generator. We're not a sales tax generator, but we do employ a lot of people. We just hired our 15th employee today and we have 38 contractors. So, we are business. We are not we're not we're not a small nonprofit and we can afford to pay our rent. We're we have a good fund going there. So, I just want you to know, council member. So, last summer we also housed we hosted I shouldn't say house. We hosted the California Arts Council. First time in 40 years they asked to come to Bakersville. So they brought their big state meeting to us and we had to tell them we can't exceed 57 people and we take that seriously because it's not just the code, it's safety. It's safety. We need that. If you're aware just behind us, the 2can building, we all call it the toucan building. It burned up and another building, the Great America Antique Building, burnt up. We can't afford to lose more buildings downtown. We're in a very old building. It's gorgeous inside. It's brick. It's open. It's got clear story windows. It's an amazing building and we would like to have more than 57 people be allowed to come in at one time. So, I have a bigger list, but since there's no opposition, I'm just going to ask you to please, please consider giving us some sprinklers. Thank you, Mr. Richardson. Is there anyone else who would like to speak in support of staff's recommendation? Well, I'll just introduce one. uh retired BPD Tony Martinez is on my board and I think you ought to give him a hand because he's just an amazing man and I have Elva Martinez and Maryanne Radmacher. The rest of my people left. So I feel for you guys. Thank you. So seeing none uh who want to speak, I'll close the public hearing and return it to council for comment and action. Council member Gonzalez. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Richardson, for your comments. And I want to thank the arts council for all the work that they've done throughout the last few years, several years. Um, but certainly the last few years beautifying war two. There are a lot of projects. Uh we pushed hard um about seven years ago now uh with CALR to get some dollars to do some improvements to some of uh the urban core and it was really wonderful when Calrans awarded uh current uh arts council uh the the contract to facilitate those um projects and it's wonderful to see that it's it's been an overwhelming success. So I just want to start there. Um, I had a great May I interject? We're they're putting us up for the biggest awards both state and nationally for those for those meals. That's fantastic. Congratulations. Um, just a moment ago during our break had a wonderful conversation with council member Basher Tosh and um he he made a good point a moment ago in in reminding us all that, you know, these grants don't just come from the ether. These are taxpayer dollars and we want to make sure that we scrutinize these projects um very carefully and I want to be clear um I have a pretty productive relationship with economic community development where um you know I provide a lot of scrutiny of each application and the and the basic question that I like to ask for every single applicant um is really what is that um what is what is in the grant that will actually enhance the economic activity and vitality of that EOA area. Um, and in this case, what would um what would enhance the economic activity and vitality of downtown? Um, give us some examples, Miss Richardson, of how this economic opportunity area grant will enhance the economic vitality of downtown. Well, the cool part, we were just with Moo Crearyy and they're just going down the street and we were talking about how when we bring people in, they they visit all the restaurants in our area. When we brought the folks in from Sacramento, we we asked them to stay at the Marriott. We sent them around to the different restaurants. We gave them the places that they could go and enjoy downtown. And to a person, they said, "We had no idea Bakersville was this cool." So hopefully now when they'll want to come back and not wait 40 more years. So with that in mind, we we we cater, we get people to come in, we are always hiring people to come in and do things in our facility. So if we bring in a band or we bring in spoken word or we're doing a summer camp, we're we we've got the opportunity to bring in 60 kids for summer camp, that's three more than we're allowed. So we really do need our sprinklers. So we can bring in lots of economic development there because people will then eat there. They'll want to stay there. They're going to want to walk around. They're going to shop there. So, this is more than just your office. This is really a community space, an event space for you to activate this particular section of downtown. We have um a huge gallery and we have a makers market. So, we have a little shop in there. We have a gallery on April 11th. We open the gallery for the best of Kern County artists. We'll we'll have a beautiful show going on in there and we invite you all to come. And on the flip side, without fire sprinkler systems, without fire alarms, you know, what happens to this building? What happens to these buildings? And Miss Buyers, it from your experience. Um, as the director looking at downtown, what what are we experiencing? So, like we were talking about, some of these buildings, they're older. They have a reduced capacity. the two spaces that they're going into, she's correct, Bakersfield Sound was in one of them and the fire sprinklers were an issue, but there was also a restaurant next door that tried to get one of the downtown competitive EOAs and we were working with them and working with them and uh they just couldn't get what it was that they wanted in that space and so that restaurant also left. So without this economic opportunity, um we've done 70 we've completed 73 projects in the downtown. It's funny, my parents are out visiting from Texas and they lived here for 40 years and they came to pick me up and my mom was like, "The downtown looks so good." And I I thought it was funny because I got to hear it personally from my mother who is the you know all like all mothers. Um, so we just see that this activation, it really starts to have an impact that grows. Back when we did neighborhood stabilization, you kind of saw that once there was some improvement, it just moves out. and the fact that Moo Crearyy is moving to the old uh the new China restaurant that it used to be. It's a beautiful building and I don't think without the improvements that were made through the redevelopment agency on Q and our street that you would see this continued growth. I I I agree with you and thank you so much. My my experience as a council member representing downtown for eight years now is that there are many uh large buildings, historic buildings that have large square footage um that are unutilized or underutilized because of basic things because of fire sprinklers, because of ADA, um because of elevators. And these are, you know, large capital costs that for many folks who are trying to make things happen, uh, really are just additional barriers to actually make the their project or their business pencil. And it can be far cheaper to seek out new construction somewhere else on the west side. And so I think that if we really uh as we look towards the next iteration of our downtown redevelopment fund um that we look at perhaps u programming a another uh competitive program where we can start chipping away at some of these larger buildings. Um, so I'm going to make a referral that we that we look at that for for the very specific focused area of of these fire sprinklers and other larger capital project capital expenses that make it really difficult to to do stuff in in some of these bigger buildings. Um, but for this matter, I'm going to uh make a motion to approve this item with one caveat, and that is that the current arts council uh come back with a calendar of events on a regular basis. Thank you. You have a motion. Please cast your votes. Motion is approved with council members core and we are absent. Thank you, Miss Richardson and board for your leadership. I know when the California Arts Council was here, they were so complimentary of your leadership and the board. So, thank you very much. Uh thank you for being here. And now we will move back to uh item 7G4. Council member Coleman requested that that be pulled along with council member Gonzalez and council member Arius. So we'll have council member Coleman start this off and I'm going to ask you colleagues to be concise in your language and in your questioning. Council member Coleman, please. Hey, I resembled that remark. Thank you, Mayor. Council member Coleman, would you like staff to provide a presentation? That would be awesome. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. As we get that I was trying to be concise by not saying anything. So, as we get as we get that presentation teed up, let me just provide some quick context that this item I would argue is very distinct from the item we just heard. Um, even though they may feel similar, the background and the context is very different. And the first thing that I would start off by saying is I apologize that we haven't addressed this issue sooner, but it is long overdue. And I think that's why it is such a large amount and why it is so challenging. Uh but unfortunately we're at a spot where you know we've been operating um at a revenue stream that is is so far below the average that um it's now starting to affect our ability to operate and in particular will affect our ability uh to do more into the future. And uh you'll see some graphs which will show you this, but at our current rates, we are three times lower than most average cities in their uh costs for a similar service. And while I could be proud that Bakersfield is very efficient and we operate very lean, there's just no way that our operation is 300% more efficient than similar operations. And so we're long overdue to address this issue. And so I'll invite Miss Budak to come and walk through this slide presentation to lay out where we're at and and what we think we need to do to be solvent moving forward. Thank you. So um we are uh going to talk about the sewer user rate increase. Um, this is just specifically for uh the user rate that's on the tax role. It's uh not to uh be confused with the sewer connection fee that's paid by developers. Um, so it really is associated just with the tax rule. Um, we are looking at doing an increase to the sewer user rate due to uh increased cost to operate and maintain the existing system. Um, and we need to evaluate our plant two and our plant three and ensure that we are utilizing the best technologies and we have improvements to ensure that those facilities continue to operate efficiently and and can provide the service for the residents of Bakersfield. The wastewater responsibilities are to treat waste water and handle bioolids for over 400,000 residents. We provide 2 million gallons per day of tertiary water to the sports complex, accept 1.9 million gallons of septage and grease from hauling companies, and meet all state requirements, specifically those associated with the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board. One of the challenges is the maintaining of aging infrastructure. We have two treatment plants. Wastewater treatment plant 3 that uh treats approximately 32 million gallons or has a capacity of 32 million gallons per day. And wastewater treatment plant two uh sorry plant 3 is in the southwest. Plant 2 is in the I guess northeast uh or eastern east of the 99. And that particular facility is uh treats can treat up to 25 million gallons per day. The plant was constructed in 1958. It was upgraded with secondary treatment in 1978 and again there was an expansion done in 2000 to bring the plant from 19 million gallons per day up to 25 million gallons per day. But no upgrades were made to the existing structures. So, anything that was built in 58 has been utilized since 1958. Um, anything that was built any of of the structures built in 78 has been utilized since 78. In addition, we have approximately over um 1,000 miles of sewer lines, 55 sewer lift stations, 27 storm drain lift stations, and 650 mi of storm drain. It's all maintained as part of the treatment and collections system for wastewater. It's important to note that in 2006 the user rate was $135 annually on the tax role per the resident. In 2016, that was increased to $215 annually. So approximately $17.91 a month. And in 20125 today, we have a rate of $239 annually, which equates to just less than $20 per month to operate the system. Some of the more significant impacts that are affecting us to have that are a result uh to ensure that we have a rate increase is a significant O andM costs uh electrical costs um incorporating sewer and storm drain miscellaneous CIPs and O andM sorry operation and maintenance. The streets department operates and maintains the sewer collection and the storm drain systems. And so we work closely with uh public works director Zach Meyer and his staff as they evaluate the systems and determine which capital improvement projects need to be um put into the budget and also identify there's cost identified with their staff maintaining the systems. So we work together, we manage the fund, but they do the work. So we have to collaborate a lot um to ensure that we're providing them the revenue that they need to do their projects and they're providing the services to ensure that the systems continue to operate efficiently. Um I would actually I would like to ask Evette uh Raldon she is the assistant director of water department the wastewater uh manager to talk about some of the challenges with wastewater treatment plant 2 and why we believe that we need to do a significant replacement or upgrade on this facility. Hello council members. Mayor go. Um so wastewater treatment plan 2 as indicated previously in the presentation the last major upgrade was designed in 1997 um and fully put into operation in 2000. A lot of the structures predate that. That is the most current. Um it is a trickling filter facility. We have three trickling filters. That is the biological process that we have. If you have visited our plan three facility that is an activated sludge that is a much newer technology is able to better treat waste water compared to a trickling filter facility. Um, one of the things that sort of brought us to this point of we really need to look at plan two is every time we went in to do what we thought was um, a minor or a just bare bones needed repair for any one of the structures, every time we basically lowered the w water level and had eyes on the concrete structure underneath the water surface. Um, we had significant pieces of concrete missing uh, rebar structural rebar exposed. Um, for example, we are currently in the process of updating our bar screens at plan 2. It was awarded as a $3 million project and we potentially have a $1 million change order um that we are reviewing. Probably not going to do it all, but that was being caused by once we have eyes on the raw concrete underneath the surface, there is substantial corrosion um and exposed uh structural rebar. So, it needs to be addressed. Um but some of the things that are mentioned here uh so with that and just sort of knowing what we have um come across with current and past projects once we start opening up the remainder of the structures once we start looking at every trickling filter every digtor um every primary clarifier secondary clarifier we know what we can see above on the surface but it's all that below the water level that we just know is not in the best condition and it is going to be a costly repair. Um, and once we started adding those up, we considered are we really using doing a benefit to the citizens by just repairing what's there or do we really need to look at changing um the technology trickling filters predate activated sludge and even activated sludge was the newest thing in the 70s. So, there is a lot better technology out there, more efficient that could provide a better quality and better level of treatment for our residents. Um, and there's also additional opportunities of introducing recycled uh and reclaimed water facilities within the plant that could then further service the the community in the surrounding areas. So that is sort of what led us to this position where we really need to um contract a outside consultant, have them do a full evaluation um and come up with the preliminary design and really look at and evaluate um what is the best use of our technology and our sewer repair um funds to move forward and make sure that we are able to provide the level of treatment for future. Not just 5 years, 10 years. these systems really need to last 20 plus years. Um, some of the items mentioned on this slide, you know, that that cost 520 million. That is a big number. That is a number being used uh based off of industry average when looking at a 25 million gallon per day capacity uh treatment plant. Um that number will be buttoned up as we go through this evaluation as we answer the questions of what technology technology should we implement. Um what structures do we really need to look at? Um one of the other things for electricity cost that plant two has two cogen co-generation engines. They are currently not operable just because they are um not beyond repair. they haven't been able to operate for about the last five years. So getting renewable energy, you know, getting cogent back, you know, do we add more solar to that facility to offset electrical costs. So, um, those are things that will be closely analyzed, evaluated. Um, but looking at, we are going to need substantial funds to make sure that we address these concerns, even the ones that we do know. Um, and that is where these numbers are coming from. um required and significant on O andM costs. I just spoke a lot about addressing the aging infrastructure but we also need to be able to maintain and operate the existing infrastructure. So um the on andm cost that is electrical cost that is personnel equipment repair and maintenance for existing um and just buying replacement parts for for some of these um equipment that we have. Just be mindful that these systems and the equipment and the infrastructure, they are being exposed to waste water every single day, every single minute of every single day, every single day of the year. So these do not stop. do that. So, so again, when we determined the amount of revenue needed to offset the expenses, uh we again looked at all of the operating budgets. We looked at the operating budget for plant 2, plant 3. Uh we worked with um streets and looked at the operating budget for the sewer collection system, the storm drain system. We looked every line by line and we evaluated what our current expenses are and we used inflators to increase for CCI, increase for uh personnel and looked at our um our projections for electricity. We really looked at the operations and evaluated it and determined that we were going to have an increase every every single year because every year things tend to go up. Um, we also looked at, uh, as Evette said, we evaluated plant 2. We got to the point of when you started adding up all the potential, uh, improvements that we came to the conclusion that it's most likely going to be some type of a significant upgrade or a full rebuild. And that's where we identified the cost of being approximately $450 million for construction. Um, if I may, Miss Buddha, before we leave this slide, we've also done some analysis that shows that even without a rate increase, we start to see our our revenues um not be sufficient. And so that we would also drop below our recommended reserve line just, you know, with regular operations and maintenance, let alone any large capital investments. Thank you. So what this graph reflects is it is the proposed option that was proposed uh presented and proposed during the waterboard and it identifies that the goal would be to collect the revenue to cover our current operation cost and our future operation costs as well uh for the entire system and the cost to rebuild plant 2 with the estimated cost of I believe being 550 million and that would be design construction and construction management services. Um, working with our finance director, Randy McKean, it's important that to borrow money for this type of a facility, you would pay a lot more to pay back the bond. Uh, so the goal was to collect the money over the next 5 years, have all the money available. um as we're collecting it, we would do the design. We would work on our permits and environmental that when we get ready to go into construction, which is anticipated to be uh 2030, 2031, we would had have all the revenue to be able to award the contract and move forward with construction without having to borrow money and not having to pay those interest rates. I would defer to Mr. McKean if he wanted to talk more about bonds, but the goal was really to not have to bond for this project. [Music] Um, this slide evaluates the Bakersfield's current rate at 239 to uh the top uh cities within California. Uh we are the lowest, we have actually been the lowest in the state of California since 2006. Uh and so that explains kind of where we're at now. the other cities have a higher rate and it's a higher average rate, but they've been collecting it for a longer period of time. That's we've had such a low rate for such a long period of time that we need to jump above them. And the proposed rate increase is $950 um to be added to the sewer user tax role. And I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Miss Budc. Uh going back to Council Member Coleman, please. Thank you, Mayor. Uh okay so uh there's three stations now, correct? There's three sewers. There's actually two. There's two. Wastewater treatment plant two and wastewater treatment plant southeast. Plant three. Yes. Uh plant two is in south southeast Cottonwood Road area. Okay. And then the other one is like ash. Yes. Okay. Where's the third one? It's actually Can you explain what happened to treatment plant one? So treatment plant one honestly it was more like a glorified lift station. It was previously is that what that guy was doing in the picture? Was he fishing in there? No. No. That was a secondary fire. No. So plant one used to be um behind what is now the current animal shelter off of Mount Vernon. Um if you look at our sewer system, it kind of like um collects in that section. Uh when it was decommissioned, the numbering of the plants was not changed just to not confuse for future because then you'd have to keep track of is this plan to pre-decommission or post decommission. So the numbering was not changed. So um what's your plan to manage the capacity when you rebuild station two? I've stationed plant two, what do you want to call it? I think the evaluation um will determine the um sorry will determine how it is staged. Is there a phasing way you can do that or do you have to tear it all down and build it all up? Yeah. No, absolutely. This would need to be phased in because we would be need to maintain service throughout. Um and so the plan too, just to be clear, at this point, we are not anticipating uh additional capacity. We're really just trying to replace existing infrastructure. Um, so it wouldn't be a capacity growth. It really is just to address aging infrastructure. Well, the reason I ask you that question is because especially that station out in the southeast, you know, we're going to grow the capacity there a lot in the next five years. So should it be determined that additional capacity is needed that is a connection a sewer connection discussion um driven by developer fees not sewer users. I see. So any expansion of the facility will be paid for by connection fees. That is the intent of connection fees. Yes. All right. Thank you for clarifying that. Uh, is your intent to acquire any more property for future uh, locations? Um, I don't believe that our intent would be to acquire any additional lands. We currently operate about 5,000 acres of farmland and so that's what we utilize the affluent and the solids on. And so the evaluation really is to not only look at the treatment, but how we utilize our farmlands, how we utilize our dams that are to the north. It's really looking at the entire system and making sure that we are operate and that we're making the best decisions on the future of Bakersfield for the plant, uh, for the land and for how everything is operated. a tertiary system would be very beneficial um that we could maybe then utilize for streetscapes in that area uh with um with tertiary water on landscape in lie of using portable water. So lots of things to consider and evaluate. Well, my only cons not my only concern but my concern is that we continue to have capacity for the growth that we're going to have. you know, we're going to approve a general plan sometime this year that, you know, that's going to take us out to 2045 and, you know, my expectation is the population is going to double in that amount of time and so I want to be sure that we have, you know, capacity so we don't have to have building moratoriums because we didn't plan well enough for that. Uh we are evaluating the capacity issue at plant 3 and we are going to be talking with developers in the fall about plant 3 as well because of the develop the connection fee uh to be able to expand plant 3 and when we do our evaluation we'll we'll look at we've already met I've already reached out to um Mr. burns and he's provided me some growth numbers to help us plan for the capacity of plant 2 if it's above the current 25 million gallons per day. Okay. So, uh I just want to make one com I appreciate you trying to do this without any debt. So, I I do appreciate the the no bond approach to that. Um, I do see this one as significantly different than the water rate increase, uh, because it looks like we just failed to keep pace with where we should be on rates. And so, um, two questions. One is I don't understand the county's objection to this to this, uh, filing at this time. They don't seem to be opposed to the rate increase. They seem to be opposed to the timing. So, h have you not had any conversation with the county or is this um an ongoing dispute? So, I can have uh I bet clarify, but she was work at her at her level working with the staff member from the county. Uh she informed them in uh I believe it was February that we were working on a rate increase, but we were still in the evaluation mode and that we would have a better understanding after we presented it to the city manager and to the waterboard. Upon doing that, uh, within one or two days after the waterboard meeting, she again reached out to the staff member at the county and advised that we were doing an increase in the amount. So, there has been some communication. Um, at at her level, uh, I don't know if in the past, my understanding is in the past we haven't communicated that way. Uh, and I don't know if if Zach or um Evette want to add anything there, but it seems like in the past when they do an increase, we don't necessarily know and vice versa. So, is it appropriate to hear from the county and what their object objection is? Is that inappropriate? No. No. Well, or or at this stage, I think I think you know I'll defer to the city attorney, but I think if council members have specific questions of, you know, stakeholders here today, you can ask those questions. A couple things I would add to this consideration. Um I will acknowledge that um this was it was not on my radar to really make a large overture to the county because you know it's it was not in my mindset that typically we don't have unincorporated um residential units that are affected by our sewer rates because we have very few that are um on city sewer. that is uh typically uh we require annexation in order to extend our utilities to individuals. But there was one area called um the community is community CSA but community service excuse me county service area 71 uh was uh adopted uh a very long time ago um before some of the policies the city had about whether we would extend utilities you know into areas that had not been annexed. And as noted in public comment, there's about 600 um you know, units that are within that CSA71 that are that are um impacted by this. I would note that CSA71 is is um fairly unique um in um its sort of public policy and administration. Uh but we appreciate that, you know, the county has brought forward that it is a challenge for CSA71. I think in fairness, while we had some, you know, um, early communication within 2025 about this, you know, the ability to ramp up a 218 notice process, as we've described today, it's a lot of work to get it going and it takes several months to get it done. And so I I think the county is in a unique spot where they're unlikely to be able to do a full 218 notice, get to the board of supervisors and do a full 218 notice before um this next cycle where the um county assessor could get it on the tax roles uh for you know this summer cycle of taxes. That being said, I would just offer since we're on this topic that we're happy to work with the county to try and find, you know, creative solutions uh so that there's not negative impacts um in the county's ability to collect enough revenues to be able to um uh pay for this increase. Because how it work actually works is the county pays this the city for um the sewer costs and they collect an assessment from those 600 you know units and then the county pays the city directly. So we're not billing to their customers directly and so it does put the county in a spot where you know they they have to deliver based on the charges but there may not be able to collect the full amount of those charges. I think given that it is such a small percentage of our total citywide sewer system that we can work out cooperatively with the county uh some solutions that that are helpful to them. In addition, uh we're willing to go the extra mile to provide notices to individuals who may be in CSA71. although it won't meet the county's official 218 requirements, we're happy to get the notice out so that folks are uh more aware earlier of uh some of these um realities. But yes, uh it is it is unique that we um have uh some you know unincorporated residents kind of stuck in a little bit of this limbo from from the creation of this CSA71 many years ago. Anything to add, city attorney? Yeah, I I don't I don't think I need to hear from the county person after all. But one last thing on the adequacy of the rate increase. U how conf how confident are we that that that rate increase is going to take us through the next five years? Um as I stated, we've we've evaluated um our line items directly for the operations. Um we have bid jobs recently to get an idea and understanding of the costs associated with doing improvements. Uh we worked directly with public works and their staff is very knowledgeable about uh lift stations uh storm drain stations and we also put an inflator on those. Uh Zach, do you have anything to add on that? No, just to reiterate um anything with the collection system, it's still public works responsibility. So looking at all the sewer lift stations, sewer lines, trying to upgrade and upsize sewer lines uh due to capacity issues, these projects were taken into account as we try to project out the next 5 to 10 years. Okay. And is it is it not possible, this is probably a question for the city manager, is it not possible to have a rate increase that includes some kind of a, you know, automatic accelerator? You can approve rate increases that would um the basically be at sort of a consumer price index. We've got one example of that um in solid waste. Um but what I and again had we done that over the last 20 years we would be in a much better spot. But also I think one of the challenges is that um sometimes you know a consumer price index escalator might be 2% 3% but actual inflation you know is a little bit different sometimes in CPI. Uh but also um uh there may be changes in you know some of again regulations, mandates, capital projects. So CPI doesn't always keep up with rates but it would have been wise to do that over the years. All right. Thank you, Mayor. I have no further questions. Thank you. Council member Gonzalez. So, I'm part of the waterboard and I um was first in favor of option one uh to bring this to the full council because I understand the need for us to um find or generate the revenue necessary to uh meet our um need in treatment plant number two. Um, but I've heard about a number of stories from from my constituents who are really uh experiencing some tough times and so I I do hesitate uh to continue supporting that. Um, Chris, in our waterboard presentations, you um produced uh the different options. Can you show those to us or walk us through various different options? Thank you. So when we did the evaluation, we really looked at it as four options, but option one and two were really to collect the full revenue for the plant reconstruction or replacement. And then options three and four were to determine to still have the funds to deal with operations but collect approximately half of the funds needed. And so that option three was discussed and it would be an increase to $75 and that would enable us to provide the revenue needed for the day-to-day the CIPs that have been identified and about half about $250 million With that option, we would then have to either bond or sometime prior to construction potentially doing another small increase that could pay the bond back faster. The challenge with this is overall uh you still have to find a way to collect enough revenue to cover half of the construction cost. And just so that I'm clear, um, and maybe for the benefit of the public, when we go out to bid for this particular project, um, we don't necessarily have to have all funds secured at that point. That is correct, council member. Again, if we choose to bond, you can bond for, you know, s, you know, significantly higher costs. You have to have the certainty that you can with your revenues over the life of that bond pay the debt service, but we do not have to have all proceeds in order to bid the construction. Okay. And when we look at um a five-year increase um just in full transparency, I was exploring this topic uh with various different uh city staff members um and trying to see if we can maybe extend it beyond se beyond the five years to seven, but there's actually government code that inhibits us from doing that. Can you can you clarify that for me and for the public? Yes. Uh, Mayor, Council Member Gonzalez, that is correct. Under Prop 218, it can only go out. It can only be extended to the fifth year. Okay. I'm interested in hearing from my colleagues. My uh position today is that we pursue option three. Um which is uh less of an impact for the rateayers uh this next year. Um and it helps us address some of those capital projects that are necessary. um and then also affords us some more time through the design process to understand um the actual cost and and and then proceed with the financing strategy in in the upcoming few years. So I'm going to make a motion that we adopt option three and send that for 218 notice. Council member Arius, you also had asked for this to be pulled and then we'll go to Council Member Smith. Thank you, mayor. Um, I'll try to keep my comments brief on this issue. I think that, um, I'm I'm internally conflicted on this issue as well. Um, I think it was back in 2020 or 2021 when I first joined the council and realized that, um, there is a huge swath of undeveloped farmland in Southeast Bakersfield in Ward One. um and had early conversations with a couple of developers and talked with Christian about uh you know really opening up some of these uh spreading fields um as that next potential um you know heavy manufacturing logistics opportunities job creating opportunities uh for the city of Bakersville but specifically um for for W uh residents and families Um, and it's taken us so many years to get to this point where, uh, you know, there's a real meaningful opportunity for us to free up some of that land, uh, to create those opportunities. At at the same time, I think about all of the families who are have been struggling for years. Um specifically um, folks who are living on a fixed income. Um, these are, you know, our veterans. These are, uh, our elderly community members who, um, you know, live off of social security. Um, you know, folks who live off of a fixed VA, uh, benefit on a monthly basis. Uh these are um folks who struggle like I said even before these rate increases and will continue to struggle uh even more if we make these increases. I also think about some of the challenges that they will be facing as a household headed into the future. Um with um you know politics aside, uh there have been significant discussions at the federal level about potential cuts to Medicaid um that will come down here in the next couple of months. Uh there have been serious conversations about cuts to social security um that will impact hundreds of thousands of households across this country. And I think that we have to do everything that we can at the local level uh to help folks literally survive and fight for the next day. And I think that timing is really what it comes down to for me. Um I think it's very clear we have to upgrade uh the sewer plant. Um number two, um I just don't know that now is is the right time. And I just want to read for the record a u a text message that I received from one of my constituents who said, "Rate increases hurt when food and gas are at all-time highs. With summer soon arriving, so is water usage. We are stretched so thin on our monthly budgets as is. This is way too high of an increase, particularly for folks that live on a fixed income. Um, I know several dozen families who live in Ward One who live on a fixed income monthtomonth, paycheck to paycheck. And I I didn't know that there were other options uh for us. And at this point, I am I would only be open to uh approving option four with minimal impact in the first year um with more marginal increases in the years after that. Thank you, Council Member Smith. Thank you, mayor. Can you go back to the graph that showed all the other jurisdictions? It's another presentation, so it'll take us just a moment. No, no, we had it in two different slide decks. Oh, yeah. So why is that not Oh, there it is. Okay. So I guess the point was made that you know take Sacramento or Anaheim for example. Do do we know how long they've been charging those rates? No, the the comment was made that, you know, they've been charging those rates for a long time and that's why we have to go higher. And I I think that's probably true. And so when you're the cheapest and you only patch what's broke, then sooner or later you have to pay. And The longer we wait, the higher this number goes in my mind. You know, if we do something now, then it's 950 to, you know, get it paid for in five years, we wait two or three years and we're up to the, you know, 2500 like San Francisco. I don't know. Just it just keeps exponentially going up the longer you wait. And that's not good for the community in the long run. They end up paying a lot more. And same idea with financing. So let me understand Councilman Gonzalez's proposal. Go back to number three. That essentially gets us halfway in three years and then we borrow the other half. we would actually collect the halfway within the five years. So at the end of 2029 2030 we would have collected approximately 250 million uh 260 million towards the costs. We anticipate uh invi uh design being approximately 40 to 50 million and then uh construction would be uh 450 plus cm which would be around 520. No, it would collect about half of it. Option three. And and then you're borrowing the other half. And then you have to borrow or do another rate increase somewhere prior to 20 930 to increase it to try and collect more during construction. I I guess I'm still where I was, you know, at the waterboard meeting. What what's cheapest in the long run and and we need to make up for the mistakes that we've made in the past or or I mean, you know, you pay now or pay later and and later is now or in the future it's even worse and we're not saving our constituents money. We're were costing them more money by continuing to wait. So I I again will make the motion for option one which was staff's recommendation I guess and to move forward with the 218. Thank you council member. Any other requests to speak? Council member Gonzalez. Yeah. Um, so I appreciate Council Member Smith's line of thinking. I I think it's right on. Um, one of the that's one of the considerations why I was not in support of and I didn't make a motion to approve option four because while it is a smaller increase in year one overall it actually is a larger increase to the rateayer. Um, the reason why, and I'm going to give my best pitch for option three, is that beyond um, 2030, if we choose to bond, and I understand there are lots of costs to bonding, we still are generating that revenue from these increases to service that debt. Is that correct? The the the $250 million that we're generating, once the project is already in construction, we can bond against it. we use that 250 million over the following five years 2030 to 35 to service that debt. may be much higher given the bond cost, but there are no I'm I know there are a lot of caveats to what I'm suggesting, but in in just just for the purpose of just keeping things simple, I think there is a strategy to to pursue option three um try to be um sensitive to the cost burden uh for the right payer, but then also get to some sort of position where we can make this project work. Mr. McKean. Uh good evening, Mayor Go, Council Member. Uh so the plan with option three does require that you have to borrow $250 million. So the additional revenue that you're generating from those fees would cover that debt service. But we do need to understand to Council Member Smith's point, you'll be paying approximately $185 million in interest. So that would be over 30 years. So in addition to borrowing $250 million, saving $250 million, you're actually adding costs of 185 or so million. So, anything else? I thank you. Okay. All right. Council member Basher, any of the upgrades uh going to play into the role of the water conservation that we have to have? Would they count recycled water and the use of that toward any of that? in the years coming up from our state. So water conservation actually on a wastewater facility there's already been several reports done that there is an impact and so as part of our evaluation of plant 2 we will need to look at that uh when you have water conservation you then have a higher level of solids and so that does impact how we operate the plant. I think that's one of the reasons why we are looking at using other options other than trickling filters is because other technologies may provide us a better processing knowing that we're going to have less water. If I may just add on to that, I think is is a a smart um question, council member, because even though it might not help us with the conservation, our ability to take, you know, tertiary treated water and use that for other purposes is a great savings. And even if it just goes if we have other uses, I think our the value of our water is going to continue to increase. You know, it's a it's a finite resource that's, you know, going to continue to have value. And even if we can put it back into the ground for groundwater points or use it in other ways, there's a lot of value there. So it may not equate to some of the conservation, but I think in through the analysis um there could be both revenue generation or just cost deferrals by using that water smarter through better technology. Council member Smith. Thank you, mayor. We mentioned tertiary a couple times. Is is the plan to go to tertiary on this plant? Um, that would be my recommendation. Yes, I think we have to work directly with um planning and and public works and and start talking about how we have purple pipe installed with uh future development uh because we don't currently uh I'm not sure about the current system today. But if we can get ahead of it and start putting some purple pipe in and have a tertiary system off a plant too, definitely being able to utilize that water for parks, for streetscapes would just provide us an overall benefit. So then you don't need the spreading fields anymore or you still need them. Oh, we would evaluate. We would need spreading fields, but it could diminish the total square footage of them. Yes. So you could sell those or alternate use. I don't know. That would be a proper management. Yeah. If if I may, I don't want to get too ahead of ourselves because um there's a lot of unknowns there, but it has been rolling around in my head for a couple years, but especially tonight that um depending on the amount of acreage that we could take out of service. Um that could be a pretty significant development opportunity that could generate significant revenues that could be then used to pay for costs of the upgrade to the plant. Um, so I think we can include that in our analysis. I don't want to overstate that to say, hey, that's our silver bullet to having way, you know, tons of savings, but I do think it's a a genuineely real possibility to get some significant revenues to put back into the plant upgrades that made those that development possible. And I guess the next question would be this is all about plant two. So plant three is old and wearing out at the same time. What's our plan there? So, uh, plant 3 did have a significant upgrade in 2010 and there has been a strong maintenance program, a stronger maintenance program on the plant 2 facility. We are currently evaluating Did you mean plant three? Oh, yes. I'm sorry. Yes. Yeah. Sorry. Plant three. Thank you. Plant 3 has had um a more detailed maintenance plan uh for the infrastructure. We are looking at capacity at plant 3. We are identifying that due to all the growth in the southwest, we are getting to a point where our capacity is going to need to be evaluated and possibly expanded. So that will be further discussions in um with the developers. And plant two is 25 mg. What's what's plant 3? Plant 3 is 32 million gallons per day and we are uh near 24 million gallons per day currently which is about 75% and that's the time when you start talking about an expansion plant two what's actual yeah 14 14 14 of the 25 yes okay um yeah I'm still $200 million in interest is not saving the community money. So, I'm still in favor of option one and moving forward. Thank you. So, we have two motions. We'll take council member Smith's motion first, which is uh granting step authorization on the mail notices. You have a motion. Please cast your votes. Motion is approved with council members Core and Weir absent and council members Aas and Gonzalez voting no. Thank you. Next item, please. While the clerk is getting ready, young man, are you with Bakersville College? Congratulations on staying all night. Are you a professor? Yes. Are you in Professor Holm's class? Come come at come and see me after and I will uh make sure that we communicate your diligence. Next item, council and mayor statements. Council member Coleman. Uh thank you, Mayor. In lie of the uh the past decision here and these two items that we talked about um water and the sewer, I'd like to make a referral to staff to evaluate what kind of program we can develop to provide relief for those people that face a financial hardship as a result of these these two motions uh these two decisions. and and I don't know what that looks like. I'm gonna rely on staff to make some kind of recommendation of what what we could consider. Thank you, Council Member Smith. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to relate. I was at a conference a week ago and uh it was council members throughout the state and supervisors and and gentlemen from San Diego came up to me and said that they you know everybody passes through Bakersville but they stopped to stretch their legs and they walked around our downtown and specifically mentioned you know the Padre Hotel but also mentioned how you know what a good-look downtown and how clean it was and and you know I I just like to relate those things that we are moving in the right direction and people do notice and I would along that line um we have used our toot transit occupancy tax as capital improvement projects and kind of just in the general fund and I know different jurisdictions do different things with it and focus more on tourism which is an economic driver in a lot of communities and and you know drives a certain amount of the economy in Bakersfield. And so it seems to me that we should split that out more. Uh the toot could be focused on things that promote tourism and and promote that portion of the economy because that's where that money is coming from. So, I'd make that referral to look at what at budget time. Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez. Yeah, I love that idea. I mean, the TOT should really be reinvested to generate additional TOT and local sales tax dollars. I think that's a smart strategy and uh I don't see a reason why uh we can't do that. We there's plenty of examples of other cities that have been very strategic in making investments to improve quality of life, enhance quality of life, and also attract new visitors to their communities and have benefited uh significantly by those economic enhancements. So, I appreciate that referral. Um I wanted to just make a comment that um you know oftent times and for decades people from Bakersfield migrate to the central coast but last weekend we saw the reverse where the central coast actually came to Bakersfield and Hogis uh which is a very popular restaurant uh on the central coast actually opened a restaurant right in downtown Bakersfield and that's a huge Plus, that's a huge win for for Bakersfield and for downtown Bakersfield. And like I said earlier, downtown Bakersville just gets better and better and better. Um, one of the things I do want to explore though is um they and and many others are hit with these really high traffic impact fees and I really can't understand the the real nexus between the um the improvements and also the those impact fees. And so I'd like us to again look at uh additional tiers for all impact fees as it relates to the urban core and specifically to the downtown area. Thank you. I see no other request to speak. So we stand adjourn at 8:39. 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