[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the 3:30 p.m. meeting of the Bakersfield City Council is now in session 3:30 regular city council meeting of June 26 2024 Madame clerk please call the role mayor go here vice mayor Gonzalez here council member Adas here council member we council member Smith I here council member Freeman council member gray and council member core here thank you in keeping with the council's new 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 at the appropriate time so please listen carefully for the correct time to speak if you wish to make a public speak public statement please fill out a public speaker card and place it in the tray on the counter 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 specific agenda item will be presumed speakers for the non-agenda public statements if you're to if you're here to speak on an item not listed on the meeting agenda you will be call first to speak statements are given a 2-minute time limit per speaker 20 minutes total for all non-agenda items public statements if you're here to speak on an item listed on the agenda I will call for you at the appropriate time so please listen carefully if public statements become disruptive and I have to clear the chambers to regain order of the meeting you will 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 De deorum established by resolution of the city council failure to abide by the city's rules of decorum including any disruptive behavior that interferes with our ability to have an orderly and efficient meeting prevents the city council from conducting the business of the city consider this a first warning to everyone in attendance that conduct that disrupts this meeting May result in expulsion and or the chambers being cleared behavior that disrupts the meeting includes repetitive statements shouting interrupting staff or presenters during the meeting speaking out of turn Outburst from the audience or surpassing the two-minute time limit Madam clerk for the record council member gray entered at 3:37 Madam clerk do we have any public speakers regarding items not listed on the agenda Amo we've received two public speaker cards for items not listed on uh tonight's agenda the first public speaker is Ernie Lopez true uh I wanted to bring please introduce yourself uh Ernie Lopez um I wanted to bring up uh uh people who buy uh real estate uh because uh um uh I could have ended up hurt because uh uh someone uh aimed a weapon I got the pre support and everything but uh I don't I don't I don't see it safe for people who do Real Estate to um for people uh for them to uh not be ordinance where uh people some people can get shot I was watching the property and I almost was shot because uh the owner had somebody else watching it and the dude aimed the unmarked VI unmarked weapon it didn't have an a serial number on it and uh they were drinking and doing drugs and I was instructed to watch that property and uh I don't feel that Justice was was served on that situation I had the police report everything was made accordingly but I feel that um um something up um that it should be more um safer anything else sir no that's it thank you I'm so sorry that you were shot and uh Mr CLE is there somebody who could be assigned maybe just to follow up with him we can take care of that thank you next speaker please Michael turnup seed welcome Madame mayor members of the council I'm Michael turnip seed I represent the Kern County taxpayers Association I have some handouts for you here because because I know I can't get it all in in two minutes uh I attended Monday's budget and finance committee meeting with the topic the economic strategic plan and the plan supposedly aligns Council goals and reflects the most promising opportunities and most pressing to address the most tracing challenges facing the Bakersfield economy council's goals I've been watching the process for many years you adopt goals they're there never really do we go through that whole process very early do we ever see actually benchmarks and outcomes and make sure these outcomes ever occur because the outcomes happen four or five years down the line uh the council needs to adopt sustainable Economic Development assessments SAS and S to defines Community well-being based on 10 factors group into three categories the economics which is income economic stability and employment investment investment and excuse me I saw the clock investment uh Investments include Education Health Care and infrastructure which reflect the outcomes of the uh local government goals and programs needs to be sustainable the environment equality of a strong Civil Society and sound government using indicators from publicly available sources Seas uh assess government performance on each Dimension cities were developed by the Boston Consulting Group the city needs to get this right and they need to look adopt different ways of evaluating where they want to go down the road because failure really is not an option thank you very much thank you Mr Atty vice mayor thank you mayor m Mr try thank you so much for your um comments and thank you for being at the budget and finance meeting on Monday was the only one you were and I appreciate it and so um I I think what from what I'm hearing from you is we really need to look at uh key indicators related to outcomes is that when you boil it down what you're asking for the city well I think there's a bigger picture than just economic developments and jobs and and that's why I put the handouts together if you look at what Ceda does and go back about six or seven pages you will see a graph actually a circle pie chart that kind of explains what Ceda is and the different parts of it and how we need to take a holistic approach because it's everything that we do and I know we spend a lot of money now on different things but economic development is going to be the engine that's going to pay for everything and get the benefits that we need to get better health care in the community Better Health in the community we need to do things education infrastructure you know our infrastructure has obvious challenges and it's all going to come from the money from Economic Development uh and you measure economics from make income economic stability and employment mhm but there's more there's the equality portion there's the civil society which is really the public safety aspect of it it's the environment within the city uh there are many components that I don't see in your economic plan and the Boston Medical Group developed this 10 years ago and to address and rate every country in the world but if you look at our economy our economy isn't just one economy it's based up of the 18800 counties that that are put together for our national economy so we're part of that so we need to look at on the local level a little bit different approach than what we're doing because uh I think both the city and the county have big challenges moving ahead and competing with everybody else I think we're behind the wheel and we have to catch up and uh it's going to take some bright ideas and different approaches to get there no I appreciate that I read a while back it's no longer a competition among nations it really is a competition among regions globally and so as we look at Economic Development we ought to to think about that competition and one of the things I really appreciate about this um is that these 10 Dimensions really are holistic in nature so you got just for the benefit of the public the economic Dimensions which are governance environment income uh economic stability employment we have the Investments Dimension health education infrastructure sustainability uh equality Civil Society um I I I suppose governance and environment are under that sustainability but it really gives us a 360 view on our region as a more holistic way to measure our growth in terms of Economic Development uh the quality of life is what it really says it doesn't matter how big your economy is if you don't have the quality of life and that includes how long you live and everything else and in Pittsburgh's uh Smart City campaign they ran a few years ago they said if it's not good for everyone it's not good for anyone and I think when we look at some of the decisions we make we need to to think that way I appreciate it I think two things are really striking uh from this uh for me number one is we have a lot of activities uh that we that that are outlined in the economic development strategy um not all of those activities are a responsibility of the city but certainly we have a lot of things going on we want to make sure that we are being impactful and that we're able to measure those things that's something that council member adius and I spoke about at the committee meeting on Monday um so identifying those key measurements I think is really critical so I'm going to ask Mr CLE if we can uh get with uh Mr turnup seed and discuss these ideas and see how this might um work within our framework uh to measure the impact of our all of our activities related to Economic Development and then secondarily uh I think the other piece is that um Economic Development and really quality of life doesn't just sit within our economic and community Development Department it really is cross departments every single Department within the city and all of our partners in the county and education are also required uh to participate to improve the quality life for our region and so um I think we all have various different roles to play so that's what's striking when we come when we take a look at this uh this framework so thank you Mary Barlo made a comment and I wish I had wrote it down so I could read it properly about when we have such large scale problems one nent one agency cannot solve those alone it's bringing and that was part of her when she started the current pledge you've got to bring everybody to the table the education Community the Health Care Community if we're going to make t the quality of life better it takes like would Hillary say it takes a community to raise a child well it takes everybody to raise a community thank you Mr turnup thank you uh Madam clerk next item please reports item 3A presentation on neighborhood stabilization and prevention programs thank you and for those of you who are uh wanting to make public comment you'll make uh I'll give you an opportunity after the staff's presentation Mr click thank you mayor and councel I'm going to kick us off and then I'll um turn over some more of the details to miss buers and then we've actually we're coordinating this presentation to include information on several different topics uh that we've also invited folks from the great greater Bakersville legal assistance to present a little bit on one of the programs that's going to be highlighted in this broader framework so what we're going to do today is uh this is in response to a couple of different things one just you know general interest in this topic in particular the topic of our eviction prevention program as well as the recent referral from council member ARS to really look at funding sources towards you know programs uh um like the eviction Protection Program as well as um other prevention housing prevention programs so the slide that you see before you we've uh really uh labeled this in a broader perspective more about neighborhood stabilization and prevention programs because there are a number of different programs that can actually have important impacts on community and we wanted to kind of zoom out first and look at the bigger picture and then um Orient us to zooming back into where we're going to focus some more of our conversation and so I just wanted to reflect uh for a moment that around any type of a housing response system especially when you're looking around homelessness this is just one example I'm going to show you several different examples that you can look at a broader framework and so in any good system you need to be looking at your emergency Sheltering your transitional housing your permanent housing but you also need homeless services on one end and you need preventative Services on the other end to try and keep individuals from entering into um the need for those services and addressing vulnerability factors and risk factors this is just another example from another Community um that this is not uh the precise rubric here in Kern County but just another example of where you need to have an iterative process where you're addressing Outreach coordinated entry prevention emergency Sheltering rapid re housing and ultimately permanent support of housing I would argue that in addition to that we should be thinking about market rate housing and so U if you look at a full housing Continuum this is just another example used in a different city they had a fantastic graphic so I stole it uh which demonstrates that you know on the full spectrum from homelessness all the way to market rate and in potentially even home ownership that there's multiple different you know um steps or uh you segments of this housing Continuum or or housing Spectrum um and that often we don't necessarily move folks immediately from one to the other often it's um uh we we try to step individuals through some of our emergency needs into transitional housing and ultimately permanent support of housing but sometimes it's also about taking folks from Supportive Housing into Market R housing or market rate rental into market rate ownership I would also just reflect really quickly that there's even a bigger picture specific to housing that there's also a full spectrum of even market rate housing and you can go from your detch single family homes to many types of more multif family but lower density to higher density all the way up to midrise R highrise higher density housing and uh lastly this is just also a quick perspective and this actually is from right here in Kern County this is an example of how we address individuals coming through our coordinated entry system that there are multiple steps and considerations that we need to have programs you know in a safety net helping individuals across multiple uh different need areas and so all of that is to say there's a big picture and but we're not trying to talk about all of this today we're not trying to focus on addressing all challenges around homelessness we're going to be narrowing in on these stabilization programs but we're reflecting to the council that we know that we need to address issues across a full spectrum we're going to really zoom into the prevention type programs and stabilization type programs around housing and homelessness um we took a quick look just in this last week the Kern County homeless strategic action plan plan has eight different it has three different goals and there are 27 different objectives but uh amongst those one goal is focused specifically on reducing inflow and there are eight of those strategies or objectives that are specific to prevention programs there's also the city's affordable housing strategy that has four overarching strategies with 21 actions there's not one of those strategies that is uniquely specific to prevention but there are um probably three or four of those um specific actions that touch around uh prevention however I would uh recognize that while most of our affordable housing strategy is about unit production and producing more and more units we probably can do more about some of our prevention strategies but those are again recognized a lot more in our homeless strategic action plan and then lastly if we look at our draft housing element and many of the components that are required in the sixth cycle of the housing element we have five overarching goals there are 28 total strategies in their draft um housing element and one of those five goals is entirely focused on prevention and prevention and pre preserving housing and different prevention strategies and there are multiple of the 28 strategies across more than one goal that do address um suggestions or policy ideas that are uh related to prevention um I I think uh I would note really quickly since I I mentioned the housing element work that's largely policy related work it's not program related work but as we adopt some of those policies it'll be incumbent on the city council and and City staff to consider whether there should be complimentary programs in support of those policy statements so there are several existing plans and strategies that reference prevention and stabilization programs so we wanted to make sure we're we're really um taking all of those into account so at this point I'll turn it over to miss buers to share with Council some of the programs that um are already in existence and some of the programs that are being proposed and then lay out really a framework that we're recommending to the council that staff go and do some analysis on overarching stabilization and prevention programs based on this you know these set of plans and come back to council with some additional recommendations about how we can pursue um more than just one program uh around prevention and stabilization but make sure that it's within that context where we've looked at the bigger picture thank you Mr C Madam clerk for the record council member Freeman entered at 3:42 miss spers you mayor council so one of the things we want to talk about is what is contributing to this pressure that we're having for an increase in homeless not enough housing and anyone you talk to will tell you it's a supply issue here in our community so our population over the past decade has increased almost 50,000 residents in the last Arena cycle which was um through 2023 16561 units were constructed and so you already have this increase in population um we have been constructing more more units recently but you can see where that's one of the factors but our vacancy rate is somewhere between 2 to 3% and it it goes up and down around there but a healthy healthy housing market is really 5 to 7% 5 to 6% so when you have such a narrow entry or a narrow opportunity to be locating into a residence with the increased population lack of housing being constructed we have a supply issue in our community the housing element has shown in conversations even yesterday at the housing and homeless when we look at the bkc uh homeless strategies talks about the supply issue uh Mr cay was showing you the different examples of uh types of Housing and so we have 125,1 143 housing units here in Bakersfield this home ownership and this rate so I started in November of 21 at the time it was 59.7% % home ownership across the city it's currently 58.4 which leaves Renters 41% of our community is renters then we start to also look at the age of our existing housing stock about 50% of our housing is over 40 years old and really Studies have shown and even our housing element talks about that housing that's over 30 years old is most likely to need Rehabilitation uh whether that's new Plumbing roof repairs uh foundation work and so some of these older houses may have additional health risks such as lead based paint such as um asbestos so really the housing stock that we're talking about that is most likely to need Rehabilitation is that greater than 30 years old and 50% of our housing stock is at that uh the housing element also looked at the number of units in our in our NE or in our community that has code enforcement and about 4% of our housing has active code enforcement activities occurring and so this is one of the supply issues that we have in our community that we have aging housing we have lack of housing we have a very tight vacancy rate and we have more people moving to our community and so that contributes to it another contributing factor is the rise in value you look at the median rental rate it's increased 62% since 2015 we utilize Hud's data the Chaz data and it's 2015 to 2019 and so if you look at increase of 62% since 2015 the rate back in 2019 was that almost half of the residents who rent in the city are considered cost burden CommunityWide 36% is considered cost burden and so we look at this demographics by Race by income by Home Ownership um even homeowners are cost burden and it looks like about 27% of homeowners are additionally cost burden and if they're in one of those units that's greater than 30 years old cost burden not doing deferred maintenance then when they move out you really have a struggle with the units in our neighborhoods so the California tenant protection act was 2019 and that was the state's attempt to do rent control so you cannot over a 12-month period increase the rent greater than 10% or 5% of the consumer index for the region which our region it has been about 10% the last couple years they also identified what is considered just cause eviction no fault and fault so a fault just cause is somebody who's not paying their rent and then a no fault is the landlord has requested the individual to move out but we look again back at what that median rate has increased it's increased 62% you can only raise rent 10% you start to see kind of a struggle with landlords who want to receive more money and who are then evicting tenants and so um we listed this as one of the contributing factors as well so what do we have going on we have a lot of existing programs and then programs we're working through fair housing the city currently contracts with gbla and I want to be very specific about what that contra contract is gbla is a qualified Fair Housing Organization which HUD requires us to have because we're an entitlement city so we are required to have qualified fair housing but fair housing at the federal level is really defined more towards discrimination the state has language for what fair housing is but when we look at fair housing we are looking at it solely from the lens of the federal government and discrimination-based and so that is the act activities that they provide for us now tonight there is going to be an item later for city council for an eviction pre prevention program and staff is recommending gbla and we'll have them speak to us in just a minute we also have a home buyer assistance we utilize home funds the city contracts with bccdc they are also a hud-certified home ownership specialist and that's why we contracted with them they provide home buyer education and down payment assistance so when we start to look at home ownership these greater than 30 years old um all of these things these this is what bccdc does for new homeowners who are interested in going through the program and receiving down payment assistance we have tenant-based rental assistance currently we have several resources going to that uh we have a million dollars that was allocated at the midyear budget from the interest we received from our arpa funding tonight there's an item for a substantial amendment to our home funds to for million to go to cap K for tenant-based rental assistance Pap has five cycles and in those five Cycles uh 1.4 1,495 th000 is allocated to tenant based rental assistance 10% of that is set aside for youth another program we have is home access that's a a cdbg program that assists homeowners who have Ada challenges and so we can do Ram we can do showers for those that are disabled uh we've had that program for several years it's about 50,000 annually we also have a home repair and weatherization program from arpa we allocated a million dollars to that program it provides up to 15,000 for things like new roof repair uh new windows efficient appliances those type of things and then as part of our TCC application it did include a solar program uh so that homeowners could get uh better prices on pg& and then the pilot eviction Protection Program we did we have done two rfps now for eviction Protection Services the first time we went around uh it just the request didn't line up as far as what the funding we had and so we went back out and we specified that legal aid would be 275,000 and that we were going to put 75,000 of the funding towards education programs and so we reallocated it in the second RFP uh we had a total of three um submitters gbla submitted for both programs and then we had one each one for education and we had one for legal aid so this is what we asked to be in our pilot program to also include reporting and so this this program will be brought back to the housing and homeless committee um we're thinking after 3 months in order to let Council know how that's going we have a representative here from gbla so I'm going to at this time introduce Valentine narice he's going to go over what their proposal was and then I'll get back up and speak hello everyone welcome good afternoon well thank you for uh considering gbla for this program um as you know gbla is a been a a legal aid organization in the community for quite some time since at least 1968 um our bread and butter is uh Housing Services uh we know how to uh protect tenants um and that's uh what we strive for we strive to promote social justice and and and change uh through high quality Legal Services um so we're well equipped uh to protect the public um especially our most vulnerable populations um and our goal here would be to try to prevent eviction um as the program indicates uh we would U service people at uh different stages of the eviction um process um meaning we would try to uh provide education to those who um you know could uh be um subject to eviction uh give them education through workshops um if someone is about to become um you know U subject to eviction we'd want to give them resource es access to those resources and then if someone is about to be evicted through the actual legal process we would want to provide um representation to that person um and so uh I think this will provide will fill in one of the much needed gaps um that the you know that the city has recognized exists and so uh legal aid is uh ready and willing to to help our our community um I won't I won't go through the the slides I won't read those to you because I mean you can read those um independently but I think a better use of our time might be um you know answering asking and answering questions if if yall have any questions for me I'd be happy to to answer any we're not able to dis Point uh as we agendized this as a report with along with u staff presentations we can do question and answer and I would acknowledge with the council that we are not taking action on the pilot program at this time that will be on the consent agenda on tonight's 5:15 agenda and so um it's okay to have some question and answer and and we're not taking voting action on on the pilot program this afternoon council member Smith thank you mayor just from the presentation it looks like you're already providing these Services is this something new or this something you're already doing and it would just add to it uh so this uh this service is something that we're well equipped to do because we have been doing it and so this would allow us to actually expand the scope of our services right now GBL is in a growth mode and um what I mean by that is we're looking to add staff uh because um you know as as we heard earlier our population is growing so it logically follows that the demand for um these types of services is also going to grow so this will actually allow gbla to grow and meet that um demand but you are already providing these Services sir to some extent thank you council member Arius thank you mayor and I apologize to the public um I have a little bit of a cold so bear with me um thank you so much for coming tonight um and uh for responding to the RFP we're really excited to get this program lifted off the ground uh just a couple quick questions for you um you know throughout my time working in you know various elected offices I've referred you know dozens of cases to gbla and really grateful for the work that you've done to represent those clients um quick question for you I know capacity is such a you know challenge across the board for many of our nonprofits um you know can you give us um a sense of what you know wa weight times might look like with your current Staffing uh for any uh any any particular case sure um well we try not to have uh extensive weit times we try to help people as quickly as possible um and the reason that's important is because in an eviction uh people typically have five Court days from the day that uh from the day after they're served uh to respond uh which means that um uh an attorney or or you know uh the the person the defendant uh has to review those documents understand them and then somehow figure out the court process um on how to do everything timely and accurately because if if a response is not uh proper submitted or or not timely submitted that defendant is subject to a default uh which means that they essentially lose a case automatically um and it's very difficult to uh uh set aside a default um as far as wait times for our services go we strive to help someone as soon as possible because of that tight deadline so understanding that five court day deadline is is critical to the workflow and so over over the over the years we've we've um uh improve improved and uh in my opinion perfected the the workflow to help someone as quickly as possible um for example our our call reports we have um we have viip phones which allow us to report on our our calls and our wait times and um you know I I receive I personally receive uh call reports on a daily basis and I review those reports um and it's always a problem for me if someone has to wait on the phone for more than five minutes um so uh time is of the essence in these matters so the there is no room for delay great um C can you can you talk to us a little bit about your proposal you know $350,000 isn't a ton of money um what does that mean in terms of uh capacity building how many folks are you looking Tire on if any um and then can you talk to us a little bit about timeline how how long can you stretch these dollars for us yeah that's a that's a great question so um the money would allow us to hire at least one attorney uh one paralal and um a housing Navigator so we're envisioning three staff um you know when you take into account overhead and and and things things of that nature I think the money would would help cover those those salaries um and so uh we're ready to get started um right away in fact I have an interview scheduled for tomorrow morning with an attorney that I have in mind for this this program so uh it's it's amazing how things are aligning for gbla and uh we're looking to get started as soon as possible great thank you so much and then uh the second part of my question in terms of time line uh well I mean the the my understanding is that this contract would be for a period of about 5 years uh renew renewed every year um so I don't I don't know if I understand your the second part of your question to ramp up the contract or to get it rolling yeah three $350,000 isn't a whole lot of money um how how long do you think that you'd be able to provide these Services um through this contract with that allotted amount oh I mean I mean we would we would fulfill the the contract term I don't I don't foresee any problems with that if I could help out council member uh mayor and councel uh the $350,000 as written into the contract was intended to be for a one-ear period for a one year period and the the as written there's the option if you know uh this comes back you know uh and again this is a topic where we've called this a pilot project we expect there to be some you know Council and Community interest that will bring back data analysis to the Council on the number of clients served one of the important purposes of this contract is to also gather data to understand what's the full scope of the challenge and and issue out there and uh be able to report back to council are we are we you know seeing really long wait lists are we seeing a number of clients that were unable to serve with that amount of support and funding and that um the way it's written on the agenda for tonight is that there could be future renewals based on Council future approval but the funding that has been approved is for one year great thank you for that that clarification um two two two last quick questions um you know is there is there anybody in the general population that um who might be going through you know in eviction that gbla cannot provide services to can you speak to that sure um so uh there's there's actually a few different categories so the first would be um and it's it's important to understand there's restrictions that we we have as a as a law firm um for example if there is a conflict of interest the rules of professional responsibility require us not to assist um under certain circumstances if there's a conflict of interest that cannot be waved um so that would be the first category where a conflict of interest exists um another category would be where um a person um who has income or assets above a certain amount um you know requests our services um we have restrictions as to income and assets and then uh another category would be um uh you know persons who uh may not have status in the United States um an undocumented person um and those restrictions come from the federal government because uh greater Bakersville legal assistance receives federal dollars um we're subject to federal law that says you know um unless there's an exception we cannot help a person without um status in the United States um there are several exceptions to that um I could talk about that for a long period of time U but there are exceptions to it and we do actually help persons um we undocumented with u you know uh domestic violence restraining orders and special immigrant juvenile status uh that sort of thing um and so so to answer your question yes there are there are people that we we cannot assist because of of federal law and and state ethics rules great thank you so much um last question um in ter in terms of case load sounds like you're going to bring on uh three additional staff members you know can you can you just give us a ballpark range of you know how many cases we can expect to be able to help assist with is it going to be you know five a month or is it going to be closer to like 50 yeah I mean that's a that's a great question so uh the pro the program not only focuses on cases but it also focuses on workshops and so we're we're hoping to have at least um a you know a workshop every week where we help uh no more than than 240 persons um you know a year um as far as cases I mean if if I had to guess um you know based on the number of cases that we receive and the number of cases that are assigned I would probably aim for anywhere between two to three cases a week just for this program um but uh you know it's it's it's a function of how many people request our services you know that sort of thing okay great thank you so much thank you Council bar is vice mayor thank you mayor um thank you so much for the presentation uh it's good to see you again uh glad that we're finally getting this up and running I know uh it's been a while since we first met in January of 2023 I think it was um Let me let me ask you a few questions just kind of winging off of council member audius um you mentioned your call reports and that you monitor the number of calls and requests I'm sure you have some tracking data of how many folks have called who were facing eviction that you for funding reasons you weren't able to serve can you kind of give us a ballpark figure of how many of those requests if you have that data um I I don't have that you know uh data for I can't share that data today but I could look that up and provide that okay if you'd like okay um you know it we're we're interested in this uh program one attorney one paralal one um was it homeless Navigator housing Navigator yep housing Navigator right um I had a similar question in terms of the capacity and just wanted to ensure that we can meet that capacity so I I I'm looking forward to revisiting this issue in housing and homelessness uh in three months and then also at midyear as we Tu a look take a look at um some of these contingency items that we're placing on on the budget for for midyear review um in the education work how do you plan to to strategize where those educational workshops take place what can you kind of give us a a better understanding of where that might work and and how are you working in collaboration with some of our other homeless service providers who are also working on homeless prevention sure um well uh the presentations could be held at uh gbl's office um we have a multi-purpose room that can hold um you know several people um and it would it would be great for presentations because we already have the equipment set up there um alternatively we can offer presentations um remotely for example through Zoom um that would be another option um and then third we could also visit partners and provide um Community um workshops um at other offices or other buildings uh where the public could be invited so that those would be the venues um that we could provide those Services as far as other partners go I mean we've we've been uh working with flood in the past uh I mean we've worked with the county uh I mean we have we have Partners in uh all throughout the the community that we regularly work with and so that would also be a component uh to provide resources to people that need it um to help prevent uh eviction okay finally uh we asked a question regarding uh those who gbla will not be able to serve I believe we had this conversation a while back in terms of looking at a potential alternative firm that might be able to provide support for those who uh do not have legal status um but I think that's that's a very difficult challenge can you describe that challenge for us yeah well I think I think the challenge here is that um um more often than not evictions are related um to money and so if you have a a defendant who is being evicted for non-payment of rent that person probably doesn't have money to pay an attorney yeah and so the private bar is is probably not going to you know Assist um uh that defendant unless they're going to do so on a pro bono basis so any profit um Law Firm any private practice is probably not going to make that a top priority um and so legal aid is there to fill in the Gap um unfortunately because we receive federal funds um there is that restriction that we have to abide by um and so that's why we cannot serve certain types of of persons okay that's the challenge that we're that we're facing thank you cons member core thank you mayor uh thank you for the the presentation and it's always encouraging to see uh our city partner with local community organizations that are already doing the work and have been doing the work for a very long time I have a lot of love for gbla um as a young Community organizer we did a lot of work around education Justice within the curtain High School District so that's where I first found my um kind of first steps as a community organizer so there were great people there um who really taught me a lot as well so thank you for continuing to do this great work um I'm also building on questions asked by council member adius and vice mayor uh Gonzalez in terms of how you while I understand all the restrictions that are placed in serving um those who have sensitive status in terms of their legal status how do you I know there are some exceptions but which organization are there like can some of this capacity that we can potentially create here can that be used to also seek out organizations or do you work closely with an organization um similar to crla in order to kind of fulfill um the needs of our undocumented populations um yeah well uh we do we do often um you know work with uh other organizations crla uh typically doesn't um provide evictions Services as my understanding at the at the level that you know GBL does um you know they're they're in other areas of California as well so they don't service the same jurisdiction that we do um you know there's not many I'm struggling to think of an organization in our area that provides this type of service other than gbla um I think in the time that I I was practicing as an attorney I maybe only saw one case out of the hundreds that I I saw where an attorney from the private bar actually defended attendant um and you know typically if uh if someone was not represented by gbla I mean you know the person was representing them themsel and so um so to answer your question I mean we do work with with Community Partners but U there's not there's not really anyone that I know of that does this type of work in our area in your years of being in the eviction kind of legal work are there organiz ations that Exist Elsewhere that can be partnered with to bring them into Kern County to also fulfill serving the undocumented population like I just I'm very curious about how this kind of population Gap is met if we are like I'd like us to go you know be able to go as far as we can with it yeah so our the Restriction that we face would prevent us from co-counseling with someone you know who was helping an individual the most that we could do would be to maybe refer someone over to another another entity or another organization so I mean um unless there's a specific Federal exception to representing someone who's undocumented um you know we couldn't we couldn't even co-counsel with that with that organization unfortunately okay so the federal restrictions that are placed on you all prevent you from co-counseling uh undocumented folks in court okay are you personally aware of organizations that do serve this population that are not not restricted by federal funding in the same way that can be a potential partner in in our area no um you know I'm aware of other organizations for example in Los Angeles like the inner city Law Center who are not recipients of LSC funds but I mean they don't they don't serve outside of the Los Angeles area um in our area I'm not I'm not aware of any organization that provides this service okay I think as this pilot program develops I would um like to see maybe a maybe we bring folks in and and kind of help meet this Gap and if we don't have it in our area how do we create um how do we create that here and or how do we bring attorneys in into Baker solder County that can serve that population group um to kind of at least spur um the service needed for those who are the absolutely most vulnerable um and i' I'd like to hopefully see some something come out of the p program that we are creating here and and that being one component of it um so that was just one of the questions I had and one of the thoughts I had uh my second question is within this pilot program uh how do you all build how do you all plan to build capacity to serve multilingual populations that you know speak MCO talog Punjabi sure yeah well I mean we we already um we already serve persons who are of limited English proficiency uh for example by the use of language line um it's an on a realtime on demand um language interpretation and translation service so for example um you know if someone comes to our office who speaks um only only Russian we can pick up the phone get a translator um on the phone right away and help that person um so that's not a problem for us okay and in this education program that you're doing here within the workshops uh will you also be designing like uh multilingual workshops as well so uh right now our plan is to do both English and Spanish um you know I suppose we could we could look into other languages as well yeah I'd love to see that as well I think that'll kind of serve our our County and our community um in a more full way um and then my last question is just within your own legal experience can you share um how much whether it's maybe not at GBL but on average how much does a family spend on legal fees how much is expected on average to be spent when they are um fighting an eviction just to kind of give a number to it how much a family spends or a household yeah an individual on average well I I think it's important to understand that um a lot of our clients uh are low income and so most of them will qualify for a fee waver uh which means that they don't have to pay filing fees to the court and then if they seek gbla Services um you know they um we don't charge them for services uh you know they're they're free uh services and the the cost is is um you know U from our funders so I don't don't know that a family actually spends money in defending an an eviction um I meant sorry I meant without gbla how much would a family on average like without this Aid without this program what would a family who is most vulnerable be looking to spend and what would that look like without having this resources was really my question I mean it could it could it could vary I mean you know attorneys bill at different rates but I mean assuming an attorney bills at $300 or $400 an hour I mean it could easily easily balloon into a a large bill and if someone already owes rent I mean it's going to be financially traumatic for any any family to have to pay a private attorney I I can't imagine what what kind of stress that would put a family in I mean if if a if a family is already struggling to pay their rent um the idea of having to pay a private attorney would be I mean it me personally it would just make me give up it wouldn't even make me want to litigate um which would mean also that it would it would discourage me from fully litigating a case um to the full potential that it should it would make me not want to go to trial it would make me not want to file a motion for summary judgment if it was even if I had Merit in that motion it would make me not want a profound Discovery would make me um just want to file an answer and try to get the case Cas over and done with as quickly as possible which would only help the landlord um so I if I had to guess um I mean there's summary proceedings and a case can last anywhere from two to three months if it's litigated properly I mean you're you're talking about10 to $20,000 easily on just attorney's fees not that's not even counting the debt that you know the family has to you know potentially face M that's crippling yeah truly in addition to that not only would would a family have to pay their own attorney but and the and the potential back rent they if they are not the prevailing party in a case they could end up having to pay the landlord's attorney as well which could be another1 $20,000 wow so the cost is astronomical yeah thank you for sharing that and I don't know if someone's already asked but um in the program in your existing program how many referrals have you all done for eviction so far evictions uh what do you mean by referrals um how many referrals have you received or I guess cases have you worked through um how many cases I mean per year we we see anywhere between maybe 350 to 500 cases that we actually you know serve uh we receive more requests than that but you know like I mentioned we can't help everyone but uh yeah we easily service three to 500 300 to 500 cases a year wow just evictions that's an incredible number um thank you for your time and thank you for answering my questions yeah of course council member Cory thank you mayor um when the Leadership Council came to my office we had a a great meeting um I enjoyed speaking with all of them um we did come to some conclusions though that excuse me that there are good landlords and there are bad landlords and there are good renters and there are bad renters and we all agreed on that um what I understood coming out of that conversation with them and that there would be legal counsil provided for those landlords that were good landlords that don't have the financial means to be able to fight those cases where a tenant just just won't leave you know that they're stuck with them um and I know that before you answer the question I know that there are other stakeholders in the community that we've received communication from that are concerned about this program because they're concerned about those good landlords uh that could be taken advantage of through this or those good landlords that need counsel and won't have the same opportunity um as the tenant so how would you your um firm how would you address that issue would landlords uh well we wouldn't represent landlords at all so I just want to make that clear we would we would only represent defend uh defendant tenants um and so yeah I mean I I agree with you there's uh there's good landlords and there's uh um there's bad landlords as well as good renters and bad ones um but our Focus would be to help um you know the the tenants the defendants who are low income and need need that that assistance so if this program were expanded um city manager CLE can you help us with that would only tenants be covered under the the city dollars or would this be expanded to where those landlords that are in as great a need that could be losing their property um be able to tap into it uh thank you council member and and if I may actually it's a little bit of a clarifying question even on my own part that I would just ask a little more detailed of a question okay is that that um the distinction between representing clients as as well as those that are you know receiving just Workshop information um are landlords eligible to receive sort of the the the workshop information that would be available under this um scope of work that's a that's a good um thank you for clarifying that's a good question so I mean the the workshops would be general information so um you know if if a if a landlord wanted to attend the workshop they'd be more than welcome um the reason it's it's uh it's allowable is because general information is not legal advice so a workshop can can uh be attended by the public it doesn't have to be a landlord it can be um it can be just a general member of the community uh it can be a community partner anyone is would be welcome to attend well I'm glad to hear that but still doesn't answer my question yeah thank you council member and and uh I just wanted to clarify that piece that some of the education pieces are available to a broader audience uh but uh as far as the legal advice legal representation it is as as uh um proposed on the agenda tonight is limited to um tenant-based Le legal advice while the educational piece is available to all so again it would it be a possibility if this program were expanded that it could be expanded to except legal advice for landlords also because there are landlords that aren't wealthy there are landlords that maybe this was their you know their their parents' property they inherited and they're not if they don't have means themselves but they haven't given up this home it's not worth a whole lot but it's worth a lot to them and if they lose it then they lose that income which could be detrimental to them as a landlord so that's my question yeah thanks council member mayor and Council uh that's a policy choice of the council I would um clarify early in my response that I think uh you know based on the the feedback that I'm uh you know hearing and and more familiar with as we prepared this agenda item that it would probably be important to have a different legal entity that could represent uh landlords because you wouldn't create a conflict of interest between gbla and and another entity but as a policy Choice the council could allocate additional funds to the city overall per um program um that could be allocated to to that purpose yes okay I think the stakeholders that are concerned about this would like to hear that because it it can't just be one-sided I don't believe with taxpayer dollars because we're all taxpayers and we should all be we're talking about equality all the time we need to be we need to be thinking about equality in that area too thank you cons member Smith thank you mayor I just had a question how big your existing staff is uh it's a great question well um our staff right now is about 65 uh just this year alone we've we've hired um you know several individuals um and several attorneys and so we're growing uh but 65 is our staff and what percentage of your work is this type of eviction protection or um if I had to estimate it's probably between 65% % to 70 that's the majority of our our work so you and you focused on all of Kern County yes and and what percentage is city of Bearville it's the majority of it probably the 70% yeah right okay thank you yeah council member Freeman thank you may um well I had read the letter from the board of realtors and had several calls from them on their concerns which I think are very legitimate um I don't you know we were we were interested we're saying in the bad landlords but it seems to me we're not going to be dealing with the big corporate landlords I think they can handle all of this on their own it's going to be landlords who have smaller number of units aren't as sophisticated um at a minimum I would want to see the Workshops the Outreach to landlords and tenets because if landlords are educated we may not have so many problems a lot of this has to come from ignorance of the law and so they may be a more productive Target than the tenants to as a preventative measure because I think a lot of small they may have a duplex or they may have you know four duplexes or something but they certainly they don't have money for an attorney and they aren't well versed in the law so um I would hope you could assure us that the Outreach for the workshops would be to everyone because you would really want to see smalltime landlords in there learning about the law um and I you know I agree it's probably would have to be some other organization if we in the future create something for the landlords because they might I can see conflict of interest but I do think that see how it goes the first year but I really think part of the agenda has to be that we find some sort of legal aid for landlords who don't you know have a few units don't know how to handle this because they're the ones who get stuck with the squatters I mean the lady who sat right next to me for many years here she had like a couple of duplexes so a lot of her retirement income based on and she got the squatters I don't know if she got them out after a year but this once they Squat and you lose all your income but you have to make the payment on the loan it can drive you into bankruptcy um there is a problem with bad tenants as much as with bad landlords so um I'd like to I like to see us explore that in the coming months and definitely before before we renew for another year make that a consideration the council does can we can we get some sort of legal aid for landlords maybe there's a threshold it can't be for people who have a thousand units it can't for the be for the big guys it's for the smaller the smaller landlords um and the other question is I know you're attorneys but but when people meet with you and have a problem will you be contacting the landlords to before everybody goes hopefully they're not already in legal proceeding because then but but even so settlement is always better than a court case that takes forever I agree um do you Enis yourself meeting with landlords and tenants and trying to work something out uh if the tenant can't pay you know there's a certain amount of time they're going to have to go or maybe you can find rent subsidies counseling it just seems to me working together to solve the problem rather than months in court and all the legal fees uh for the landlord um that's kind of the worst outcome it would be better if you're more counselors with the court as Last Resort I mean do you see that happening often or what's your experience so far I mean ideally we we would love to see settlements happen before someone is placed into into the um the court system um because once once an eviction is started the problem is that a landlord um has already invested the money and expense of hiring councel and usually um you know they it makes settlement that much more difficult so you know I agree uh if we can settle a case before it gets to the eviction stage I think that benefits everyone um you know we actually do that um when for example if someone receives a termination notice uh that's a no fault eviction um typically those are 30 days or 60 days um that gives us some time to actually negotiate a settlement um where either there's a soft Landing where the defendant agrees or theut tenant agrees to to leave upon a certain amount of time thereby saving the landlord um you know money and uh and the defendant a potential judgment on their record but it also gives us an opportunity to try to work something out where uh housing can be maintained so yeah g actually does that already the workshops seem to me to be extremely important to educate both tenants and landlords so during that beginning 30 days um people have a chance to work something out but thank you yeah I agree I agree yeah thanks council member Arius thank you mayor um to to quick questions actually following up on council member Freeman's points can you give us a ballpark range of how many of these eviction cases actually end up in litigation how many end up in Li I you know I I wouldn't know um that information I would have to know how many uh landlords have issued termination notices I mean I would guess that if I had to speculate and guess I would I would say that you know uh a small percentage of them actually go to to you know the eviction stage and that landlords there's nothing really to to stop a landlord from drafting a a piece of paper and placing it on someone's door and saying that if you don't do XYZ you're going to be evicted that's a very easy quick um uh notice to draft up and serve whereas the eviction um you know uh takes time you usually have to draft paperwork you have to uh get a summons uh you know stand by the clerk and served and so there's a a very lengthy process that happens with the eviction um if I had to speculate it uh you know small percentage would go to eviction I I appreciate that because I think that there's this you know um Mi myth out there I suppose uh amongst landlords um that you know with this program that you know GBL is going to be able to you know uh enter into many lawsuits uh across our entire city for every single one of these eviction cases and and that's just simply not the case based on what I'm hearing from you well it's also it's also important to understand that um I mean if if you're talking about an affirmative lawsuit you're you're talking about a completely different ball game because the way the law is is crafted um an eviction is essentially known as a summary proceeding which means it's it's a civil case that ordinarily would take two to five years condensed into a time period of um three to five months at the most and um if a if a tenant decides to sue a landlord their case is going to last you know two to three years maybe five years whereas the eviction could last a couple of months so it really um it's not uh you can't do the same volume affirmatively as you could with with evictions I mean there's there's eviction Mills out there that just crank out hundreds of evictions on a regular basis but as far as I know there's no law firm out there that does the same for affirmative litigation against landlords just doesn't happen and then changing years on you in terms of in terms of success you know 300 to 500 CA eviction cases a year throughout the county you know how many of them are you successfully is your team successfully able to win on behalf of the tenant well I consider a win settlement um I don't I don't consider a win um where we obtain judgment so I would say that you know every time we settle a case that's a win for everybody so uh if if if I include that in my definition I would about 80% 80% mhm great um my my last ask um you know and in bringing this back to the homeless housing and homelessness committee or even in a year out when you bring back hopefully another presentation with the data uh to this council is that we actually track uh the number of folks that we have to turn away uh on a monthly basis um and and really start to Define why it is that we were able we are unable to provide that service whether that be capacity issues or you know one of the classes of folks that gbla is not able to provide services to uh that that data would be really helpful to me uh with the numbers that you gave us you know on the on the upper end you know that's about uh with with the $350,000 it's about 150 additional cases uh a year um and we know that there's a a much larger number of evictions that take place every single year so uh that data would be super helpful as we kind of take our our next steps thank you understood what percentage of the eviction cases that you defend are related to not inability to not related to somebody's inability to pay but rather related to property damage something illegal that really is more on the fault of the tenant versus just a financial issue um well H you know the majority the majority of the the majority of the eviction cases that we see are related to non-payment of rent about 90% um other types of cases that we see are no fault evictions where um there's a just cause reason for example the landlord intends to do substantial remodel or the landlord intends to move into the property um there's some other minor exceptions maybe a breach of a covenant of the lease um maybe there's some other some other violation of of law like a nuisance I think that relates to your question about property damage it's a very small percentage it's under under 10% thanks M mayor uh just a quick question so I think council member fre actually asked a really good question about um you know the the cost um related to each each case and uh just it's spad of thought really there there is this is a flat fee contract it's not like you're billing per hour so there's there's actually an incentive for you to move towards settlement is that right even if even if it wasn't a flat fee we would want to we would want to settle quickly because um it's in the it's in our client's interest and sure the Court's interest as well to to settle it and move on yeah find some resolution okay I appreciate that thanks council member gray well I'm just curious because I know there are bad bad landlords out there and say you have a tenant that comes to you that has been unfairly treated because the house is full of cockroaches they won't spray the windows are broken their energy is going out the out the window literally um so what kind of influence do you have over those types of cases where you you've got that bad actor how do you all settle those types of things or they're illegally raising the rent much quicker than what they can do or it's supposed to do rather yeah that's a good that's a good question so um as far as the habitability goes um you know sometimes there's a misconception uh uh generally that if the property is uninhabitable or that there's something habitability issue that that all all of a sudden wipes out the rent that's due or that uh you know if if the tenant can prove that in court that that they win the case and game over for the landlord um the way it really works is that um you know if if you were to raise as a tenant if you were to raise a habitability defense in an eviction um uh the court uh if the court agrees that there is a habitability uh breach on the landlord's part then um the Judgment would be a conditional judgment meaning that um the tenant would have about five days to pay the difference between the rent that was owed minus uh the reduction of value from that habitability breach and if the tenant doesn't pay that in five days then you know the Judgment goes into the landlord's favor um it's the same uh concept with u an illegal rent increase if a if a landlord has legally increased the rent um it doesn't mean that no money is due to the landlord it just means that that that portion that was illegally raised uh probably wouldn't be collectible by the landlord so there probably could still be money owed by the by the tenants if if the um uh even if the the tenant can prove that there was an illegal rent increase so all those decisions then you all are just giving advice that can be determined by the court and the Court's making the final decision and you're you're just representing that tenant in court against say that bad actor is that what I'm hearing yeah the judge and the commissioner uh judicial officer makes the uh ultimate decision if we go to trial U but if we settle then the parties get to make the decision so it's better for everybody that way right okay thank you if I may thank you for your presentation I just wanted to follow up on that last point and an important addition that we've been uh discussing as staff related to habitability because this program is largely designed to offer these workshops as well as um legal advice related to evictions and so I'm sure habitability will come up up naturally and we know that gbla does help individuals around habitability but this program for eviction protection or eviction prevention is actually not designed to address all of those habitability issues and so that's one of the reasons that we try to take a little bit of a a step back and look at all of our stabilization programs because we anticipate that as tenants are more aware of their rights related to habitability there may be more requests for code inspection and there may be more requests for landlords to address habitability issues and we will need to be prepared as a city to contemplate whether we're going to provide resources or uh programs that also address habitability specifically because this is more about the legal advice related to evictions and so with that um we actually have a few more slides that we're going to cover and that's maybe a good transition Point unless there are other questions gbla and we go back to staff thank you for G for your presentation we'll go back to staff Miss buers and then we'll go to the public for comment thank you I did want to uh go back to this slide because this is what was requested in proposals as part of our RFP that the legal aid meet with tenants to discuss eligibility act as a liaison between tenants and property managers or landlords and provide legal aid counsel to tenants and it was specific for low-income individual ual as far as the education program we did request that it be based on California tenants a guide to residential tenants and landlord rights and responsibilities and I took out the slide and now I wish I wouldn't have because it it's very specific in this guideline what is your right from the day you enter your rental unit filling out the paperwork what do you do if you have issues um going through all of that and so um I just wanted to kind of point that out so what we've been talking about doing because as we talk about you know what housing looks like across the Spectrum what do the issues look like across the Spectrum are there other ways um to have greater analysis we have several documents and there's one thing I hate is when the city does uh research in a document and does an affordable housing strategy and then puts it on the Shelf we have all of these tools at our disposal the housing element is one of them there's a lot of analysis and background and details that are included in that it is policy driven like uh city manager Cay mentioned we have the affordable housing strategy and then with homeless in their strategic action plan it is about uh increasing outflow and so we have some Benchmark City research as well as additional best practice and so what we're requesting at council at this time is to provide us the opportunity to look at some potential programs so like Christian mentioned the substandard housing I've had conversations with Mr Burns already about the anticipation that once we do start to educate individuals that if you do have a bug infestation pay your rent but go through this other process and then that wouldn't be something that GBL is gbla is taking care of it would be something that came back to the city and is going to create an inflow of calls to our code enforcement to our building uh department and so we've been talking through that we do have best Bas best practices um to maybe deal with that so some of these are potential programs that we could look at substandard housing uh Rehabilitation could there be funding to work on these houses that we know have habitability issues rental registry is one of those not to go after the good players but what does our housing stock really look like do we have something that we know where there's Ava availability and this is very much a conversation that's happening in the homeless is having a registry that kind of we know where there's potential to place people we have contact information frequently when we talk about bad landlords we are talking about out of town owners we're not necessarily talking about people who are invested in our community who aren't easy to reach the Police Department for uh loitering has the ability to contact the building owner and so similar to that if we had something in lines with the rental registry that we knew how to get a hold of a property owner if we had a lot of complaints on that residential hotel and motel inspection this has become very popular in the last couple years the Planning Commission has seen a couple of items we've even purchased a motel to uh uh renovate into affordable housing units possibly starting the there with an inspection program the Community Land Trust we're looking at several types of construction we're not just looking at multif family we are looking at home ownership opportunities uh especially when you look at if Citywide home ownership is 60% you look in our prosperity neighborhoods and Home Ownership is about 20% and so how can we incentivize that that's one of the construction types in the community Land Trust that's being evaluated we did put put city council put uh a million dollars towards home weatherization and home Rehabilitation and a lot of that is to keep people in their homes uh when the roof is gone when they don't have any heat when homeowners find themselves in those situations and they frequently do they will sometimes leave that housing unit and so if you're able to age in place in your existing home uh that's one of the home weatherization programs we've also talked about residential facade Improvement Grants similar to what was previously touted as neighborhood stabilization program a program through HUD do you start to see neighborhoods reinvest in themselves when you incrementally do that I think we're seeing in the downtown area the power of facade improvements that's a potential program that we could look at rental assistance uh how do we uh make it possible to expand some of those expansion of an eviction protection uh an eviction prevention program you've already been talking about it's possible we may have those needs now and then the adoption of strategic land use policies that's really towards uh incentivizing growth uh we talked that we have a capacity issue we have a supply issue adoption of strategic land use policies could be one of the potential programs that we look at and then how do we fund these things we can't constantly go back to the general fund well um especially as we're looking at uh the budget's tightening and decreased revenues so we've utilized arpa substantially but we have to have any program that we have has to be under contract by December uh we have in the past utilized our funding resources affordable housing trust fund we received 5 million we went and got local Housing Trust Fund which is state grants and leveraged our money that way we utilized our Housing and Urban Development the cdbg the home HOA uh ESG we utilize the heck out of those funds and so we annually bring you that report we're getting ready to undergo our 5-year Consolidated plan and that's how we're going to spend the next five years of funding on average we've get about 8 million a year that that does get divied up into different buckets uh philanthropy how can we be working with our landlords how can we be working with our local investors um to see about uh possibly incentivizing or or or having the community reinvest in itself and with that did you have anything you would like to add in closing the big takeaway is that we recognize that there's more than one way to address stabilization and prevention and staff will go and do this homework and identify funding sources as well as partners I don't want to highlight that really quickly that the city should not necessarily be doing all of this type of preventative work there are other agencies that are in the space and they should be also uh implementing uh programs that are in support of the homeless collaborative action plan but there are some areas where it does make sense for the city so we'll go back and do this homework and and come back with additional research and recommendations for Council about where it makes the most sense to make our investments around stabilization thank you Mr CLE and Miss buers thank you and now Madam clerk uh would you please call the public speakers who have requested to speak on this item please Maro we've received three speaker cards regarding this item the public speakers are Sandra Placencia Antonio Reyes and Wendell Wesley Jr welcome please yourself uh Sandra penia Uh current policy Advocate with Leadership Council um just wanted to thank the city um for starting up this program I really wanted to focus on some of the dialogue that was focused on today um the big one being why do not do we not push for representation of landlords right and the reason being is because there is a huge gap that hasn't been talked about um John Donan from the California actually said um in an article a few a few weeks ago 72% of landlords have representation in court when less than 2% of tenants to that is the gap that we are trying to address when it comes to the eviction prevention program right that is what we want to help we want to make sure that the folks that gbla cannot help due to capacity because of restrictions are being helped throughout the city right and those are the folks that I get calls from on a weekly basis I know a lot of the council members get calls from these folks also probably on a daily basis right as elected officials so I really wanted to highlight the fact that we are trying to address the Gap that we are seeing from residents right and as Valentine clearly stated residents who or families right will have to endure 10 to $20,000 of debt when they go through evictions I cannot afford that right I would end up on the street or I would have to move in with my parents a lot of the families that we work with have to endure that as well and they shouldn't have to right because if they cannot be represented with the funding allocated by the city they should not have to endure that the last thing I wanted to sayate is I think a lot of the programs that the city is presenting are really great um but I really wanted to focus on the fact that a lot of the programs um that are mentioned up there we have suggested through our housing element comments right so we really encourage the city to keep working with us um because the EP program ection rights to council uh inclusionary zoning uh permanent rental assistance these are all programs that could qualify under um the presentation that was just given by staff so thank you so much thank you Mr Placencia next speaker please Antonio Reyes welcome please introduce yourself Antonio Rees um good afternoon afterno mayor go mayor vice mayor Gonzalez and All City Council Members I'm with the associated students incorporated or Student Government at CSU Bakersfield and it is my pleasure to represent our community of over 9,000 students as the vice president of legislative affairs I come to you today to express our strong support for the allocation of $2 million to the eviction protection program at CSUB we are acutely aware of the challenges faced by a student body concerning housing this past year alone 25 students have relied on Emergency funding due to precarious living situations and approximately 10% of our student population experiences housing instability annually that is over 900 students facing housing instability each year these numbers represent individuals whose academic success and personal well-being are being compromised by the threat of eviction and homelessness I draw personal experience with this issue for my 2 and a half years as a housing navigator at the open door network but let me start by saying that I have great respect and admiration for the folks who work every day to change the lives for the most vulnerable in our community at organizations like these the work there is hard there were days I had to tell families that they were going to have to sleep in their vehicle or that they were a few dollars over income and they didn't qualify for services anymore but some of the toughest stories I heard came from students or student parents who were just trying to better their lives and lift their families up from Financial insecurity we often talk about wanting to see the city rise and seeing our residents rise with it one of the most effective ways ways that residents of Bakersfield can rise economically is with a degree which is why we shouldn't make it difficult for students that are experiencing housing instability to get Services programs like the EP are crucial to helping mitigate these situations before they happen investing $2 million in thepp aligns with the city's commitment to improving the quality of life for residents and by extension our students at CSUB I look forward to working with the members of the city council on how to best serve our students into seeing the city council take decisive action to support the eviction Protection Program and address the ongoing housing crisis in our community thank you thank you Mr riss Madam clerk would you just hold for a minute we have a lot of people at the door uh can we have you everybody get seated please who is in the back and then officers if you could just hold the door have the people stand in the lobby until our last speaker finishes so we don't have uh an interruption there just hold on until people are seated those of you who want to put your cards up here if you just hold off so Mr Wesley can speak we'll wrap this up in just a minute thank you go ahead Mr Wesley okay uh Wendell Wesley Jr thank you uh mayor go vice mayor city council City management you know I was turned down by gbla twice um the second time it was because our apartment complex gave us a rent increase of $100 that was way over the 10% they gave that to everyone so I knew they were full of it I tried to get help I was turned away so um I'm not for sure about gbla maybe it was just color of my skin I don't know I hate to think that but I couldn't see a reason why I needed to be turned away I was a resident there unless there was an age restriction um so show me a land a lazy landlord we're going to have a problem with that apartment complex or house having a Hal ability issue okay landlords need to be responsible and tell their tenants what they expect of them when they see a little bit of water coming down from the sink the toilet or whatever okay so we all need to work together but the reality is we have a lot of lazy landlords out there we have a lot of good landlords but we're not trying to focus on the good landlords we're focusing on the bad ones they're not doing our our city any favors by being that way and if the tenant doesn't know what the expectations are then the place goes to rack and ruin so we really need this uh program we're still going to ask for this funding because we believe that no one's going to do it better than we are because we are in there with the community and we are aware of the problems in the situation I don't G I don't believe gbla really is aware of the problems in the situation that faces tenants and we need a large media campaign so that we can educate the general public the tenants and landlords as well because you know by the time you get to a workshop it's too late for most of those people you know we need to start educating the general public now about what their role is as a tenant in order so that they can stay house Mr whesley thank you your time's up if you can bring thank you thank you and I believe uh Madam clerk was that our last speaker there yes may go all right so I'll go back now to council for any further comments seeing none vice mayor motion to receive and file you have a motion please cast your votes motion is unanimously approved thank you and with that we stand adjourned at 5:09 uh we will resume the next meeting at 525 no we don't have a Clos no no closed session but let's take 15 minutes um sorry to keep all of you waiting but uh our last meeting ran quite long thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] m [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome to the Bakersfield City council meeting this television Broad [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome to the Bakersfield City council meeting this television broadcast is brought to you by the local cable companies the county of Kern and the City of Bakersfield you can watch the rebroadcast of this meeting Saturday at at 700 p.m. Sunday at 10:00 a.m. and the following Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. you can download the agenda for this meeting at www. Bakersfield city. us priding over this evening's meeting The Honorable mayor Karen K go good evening it's my pleasure to call to order the 515 regular city council meeting of June 26 2024 Madam clerk please call the rooll mayor go here vice mayor Gonzalez here council member Aras here council member weer council member Smith I am here council member Freeman here council member gray here council member core here thank you welcome to all of you again we we apologize for the delay in the start we have an interpreter present tonight for Spanish language and I'll now invite The Interpreter to give instructions for those who might need to use a service on this side good afternoon my name is Stephania we have fando we're with linguisa and we'll be offering simultaneous interpretation if anyone needs a device please invite people to raise their hand or to go up there for a device thank you thank you and for the benefit of our interpreter please pace yourself and speak clear into the microphone during your comments and this will help our interpreter to clearly translate your message at this time we have the pleasure of having Reverend Hector Lopez who is the pastor of St Philip the Apostle Church in Bakersville he'll offer the invocation we're just so grateful for your Outreach to those who have challenges in terms of food insecurity I know the members of your congregants have been collecting food through Catholic Charities and Through The Gleaners thank you so much Pastor for that following the invocation Erica DEA Cruz who's a city fellow and a graduate of CSU Bakersville will lead us in the pledge she's a fellow with our city manager's office she recently graduated from CSUB majoring in Business Administration concentration in small business management where she served under the associated students Inc go Runners and she plans to pursue a master's in Business Administration and work for the city of Bakersville would you all please pleas stand thank you mayor for the opportunity to the invitation to lead the U invocation at this evening's meeting it's an honor to be with all of you I invite us to pray loving and Provident God we come before you this evening with grateful Hearts seeking your wisdom and guidance As We Gather for this city council meeting you have bestowed many gifts and blessings upon our city you have placed us here in the midst of a rich Heritage a variety of cultures and a wide diversity of people we call our friends and neighbors we give you thanks for this opportunity to serve the residents of Bakersville in the building up of a strong healthy and flourishing Community for everyone one in which every person can grow succeed and be happy Grant the members of the council the wisdom to make decisions that are just and fair for all members of our city give us the courage to face the challenges ahead fill us with compassion to understand the needs of our neighbors and above all Inspire us to work together with Open Hearts and Minds always striving for greater unity and cooperation Lord God we ask that your peace might reign in our hearts and in our streets help us to build a place of belonging where every member feels welcomed valued and respected May the strength of this community shine forth in the way we treat the weakest Among Us lead us to Greater solidarity as we share our goals hopes and dreams give us the patience to listen to one another and the strength to overcome our differences guide us in our efforts to work together in collaboration always seeking the the common good look upon us with kindness and bless the work we do we ask all of this placing our trust in your Providence and care for each of us for you live and Reign forever and ever amen amen thank you Pastor Erica I pledge allegiance to the FL of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands indivisible andice all thank you thank you Pastor thank you Erica you may be seated 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 the other portions of the meeting everyone in attendance is expected to adhere to the rules of Decor 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 an 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 your removal from the meeting and or the chambers being cleared behavior that disrupts a meeting includes repetitive statements shouting interrupting staff or presenters during the meeting speaking out of turn Outburst from the audience and surpassing the time limit mam clerk next item public statements thank you in keeping with the council's new 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 at the appropriate time so please listen carefully for the correct time to speak if you wish to make a public speak statement please fill out a public speaker card and place it in the tray on the counter next to the speaker's Podium we ask that you mark whether you're here to speak on an it item listed on tonight's agenda or on a matter not on the agenda speakers who do not identify a specific agenda item will be presumed speakers for the non-agenda public statements if you're here to speak on an item not listed on the meeting agenda you will be called first to speak statements are given a two-minute time limit per speaker 20 minutes total for all non-agenda item public statements if you're here to speak on an item listed on the agenda I will call for you at a later time so please listen carefully if public statements become disruptive and I have to clear the chambers to regain orderly uh to regain order of the meeting you will be called in one at a time to provide your public statement when your item is called Madam clerk do we have any public speakers regarding items not on the agenda maricao we've received nine speaker cards for items not on tonight's agenda the first three public speakers will be Florence Marshall Darrow Susan colad and Johnny alz thank you and Miss Marshall hi welcome please introduce yourself my name is Florence Marshall daro and I work for Golden Empire Transit and I'm here to talk about um our Transit board and um I would like um I'm not happy with our leadership of the board that you guys have elected um these past few years we've been having problems with them and a few of them have been in office for quite a number of years and one of them's been in for 10 years and plus she has I think another five more years listed on this or at least four and I think that I'm I'm asking you guys there the ones that you've elected if you guys can reconsider of having them having them replaced because um I'm not happy with their leadership with the things that have recently been happening there um that's that's about it thank you Miss Marshall thanks next speaker please Susan colad and following her will be Johnny so Johnny if you can make your way to front row that would be helpful save some time welcome please introduce yourself hi my name is Susan Kad my husband James Cad has been working for get for 22 and A2 years and they recently rehired the new new CEO everybody was pleased with him he's trying to be Innovative and put new things out there and then they go and fire him and there have been drivers that said that with Karen King they didn't get much interaction from her for open door policy or suggestions Etc whereas Mr tree has been quite the opposite and everybody has well rece has been very receptive from Mr tree and he has done a lot in trying to push get forward and further in the 21st century make more efficient and even a couple of the things that he had suggested the board actually even adopted last night so what's the problem they have not established they have not discussed said anything about it and I'm asking the same thing as Florence that you remove the people that you appointed please thank you next speaker Johnny followed by Yolanda Getta Heyman followed by Francis Rubio welcome please introduce yourself uh Johnny olz um so one question I've been looking into what paperwork and what qualifications it takes to run for city council I noticed that the website has little to no information I myself have figured it out I called um would it be possible to update that for future candidates or people who may be interested in running for local office uh information is power and with no information we are not promoting a knowledgeable engaged or inclusive community so that's what I'm here to say thank you thank you next speaker uh council member Arius thank you mayor um if I could just ask staff to take a look at that um I myself have also looked for the same exact information and have struggled to find that basic information on the elections process and um that information relevant to potential candidates I appreciated thank you thank you next speaker please welcome please introduce yourself good afternoon my name is Yolanda G hyon I am also a coach operator at Golden Empire Transit I myself and co-workers spoke to the Kern County Board of Supervisors yesterday at the 2 p.m meeting where they engaged and voiced their concern over the get board's ction of initially terminating our CEO Michael tree June 17th at last night's gboard meeting the two County appointees abstained from voting to fire Mr tree it was the two City appointees and the atlarge member who voted to fire him therefore there appears to be a split on the board and we wonder why Cindy para a city appointe is the board chair at last night's get board meeting drivers voiced for the reinstatement of Michael tree as our CEO but felt the board showed no empathy get will now return to a state of turmoil and you seriously need to question the current state of the board's leadership how effective has Miss para been guiding the transit district in 2014 the city council removed both of its get appointees due to complaints now a decade later your appointees are under criticism again keeping Cindy para and Carlos Bellow on the get board does not appear to be improving the transit District's image are they acting in the best interest of the city we shouldn't have to come here to bother you with the transit district problems but we will bring our concerns to you the people we vote into office if action is not taken the transit district should be governed effectively so city council does not have to intervene we are asking for Cindy par and Carlos Bellow to resign as board of directors at Golden Empire Transit District or we request that city council act on replacing both immediately your time is can you bring your comments to a close please okay thank you you can go and finish the last sentence we will continue to fight for what we believe is in the best interest of of all of us and our community thank you thank you for the time thank you next speaker please Francis Rubio followed by Kev followed by Carmen welcome please introduce yourself Francis Rubio I'm here today as an employee here for 30 plus years to address some issues of Golden Empire Transit employees there's some several issues one there appears to be an ongoing problem with the appointees that the city council has selected as board members in 2014 the city council removed both its appointees as a result of a strike that occurred mounting to public dissatisfaction with these new routes systems that were implemented during the fall of 2012 the city council's goal was to replace these appointees with more responsive people who would work to solve get problems but unfortunately these two Replacements have only caused more problems over the past decade number two your appointees have been on the get board for 10 years plenty of time to solve problems and move move the district forward they have been given enough time but nothing is better you need to seriously think about how much longer you want these people to be on the board is it a is it good to have people have these people on the board that long especially when they no longer they serve and the problems are just worse are getting worse so I ask you for the city council to address these issues we need city council to support on these issue ongoing problems that us the employees are tired of facing thank you thank you Mr rubo next speaker please Kev followed by Carmen followed by Lisa Smith welcome please introduce yourself hello my comment today is for the community so we can acknowledge how the city tends to operate that we the people come here to advocate for improving the quality of life that we ask for things because there are actual issues in the community that need to be addressed and then at the same time the city seemingly works against that that as a community we would ask for things like measures to ensure we mitigate climate change yet the city will cut down trees a couple blocks from here ones that would have cooled the area and provided hundred hundreds of people of shade during notoriously hot summers that for a Time peaceful Palestinian protesters came here asking for a simple ceasefire resolution and they were met with intimidation antagonization and violence that for years people in this community have asked for police accountability and reform of a notoriously dangerous police force and yet the city is still giving them hundreds of millions of dollars passing recent resolutions to give them multiple types of surve Vance software ammunition surpluses and power expansion or the or the other issues that we bring here they either get pushed aside unaddressed or forgotten so we shouldn't glamorize any of the city's actions whatever they take because if we were poor or homeless we wouldn't even be able to rely on them to treat us like humans so please remember this when our needs as a community aren't met that when the summers are too hot when the water infrastructure fails or when the things we want to funded aren't funded properly because they have other priorities free Palestine next speaker please Carmen followed by Lisa Smith followed by Cecilia welcome please introduce yourself I noce some of you are snapping and that is disrupting the meeting so I'm going to ask you to please stop Carmen go ahead hello hello I'm here once again to ask the city council to pass a ceasefire resolution I know that this will not stop the genocide in Gaza but it will show the people of Bakersfield where their city council stands on genocide a genocide it will show the city of Bakersfield that you are not okay with seeing children starved and blown to Pieces it will show that you do not support the United States funding the murder of over 40,000 people please please consider looking into the ceasefire resolution that was given to you months ago the city of Bakersville told parks and wreck to cut down the two trees on 21st and I Street these trees provided shade and oxygen to our community and I'm wondering why they were cut down I'm hoping it wasn't to get rid of the homeless who would hang out there and rest under the shade I am recommending that fruit trees be planted there in place and that the city of Bakersfield stop cutting down healthy trees I'm also here in support of the eviction prevention program and urge you all to support our community and allocate funds to this program because everyone deserves a home including our undocumented community and to also be treated with respect by their landlords I'm also here to urge you to look into Patty Gray's son Christian Gray the man assaulting people in front of City Hall please do not let Christian Gray think it's okay to assault people because his mom is on the city council also I'm urging a thorough investigation into why 27-year-old Brandon Elliot Gabriel Flores was hit and killed by police officer Julian Garcia the Poli the patrol car did not have their lights or sirens on when Brandon was hit the officers must alert the public through the use of their lights and Sirens as indicated in California vehicle code 21055 why does the community have to start a GoFundMe to pay for expenses instead of having it come out of police funding a program you could take some funding from is organized retail theft program that the state awarded the Bakersfield Police Department Carmen your time is up go ahead and bring your comment to2 million to prevent and respond to organized theft motor vehicle accessory de theft um they were responding to a motor vehicle theft and this would be very appropriate way to allocate funds to victims of the police department thank you thank you next speaker please Lisa Smith followed by Cecilia welcome please introduce yourself and we will have staff help you can somebody help Miss Smith turn that on I have my time reset yes we will thank you can somebody just help her with the uh I should know how to do this teacher right but I'm on vacation I guess just it's on thank you all right welcome is is it okay would you my name is Lisa Smith and I am here to speak to you tonight about my friend Stephanie Gatlin who is a sometimes contributing writer to the Bakersville Californian and is a longtime teacher at East High School and she's a department chair working at khsd this week or this summer she was near my home which is one of the 22 County Islands within Metro Bakersfield so it happened near my home but it could affect any of your Wards when she went to Starbucks and a a person was screaming in the parking lot she went around him went to took care of her business to get her breakfast came back out the woman stood between her and the car raised a gun pointed to her head and said I'm going to eff and kill you and called her something and pulled the trigger Stephanie was lucky it was either a replica gun or it jammed but when I talked to her later she told me that BPD informed her the area is so dangerous they don't even go out there anymore and part of that is because Behavioral Health has moved into the same building as Kern County Probation on Stockdale and Stein on newstein right next to the recycle center in the same parking lot with the smoke shop a block away from four other mental health facilities and a block from that three other smoke shops that were existing together on the same corner we run into this everywhere because the city and the county bump into each other and one facility doesn't know what the other one's doing Jeff flores's office that I know of when I spoke to them did not know that this facility was there so my concern is this we have 22 Islands bumping into the city we have businesses moving in without setback requirements by any any ordinance except for like porno theaters schools we do not need these businesses dumped on us please do something to keep these businesses from all going into one area and to work with the county so that you all know what each other is doing thank you thank you um I have her post of the event and I would like to leave these packets for you you can just leave them right there and we'll get them the city clerk will yes thank you next speaker please Cecilia welcome please introduce yourself my name is Cecilia marcial I am a perinatal nurse in the city of Bakersfield representing only myself and I am here because I am appalled by your silence and your enabling of conflict between BPD against your constituents how many peace Breakers do you need to feel safe how many of us do you have to criminalize you are enforcing State violence against us so that we will will be silent but jail is not worse than genocide you are criminal criminalizing our words while you remain complicit in ethnic cleansing while you enable violence against the people you claim to represent just like the police in this building you are abusing your power because you feel disrespected well I don't respect you does that mean that I need that I deserve to be treated as subhuman while you faint at words the settler colonial state of Israel is deliberately targeting healthcare workers and lifeup supporting infrastructure you remain silent as they kill my colleagues and murder our children while you threaten us with violence if we disrupt your important decisions if your statements against the AP parite state do not matter then why not make them you are enabling white supremacy I invite you to move away from the time of supporting an apari regime equivalent to Nazi Germany and then maybe your constituents will respect you that is all thank you madam clerk is that the conclusion for the items not on the agenda that is correct mayor thank you we'll now move to public statements listed on oh I'm sorry where is your did you sorry go ahead sorry mayor uh my buttons not cooperating with me this even um can you check the technology please so I wanted to uh first comment on Miss Smith's um remarks um that experience obviously is pretty jarring if if um City staff can reach out and if we can look into what were those comments made by the police officer that seems a little odd to me um and then also I think there is value to figure out some coordination and and also I think Underneath It All um there are some County Pockets within that area that are problematic and I think uh you know our larger goal to Annex a lot of those unincorporate areas uh is ultimately um a way to resolve some of this uh conflict in terms of jurisdiction questions um but certainly we want to make sure that we get to the most acute issue right now related to the safety of that particular area and I'd appreciate if um we can if staff can work with Miss Smith to identify um uh both the situation but then also address some of those chronic issues in the area um and then other comment um I wanted to clarify regarding the street trees uh and the removal um this was a project that was planned from my understanding uh for quite some time uh we're we're removing a lot of the um pretty Antiquated uh uh Planters within downtown um and we're set to upgrade a lot of the infrastructure in downtown Town particularly around 18th and 19th Street and I know Mr Anthony is here if you can come up and it was my understanding that we worked with an arborist to see how we could save those trees um and we did that work can you just explain for the public because I know this has been a question Mr Anthony sure for the record Rick Anthony director of Recreation and Parks uh you are correct this has been a a process uh project that's been in progress for quite some time um I actually went out myself with the arborist to see if there was a way that we could replant the trees or repurpose the trees but the fact of the matter because they were in the race Planters majority of their root balls would not be able to be salvaged or being able to kept intact so it is unfortunate at this time that we got to this but those were the facts of the matter and also we plan to replace trees so we plan to replant mates exctly every tree that was uh taken out will be replaced and we will choose the largest species the most drought tolerant species and obviously the species that will provide the most shade right and this in this whole notion that somehow this is a strategy to um to remove homeless I take exception to we actually I particularly Advocate on behalf of making sure that we have additional resources for our unhoused folks particularly in the Heat and anyone who attended the housing and homelessness meeting yesterday uh that was a question I raised in terms of what we do when we're responding to the the house but I also want to to clarify and underscore Mr stlo in our design of 18th and 19th Street of our Improvement project along that Corridor it actually includes elements uh including uh Street Furniture is that correct it does okay so we actually will be enhancing the area for all of our citizens to find Refuge under shade in downtown correct that's correct thank you so much uh thank you very much Mr Anthony Mr St we'll now move to the public statements listed under the agenda if you're here to speak on items listed under consent calendar item s your time to speak is now again each speaker is given a two-minute time limit and each agenda item is listed limited to 20 minutes total the consent calendar as a whole constitutes one agenda item if you're here to speak on hearing item 9A or deferred business item 11a now is not the time to speak you'll be given an opportunity to speak when those items are called later in the meeting Madame clerk do we have any public speakers regarding items listed on consent calendar item seven mayor go we've received one speaker card regarding consent calendar item 7 E7 and would you go ahead and call that speaker Kev welcome if you just wait until everybody exits thank you welcome go ahead I'm here in solidarity with the many folks who have mobilized to see $2 million be put into the eviction prevention program a program that will act as a buffer between renting and homelessness a program that's Guided by aiding people instead of making a profit a program that helps people by assisting them instead of policing them which is why it not only needs to be properly funded but properly effective if the program is not in good faith or if they don't have the resources necessary to assist everyone in the community then it won't be effective at helping the marginalized people who need it the most GBL will not be effective the right to council programs deserves a chance to be effective and it deserves the $2 million of funding it ought to have I urge these things because it's the livelihoods and survival of community members of human beings that are on the line thank you vice mayor thank you mayor uh thank you Mr Kev for those comments I I do agree with you uh there are those vulnerable individuals who do deserve um the services provided through this eviction protection I think um earlier this afternoon we were able to have a conversation and just to clarify uh Mr C we are bringing this item back to housing and homelessness in 3 months time to uh review the status uh and to monitor the progress of gbl's work through this contract that's correct both this contract as well as um considerations for other neighborhood stabilization projects that we could pursue okay and I I do know that there's this question about $2 million I'm quite I'm not quite sure how that was calculated and where that came from did that come from staff or from gbla it it did not okay and so we will have another opportunity to review the contract and that funding amount and how that how gbla is performing uh both in three months and then also in subsequent um subsequent meetings correct correct so what I'd like to do is um make a referral that we bring this item back in particular at midyear um so we talk about a midyear budget um and make it even a contingency item for us to address should we need uh additional resources uh given the demand okay and with that I'll move uh the consent calendar you have a motion please cash your votes uh mayor prior to the vote um if I can just announce what we Pro provided a staff memorandum transmitting correspondence on a non-agenda item thank you go ahead and cast your votes motion is approved with council member Weir absent thank you and for the record uh the vice mayor did check ahead of time and none of the council members wish to pull any items for separate consideration but thank you our next item is public hearings each side will be allowed 15 minutes it's 15 minutes for all speakers per side so it's important that you identify yourself make your statement succinctly So Others May speak we'll hear statements from those opposed to staff's recommendation first then we'll hear from those who would like to speak in favor of staff's recommendation if there's testimony on both sides each side will be allowed a five minute rebuttal there's a clock in the TV screens behind me which indicates 15 minutes please step to the microphone identify yourself and after 14 minutes a yellow light will come on at the end of 15 minutes a red light will flash indicating your time is is up quickly and your statement you may ask questions during your statement but they won't be addressed until the public hearing is closed if you have written comments that are longer than your verbal statement give them to the clerk and she'll provide copies to the council please be courteous to others who wish to speak Madam clerk please read the public hearing item public hearing to consider action plan amendment to HUD action plan fiscal years 2022 and 20 23 and 20232 24 thank you and Mr C thank you mayor and Council our economic and Community Development director Miss buers has a brief overview for this item Miss buers thank you Christian and city council so this item before you tonight has come hold on I messed with my computer so the item before you tonight is a public hearing request based on our home funds we're requesting a reallocation of those funding resources um specifically from two fiscal calendar years let me see I love technology and yet I struggle with it daily so basically the items that we're requesting are from 22 23 to reallocate some of the funding for the let's range senior housing project it is 150 units uh located in Ward 1 that project is up for some tax credits and in order to be more competitive there's some funding uh reallocation that we are proposing there's some funding from 2223 budget year as well as from 2324 we have a second request for uh um an amendment a substantial Amendment for the uh ten based rental assistance for cap K to provide $1 million in tenant based rental assistance we did notice this agenda item and are requesting city council approve these budget items thank you anything further Mr click and at this time hearing item 9A is open is there anyone who would like to speak in opposition to staff's recommendation please come to the mic identify yourself and proceed seeing none is there anyone who wishes to speak in support of staff's recommendation please step to the microphone identify yourself and proceed seeing none I'll close the public hearing and R return it to council for comment and action Madam cler can you activate the request button please all right just signal to me if you would like to speak anybody comments no comments uh vice mayor I move to approve the action plan Amendment you have a motion please cast your votes oh right now are you frozen let just give her a minute to see whether motion is approved with council member Weir absent thank you mam Clerk next item please deferred business item 11a fiscal year 20242 City budget item one a resolution approving and adopting the operating Capital Improvement budgets for the city of Bakersfield for the fiscal year 20242 and number two a resolution establishing the city of Bakersfield Appropriations limit for fiscal year 20242 a staff memorandum has been provided transmitting correspondence regarding this item and another staff memorandum was provided updating the salary schedule thank you before we begin please note that if you're here to speak on deferred business item 11a the city clerk will call for public statements after staff's presentation each speaker will be limited to two minutes and there will be a 20 minute time limit per item Mr CLE thank you mayor and Council just to provide some context for this item uh over the last several months we have had workshops in particular related to the public safety vital Services tax through that oversight committee that makes recommendations related to that funding source those were held in April uh they made recommendations and and uh provided feedback that was provided to the city council at your last meeting in the meeting packet we also had a budget workshop for the city council uh that covered presentations from all departments uh that went through this information of course those are those workshops and meetings are also available to the public that may not have been able to attend those workshops online through our um online portal that that has our meeting agendas and and meeting minutes and recorded meetings and and then at your last meeting uh we had a public hearing to solicit Community input related to the budget and what you have before you tonight is the final uh budget uh recommendation for adoption uh next year's budget again just to set some broad context that has been repeated in all of our workshops that we continue to see the economy be fairly flat overall we have seen some modest increases in sales tax and property tax uh but not what we would expect in sales tax in a typical um economic year uh over-year and so our also our um cost of doing business has continued to increase due to inflation General um cost increases for supplies and services uh We've also had increases notably in our utilities as well as our liability costs our insurance costs and risk mitigation costs are up by millions uh we have also I think it's fair to not address um some deferred um Market compensation adjustments in the last couple of years and that continues to also affect next year's budget but overall with our costs going up and our revenues remaining flat it means a tighter budget and so we've had a very conservative approach to our budget for this coming year uh we had have ADD made very few additions to uh employees or Services we actually reduced the public safety vital Services tax ongoing um operating expenditures by more than $3 million to make some space for programs that are of high strategic priority like including another $1.5 million in next year's budget for additional emergency shelter beds uh We've also um increased our capacity to address uh chronically homeless uh through intensive Case Management Services and then we've made some additions on the policing side for um professional uh employees a non-sworn employees but returning many sworn employees to police work as well as just continuing to professionalize uh the administrative and and other supports to uh the police um department and we've also just added uh two call takers to help with our homeless encampment uh call center those are probably the most notable uh additions we have uh capital projects also that address um in large part our streets we have $82 million that is going towards streets in this proposed budget um we've been in a large catchup mode there modest uh investments in ongoing Park work I can um affirm to the community that we have done more than 30 Park projects in the last four budget Cycles um spending millions of dollars upgrading and and um addressing deferred maintenance in our Parks but this coming year a little more modest Investments to make sure we can do Grant match funding for the the Martin Luther King Community Center renovation as well as um some other enhancements in Parks throughout the city um the full details of course are in the agenda packet they're also online in our um proposed uh budget book and uh if I could just reflect over all um our budget this year we have a uh Capital Improvement project budget that is $172 million total uh our um overall budget is uh just under $900 million um across all funds including our Enterprise funds our general fund budget's now over $400 million um but again um reflecting those highlights of um the most strategic additions our Focus was on maintaining essential Services making some some strategic additions and setting aside contingencies and reserves to ensure against uh any potential Eon further economic downturn in this coming year thank you Mr CLI Madam clerk do we have any public speakers regarding deferred business item 11a mayor go uh we have received one speaker card for um Mr Eddie Lane Mr Lane U mayor go I'm Edie Lyn I I thought I was going to be discussing the the $2 million eviction prevention program am I at the right time right place you're you put down 11a I I may have made a mistake I I would argue that there there it was a subset that that this is a you know uh budget item that allocates resources it's appropriate it's fine okay thank you um I'm Eddie Lane I'm a longtime Bakersville resident here to speak on behalf of the $2 million proposal for the eviction prevention program I'm passing around two pictures the first is of the denuding of all living vegetation between a portion of truckton lake and truckton Avenue creating a virtual moonscape this picture was taken on March 27th of this year the purported purpose protect the water storage functions of the lake however four large water storage Ponds West of Allen Road serve the very same purpose they are not denuded of plant life this unsightly scene is not necessary as the Sierra Club has recommended on numerous occasion there needs to be a written protocol regarding habitat protection along the Kern River and bodies of water natural or man-made such as truckton Lake the development of such a protocol was promised three years ago by then Water Resources Director ranello and provided to the staff and the council many times no followup particularly Troublesome is the renewal of a contract with General Tree Service last year from 860,000 to 1.7 million the first page of the contract is provided for your review General tree services was responsible for what you see in this March 27 picture however City staff bulldo the other of truckton lake and destroyed habitat along the Kern River the same day cut and destroy the second picture was taken June 2024 20024 uh just a few days ago of trees trimmed at jastro Park what guidance from City staff was provided to General tree when they hideously butchered those trees in what was once our Bakersfield Tree City aside from looks there is virtually no shade for on hot days please stop this destruction of our limited native vegetation take the $1.7 million and put it into use for our vulnerable population this program this $2 million for eviction prevention thank you mayor thank you Mr Lane Madam clerk do we have other speakers America we've received additional speaker cards the following three uh speaker cards were received uh no no Garcia Noy Garcia Ashley De Rosa followed by Valerie Pinto welcome please introduce yourself hi good afternoon city council my name is Noe Garcia I'm the director of Civic engagement with the Dolores wera Foundation speaking here on behalf of doresa and the organization I'm here to urge and and really thank the city for allocating $350,000 for the eviction prevention program it's been a you know huge battle by you know Leadership Council for justice and accountability and tenants as well uh and so we're here to really you know urge that the city allocate more of that funding for the EV eviction Protection Program um we're asking for $2 million to really fund this program and ensure that we can reduce the inflow of families into homelessness by protecting vulnerable tenants from from eviction we know that homelessness continues to increase each year and we've seen those figures uh just this year alone as well and so we know that you know preventing folks from losing their homes is a more Humane and cost- effective way than having to help them rebuild their lives after they've become homeless so I appreciate the motion to you know review the the program and its Effectiveness uh but we are asking for more funding $2 million of funding and we're going to continue to work with each of you all to find that funding and and get more of that funding as soon as you all see how effective that program has continued to been to be um so that's really what we're here to do uh thank you so much for the time thank you Mr Garcia next speaker please Ashley Delarosa followed by Valerie Pinto followed by Vicki Grano good evening council members my name is Ashley thear Roa I am a member of the current County young Democrats I'm here um I just want to share with you when I was in fifth grade I was actually houseless and I didn't know as a child as a child you never understand why you're constantly moving why you're having issues and why these issues are never fixed and so you see now I know what I didn't understand then landlords abused lowincome immigrants people color of families are vulnerable to evictions and vulnerable to residing in in one home we are experiencing a huge houseless crisis and the solutions you've presented thus far are really bandaid solutions that do not offer long term and or for a longer ter term it is necessary to fund important it is very important to for you to fund the $2 million for eviction prevention programs and the key to this it's prevention if you provide the just 300,000 $350,000 for rental assistance is a one-time Band-Aid solution and we're asking for longterm we are asking for Investments and you just for you to understand the story I bring this to you today is because the 2,500 residents that are facing houselessness today in Bakersfield are not just adults they're young children that are also suffering the burden that are being kicked out at a higher rate in suspensions in our current County Schools so if you're kicking them out of school and they have nowhere to go and on top of that they have no assistance how are we providing and serving Bakersfield and so today if we really listen and believe the invocation of Father Hector then you will be leaders and stand in solidarity with the community and provide for the most in need thank you thank you Mr Lissa next speaker please speak now okay uh before you start uh vice mayor thank you mayor I apologize um Mr Del thank you so much for sharing your story and your personal testimonial I I really honor that I really do genuinely and I I do want to communicate that um you know eviction protection I don't believe is a Band-Aid I don't think that's what you're saying but um it's it's also coupled with lots of other uh prevention programs that we're trying to build out and in fact we do have a rental um assistance program emergency rental assistance program and just Mr CLE if you will I know we had just a presentation at the 3:30 meeting but for the benefit of those individuals who are here now to speak on this particular issue I think it's important that we communicate uh you know to our constituents and to the public who who care particularly about this issue um what exactly we're investing in in totality thank you yeah thank you vice mayor uh mayor and councel so we have several programs that are currently uh being resourced or pending you know to begin uh that I can highlight as well as just say Express really quickly um the actions that were recommended earlier this afternoon so the city does fund uh a fair housing program that helps individuals that are facing discrimination based on a protected class as defined by the federal government um that is through a contract through the gbla we also have home buyer assistance program we have tenant-based rental assistance that we've done not only through of course uh the pandemic through large pass through dollars from the federal government but we also allocated more recently $700,000 to continue the rental assistance program and then we allocated $1 million of um uh HUD Housing and Urban Development Federal entitlement dollars also to continue a tenant-based rental assistance program um from our home funds we actually just approved that tonight on your Council agenda we also are looking at $1.4 million uh from the state hap dollars um as a set aside for youth home access uh to address that we have other U funding like emergency shelter grants and hwa funding uh in smaller amounts but that help vulnerable populations uh be housed and and then we did approve um on the consent agenda the $350,000 to begin our eviction prevention program pilot so those are all um oh and excuse me we also have a home uh weatherization and home repair programs that are funded through our entitlement dollars and then also lastly we've been able to acquire several million dollars for home weatherization and and installation of solar through the transformative climate communities Grant specifically to uh lowincome individuals in disadvantaged neighborhoods in southeast Bakersfield so those are programs that are currently in place we acknowledge that there are many programs across a spectrum of Prevention Services and stabilization services that could be considered and we committed uh this afternoon uh in our Workshop to go and do research um um that's takes into account our uh draft housing element and recommendations in that our uh affordable housing strategy that the city has adopted also the regional homeless collaborative action plan strategy has several recommendations and we'll look at all of those recommendations from all three um strategies as well as uh Benchmark City research and other best practice research gather data on this pilot um and you know through this other research and we uh anticipate coming back to this Council based on all of that data to be able to come back and talk about other other potential programs that could include uh substandard um housing Rehabilitation uh looking at how we leverage our community land trust to build different housing types um expansions of some of the existing programs res residential facade Improvement Grants um and also looking closely at our land use policy adoption in coming years that that helps uh facilitate this kind of work and so we're looking at a pretty broad spectrum of neighborhood stabilization programs Beyond just eviction prevention I appreciate that and and one of the letters we received I was reading um made a comment regarding their concern for the city's um reduction in revenue or in um reduction in uh our allocation for uh affordable housing and um you know I I think that's a legitimate concern that's a concern in many of our conversations that expressed as well um and so I think one of the one of the ways in which I've sort of um rationalized it for lack of a better word is that we still have these uh unspent arpa dollars that are allocated for affordable housing construction for our community land trust and we still have um some dollars in our affordable housing trust fund um that are unspent um so can can you kind of for for the benefit of the public and for from for us on the dice kind of explain staff's rational for that recommendation um yeah thank you vice mayor so a couple different uh perspectives uh one uh it is accurate that we have um more than $8 million uh excuse me we we we had uh spent um $1.4 million in the acquisition of a a residential Hotel Motel so we we now have um you know6 and5 millionar a little more than that that's going into the Community Land Trust that's going to be uh developing affordable housing units um those are significant arpa Investments that are still pending uh we also have received additional monies uh thankfully in this last fiscal year from U what's called home ARP it's arpa funding that is specific to affordable housing projects and we received additional ations I think $4 million of uh overall home ARP funding that has allowed us to fund several affordable housing projects that we otherwise wouldn't be able to um at the same time uh we also are looking at the housing and homeless assistance program funding from the state um those funds have um been hard fought every year through the state budget process but we have hap five monies and hap four monies that are still not fully spent and and we are um very thankful to see half six monies included in the uh the final state budget that we'll be able to use towards different projects and then in addition to that there there's significant Federal funding that's out there right now and so we know that we need some local dollars that we can use as Grant match and we've actually been able to in the example of the affordable housing trust fund we've allocated $5 million each year and we've been able to go to the state and apply for match es to those uh funds and so in one year we received a $2 million match and another year a $3 million match and so we got another $5 million into our affordable housing trust fund by matching State funds and so in a tight budget year as we looked hard at um the meting mini competing interests uh we also are recommending a $2.5 million allocation to support the expansion of the open door Network shelter and with that large project and some other notable projects and some of these other funding sources we did feel like the $3 million allocation in the affordable housing trust fund would allow us to still do many important projects leverage other opportunities to you know get federal dollars and and we hope some State dollars although much fewer State dollars available in this coming year um to really maximize uh the use of the affordable housing trust fund monies as much as we could okay um I have some comments to make and I will hold those comments until the end of the public uh comment period colleagues we have a number of public who still wish to speak so we'll come back to you at that point based on um what we've set up so um Madam clerk are there additional public speakers we have about 14 minutes left and are there more speaker cards than I have received at this point we have eight more public speaker uh cards for public speakers to go thank you okay um Madam clerk please call um Miss Pinto sorry thank you for waiting no worries um hello dear city council City staff and mayor go my name is Valerie pinto and I'm making a public comment on behalf of the repid response network of kar I ask the city to allocate $2 million in the 2024 2025 City budget for the eviction prevention program considering what's at stake times are hard and there are skyrocketing numbers of evictions across California now that Co era moratoria has expired tenants need to know their rights and have an attorney present and guide them when facing an eviction or housing issue considering both of our bases your constituents and our community members at rapid response network of Kern our majority working-class populations we need to look to currents most at risk of homelessness specifically what both of our bases have in common consists of not only the working class but primarily Farm Workers Monterey Fresno and Kern Counties have the largest number of Farm Workers in the state regardless of the population detached single family houses were the most common type of housing for California Farm Workers roughly 57% and about a third 35% lived in crowded dwellings none of this is new to us what is our concern is that our base of community members and local leaders involved in our rapid response network of Kern are out of work field workers are experiencing a shortage in agricultural work and because of field workers the Central Valley supplies about 25% of the nation's fruits nuts and other products however only 9% of California 9% of Californian Farm Workers lived in housing owned or administered by their current employer all of this goes to show that your constituents are working living paycheck to paycheck and on top of that do not have a stable means of a job which affects their housing status exponentially so when there's a lack of legal resources to assist combating unlawful convictions we must work together to ensure that tenants know their rights and have an attorney present and guide them when facing an eviction or housing issue when the city invests in Security in our budget ask to fund eviction preven ions program our base has one less thing to worry about however let's reframe the idea that this is just one issue the city cannot address because of all other countless issues because with 37% increase in homelessness in current County from last year the biggest issue is inflow the city must prioritize your time is up can you bring your comments to a close please yes not only is it inhumane that hardworking folks are unlawfully pushed out of their well-deserved homes but it is also inhumane that the people in position to make CH tangible and meaningful assistance to our communities do not invest in their community knowing what is at stake thank you for your time thank you Miss Pinto next speaker please Vicki followed by Rosa Lopez follow followed by Sandra Placencia hello my name is Vicki gito I am an ex-employee for Superior Court um I work for them for 15 years and I have seen firsthand um the eviction process and how many families have lost their homes to unlawful rulings within the courts um just recently I had a friend who was who filed for for a response within the court system and she reached out to me to help her fill out her paperwork and kind of guide her on what to do um unfortunately it was really sad to see that Gina serantes who is a court commissioner within the Superior Court who used to work with gbla and I had contact before do you know just didn't want to do her due diligence in regards on the proof of services for the people who were living in that unit and she went ahead and ruled against the defendant and ruled with the landlord a lot of those rulings do happen within Superior Court and it's sad to see that our justice system is not just with um evictions especially with what Miss Pinto said a lot of Farm Workers would come to the window they would ask us for assistance on how to fill their po paperwork and us as clerks were not allowed to were not allowed to give them legal advice we would send them to the landlord ten in a sense assistant center or sent them to G GBL but opposite the attorneys would come and ask us how to fill out paperwork or what paperwork was missing which to me was really um it was really awkward to tell them let me go ask my supervisors and then the supervisors would tend to those attorney attorneys that is not the correct way to help our people who live here in Kern County um the system is biased towards people who don't have attorneys attorneys are needed a lot for these people who don't have the legal means to pay an attorney to help them through the process that's pretty much what I was here to say Thank you Mr guo you're welome and next speaker please we still have a number of speakers who'd like to speak and so I'm going to ask you to be succinct please um good evening my name is Rosa Lopez and I'm a long-term resident of War I I'm a community advocate and I'm here to ask that you listen to The community's Plea and prioritize and invest in programs that will keep families housed our unhoused population continue to increase the speakers before me has shared some data with you and I'm sure you've seen them in the local articles uh because we continue to waste funds pushing them out of our site or criminalizing them for being poor you have tested quick fixes and added Emergency Shelters cleared out encampments and policed Parks but you have not addressed the root cause of public safety concerns and the increasing number of unhoused people like building more affordable houses bringing industries that pay livable wage prioritizing Workforce Development creating Green Space and in investing in Social programs that will help our families Thrive and stay in their hopes I applaud you for thinking about this crisis and naming some of the programs that already exist but something doesn't match right I mean we keep on seeing more people in the streets um the we keep on seeing more people and unhal folks um on the streets and so the datas and the testimonies that you've heard here tonight um does not represent what you're what you've shared that we are looking into it and we are investing in certain programs like others have shared this Advantage responses tonight you heard from various speakers imploring you to stop business as usual and reconsider how you prioritize budgets you have a chance to stand with the community and allocate the $2 million to the for for the eviction prevention program um like the speaker said um this is a smart program preventing preventative measure to keep families in their homes instead of letting them get evicted then hauling them around in Emergency Shelters you can continue to do the same thing um you can continue to do the same thing and sound surprised when we see that the numbers don't match thank you thank you m Lopez next speaker please Sandra Placencia followed by wendal Wesley Jr followed by Andrea Montero welcome please introduce yourself more comment cards on the table we are uh we have eight and more minutes for this segment so if you can all keep your uh comments as succinct as possible please yes okay thank you uh Sandra placenia Leadership Council um just wanted to reiterate that the reason why we want the eviction prevention program is because we want accountability and we want accountability to the bad landlords right and the reason why I State this is because the programs that Mr CL mentioned are great right we all want permanent rental assistance we want a Varity of programs that are listed in the housing elements but I remind the city that you're currently out of compliance on your six cycle housing elements hcd has not deemed it compliant so by that I state that the city must invest $2 million into the eviction prevention program to help reach accountability by hcd what I mean by this is that the eviction right to council program is um it will further affh which is affirmatively furthering for housing um and that will give you points so you can better reach compliance and accountability by uh the state when it comes to your um housing Element last thing I also wanted to mention is um through airally furthering for housing the city has the ability and the duty to provide meaningful and beneficial actions that will help community and when we were working with the er um back in 2020 a lot of landlords did not want to take those rental assistance checks so who are tenants going to call if there are no attorneys to call to force llers to take those checks we need accountability and we need it now and we cannot wait until the mid year to see this happen and the data that is going to be collected should have been collected a long time ago thank you thank you next speaker please hi wend Wesley junor youall know me um that registry will be a big big deal we need to start that like yesterday because we need to identify all the landlords and we can't allow landlords to hide behind three or four or five llc's to get out to try to qualify from some type of program that will allow them to get free services okay so soon and very soon there will be a nonprofit Community Land Trust I'm going to urge the city council to work with that nonprofit Community Land Trust because what the city is proposing is going to be based on a gross income okay and you know based on the income level of the low income and Below income it's still going to be too high you're looking at a 40-year mortgage you're looking at a first and a second okay we need to start building these real true affordable housing make a lot of them rentals and make some of them actual housing and sell just enough to keep the program running because for the simple fact that we are so far behind right now and because we let the real estate board run a muck and keep pushing the level up in what we're costing the medium price of housing will continue to go up and by allowing people to keep buying houses and flipping them it's madness Okay it's going to continue to go up and it's going to continue to be Out Of Reach until we have a true nonprofit Community Land Trust that will actually be able to afford and keep the price down for people that need it and that in turn will improve situations that we have on our street not just homelessness but crime as well it's all it's all connected so really we know what we're talking about because we've been there before and I've come from a city that's been through the same thing that we're going through right now and I know what mistak they did that made it worse and I see where they are now so please let's reach out to us and let's get this done because we are way behind thank you thank you Mr Wesley next speaker please Andrea Montero followed by cilia Castro welcome please introduce yourself hello my name is Andrea Monto dear city council City staff and mayor go my name is Andrea Montero and I am asking the city to allocate a large investment in the 2024 2025 City budget regarding the eviction prevention program tenants should be given the opportunity to know their rights and have the attorney have an attorney represent and guide them when facing an eviction or housing issues uh my family and I are actually going through the process of being displaced from our home where we grew up because our landlord is selling our house now I have two options and I appreciate Andre Gonzalez and the city manager for giving us all these awesome opportunities however I cannot afford a house under the uh loans that you guys give for first time um housing uh buyers I also don't think that the housing right now is Affordable for someone who literally has a good job like I don't know what your definition of affordable is because my paycheck will not be able to sustain that I am the eldest daughter of my family um I am the most eligible to have documents to buy a house to um do all of these things and it's really difficult for me my father passed away three years ago and he was the one that was representing my family now I'm the legal guardian of my family and I'm literally representing my mother and my two younger brothers it's really difficult so the city is obligated to actively promote fair housing proactively combat discrimination and address patterns of sex regation by prioritizing the housing needs of lower income households and households with special needs it is time for the city of Bakersfield to invest and prevent previz or sorry um in preventative U measures that will protect tenants and keep families housed I really appreciate you listening to me and this is all real thank you thank you Miss Montero next speaker please Cil Castro hello my name is Cecilia Castro and today I'm not I'm here not only on behalf of the Dolores wera Foundation as the executive director but also on my personal capacity as this issue is very close to my heart I am urging the city council to do right by its constituents and to make a bigger investment in the eviction Protection Program which will protect tenants and ultimately benefit the larger Bakery sold community we all know that there's a housing crisis in Bakersfield I live in downtown Bakersfield and I see it every single day we need Sustainable Solutions and onetime rental assistance is just just not enough like I mentioned this issue hits close to home for me my mother a longtime resident and renter recently moved into a new home within just a few months she encountered numerous issues gas leaks electricity problems lack of hot water and most importantly a hot H style and incompetent Property Management we discovered that this property management is basically a shell company a company that owns many properties throughout LA and Bakersfield and thankfully my undocumented mother had access to resources and my help and my emotional help to support her and many others do not it is clear that companies like this are praying on our communities on your constituents out of fear of eviction my mother had to endure numerous violations and we are now having to seek legal counsel but my mother's story is not unique it is the story of many and we really need a solution that addresses the root cause of this problem an eviction prevention program I appreciate uh you know the city manager explaining many of the programs that exist but they are not eviction protection programs right so this is your choice will you stand with corporations and developers or will you stand with your community I hope that you will find it in your heart to support the eviction Protection Program and really stand with your community thank you thank you m cro M clerk um there's one more speaker that we're gonna have time for and I'm just going to ask you to set the clock for two minutes Miss Cent Maria please miss curay Madam clerk may I have the speaker card please introduce yourself uh good evening Council and mayor go my name is Dominic Miller I am a longtime resident of Bakersfield born and raised from East Bakersfield to the Southwest Bakersfield and and I am the senior class president of 2017 printer High School ASB honors I am here to speak on behalf of the homeless prevention program as I have been homeless for the last couple of years due to my mother's house being taken and $10,000 on my inheritance my experiences as homelessness with landlords are unnecessary and a violations of federal housing law recently uh I know that you guys have dealt with cl company who were charged by the state attorney general for $93,000 for overcharging residents my experience with them has been horrible they are they have tried violating federal laws by not accommodating the Social Security program accommodation laws in regards to Federal housing they have allowed drug addictions they have allowed rapes to happen including myself as a victim of raped as a February acclim and Company they and I tried to um explain to them what happened they said we're not responsible for your safety and quality of your living but why do we pay rent to these landlords who refuse to help our residents and help our veterans who are homeless and help the people who are most vulnerable to these situations and I do want to remind the council that I am developmentally disabled so I've been through a walk and I highly recommend that the council take this pleas seriously for $2 million I may be rasbery with my voice here currently because I do have social anxiety and it took me a lot to get up and speak at the council tonight on behalf of the homeless population I am homeless Advocate and advocus and I believe in the fact that I have belief in the council and our city staff in order to help our homeless populations to not be homeless because of the homeless crisis that's going on in the current state the country and County thank you Mr Miller and sorry for the challenges that you faced uh thank you for having the courage to get up and speak you have a great night thank you and now we're going to go to to council for comment and action uh vice mayor if you'd like to finish count uh council member core I had a request earlier but after hearing um just your life experiences and thank you for having the courage to come today and speak and share your personal experience um truly it just goes to show how important programs like this are um I I know it probably took a lot to to come and share your story with us today and I just want to convey my immense gratitude to you um and and to all the Advocates sorry for your mother's experience um uh these are like real experiences of our residents here in the city of Bakersfield and um I just wanted to share my appreciation for you coming here and sharing your own personal stories um and I just hope that we can do justice to um and working towards what what our residents really deserve sorry I forgot what I was going to say thank you and um other council members any requests what mayor um just a couple of comments um I think council member core captured a lot of my sentiment as well just want to thank everybody for your heartfelt statements um and just just honest um testimonials um I I'm thinking as I'm working here um so I wanted to ask staff um for a couple things as we look towards um the future um council member arus made a referral at the last council meeting regarding the use of arpa dollars for uh homeless prevention funds um I I I think that's a it's a worthwhile and I think it's a worthy uh use of those dollars um I'm hoping that we can get to that particular issue sooner than later so that we can identify additional dollars either for EP or for other really effective um homeless prevention fund so that we can help those who are in crisis now uh can you give us the timeline as and to win staff thinks that we can bring this to the council yeah thank you vice mayor and mayor and councel um I would also just you submit that uh the conversation at our Workshop this afternoon was the first step in being quickly responsive to that request to outline uh the homework that we feel like we need to go and do to look at the different prevention programs that's one two we have to um share with the federal government a um annual report on the use of arpa funds in uh July next month and so in the second meeting of um July for for the city council we'll have that report back to council and I think it'll do one important task which will be to highlight where we have spent the arpa funds down where we anticipate to continue to spend the arpa funds down and where really are there still funds that are that remain unspent um um largely all arpa um funds had been at least allocated into certain buckets um but um we will come back and identify for Council where we have fully expended and where we don't expect to fully expend and then that can be an opportunity for Council to weigh in on how to use some of those final arpa dollars and so that's just a month away essentially from now uh probably worth and I think the council is aware of this but for the benefit of the public we have to encumber any arpa funding before December of this calendar year and so we'll have to move uh on any program and and um I think it's it's um important to consider the different uh ideas that we put up today even in the workshop but also be reflective of those items that we can move quickly on vers is items that might take a little bit longer that might be more appropriate from one of those other funding sources like home funds or the general fund or other you know ha funds for example so uh July and then um there could be still opportunities to revisit and allocate arpa funds in the fall before December 2024 um uh but we'll come back in July and and have an accounting of where those funds are at okay and and the the other item that I was going to mention earlier was uh uh to the point that some of our um community members raised in some letters that they had sent City Hall regarding their concern for a reduction in the allocation for affordable housing uh that $2 million reduction I I I want to make a referral that we uh direct staff to look at uh restoring those dollars in the next fiscal year fiscal year 2526 and that we not uh continue that reduction uh but that we restore it back to the $5 million as we had in the initial psvs budget um with that I'll move adoption uh I'll I'll move for the approval of the resolutions for fiscal year 2425 City budget um with the caveat that we will bring back the discussion related to the arpa dollars for um eviction protection prevention programs or other uh homeless prevention work thank you council member arus thank you mayor um I appreciate the vice mayor's questions um many of the same questions that I had um I if well let me let me back up um Ward one is home to some of the highest uh densities of housing throughout the entire city of Bakersfield it's also disproportionately a district where we see far more renters um and apartment complexes of of so many different sorts as opposed to single family uh residences and even those single family residences many of them are uh rented out as well um and so I just I just wanted to lay that on the table to say that you know this disproportionately impacts the constituents that I represent and the and my very neighbors um and it it's frustrating um to know that as as hard as we are working as you know so many of our partners continue to do the good work whether that be flood Ministries on Street Outreach Clinic of Sierra Vista working on the medical side to engage some folks um out in the streets um as many affordable housing units that we're building uh the the fact of the matter is in a year's time from now with this current budget as proposed I don't have reason to believe that we are going to slow down the inflow of homelessness right for every six folks that we place into permanent support of housing 10 additional individuals fall into homelessness we are in a game that we cannot win and it will not be until we can actually change the way that we are playing the game uh that we can actually expect some sort of different outcome I don't think it's clear how tonight we do that I think that there's no one solution that's going to fix this this problem there's not one single reason why someone Falls or a family falls into homelessness uh and in fact you know I love the eviction Protection Program I think we have to continue to fund that program but I also don't think that that program itself is going to prevent every single individual family from falling into homelessness um and so I appreciate the vice mayor's uh sentiments I think we have to bring this back as soon as possible hopefully within a month's time uh leveraging the $2.1 million but also potentially other uh sources of funding as well I know we talked about uh many streams coming from the state and federal government that we could potentially leverage some that we leveraged here tonight um and in the soon that we can continue to move on on that work I think the better um question uh for the city manager on encumbering those funds by the end of this fiscal year um I know that we've moved a bit of arpa funding into certain buckets like the affordable housing trust fund for instance um and then also the Community Land Trust um those that shifting of money does that is that considered en encumbrance of those funds by the federal government uh thank you uh council member the um affordable housing trust fund um monies that were moved from arpa uh yes in part because we did that you know fairly early in arpa and we've actually awarded projects also against that um funding and so we're in very good shape there um for the Community Land Trust we we um are confident that if we can identify the funding buckets for which that will be spent we don't have to have every project but if we can say you know uh $2.5 million is going to go towards infill and you know uh a million dollars or a million and a half is going to go towards acquisition of a you know this type of property that we that will count as um having encumbered it prior to December yes and so would the same thing apply if we were to develop a new program for instance hotel motel inspections um would would that potentially also count as encumbering of those funds potentially let let me also confirm and we'll we'll probably have to get some technical assistance um uh to make sure that that is the case I think but but in the spirit of your question I think also if we've done an RFP process and identified you know um an entity that would be managing that or you know you know owning that contract absolutely that would count as an encumbrance and so we don't have to have everything uh you know fully expended it's just um the the projects and programs in the works um but we'll also we can confirm whether or not an identified program um with specific dollars for how going to be spent would also qualify okay great thank you I appreciate that um and I I I'll just finish my comments by saying that you know um I think we recognize the urgency that we need to move on this issue um I think it's clear that we're going to have to get pretty creative um in figuring out how we are able to uh allocate funding uh towards you know continuance of EP um you know continued rental and utility assistance there are I think um the presentation that was made earlier there were at least six six other buckets of funding that come through the city of Bakersville that could potentially be leveraged um and I say that because there are so many good things that are in today's budget as proposed that staff has worked really hard on and really diligently on and the comments that were made tonight are not missed on me uh we got to continue to move quickly um it's our hope that we can bring St staff can bring something back and it's my hope that The Advocates can continue to come back and have these conversations um and continue to shed light on some of the challenges that residents are having on a daily basis until we can come to some sort of resolution and make sure that we can keep families housed thank you thank you council member Freeman um am I correct that we are going to be voting on approving the budget for next year that that's correct want to be sure because I have a couple of questions of what's in the budget y okay um Mr Flay can you tell me um how much is in the budget for the the b3k project and the KC how much money each one have we allocated in our budget thanks Council M Freeman um I'm going a little bit off of memory here but I'm fairly certain it's accurate we uh created a bucket that funds the chamber b3k and kedc that's uh about $300,000 the majority of that is for b3k we're looking at I believe $250,000 for b3k and um uh about a fairly even split between the other two from the remaining $50,000 okay um you wrote us a mem a while ago explaining what b3k had accomplished this year which said really hadn't accomplished much they were looking for a director in between the lines it looked to me like it was sort of floundering around without a director they couldn't really in director really couldn't get it pulled together I assume we spent 250,000 this year or did we not for them this year we we spent uh 15 $50,000 this last year um and I made a comment that in the all of the information you gave us on b3k uh and other stuff that that it appeared that they were making it's seeking more high-tech jobs concentrate which move them naturally towards the Mojave and where all the high-tech weapons and airplanes and everything are and that was kind of the focus because that is high-tech for Kern County that's all bu only Hightech we really have that is growth only my observation Bakersfield doesn't benefit tremendously Lancaster does maybe a little tachy but our city doesn't get you know they're not setting up headquarters here when they come up with u you know a new way to park planes like one of the Innovation they come up with so I was and and and in all of their Communications they completely left out our biggest and only growth industry which is logistics and warehousing um and I was saying I wanted to see some you know that folded into their emphasis for the future if we're going to give KDC 50,000 which is what their emphasis is and they've actually done a reasonably good job in that um and if that's going to be split to 50 to 25,000 or give 250 and I have nothing against be we could be talking 500,000 I'm not against what they're doing at all but I would like to see I don't know how I vote for this not knowing if I never got an answer are they are they just saying we're just not interested in your major industries here we have to create new high-tech which is a great thought but a lot of it isn't ever going to come to Bakersfield and the job creation we need here is with the industries we have and we're losing oil at is being shrunk and we're a logistics center that is it for new job creation so how do I or we get that emphasis brought to b3k equally since we're giving them 80% or 75% of the money yeah council member Freeman a couple of thoughts related to that one um I do sit on the U Leadership Council for b3k as well as the executive steering committee and so um you know direction from Council through me to b3k is is very direct access uh but what b3k is working on uh I think your um assessment of what has been the biggest wins for b3k over the last year absolutely we're in Aerospace that's that's accurate but b3k does have a focus on several other Target sectors and so um Advanced manufacturing right here in the metropolitan area is an emphasis for b3k what they're calling um Advanced uh Business Services is a focus for b3k meaning uh that we um these are uh for example uh accounts payable or IT services or HR services that could be done remotely that you know other large corporations we're finding in some of the large metropolitan areas don't want to pay the high rents and the high wages for some of those areas and so they're looking to sort of off not offshore out of the country but offshore out of those cities into places like Bakersville that's an emphasis for b3k the logistics um uh is um less so as a straight emphasis but about Advanced Logistics again and those uh higher um uh technical positions and Logistics is a focus for b3k as well as energy diversification is a huge Focus for b3k so what I would suggest to the council is that while we haven't made huge progress in those other sectors it's absolutely the mission of b3k we have received numerous grants um related to Aerospace but we did also through some of our efforts of the the overall b3k Coalition received grants related to energy diversification there's been some grants to help with um carbon management um and some other energy projects so what we really need to do is continue to push hard to make sure that b3k makes advancements in these Target sectors that are more relevant to Bakersfield it is my assessment and belief that we will do that we've been working hard in those spaces we just haven't seen those winds yet one example is the technology park um that we've talked about um the uh CSUB did receive the $83 million allocation to create their energy Innovation Center that would then be a complement to the tech park there in West Bakersfield and then also looking at Advanced Manufacturing Park in East Bakersfield along the Brundage Lane Corridor so um the work of b3k continues in those important areas we just need to get to those wings um well you're our representative there so you have to advocate for us and I'm not saying that the people on the born are good people and aren't advocating for us some of them are really more in the county than they are here uh but I need Assurance from you and I'd like us to sort of get a quarter ly report on what are they doing for us if we're that's a large allocation compared to you know we're given very little to anybody else if we're give them 250,000 a year um I would really want your assurance that you'll be telling us and advocating for stuff here and some pragmatic stuff and not to exclude our Logistics and industries that we have um everything doesn't always happen in the county uh so okay that's one caveat I need that Assurance um oh the other thing within this budget are all of the parks we you know I'm the guy who brings this up every time are all the parks that we have collected the majority of the fees for Budget to be under construction within the next fiscal year in this budget they are not and well we're putting a lot of money towards other things those are legal and moral obligations to the people living in the houses staring at a dirt field and they paid their money um I know I'm the guy who complains about this what do we have to do to get at least the ones sort of if they paid the majority the fees why aren't we building their Parks this year other than if you say well we started engineering design I think we talked about one a while ago why aren't we doing it I mean why are it isn't that much money in the 600 and it's like what that' be a first priority before we did any other kind of a park we would do the ones that the people already put their money in so what do what do I need to do or what do the council need to do to get these the ones where they've already paid not the one that only collected 25% but the ones where the majority have paid their fees or they bought their house which had a big massive you know 5 6,000 bucks in that house is for the fee for the park in front of their home what do we do to get the parks built so a couple different things first our Parks Master Plan update um has been in process which we've asked the team to come back to council with recommendations for how to get those Parks done that's scheduled for July 24th we're going to also come on that council meeting and provide that presentation to you um my belief and uh we can we'll verify this you know between now and July 24th is that excuse me the the number of parks where you know 70 80% of fees have been collected is actually a small number of parks we have 11 undeveloped parks that we did make a commitment to build but for many of those we have collected less than 50% of the total let's say there's three yeah so why why can't we be reserving enough Mage to meet Our obligation to those people um I mean we we put estimated amounts for things we haven't bid yet in our budgets all day long we we we say hey given what we've got what Rook says a cost per square foot hey here's approx how much it's going to cost if we got to chip in put it in the budget we don't have a final engineering and bids on it anyway but we budget for things in advance with estimates and I'd sure like to see those three Parks put in that we can certainly get them engineering started before the end of the next fiscal year so I would agree with you that we do budget that way absolutely I agree with you that I think we could get the engineering and design you know and potentially even Construction in the works in this next fiscal year I think a couple of the big decisions that we're pending trying to get this back to council where that uh our and and you've talked a lot about this with this no no surprise to you that our ability to build a 10 acre park or a full 5 acre park with the fees that were collected is going to be hindered you know we the fees have been fairly flat for a lot of years some of these were collected you know before the pandemic when you know inflationary cost not interrup but we've had this discussion three times at Council we know that right we we absolutely know that we might have collected half we were remissed for five or six years not bringing the subject up whatever um I'm just saying we should be putting in this budget a plug figure on our best estimate because we're going to fund the difference whether it ends up being an 8 acre Park a s acre Park a 10 that we put a number in there so that it's so that there is some money there once you decide how big or how will cost it here that Park but we've you know we can make an educated guest I don't know if it's an extra million on each of three Parks but it's the number it's in there and we you know that way it's been budgeted so when the time comes you can actually fulfill Our obligation to these people and start construction even if it happens in the last quarter of next year but at least sometimes the next fiscal year we at least break ground on if if it's three parks that we have you know basically the subdivision is finished there is nothing we can do to get that in the budget I I think at this point we have probably two options and I'll acknowledge I think I think a fair suggestion that you're making council member um we didn't do it in the proposed budget and so we would have to identify something else to to back out of the budget to do that right this minute the next option would be that we identify really how much we think that that would cost you know to do those Parks um when we come back on July 24th and then identify ify at some point during the year another appropriation I mean another time could be midyear if we have yearend fund balance as we close the books and identify hey we've got2 or3 million of fund balance that that could go towards those Parks then we could plug that in um um after we close the books but to do it right now we'd have to back something out okay then if if you will agree that the first monies from the the extra fund balance you know the stuff we really didn't spend that we budgeted that always cushions our cash Reserve at the beginning of the year that can be it can be 10 million it can be substantial that at least we take the first monies from that which will be like found money and we apply it towards whether it's two or three you you tell me the parks that really should should have already been started and we put those in the budget at the whatever in the revision with these monies when we revise the budget to reflect those extra at least we take the first whether it is three million bucks and uh we pass this budget like it is but but that we agree that when those found monies turn up we will Reserve those to start these parks that at least two or three of them ought to get engineered and designed and get them done by the end of the year Mr Cay if you just would wait one minute so our guests can leave it number of them are trying to leave tired of hearing our discussion but I'm I'm going to keep bringing it up for anybody else who feels like they want to leave this would be the appropriate time so that we can continue I'm coming back well if nobody's here from those neighborhoods tonight are they okay I'm I'm done with my comments after this just I just need a satisfactory answer here you know what all we gotta do is let council member Bruce speak for a while we'll clear the chambers so council member uh I am comfortable with that recommendation I think respectfully that's probably a council decision um I'm comfortable to say I I would Rec commend that back to the council but if if there's I guess you know as Council as the appropriating body you decide you know how to you know appropriate and spend those funds if if there's uh I would sort of call a little bit the question if there's you know comments from colleagues who might want to you know comment on that at this time that would help staff know how to you know bring that recommendation back for a future appropriation but um I am I I'm comfortable with that recommendation but I would just suggest again it's a it's a council decision is that simply a separate motion and don't make it part of the budget approval he's asking one suggestion I could make is that we we received a referral already earlier tonight to um cons consider another item you know um at next year's budget we also received another referral you know earlier tonight to look at another item at midye and so it it could be a separate motion or it could be a referral to staff to bring back that recommendation after we identify our you know fund balance okay I'll just to keep the budget clean I'll I'll make a referral I'll make that a referral to bring this back when you know once we determine the the U the cushion that we had going into the fiscal year uh for reconsideration okay that's my motion oh that's my Direction that's my referral thank you counc staff I don't think it needs to be to a committee I agree we can bring it straight back to council all right thank you council member arus thank you mayor I I'll keep my comment short um just just one comment about the process for the budget this year and and really you know also applicable to uh the midyear budget as well um I think we could do a little bit better or at least I would like to ask that we do a better job at educating this Council on uh what sorts of capital projects uh you know are in the hopper um you know there's just so many across the board and across departments that it's it makes it really challenging to uh figure out you know what what what's coming down the pipeline you know what what's you know coming up next year uh you know is is there an opportunity to you know make an acquisition for uh some parks that uh need to go in um as opposed to you know the regional park at MLK I just think across the board it would be really helpful uh for us to you know take a deep dive at you know what's what's on the docket if I may coun very happy to do that just clarifying when you say in the hopper that's I'm I think I'm hearing you say not just what's in the proposed CIP but those that are that just didn't maybe quite make the cut to be in the CIP the next ones down the list in the CIP exactly exactly and then also to uh because there there are uh you know projects that uh you know we will fund utilizing local dollars psvs general fund Etc uh but then also those others that maybe hey we're going to get a project into design so that we can go after this major Grant opportunity um you know all all of that would be super helpful as part of the uh budget conversation thank you council member gray well this is kind of a you all kind of given me a good segue because we're trying we're talking about budget and where we can find money to do some of these things and I wasn't going to bring this up after our very tear jerking uh testimonies tonight on the eviction I thought no this is not the time to talk about this right now but now that we've gone into this other conversation um I had brought up two weeks ago uh about the 40 49 million dollars being spent on complete streets and um the next day I believe it was there was a big article in the in the Californian on that that was published June 12th um I would just want to tell you first of all I appreciate the breakdown because when that $49 million was just sitting there we're going to spend it on complete streets we had no breakdown that's where I think we could get better before this um budget you know next year so that people really understand when you just throw $49 million out there and you don't really know what it is it helped to get that that breakdown and I do want to say that all the capital Improvement programs um were are listed in the um the budget that you guys gave us so I appreciated that um so in looking at that um the majority of the money was money that needed to be spent ie appreciated you told us where that money was coming from and so forth and 77% of the complete Street budget was on sidewalks which I very pleased pavement resurfacing storm water management and Street lighting that made up 77% of it and again I just want to reiterate those kind of details need to come be to us way before we're going to be voting on a budget so that's what I didn't feel good about last week in fact I was going to vote against the budget if I didn't get the information that I needed so thank you for sending that um however though um it was reported in that same article on June 12th that um City officials were reviewing the eventual roll out of the active Transportation plan this is where when we're talking about money need to be found I just hear me out on this guys that has made me a bit nervous in that article it said that all future projects programs and policies aimed to make it safer and quicker to travel without a car when I read that I thought wow what an oxymoron we're going to travel quicker without a car I don't think pushing a stroller um being in a wheelchair or riding a bike is going to be traveling quicker without a car so that that was kind of odd to me and so and then another quote it said the aim of the plan is to offer easier access to alternative mode of transportation bike foot wheelchair scooter stroller skateboard to name a few I'm quoting again in the newspaper um this is all coming from staff and so forth I'm reading that and I'm thinking aren't sidewalks meant for pedestrians wheelchairs strollers scooter scooters and skateboards roads are meant for cars not scooters skateboards and pedestrians so that really puzzled me and when I brought this up two weeks ago I had a a barrage of comments coming after me because I said that people in fact I talked to two today um in my constituents in my business that said what is going on Patty with these narrowing of roads and so forth I'm kind of getting ahead of myself but anyway two more people today so on June 16th it was reported and quoted to say but we are trying to change habits so we can reduce the amount of people who are literally dying on our roadways change habits I'm thinking okay change habits move around more quickly without a car is stated in the June 12th Article puzzled again by that statement when we are a sprawled City we need cars and and very respectfully because I respect the fact and council member Smith is in such great shape because of it physically but he's the only one that I know of in this whole room that rides a bike to work every day the rest of us drive cars roads are meant for cars so change habits who's going to change their habit is anybody else in this room tonight willing to change your habit and start riding your bike to work I kind of doubt it I'm not going to be able to do that when I'm 80 years old you know it's hard be hard for me now I guess maybe if I had electric bike so then June the 23rd and I'm having to take you through this because I I need with a barrage of um comments that I got afterwards Act as though I'm this horrible person because I'm not worried about people dying on our roadways or pedestrians are riding a bike yes I am but let's get this all into perspective so in June on June 23rd the headline was nearly every pedestrian killed last year was found at fault why well according to BPD and I assume they'd be the authority on these matters of 28 pedestrians killed last year 20 were found to be at fault that mirrors the California Highway Patrol numbers which overseas State routs and highways concluding pedestrians have caused nearly half of recorded crashes this year end quote I didn't pull that out it was in the same article traffic Commander Mitch galland a 26-year veteran on the force stated that people crossing mid block can be the deciding factor in blame it's the majority of excuse me of the time by far Mr Gallon also stated he believes the city streets are a volatile mix of hay drivers darting pedestrians and diverging cyclists that together routinely flout the rules of the road when asked about complete streets program he was skeptical one could have all one could have all the crosswalks barriers and partitions in the world there's no simple solution for stop stoping pedestrians or cyclists from shirking the rules and getting hit if we build the bike lanes and they don't use them then what council member Smith I know you're following the rules and I know you're using the bike Lanes properly most people are not so he goes on to explain that law enforcement has the inability now not to be able to enforce or punish jaywalkers because of Governor nome's known assembly bill as freedom to walk act I thought well that's a really interesting title for uh Jay Walkers now they have the freedom to walk act wherever they want to go so you'll never change people's habits to reduce the amount of people who literally dying on a roadways no matter how much traffic calming you do when people are not following the roads and then a consultant and this is why I'm bringing this up now because this ties into the ation we've been having a consultant with kimley horn Mr darl Phillips said in the same article June 23rd so I'm not going to lie this is going to be an expensive plan to implement active Transportation um plan he says it's going to be a expensive plan to implement there are a lot of big Investments I believe that are needed that we've talked about on this Das tonight we have got a lot of stuff facing Us in this city and we're talking about this expensive plan to to put this together I don't get it I don't get it I just don't get it so all the information from these experts is exactly why I'm again spending millions of taxpayer dollars on narrowing the streets jamming up traffic when the roads were meant for cars it is these types of policies that are a waste of hard-earned taxpayer dollars that are driving our constituents right out of our city good taxpaying people we meet them every week in our business that are leaving the country they want to remodel their bathroom or kitchen so they can sell their house and leave I'm out the country and leave the state into other states like Texas Tennessee Florida Idaho so I do not believe as a city we can afford to throw money away when there are so many other ways to spend our dollars as in towards our neighborhood sta stabilization programs our parks that people have already been talking about tonight we heard testimony after testimony tonight I mean two out of seven of us visibly showed their heart and their tears for the people that coming forward and I was holding my back so so I'm saying to all of you and and council member Freeman he was quoted in that same article as saying it's going to be like a cold shower dealing with budgets as all the subsidies dry up one day so I would ask the staff to reconsider the high cost of your active Transportation plan that is going to cost millions of dollars into the future for this city when we have basic needs basic things that need to be taken care of and we're thinking about some of these crazy ideas and we may get in so deep into that thing that we cannot deliver on the promise so that's my comments tonight thank you council member Smith thank you mayor I just obviously need to respond to a few comments um roads are meant for car roads are meant for people roads are meant for the public you said to yourself sidewalks are okay well sidewalks are a big part of it street lights are okay well street lights are a big part of it a complete Street isn't when we first build 24t of Paving and it's only Built for cars a complete Street includes sidewalks it includes drainage which was another 20% of the 49 million so I don't know you like street lights I mean that cuts down on crime it it makes streets safer for everybody you like sidewalks that makes things okay everybody likes storm drain flooded streets are unsafe for everybody if it's the 2% that's going for the bike lane I'm sorry you know that's just 2% 2% for the bike L that's too much I you know I'm with you let those people should die but the you know people driving cars 10,000 red light stops and stop sign citations we gave last time I could get in a year 10,000 people driving cars 31 people died in cars without any pedestrians or bicycles involved we need to build our streets differently that's what we're talking about we need to make our streets safer for everybody that's what we're talking about thank you council member core thank you mayor I I just want to Echo council member Smith's sentiment roads are for people the city is for people the parks are for people and if we just yesterday a devastating accident happened where a pedestrian we don't even know we don't even have the report back from our authorities who have been doing the investigation it didn't feel urgent enough for us to have a report back to know what exactly happened and how someone yet again lost their life just using the crosswalk if if we can talk about $2 million being if if we can say something and go as far as saying $2 million is a huge amount of money when we are still reading headlines about someone who lost their life and residents have been reaching out to so many of us who were literally trapped at nearby gas stations because of the investigation going on and who were looking at a pedestrian The Pedestrian the cyclist their body is in the road this is on Stockdale Highway and I know we have a lot of conversations about where uh these accidents are happening and pedestrians being at fa let's not remove the fact that the geography of that is always kind of an undertone as to how we're placing value on people and who's in the streets and why they're walking and why they're cycling in the first place this is also a class conversation to be had but when uh when it's also in uh in every part of town it's in every District it's in every W um I guess we're also failing to talk about the parts of this same article when residents also uh shared their own personal experiences of just walking there was a list a grocery store list of items that somebody was going to the store to just obtain and uh didn't even feel safe enough to do that there was a young woman talking about her grandfather who cycled and we're talking about if anybody in this room is going to cycle back and forth to work uh this is not the this is not representative of our whole city or the the residents or the population we saw people leave who had other commitments uh who have to go take care of their children feed their children who have to go get up and go to work today uh who can't even watch us uh pass the budget because because of the time that it's taking we're also talking about the people who can't make it here today it it is the elderly it is the children who should be able to safely cycle to work council member Smith is one of the best examples and who is so inviting and encouraging of how to practice uh cycling safety but for a child child who should be able to cycle to school safely who uh should be able to walk to school safely how are we thinking about them in this equation cuz I have had children lose their lives to speeding vehicles in my ward so I can speak to that and families who are still grieving to that and I know I'm not unique to in that experience uh the elderly man mentioned the article that was also in my ward that is an elderly man who Cycles to the park every single day who Cycles to his place of worship every single day and has the same route was it his fault that there wasn't a bike lane on the right side of the road um no that is an infrastructure issue that is an infrastructure Gap and that is our fault that is our responsibility in order for someone who is not able-bodied who uh is is is chooses to cycle but also uh a vehicle is not their primary mode of transportation for whatever reason for age and they are over 80 and they are staying active so why are we preventing them from having that ability to also uh engage in whatever form of Mobility that they seek he was hit by a car and it wasn't even a speeding car somebody was turning right at a stop sign and he was hit and his blood was splattered in the road um that is traumatic he now has moved back to India because of how unsafe he feels that is mentioned in the article so I think we also need to look at the full picture of this of what it is forcing our residents what decisions they're making our local news agencies are reporting of how many unsafe accidents we have had how many fatal accidents we have had how it is only increasing we we get the uh the press releases from the BPD every day and almost every day you can expect a fatality of a pedestrian or an accident that involves a pedestrian or a cyclist so if we cannot take the responsibility and invest funds there there are many competing priorities clearly for our city but I don't think we can reduce or deny the fact that this is not a meaningful investment this is something that is causing people to lose their lives people are dying in our streets as council member Smith has said this is like any other crime this is like anything else should be taken with just as much seriousness and I just it's shocking that we have this conversation so often all it takes is reading some of our local news media to know what the State of Affairs are in our city vice mayor um I know folks want to go home but this uh comment by council member gray deserves the response yes roads are for people someone just died in the crosswalk on stock Delon Allen last night three people people have died in the last week in Kern County people trying to get around people on bicycle people walking people using Walkers people using wheelchairs having a car is a luxury not everyone can afford to have a car how do they get around safely how do they get around how do they travel to work how do they travel to school how do they travel back home how do they go to the grocery store SA safely they have to cross the street somewhere and what we're proposing is that we create infrastructure that it's safe for all users there's three ways to look at this issue we can number one we can blame the behavior number two we can blame the lack of Education enforcement which in the article we saw some folks do and number three we can address the root causes related to design of roadways so let's talk about Behavior we often talk only about pedest Behavior those who are walking and bicycling but never we never have any regard for those who are driving vehicles and their behaviors when we know and we hear from constituents that people are driving too damn fast in our neighborhoods that we know that people are more distracted than ever using smartphones and smart devices we know that people are buying bigger heavier Vehicles which are deadly here and so the combination of factors of bigger vehicles moving uh moving Faster by drivers who aren't looking at the roadway is a deadly mix deadly com combination but those are behaviors we never often talk about and there is a study that just came out from Smart growth America called Dangerous by Design 2024 bakersfi Mr CL what is Bakersville ranked in the nation in terms of population number 57 we are 47 47 okay thank you number 47 you know where we rank in terms of uh pedestrian fatalities ranked per 100,000 people any guys no number four number four 3.99 people have died per 100,000 from 2018 to 2022 we ranked number number four in the country San Francisco San Francisco because often times people like to blame this on those who aren't in housed which is unfair when we take a look at homelessness San Francisco Rags number one in the country in terms of homelessness 959 people per 100,000 you know where they rank in terms of dangerous roadways and pedestrian fatalities number 63 there are cities who have actually fixed this problem um the city of Jersey City New Jersey I met the woman who's actually ahead of Transportation just a few weeks ago before 2022 the 10 years PRI of that 20 2012 to 2022 they had over 100 people die on their streets walking and bicycling in 2022 they were able to bring that number to zero how did they do it it was by design by rethinking how they designed their roadways and so roads are for people and we have to accommodate all users of our roadways so that we can meet the needs of our constituents particularly given the fact that we are number four in the country when it comes to pedestrian fatalities I am so tired of watching the news and seeing another pedestrian Fatality and mourning the loss of an individual who has died on our roadways when we could have slow traffic down by a design council member gray I'm finished with my comments thank you thank you well I will say this be I do want to reiterate the fact that where these artifacts are coming from came right out of our Traffic Division in Bakersfield so I do they are the authority and I think the facts speak for themselves you have a motion please catch your votes motion is approved with council member we absent thank you next item please Council and mayor statements I don't see any request to speak yet council member Smith thank you mayor I just uh tonight we voted to approve a bicycle and pedestrian facility that I have been working on since I got on the council 12 years ago and I just wanted to thank staff for continuing to work on it it was not easy and it took a long time and a lot of agencies and a lot of people and and now we're going to actually construct it and cobbled up the money from a lot of different places it's a great expansion of our existing Kern River Parkway that is east west and it it will run five miles north from about coffee and the existing bike path and go all the way to City boundary at seven standard Road and we'll serve that northern part of the community well so thank you staff and uh look forward to writing on it thank you thank you council member Smith council member core thank you mayor very exciting news council member Smith congratulations ations it's a long 12 years of fighting um today we passed our budget for the 2024 2025 fiscal year uh we are the ninth largest city in the state of California and I think that's uh a long hard uh kind of planning process so I just wanted to thank staff for working so diligently and taking all of our ideas and and and working um you know your your very best to have seven competing priorities uh as well as everything you hear from the community and um I know there's clearly as we've discussed even today there's a lot of work yet to do um but we've created some meaningful community- based programs and it's always so encouraging to see when community- based organizations or individuals bring forward ideas that allow for us as a city governance to to be able to partner and and create something meaningful so I want to thank everyone for uh for working towards that and um just a little shout out we have um one of our local journalists who is leaving our great city of B of Bakersfield John uh John you've done such a great job reporting on the city and uh local journalism is incredibly meaningful and it's something I cherish it's something I've always cherished no matter which city I've lived in um but the Bakers Californian H holds a really special place in my heart my mom made sure we read the Californian every single morning before school it was our routine we all sat on the countertop and we passed the different slips of the Californian around um and that was our routine that was our every morning so you spent meaningful time here we hope you'll visit and we'll hope you return um thank you for reporting on our city and and doing Justice to a lot of meaningful causes including the article on um just asking a lot of important questions around pedestrian bicycle and road safety um I know that is something folks are going to sit with for a long time and as the conversation kind of alludes to today hope it brings some meaningful change and you had a big part to do with that so I will always cherish and appreciate local journalism so thank you for contributing to that as well so we'll miss you the city of Bakers so thanks you thank you council member core council member arus thank you mayor also want to Echo those same sentiments to Johan thank you so much for your your fair reporting um and uh just want to commend you uh there were many uh rather chaotic moments in this these very Chambers and uh John you were there through all of it um whether you liked it or not and we appreciate that and uh just wish you well on your journey uh forward and uh know that you'll always have a place here in in Bakersfield um with that I also want to acknowledge the fact that we will have someone else departing um the city of Bakersfield uh Mr Chris Bole um was just informed that tonight may be his very last night um here with us at a council meeting um and I just want to say thank you Chris for everything that you've done for the city of Bakersfield uh we know it hasn't been easy um I'll I'll I'll recall the very first meeting that I had with Chris uh in his office uh he said I have one request of you uh council member and I go well what is that and they asked from Chris was that you always come to me and get my side of the story um and uh I I hope that I've held true to that commitment um and I just want to say thank you uh for all of the tremendous work that you've done um and has have started with the general plan um an outrageously High Arena number uh working closely with developers in W one uh to make you know things happen when it comes to Housing Development commercial devel and um you know we wish you could be here as we uh hopefully eventually approve the habitat conservation plan uh you're more than welcome to join us in the audience as we make that happen but just want to say thank you and uh I know that you've left your department uh in good hands and uh the city of Bakers feels better because of you so thank you I don't see any other requests happy fourth uh have a safe fourth and we stand adjourned at 7:53 than [Music] [Music]