[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [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 good afternoon it's my pleasure to call to order the 3:30 regular city council meeting of January 22nd 2025 Madam clerk please call the role you welcome to all of you in keeping with council's resolution public statements are now received at different times depending on the item I will call on the city clerk to call for the public statements at the appropriate time so please listen carefully if you wish to make a 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 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 the appropriate time if public statements become disruptive and I've de 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 hear adhere to the rules of decorum established by resolution of the city council failure to abide by the city's rules of decorum including any disruptive behavior that interferes with our ability to have an orderly and efficient meeting prevents the city council from conducting the business of the city consider this a first warning to everyone in attendance that conduct disrupts the 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 in surpassing the 2-minute time limit Madam clerk do we have any public speakers regarding items not listed on the agenda mayor go we have not received any speaker cards for items not listed on tonight's agenda how about public speakers regarding items listed on this afternoon's agenda mayor go all the speaker cards we received are regarding item 3A thank you and so now uh we're going to take that after we hear from staff uh Madam clerk next item please reports item 3A resolution adopting the active Transportation plan Mr CL thank you mayor and Council we'll have a brief presentation on this topic just to set some context um our actor Transportation plan is a uh state required report document um that helps paint a a big picture along range for some of our active Transportation projects I would note that it's not necessarily all inclusive of all of our multimodal or Transportation projects but again a good exercise that we're required to go through every couple of years and so um Mr Meyer from public works and our guests from kimley horn will walk through a Pres presentation for you about what this ex active Transportation plan represents sometimes this is actually a consent item but given the prioritization of Council on this topic we wanted to put it before you as a brief report just to give a sense of where we're headed on this Mr Meyer thank you honorable mayor city council I'd like to invite Daryl deonier um from kley horn and Associates he will be walking us through the presentation regarding the act of transport plan welcome great thank you Council pleased to be here so uh we're just going to walk through a little bit of what the active Transportation plan is and what we have come up with as part of this plan and what that means for the city moving forward so basically the active Transportation plan the objective is to find the best opportunities to improve walking and biking activities in the city as you probably are all aware Bakersfield doesn't necessarily have the best active Transportation environment right now there's a lot of pedestrian and bicycle injuries that occur on your city streets so that's one of the things we're trying to address just identifying where in the city we might have the best opportunities to move that so as we've gone through it we've had lots of input from the community and stakeholders throughout the city we had a fairly lengthy process where we had the plan published online for anybody to review and comment on and we received quite a few comments while we were up there we had the blue zones consultant review the plan as well um comparing that to best practices Statewide and responded to their comments and ultimately the idea is just to prioritize improvements that will make it easier for people to walk and bike around the city so as part of this effort we did take quite a long look at several of the existing plans in place we weren't starting just from a blank slate so we have the circulation element that the city maintains the county and Kern Cog both have active Transportation plans around the city that we wanted to make sure we were integrating with uh there is also uh the existing safety plan that the city City maintains uh the downtown tesing plan and several others as they go on here so we Tred to integrate findings from all of those not replacing those plans or duplicating them but trying to complement what's in those already one of our signature public engagement events was our active Transportation Festival in Summit we had over 500 members of the public participate in this event they got to uh provide a lot of commentary on what priorities they would like to see in the city we had fun events for the children we had the families come out and we also had a summit at that time where we had a presentation introducing what the plan was intended to do and what we were looking for from the public as part of the process and giving them the invitation to be participants in the plan as we continued moving forward so one of the key outcomes of this plan is the proposed Trail Network and local connections none of these are have been through any environmental review their very high level concept but we wanted to show what it would look like to have a network of connectivity across the city so the map on the left shows those that trail system that would provide the connections into the Kern River Trail the Kern fry Trail and just making sure all the neighborhoods have access into that system the map on the right shows those local connections between that trail system and Parks schools other things and this map was B built very much based on the existing plans already out there all we did was realign them a little bit to make sure they were talking to each other so we were keeping everything aligned so that it was a true system in terms of the trail system we ran it all through a fairly complex prioritization system so we're looking at how many people the trail would serve how many existing traffic crashes and injuries were occurring in the area uh if there was low income or minority populations that would be better served with this proximity to parks and schools and the five highest ranking Trails were listed here as the ones that the city might consider as their top priority moving forward and would probably score the best if the city was to go to competitive Grant applications for funding to develop these uh we looked a lot at potential funding sources so uh I'm sure if anybody's looked through the plan they've seen that to build the whole thing out is a fairly large number uh the intention is this is a very very long range plan you're looking at a and those projects are going to evolve as needs change in the city over time but the city probably wouldn't want to be footing that bill by itself so there's a lot of different programs and funding opportunities out there that could be leveraged to help build this including your maintenance programs just restriping things as you're already repaving uh when you have developer impact fees you could have these projects on there to give developers more opportunities to buy down some of their SQL obligations things like that BMT mitigation fees would function similarly special assessment districts could be an option for certain types of trails but probably the most important one is grant funding the state and federal government both have a lot of programs out there that uh Bakers field would score very well to compete for uh this is a big list of different grant funding programs that are available now uh that'll change again over time we all know the federal Administration has just changed so we're going to see new programs come some old ones Sunset but there will continue to be opportunities moving forward and there's a lot of them some of the most immediate grant opportunities coming up would be the next cycle of the ATP program we know this recent cycle uh was pretty underfunded so calr is hoping to have a few more uh a a little bit of a boost on that next time around HP the next uh safety program coming out safe routs and Roads Safe Streets and roads for all which the city is actually already funded to do uh a subsequent plan to this uh will be an opportunity to get some actual connection funds and then reconnecting communities is another one that really is a great opportunity for trails and things like that the project program uh if you look at this grid you don't have to be able to read everything that's on there but the whole idea is there each of the different types of projects that are included in this ATP is showing you which Grant programs are likely to be able to fund that particular type of opportunity and just really trying to show how many X's there are on that there's a lot of different funding agencies funding programs out there and uh we want to keep it moving forward so some of the key features just to summarize what's in the thing we have 19 proposed Trails which would create 128 total miles of active Transportation connectivity through the city it's a mixture of the class one which are the completely separated Trails class two which are the bike Lanes on the side of the road class three which are Lowe speed shared use paths and class four which are bike lanes that are physically separated from traffic and then we have various pedestrian access and spot improvements too that's mostly including um connections across the roads and things like that the 616 million investment tag would cover the entire construction of this plan but as mentioned before this is intended to be a very long range plan and that cost has broken into a lot of much smaller projects that the city can pursue incrementally and as things move forward I'm sure those will evolve and then we have 453 additional miles of uh neighborhood connectivity and sidewalk connections that would largely probably be completed under existing maintenance programs and things like that so we wanted to keep this fairly brief and open the floor to any questions or comments thank you Mr deonier we'll go to the public first Madame clerk do we have any public speakers for this item America we've received three public speaker cards the first speaker is yenia Fernandez followed by Michael trup seed followed by Dave dmowski welcome please introduce yourself thank you good afternoon my name is yenia Fernandez I am the policy coordinator with blue zones project Bakersfield and today I'm here on behalf of blue zones project I would like to express our strong support for the proposed active Transportation plan as part of our mission to make the Healthy Choice the Easy Choice we believe that this plan is a crucial step towards creating a community where moving naturally through walking biking and other forms of active Transportation plan are safe and available the proposed active Transportation plan will help incorporate safe and accessible routes for all people of Ages of all ages and abilities and create more Equitable opportunities in the community these are key components in building a resilient and healthier Community for generations to come blue zones project is a strong supporter of the active Transportation plan and is excited to see our community move towards a safer and healthier place to move naturally thank you thank you Mr Fernandez next speaker please Michael turnup seed followed by Dave dmowski welcome good afternoon mayor and members of the Council on your presentation he skipped your your consultant here skipped over the price Bill $616 million over the last five years besid your basic general fund revenues you've received 600 Mill million dollar total for measure measure measure in and uh ARA you averaged about 100 100 million a year on your sales tax and a 97 million in arpa and we drive around and we look around town and we don't see a lot and with what's going on in Sacramento and their budget difficulties especially when they have to rebuild out l and you look what's going on in Washington Madam Mary you were just there it doesn't sound like they're going to increase the spets to local government uh it's nice to put things on paper and pay Consultants to do these plans lots of money but you still got to figure out where it's coming from 10 years ago about 10 years ago we we submitted an off-road triking and Trail Plan called the centx plan it had 40 M over 40 miles of and you'll see I got the handouts here I don't know why she didn't hand them out to you I'm sorry uh and there's a map on the last page and shows where all these Trails would have gone that we proposed it took went all the way from I5 to heart to Lake Ming it started with the Frant Canal before they started doing it 10 years ago and all the lines on Canal Banks and abandoned Rail rideways and it would have cost back then we figured a million dollars a mile so if it's $2 million a mile today you can get 80 off-road non you might have to cross the road to get across like a canals do you have Bridges but it would be 8 $80 million to do 40 miles of trails that are completely off-road and uh we think this is a much better bang for the recreation active person than just striping some more Lanes on the street because most people go out to the bike path bik anyway so we would increase that model and it makes much more economic sense to us thank you for your time thank you Mr turnup seat and the next speaker please welcome good afternoon mayor uh members of the council uh Dave dski representing the Home Builders Association of Kern County uh we of course strongly support your Public Safety goals of the proposed program uh but uh couple of things popped up uh in our uh recent review of the uh document and uh to be honest with you um we we were kind of asleep at the switch I did not see a notice of availability and had not been tracking the activities of your multimodal committee very closely and thought it might appear on the uh planning and development committee staff at some point uh but that that never happened um as far as I know uh but anyway the primary concerns we have and and your consultant mentioned two of them have to do with impact fees and VMT fees so major concern would be the impact on the cost of construction uh we pretty much already lost the entry level uh Workforce housing market uh in Bakersfield because of inflation High interest rates and the cost of Regulatory Compliance uh uh another issue is is how will this program fit into uh your efforts to update the general plan especially your Mobility or circulation element uh your consultant mentioned VMT fees uh jurisdictions up and down the state have adopted some outrageously expensive VMT mitigation fees and and that's another concern that that we have um SQL issues what have you uh are always in the background when any new regulation is adopted uh a lot of clever attorneys in California that know how to work the SQL game uh for Fun and Profit uh and then lastly I think there's a a quality of life issue uh whenever you uh uh approach Transportation Planning with a sort of an approach that creates some plan deficiencies in your circulation system uh I think we have a concern uh that uh when you uh eliminate uh traffic capacity in your collectors and in arterials that it has the potential for for creating traffic congestion uh particularly in the peak hours which in most communities eventually becomes a a quality of life and a political issue so those are our concerns and so we're we're asking for a brief uh Hiatus from your approval process to meet with staff and just kind of review some of the the concerns that our members have and uh thank you for the opportunity to comment thank you for commenting staff uh do you wish to make any comments before we go to council mayor and Council I think we'll wait for Council questions and um before we make further comments okay thank you colleagues Madam clerk are the buttons working I don't see any request to speak at this time council member Smith are you trying to press your button council member Smith the wonders of Technology so we've had a lot of as he showed you know we've over the last 10 12 years we've approved a lot of active Transportation plans and as he stated you know what this does is basically bring all those together and prioritize and help in going to the state for Grant opport OPP unities um I don't think there's any thought that this becomes a developer fee uh this is a way to move forward and make our streets safer as we've talked about multiple times and this was on the multimodal committee I'm not sure if you made it to that meeting or not but we did look at it a couple months ago but as you know the uh safety record for pedestrians and bicyclists is not good in Bakersfield you're much more likely to be killed on the Streets of Bakersfield and uh other places so anything that we can do to make it safer I am for I don't have a problem with continuing it but I don't I believe you're P perceived uh problems aren't really there so I'm you know excited about making Bakersfield a safer place for all users thank you thank you council member Smith council member Coman did you just reach for a button if you hit it twice it cancels you um now you're on uh you're on so yes why don't you go ahead because I saw you try to hit twice and then we'll go to council member Gonzalez thank you this is actually for the consultant did you ever see this uh plan that was done by current tax was that ever shared with you I don't remember seeing that specific plan no we were we were aware of the county the Cog plan and the general plan but we hadn't seen that particular one okay um thank you very much yeah for for me um I like the idea having a having a plan I'm just not sure what we're being asked to do today so maybe you could clarify that yeah thanks council member Coman mayor and Council the active Transportation plan just again for clarity sake it's a two-year cycle we've approved many active Transportation plans in recent years we're continuing through on that same cycle it's a state requirement it's a it's a plan a report that we have to get back to the state in general but also it it it really enhances our eligibility to go after grant funding it's uh really a a big picture uh long range plan about flows and connectivity and I would even argue that you know every line on that map doesn't mean that we're never going to do a project that's not on one of those lines or that we're going to do every project that's on one of those lines it's just to paint a picture of where we're trying to create as much connectivity as possible and so what council is doing is basically saying that this one we're being being compliant with what the state's asking us to do to create that plan and that list it's getting us eligible to apply for numerous grants but also it's a it is council's Big Picture long range plan of saying yes we're going to try and enhance active Transportation connectivity in those corridors you know um at large this is not a budget appropriation we're not adopting a plan that we're going to spend $600 million or any you know even $11 that happens through the annual CIP process of the budget and the council we go after grants typically we fund most of these types of projects about 80 to 90% of those projects are funded by grants and the city typically has a a small match that we have to provide uh and so you're not approving that funding either you're we're just saying that's our plan and estimate of how much those projects are likely to cost but then each year we're going to have to prioritize and say are some of those do we want to get those designed um do do we want to get those in our CIP but both of those choices will be choices specific to the budget process that you'll make at that time um and then each project will come back to the city council for you know action to go into the environmental work and the Outreach work the design work and ultimately the construction projects those are contracts that will come back to the city council for vote so again this is just laying out what our big picture plan is so that we're compliant with the requirements and it sets us up to go after those Grant funds thank you uh for me my my concerns with I I like the idea of having a a vision of what we want to we want to see so I I do like that part of it I I choke a little bit the $616 million but you know I realize that that's a long-term plan and different projects come up but you know and I have talked before about the whole Grant thing and you know there there's no there's no uh you know philanthropic benefactor out there that's an allocation of tax money so you know I think as as Council people we have a duty to be good stewards of even that money that you know we don't necessarily generate here but um I I do have concerned about that but I also have concerns about the impact on development fees because we already have lot of pressure on development fees and it it's mentioned in the report but it's not clear on how much of that falls to development fees do you have a feel for that well thank you council member again mayor and Council where I would start is uh to just reiterate a comment made by Council mayor Smith that this plan does not represent a an assumption that we're going to change impact fees um and it won't and I've heard no one on this Council propose a city specific VMT fee I just don't see those being priorities of the council so I don't see this changing our development impact fees um this answers a question that was raised in public comment um and I think it's connected to your your com your question though is that yes we will look at this information with our circulation element and the general Plan update and and make sure that we're looking at all the information and and being smart about having good planning and ultimately that circulation element will go and you know we'll take a look at um the Nexus between all the roads and highways and active transportation that you know we want to build and what our you know fees are but I don't see this plan having a direct impact on our development impact fees and then uh lastly I would just suggest that uh related to VMT if anything um this is helping to have less VMT miles uh for you know this creates opportunities for folks to have less VMT miles traveled which is you know one of those cost Factor impacts Madam City attorney do you have something to add thank you mayor um of course this is up to the council but if there is no objection to a continuance perhaps we could bring this back on the consent calendar and put more of the language that the city manager has indicated into the actual resolution itself so it's clear that it will not have a direct or any impact on your Tiff um as well as some of the other statements that he indicated so it's a little bit clearer in the resolution if that um offers you any help thank you madam City attorney council member Coman uh go ahead yeah I I'll just wrap up my comments quickly uh thank you for clarifying that because that was going to be my next question about how this works with the circulation plan which is our next big hurdle that we need to have for the general plan so uh I am interested in that and then um if you could share current taxes plan with the consultant to see how that it seems like a lot of that stuff was addressed in his plan some of it may not have been um I don't know if I'm making I'm not really making a motion at this time I think I'm just talking so uh thank you mayor that's the end of my comments thank you council member council member Gonzalez thank you um good evening everyone um a couple of thoughts um as I was listening to someone the questions first and foremost I appreciate council member um Smith um for how he started his comments I think this presentation should have started with a little bit more of some context here uh this is not for me uh some you know feel-good uh Pie in the Sky initiative uh this in fact is an urgent matter that has significant consequences to the health and well-being of all Baker residents [Music] uh smart growth America names us the fourth most dangerous Metro areas for pedestrians car insurance.org states that we're 11th among the 20 deadliest US cities for cyclists every it seems like every month uh we receive a news report of someone dying on our street on our streets because they were walking or they were bicycling in our town this is unacceptable and more must be done not less and we can't uh deny that reality I think there's an assumption though that among some that you know this is only uh an issue for certain parts of the city or certain populations of our community perhaps the unhoused uh but in fact we've seen example after example of uh people being killed all over the city all walks of life so you know I I I really feel strongly that we ought to start the conversation with the reality that we're facing in this city um I want to ask a couple of questions to our consultant if you can come up please thank you so much for the presentation today I appreciate you I have a question about just as we build out uh better infrastructure for bicyclists and pedestrians um you know there's a question out in the community that I hear sometimes about the real value in building out this infrastructure because you know anecdotally some may not see bicyclists bicycling on a bike path or see a lot of folks walking on sidewalks but you know as I understand the issue and look at cities throughout the world um the infrastructure that we build out actually helps induce more activity uh actually creates those opportunities if you build it they will come sort of mentality can you speak to that based on your expertise uh yeah thank you for that question so we we were doing our prioritization process for the trails we actually ran a model from What's called the national Cooperative Highway research program report 552 so the federal level they did a whole bunch of before and after studies for communities where they didn't have infrastructure they built the infrastructure they measured how many people were walking and biking beforehand how many after and came up with a whole set of parameters and and um factors for what those do change so uh that was part of how we C calculated that and we looked at it so when we we also look at uh Big Data Systems so you know anybody with a cell phone on them they that that data is out there so we were able to look at it and see where are people walking and biking in the city so for example rosale Highway one of your highest traffic corridors for bicycles and pedestrians there is you drive down rosevale highway you don't really see that because um people are kind of off in the dirt walking on the side of the road whatever but um it's quite starkly there so when we're talking about things like the 24th Street crossing that's probably one of your highest demand projects in the city but um it is hard to see that when you're just driving down the street because a you're not necessarily thinking about the pedestrians and bicycles that's not what you're looking at you're looking at the cars around you you're looking at the traffic that you're dealing with but a lot of the time you just don't see it either because people are sort of trying to avoid the traffic they're walking off in the in the side but there is definitely some very empirical evidence that when you build those facilities you get significant increases in the amount of traffic and people walking biking yeah that's interesting I really appreciate that and I think it it underscores another point that people already walking and bicycling and lots of different routes that they've created on their own uh and have not been built out and designed and um you know with new uh technology and and data we can actually um you that could actually help us inform uh some of these conversations and decisions that we make in the future which I I appreciate in this plan so thank you so much for that um yeah I think that's it for me thank you uh just one quick question uh for uh Mr CLE um you know the the question related to the you know $600 Million number looks um you know astounding and I know uh in the California tomorrow we'll read that you know there's a $600 million plan that's being considered um but you know I just want to underscore the point that this actually is considered uh as an iterative process that we are looking at this bit by bit and we plan to pursue uh grant funding but also um thanks to the public safety and vital Services initiative and and our enhanced capacity at the city hall uh we've been able to actually be become very successful at uh new grant opportunities is that not right and can you can you actually quantify how successful we have been with with those state and federal grants yeah I think of council M Gonzalez mayor and Council uh yes uh we adopt our CIP examples of fiveyear capital Improvement project program which is hundreds of millions of dollars our Parks master plan recently that was a question mark too of you know that looked like a a big dollar amount you know these are planning documents to help us think forward and think about how do we you know um accomplish some of these goals but knowing that it's you know it has to be within our resources at least of what the city spends on the projects but also to go after those grants and so just to put things a little bit into perspective um as I you know work towards the specific Grant um question that you asked but you know this last year we spent more than a 100 million ion Dollar on uh road infrastructure and some of that was Street repaving some of that was you know Street resurfacing uh some of that though was active Transportation so I'm I'm going a little bit um um off of memory but we could come back and quantify this but there was at least $20 million of active Transportation projects in last year's you know budget alone and so um those aren't numbers that are unattainable um but also there are numbers that we do have to work at on annual basis you know we not we're not trying to eat that elephant all in one bite um but as an example to your question about um grants uh in the last uh two years the city has received $150 million in competitive grants it does not include the carage money which is about $50 million or the arpa money which is $90 million but $150 million in competitive Grant Awards uh We've hired uh Grant Riders and lobbyists and we've gotten more active on our end and we have the psvs dollars that can serve as Grant match and so we you know um in any given year the U psvs budget allocation about $100 million and tax revenues and so we feel like we've offered a great return on that investment by bringing back to the community um uh not quite a doubling of that but almost um a doubling of uh the that same Revenue in Grant revenues that we we received in the last two years thank you I appreciate that and finally I just want to make one last comment comment in that um one of the top issues probably one of the top three issues I hear from my constituents in War I uh for the last I don't know four or five years has been related to Traffic Safety uh making neighborhoods making our city more walkable and bikable and so I'm looking forward to adopting this plan thank you thank you council member council member Smith yes thank you I I think I'm going to go ahead and make a motion to approve the plan I I know that it's not a a fee program and I know that it's a planning document but I also know that Transportation safety Traffic Safety is the highest priority ever since I've been on the council like councilman Gonzalez mentioned you know my what I hear from constituents is people drive too damn fast and the streets are not safe and the more that we can do to move forward and making our streets safer for everybody uh the better we're doing the better job we're doing for our constituents so I I move to adopt the plan thank you thank you council member Smith uh other council members who wish to comment not sure how okay just press it one time council member Coleman thank you can can I talk to the consultant again please in in my effort to really understand the complete streets program that Council adopted uh I I talked to City Staff last week about this matter and uh the thing that you mentioned you mentioned some studies that show this uh that these kind of plans you know improve safety and those kind of things but what I was reading is a lot of those studies were really old and so do you have a current study that shows that so there it's a continuing body of research that happens over time so all those parameters I was mentioning do get updated periodically and they're calibrated by each state so for example the one that we used here we use specific Bakers field numbers so we go through we understand how many people are actually biking and walking in this city so we're not trying to compare to Washington DC or San Francisco we're looking at Bakersfield itself and what you have out there now and then we Ed some factors from those that research to uh give estimates here so um I can't say that there's a single study with a specific date that this goes by but it does it does update periodically so it's been an ongoing body of research probably for the last 20 years's C who's counting who's riding bikes and who's like you have people out there doing surveys or I don't know where you're getting that that data that you're using so it's a variety of sources there's the US Census so every every year they do a survey asking people how they go to work and how many people are biking how many people are walking so that's one of the inputs we have the cell phone tracking data that we use to look at see what's uh going on just in terms of the activity that's being tracked that way through the state and then there's the um there is some counts that happen too so when the city does traffic counts they also count the pedestrians and the bicyclists that are going through there and we look at all those bits of information also because I was looking at a study 2019 meta analysis in transportation review found that bike Lan additions increase cycling only in areas with preexisting robust robust cycling in other areas impact was negligible are you familiar with that study and do you have a comment on it absolutely and we factored that into this plan so you'll notice when you look at the trail system there's very little of that class 2 bike lane um not only what you're talking about but they can actually have a negative safety impact as well so if you just put a painted bike lane with 6 feet wide on a 50 mph roadway that's not a good idea that's not going to improve safety that's not going to bring a lot of new people out you're just going to get the same hardened bike riders that you had before and and half of them are just going to ride with traffic anyway because they don't want to deal with the dirt and gravel in the lane so when we're talking about class 2 bike Lanes on this and we have a whole bunch of different um contexts in the city we looked at all the different roadway types the city has the different um roadway standards that the city has and what type of bike facilities we can accommodate in each one but we really made great pains to avoid having those class two bike Lanes on those high-speed narrow roadways they just don't fit because exactly what you're talking about they're just not very effective they they don't really solve the problems I'm sorry thank you thank you I have no further questions May thank you thank you council members anything further all right uh council member B your Tash were you trying to I was before we striped the the lanes that we've done over the last year was that data research those class two bike lines that he just said were a bad idea I mean was that was that just man yes it was included in our Concepts around that and again uh I think he's referencing some of those larger arterials and we've uh actually looked at some demonstration projects on those larger arterials that actually have better buffers so that there isn't just striping and we've actually focused a lot of our striping on arterials that make a lot of sense as but in large part we're also looking at uh wherever we're doing repaving uh so that we can get a bigger bank for our buck to do the striping at the same time we doing repaving thank you and now vice mayor thank you mayor um You' mentioned there's a uh timeline that we are uh that's this report is due to the state by can you share what that timeline looks like yeah thank you vice mayor mayor and councel uh there the timeline is actually a little more flexible than some others that the state gives us and so I will acknowledge that uh a continuance doesn't uh put us at a particular Jeopardy um we want to be ahead of the next funding cycle which is you know several months out so we we do have some time but also I would just reflect that some of the feedback that we've received uh clearly has been noted and that staff is very happy to reach out with our stakeholders and walk through uh the rationale behind you know what the plan is and what it isn't and and as well as you know incorporate their feedback into how we pursue these projects specifically because again these are Big Picture plans that we're going to have to put into very specific project you know prioritizations and proposals and we're happy to do some of that follow-up but also uh it it won't it wouldn't um put us at Jeopardy for a slight delay thank you um I I appreciate that as well I think that's a great idea and I think the many kind of opportunities we've had to engage with what active Transportation even means sometimes it's around terminology sometimes it's uh just the more information that's available is better as we uh I I believe and kind of in City Planning context um a lot of the times it's like learning new Concepts it's changing a culture it's how we move but as shared the data reflects that folks are already moving but they're finding the pathways that are of least resistance AKA you know keeping their own um lives uh out of Jeopardy um so I appreciate all the research uh that's been done to create this plan we had very robust conversations at our um multimodal transportation subcommittee meeting um about about this active Transportation plan um and there we really got to kind of flush out some of the ideas of of the real impact um and I especially wanted to draw attention to slide six where um the highest ranking segments as you can see are across the city and um it's just um I feel the research supports what's coming from at least my own constituents uh when I draw attention to acres in mcke Road and within with our public works department we are working on what we are calling even the Stone Creek Loop which I've uh mentioned many times U from the dis and we've talked about um in our subcommittee meetings as well um that feedback from the constituents is meeting what the research is showing and I think that just further affirms the efforts in having a plan and having um a guide really this is I see this as a guide um rather than me coming up with my ideas and saying that this is what's most important to constituents right now and being uh someone that's transferring that information over to City Hall um it's good to have tried and tested practices that do help folks uh within and residents within our city feel safer um of all ages and we've drawn attention um to the areas around schools many times um when our children and our elderly are affected the most within the city in terms of being um the unfortunate fatalities uh when a vehicle strikes a pedestrian or a cycle a cyclist um and I wanted to just uh share my appreciation uh for the research that's been done uh for our city this is I believe a first of its kind that's being updated um so I'm glad we have a plan to move forward thank you thank you I don't see any other request to speak you have a motion please catch your votes motion is approved with council member Weir absent thank you madam clerk next item please close session item 6A conference with legal councel existing litigation on two matters one Tina Marie Tyson V city of Bakersfield and two Edgar Quincy Sloan V city of Bakersfield a motion to adjourn to close session we're jour [Music] what right [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] m [Music] well [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh oh [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] [Music] oh [Music] w [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] he [Music] a [Music] there [Music] come [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Happ Happ [Music] [Music] [Music] reconvening the 3:30 city council meeting man of City attorney thank you mayor uh there were two items on tonight's Clos session on item 4 A1 by a vote of 6 to zero with council member we're absent the City attorney was given Direction and on item 4 A2 there is no reportable action thank you thank you and with that we stand a journ at 511 and we'll start the next meeting shortly [Music] [Music] I [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] n [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 kar and the City of Bakersfield you can watch the rebroadcast of this meeting Saturday at 700 p.m. Sunday at 10:00 a.m. and the following Wednesday at 700 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 5:15 regular city council meeting of January 22nd 2025 Madam clerk please call the role mayor go here vice mayor core here council member Aras here council member Gonzalez here council member Weir council member Smith I'm here council member Coman here and council member B here Tosh here thank you and thank you all for being here and to all those who are watching online welcome we have the pleasure tonight of having pastor Kevin Bradford who's a pastor of Greater Bakersville first Pentecostal Church to lead us in the invocation thank you to both of you for being here tonight uh and we thank you also for bringing solutions to the city recently I met with pastor and Mrs Bradford and they saw the need uh for maybe some beautification from the garca circle to Columbus where their church is located and they brought some ideas rather than just yelling at us so really appreciate that um thank you so much for your care about education just your Church's investment in uh preschool and a school and your service to the community following the invocation we're glad to have Jacob Baldinos who's a junior at garus Memorial High he's going to lead us in the pledge and Jacob serves as the mayor's alternate youth commissioner he's the starting point guard as a junior for the garcis varsity team and he plans to pursue College he's going to major in Business and Entrepreneurship he's got a passion for serving those who are less fortunate in our community and mentoring upcoming basketball players and he's here with his parents Carlos and Amy Baldinos who are both who uh Carlos is the head of the Mission at Kern and I think Jacob from the womb even before you came out you're already serving our most vulnerable would you all please stand thank you mayor I came to Bakersville in 1992 from Min not North Dakota it was a very good change and I've served at greater Bakersfield's Pentecostal church since that time our church has been in the community Community for 82 years and this is the first time I've ever been in a city council meeting so I appreciate your invitation uh to come here today and offer an invocation so let's pray savior we thank you for your blessing and your goodness we thank you for the mayor and these uh city council members that are here today we ask that you would direct us and guide us to know that you provide to us an opportunity for understanding knowledge and Direction and so I pray that your blessing would be upon each and every one of them in every decision that they make but not only on the decisions that they make but I pray that the decisions that they make are not menial but have an impact and an uplift to our community we thank you for an opportunity to serve and we pray that the same creativity that you have given given in life and in nature you also put within each and every one of us and that your anointing and ability would flow in this council meeting tonight and we ask all of these things in your great name in jesus' name we pray amen amen salute pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stand one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and you may be seated thank you Pastor thank you Jacob and if any of you are looking for some special items that Jacob offers through a special entrepreneurial venture reach out to him he's got good deals for you whatever those might be basketball shoes and the like and now he's going to actually play in a basketball game or practice here are a few guidelines to help our meeting run smoothly we request that you turn off your phones please be courteous in the use of cameras and videos for safety reasons and as a courtesy to others no signs are allowed in the council chamber or Lobby Applause is allowed during the presentations portion of the meeting but not during other portions of the meeting everyone in attendance is expected to adhere to the rules of decorum established by resolution of the city council failure to abide by the city's rules of decorum including any disruptive behavior that interferes with our ability to have an orderly and efficient meeting prevents the city council from conducting the business of the city consider this a first warning to everyone in attendance that conduct that disrupts this meeting May result in your removal from the meeting Andor 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 and surpassing the two-minute time limit in keeping with council's resolutions 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 if you wish to make a 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 tonight's agenda or in a matter not on the agenda speakers who do not identify a specific agenda item will be presumed speakers for non-agenda public statements if you're here to speak on an item not listed on the meeting agenda you'll be called first to speak statements are given a two-minute time limit 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 if public statements become disruptive and I've have de 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 Madam clerk do we have any public speakers regarding items not listed on the agenda America we've received five speaker cards regarding items not listed on tonight's agenda the first public speaker is Cindy par good evening mayor welcome and vice mayor core and council members and staff uh I'm Cindy par I'm on 18th Street and I just wanted to thank the council and staff for their com their continued commitment to providing safe infrastructure for pedestrian and cyclists uh the new bike Lanes the uh green paint that's been put down uh the ATP uh that was approved on the earlier Council today I just wanted to to thank you all for your commitment to Bringing these types of uh infrastructure to our city to continue to allow folks to have uh better spaces to bike and to uh walk so that's all I wanted to say so thank you again thank you Miss par mam cler next speaker Matthew Dills welcome please introduce yourself and go ahead and raise the mic please yeah hi I'm Matthew Dills I uh lived here most of my life I teach at Stockdale High School I just want to thank you guys first of all I'm a big fan of Bakersfield and uh I think we do a lot of good things here and and a big one is is the bike Lanes I'm a full-time bike commuter I have been for 15 years bike to work I feel like I can now advocate for my students safe roots and not feel like I'm putting them at Jeopardy and that's huge because I promote biking all the time in my classroom and again I I love what we do here it's special and I've biked all over the planet and this is what we're doing here is very wonderful I think for everybody and uh yeah thank you so much thank you Mr Dill next speaker please Lisa Smith [Music] welcome please introduce yourself thank you my name is Lisa Smith I have kind of a ridiculous question I'd like to find out if I can make a city code enforcement complaint for City properties I've been here for four years roughly asking for help you all built a freeway through one of the highest minority lowest income neighborhoods in Metro Bakersfield and then ignored us 14 leftover Lots now fall within Andre Gonzalez's Ward and our being ignored here's the problem the contractor is gone Greg stalo who had a deep understanding of the area is gone the city's only plan is to hurry up and sell those lots but that isn't happening and your own people say it could be years until then you wait for the citizens to call you help and then you go away until we call again why are we bearing the responsibility for reporting issues on your property when you're the ones with the legal duty to Main maintain it and keep it from being a nuisance some of these lots have been covered with manure fencing is inadequate it's been cut locks are missing gates are open homeless people are trespassing and camping using drugs defecating out in the open dirt and grass and weeds had covered sidewalks and gutters School walkways are crumbling and more I've had contact from Zack Meyer who's been extremely kind and responsive to me he actually went out and met me at this manure covered lot several of them and toured the area with me in the last 30 days I think it's fair to say that he was very concerned and I think we were both overwhelmed by what we saw and heard but mostly what we smelled Gilbert Vega always responds but he's an engineer and for God's sake why is he inspecting properties in the last eight months the only email I've gotten from Renee Williams is an autogenerated out of the out of the office you have Park Rangers within feed of these properties who could Patrol them daily and make reports and you could use private security and you could use code enforcement inspectors you could do more please do it thank you Miss Smith council member Gonzalez thank you uh thank you Miss Smith for your comments today uh it's good to see you um and I'm glad to hear that City staff has been working with you and walking the neighborhood thank you Mr Meyer for your time in this I can assure you though that we have not forgotten about the neighborhood I have not forgotten about the neighborhood or those lots uh those are Remnant Parcels as you know from the centenal corridor project and they're have been a number of conversations that we've had at at City Hall uh to address th those particular Lots I am with you I want those lots uh gone I want them to I want to see a more productive use for those lots and so um but please I don't want you to leave here tonight thinking that those uh issues have been forgotten they have not um in fact Mr Helen I see that you're in the city manager's chair if you want to um maybe provide some context a little bit for Miss Smith and the rest of the community who deserve to know exactly what our plans are for those Remnant Parcels uh sure I can't uh recall exactly all of the 14 Parcels that Miss uh uh Smith is talking about but I can give kind of a general overview of of some of the plans on some of those Parcels um we will be selling some of those Parcels to the the neighboring uh Property Owners based on calr guidelines because some of them are uh too small to develop and so per calr because this was a calr project uh those will be sold first to neighboring property owners and then some some of the larger uh Lots uh will go through the Surplus Land Act to to sell those and I think it should also be noted and for for what it's worth and maybe not much to some people who are really concerned but the the lots are actually owned by uh trip and and and and they're actually not the property of the city of bers the city actually is the lead agency of trip uh but there are um Federal uh guidelines that we must follow in order to um disperse of those uh those uh properties correct am I off that is correct okay and so with that you know it is um I think unfortunately far more complex for us to resolve this matter um hence the amount of time it's taken um but I want to again reaffirm that we are committed I am committed to seeing this resolved um that all that said I think there are issues with those lots in terms of Maintenance and cities should bear that responsibility so I just let them make again the referral uh that we continue to monitor these sites and be better neighbors uh because we are responsible but let's be better neighbors for those res residents in West partk thank you so much M thank you madam clerk man sweep that off soon I can I'll find a pickup truck and uh I'm just kidding mad we'll figure it out Madam city clerk next item please America we still have two speakers uh sorry next speaker that's what I meant Bert Elton welcome please introduce yourself can you just raise that mic MERS a little bit please my name is lived in uh let's um restart the timer uh welcome and please introduce yourself go ahead pardon me go ahead and welcome please introduce yourself we're just raising the mic for you my name is Bert Alton I've lived in um Kern crowny for over 60 years and I I'm a um uh veteran uh two years in Vietnam and I would like to command this this body on the bike pass that you put and I am legally blind and the uh colors the the green and the yellow and everything that you guys use on it makes it a lot safer for people like me who is visually impaired and I hope that this body will keep up the good work and invest in more bike uh lanes and bike paths uh my bike is my sole Transportation like someone's car is their transportation and I'd like to see a little bit more bike Lanes get in such as like uh Buck Owens Boulevard because I do business down there and I knew other know other people that do business down there and so I just hope that uh this body will keep up the uh good work and put in more bike lanes that you guys have done a fantastic job thank you thank you Mr Alton and thank you for your service uh to our country Madam clerk next speaker please Britney brim welcome please introduce yourself good evening um uh council members um my name is Britney Bram I'm from I've been in Bakersfield for my whole life born and raised I have a a a solution for the city of Bakersfield um I don't know if you you have no no noticed um um uh I would like to um I wanted to to talk I like to uh present to you the the weo uh weo self-driving cars um so I'm going to tell you what what the um wayo about wayo is um wayo is a an autonomous vehicle way is autonomous driving technology company at as a Millions to to to be the world's uh most Trust most trusted drivers since since our start the Google self-driving cars car project in 2009 weo has been focused on building the weo driver the world's most experienced uh driver driver T driver TM improve everyone's access to Mobility while saving thousands of lives lives now uh now lost to traffic crashes in America there's a lot of AC there's accidents happening in America um there's a way there's there is a a wayo um in um Ser wayo is serving in in PH in Phoenix Arizona uh there's and there's two of them in California which is Los Angeles and San Francisco and pretty soon it'll be um it'll uh come up uh come uh come out in Austin and Miami and Atlanta Georgia thank you Miss Brun your time is up can you bring your comments to a close please okay and just like another sentence please okay and in in closing I would like for all of uh the Bakersville council members to get him to get involved with um with wayo uh with wayo thank you thank you Miss brim council member Smith thank you mayor I just like to comment on all the speakers really I I do think that the future is self-driving cars and and cars will be safer and it will end up saving all the lives that we lose now I just yesterday got the latest fatal traffic collisions in Bakersville for the last year and we lost 44 of our citizens last year in Bakersfield to fatal traffic collisions half exactly half of those did not include a bicycle or pedestrian just straight vehicle U death and and the other half 22 were were bicycle and pedestrian so in the meantime until cars have a mind of their own and know not to hit people yeah then we will continue to build safer streets as as talked about with with the wider bike lanes and the and the more visible paint the green paint and the yellow and and more bike paths and and better sidewalks and U that's our goal is to save lives in Bakersville so thank you yeah thank you councilman member Smith uh Miss Prim your time up so we're going to ask you to sit down at this time and council member arus has comments thank you for speaking council member Aras thank you mayor um I too want to speak on many of the uh speakers that have come forward today but particularly um I believe it was Mr Bert uh who came up I I am just so moved by your testimony and I just want to say thank you for your service to this country um but also thank you for coming up to to speak with with us and share your lived experience um and how the decisions that we make on a daily basis and the improvements that we attempt to make throughout the city uh make a difference in in your life and I didn't know you uh before tonight uh but I want you to know that uh there are many members of the council including myself uh who have had someone like you in our minds as we prepare these policies to improve the road conditions throughout the entire city uh so it's just an honor to to get to meet you and um I'll admit um over the past year um this my colleagues and I have received a lot of flak uh there are many uh members of our staff who have had many tough conversations with folks um but the data remains true um reduce the width of um our lanes our traffic lanes and increase the amount of bike Lanes uh that we have throughout this community so we know what the solution is uh we just got to continue to um go down that path so I just want to say thank you so much for coming out thank you council member council member Gales uh Miss brim thank you so much for your comments I uh really appreciate them I've had an opportunity to see these uh autonomous vehicles uh up close and um it's it's pretty interesting you know I was remembering when I was a kid I asked my aunt what uh she did for a living when she was younger because she told me she worked and she said she was the elevator operator and I thought that was the weirdest thing uh but back in the day they used to have elevator operators in order to get into an elevator to ride it you you required somebody and then they created these automated uh elevators they didn't require an attendant and um everyone there's a lot of people apparently who were pretty um scared to actually enter and ride an elevator without an attendant so it was a cultural shift and I think this we're we're about as a society we're about to enter this uh new shift this disruption where we see um a lot of these autonomous vehicles I'm not the car expert my colleague uh council member bashash is uh so I I don't want to get into a conversation about what's in the future but I do think your point is well taken and what I hear from you in what you're saying is that uh increased uh access to Mobility uh for all uh of our citizens is what should be a top priority for us and we should pursue all different options and I am right there with you so thank you so much for speaking tonight Madam clerk uh are there any other speakers for this portion sorry council member core vice mayor thank you mayor um I want to join my colleagues and thanking all of the community members who' have joined this evening this Wednesday evening to um give thanks but I want to give my thanks to all of you uh it is in our subcommittee meetings it is in your individual um advocacy that we've really been able to as um as a as a body as a governing body uh been able to bring these priorities forward and it's very exciting when you have like-minded folks who who understand it and and get it um kind of across across our Council and in different ways we had a great conversation about our ATP in in the previous um council meeting as well um and you know if I never had to drive a car again I would just love that so um I find it to be uh something that I don't enjoy and I like to just Outsource that as often as I can uh to whoever is willing to do that so uh these are the ideas and The Innovation and the conversations we truly need and appreciate having uh with you all um but you really are the leaders I want to Echo council member ai's comments and B thank you for being here to Advocate it's it truly I was moved I mean it is incredible that Mobility uh is is for everyone and when we uh design and we keep in mind those who um are uh you know visually impaired uh there's language barriers there folks you know if we're not able to read a sign how can we make sure we're using the symbols that everyone can identify all of these different techniques and tactics that help everyone in a community feel safe and when we make our community safer uh for uh those who are most vulnerable which uh you know I consider those with a um that are different have diverse abilities but also children and elderly then it it lifts all of us and uh I do feel that with folks comments today and uh the work that we're going to keep moving forward that um we'll achieve that and and we'll continue to work towards it so thank you for advocating in your classroom thank you for being longtime Advocates uh and thank you for challenging uh you know the culture that we are not familiar with yet and folks might think that there aren't folks who only cycle um it is important to know that there are folks that just walk or just cycle um and that is a a choice um and especially in a challenging environment that is not yet designed for it so um as our city continues to grow and um some of our Wards have very much undeveloped areas this becomes a new model for us uh in designing for everyone so just want to give my thanks to all of our Community Advocates thank you vice mayor we will now move to public statements listed on the agenda if you're here to speak on items under consent calendar item seven your time to speak is now again each speaker is given a two-minute time limit each agenda item is limited to 20 minutes total the consent calendar as a whole constitutes one agenda item if you're here to speak on consent calendar hearing items 8 a through d report item 10 a or new business item 12a now is not the time to speak you'll be given an opportunity to speak when those items are called later in the meeting Madam clerk do we have any public speakers regarding items listed under consent calendar item s Maro we have not received any speaker cards regarding consent I calendar item s okay and is there anything that you would like to do in introducing uh the consent calendar now consent calendar items 7A through 7i for approval a staff memorandum was provided regarding item 7 G3 transmitting the psvs agreed upon procedures report that was not yet available at the time the agenda was published thank you I haven't received any requests for any of our council members who wish to recuse themselves uh council member vice mayor core has requested that we pull item s D3 for separate consideration colleagues does anybody else have a request seeing none vice mayor um motion to approve the uh consent calendar with the exception of item 7 D3 you have a motion please cast your votes motion was approved with council member Weir absent thank you and now vice mayor 7 D3 thank you mayor uh this item is the purchase of two fire engines uh that will of course apply to our all of our Wards and uh our entire city um this resolution allows the city of Bakersville to secure two fire engines for the Bakers fire department um and really is to think ahead and um for the early acquisition of two fire engines this past year actually I had the opportunity to uh hang out with our Bakerfield fire department when we welcomed three new fire engines to our Fleet um these were uh each engine just fun facts that I learned along the way that I'd love to share each engine takes three years took three years to make and they're americanmade they're actually made in Wisconsin in Appleton uh and as someone who considers herself an honorary resident of Wisconsin from just three years of living there I was very proud that they were made in Wisconsin and we an American product but I was a little upset that it took so long to make of course it's a it's a craft it is um a a well it is a kind of a moving fire station so so to speak it's a mobile fire station and it needs to be equipped and ready to do just about everything um I'm excited that we are in the process of this early acquisition of these two new engines but I do think that we need more investment in our Baker fire department and we need it urgently uh everyone here in the room and folks watching are no strangers to the fires that are affecting our neighbors down south in fact our bold fire fighters uh as as well as our K County firefighters uh were assisting and helping out um their colleagues from Across the Nation across the country across the world even cross borders um as we try to contain this fire and just today we have a new fire um that is affecting our neighbors very south of us um the five freeway is shut down um and Castaic is being evacuated so these um growing concerns are on everyone's Minds I've had so many constituents reach out to me as well um since the fires in the LA region asking what is the condition of our fire department are we equipped what if something of this sort was to happen in the city of Bakers field are we ready what are the conditions of our fire hydrants um so many different questions and in um my years so far on the council and and getting to spend time at our different fire stations and spend time with our firef wrers um I have you know just I've had the same questions as well and um if you've ever spent the day at a fire station or with our our fire guys you know that they would do this without a salary they this is in their heart and uh taking care of their communities literally walking into Fires for us uh for our residents is something that they would do in a heartbeat and it doesn't take um it doesn't take a salary uh for them to do it but I I do think that it's time that we as a council and City also do our part and catch our city Department our fire department up to have the abundance of resources that they need to literally walk into Fires for us for our residents rather than working with just enough to make doe uh so today I'd like to make the referral for our city to De to develop a fire master plan and begin the design process for a new fire station in the city of Bakersfield particularly uh looking uh at South Bakersfield as our city grows South and really determine where our areas of of need are and we've done different studies um that evaluate our areas of cover but this would be the first fire master plan that we do and I I feel it should include all of the elements I think we should look at fire Master plans of other cities absolutely consult and take the direction of our of our fire department and Leadership there um and and make sure that we're still meeting that area of cover um and uh and what the pressing needs are I think this is urgent and it should be added to our next our upcoming budget cycle and I'd like us to look at opportunities within psvs uh to fund the design of our fire master plan and um as well as beginning that design process for the new Fire Station uh or come back and with new opportunities uh of um or or the buckets of you know dollars of where this could come from but this is um absolutely urgent uh and we are living it and uh so many folks in our community have been so generous in helping with our neighbors in the LA region so I I feel we it's time we update our infrastructure um uh within our city and uh we have great examples locally as well we've built a substation uh at the Greystone Greystone Park for example uh I do uh I would like for our community development Housing and Community Development Committee uh to also explore how we add um within our development codes the um how when we master plan communities uh you know a substation can sit next to a park next to a school next to a substation for our Police Department this should be really the model that we follow so that we don't fall so behind again um I want to say the last time we built a fire station was over 15 years ago maybe um I might not have the exact number but that feels way too long and um I I think our calls to Service uh will reflect the urgent need as well uh so we've built great product already and I think it's a time we explore that as well we've actually got um the a design process going for a park right now Anton bani Park would welcome a substation or station we've got plenty of land there um but I'd like us to be creative in coming up with this plan um but I would like this to come back quickly and urgently um so I just want to appreciate our Baker sold Fire Department chief um and those who uh risk their lives uh to go and help our neighbors down south as well as our K County firefighters um thank you thank you to your department um we appreciate you we thank you and we love you so thank you for keeping our community protected and safe Jenny I don't know were you signaling at me okay sorry okay got it sorry I was like are you waiting at me for information but um that'll conclude my referral thank you uh thank you vice mayor I see a couple requests to speak but I'm going to ask um Chief we've received a lot of questions from our constituents just about the fires are we prepared if you could give us a very brief update on that and just raise the mic please yes mayor go um so the Palisades fire and the eaten fire uh we have to realize that that was really uh kind of the perfect storm coming together um we had red flag events down in La at that time uh we also had a lot of vegetation that vegetation was very dry um and uh of course the fuel bed was was very receptive and uh we had a fire start and when you have uh sustained 15 M hour winds with guesta 7200 uh it's very difficult to fight uh there that fire the Palisades fire and the eaten fire were actually spotting a half to 3/4 of a mile in front of them and um when we start talking about water systems and things like that when you hook up 100 fire engines to uh Water Systems they're it's very difficult to design a system to handle that much uh water flow out of it so um can that happen here in Bakersfield uh potentially yes uh is it likely um no but uh it's not something that we should take lightly we should definitely prepare for that and making sure that we do everything we can but I are we prepared are we prepared is there more to do yes we can do more yes certainly uh and those two fires are going to change the California fire surface for sure um we're going to uh I can see uh prevention uh being a big issue uh developing fire safe communities uh pre-positioning which they did have equipment prepositioned down there uh Governor Nome has made uh for the past couple years around 25 to $40 million available for fire departments to preposition equipment during uh certain events red flag events like we had there uh flooding events and things like that and California is very good at doing that one thing that I will say is California is the best or better than anybody in the world as far as responding to disasters because we do it all the time we respond to wildfires we respond to flooding mudslides and things like that there is no other place that has the better resources in California if we look at LA County there are 29 departments down there uh easily a couple hundred fire engines were uh responded or deployed to those fires and they still had issues um as we know fighting those fires uh so yes there is more we can do uh for sure and um uh some more preparing we can do and we can definitely take a look at that and I appreciate uh vice mayor cor's uh uh attention to those factors thank you do we have water in our fire hydrants we get that I get so many of those questions we do now we do have water in our fire hydrants and we are preparing for the worst is we are preparing for the worst we have an Emergency Operations plan that we will hopefully update soon um we also work on a daily basis with cow water anytime we get a large fire we are in contact with cow water for boosting pressures and and things like that so uh we work very closely with the water company and uh we also maintain and test our hydrants every year thank you and information is provided through ready current thank you Chief I see council member Arius and council member keman have request to speak council member arus thank you mayor um first I just want to move approval for item 73 um but secondly I just want to say that I appreciate Vice mayor's um you know foresight and interest in this topic I think it is incredibly timely um that we have these types of conversation just today um a fire broke out in the Hughes Community uh near Castaic um and um within two hours 5,000 Acres um have been moved into the at risk category and are um evacuating from uh their homes um that is how quickly these things can move um and I think it's incredibly important for us to be prepared for that moment if in fact it ever does come to the city of Bakersfield um when it comes to the budget um we we we've seen since 2018 when measure n passed um that our Bakersfield Fire Department should receive an award a plaque a medal for being the most modest uh Department because often times um they are the ones asking for the least amount of resources as it relates to budget requests um but I agree um we know that there's a huge need uh for additional fire stations um we need to start the planning uh we should have started the planning years ago uh but um better late than never let's let's get a jump start on that let's start looking at particular sites that we can utilize and leverage for future fire stations um and start planning for the future um the other piece that I wanted to lift up is that uh we have an agreement through a joint Powers agreement a jpa with our County counterparts um and while I don't know the details and the status of that particular agreement I think it's important particularly since we have a new Council uh for staff to prepare a presentation to educate us on what is in that jpa um educate us on whether or not that jpa meets the current needs of our current um Bas f fire department um and really help Empower this Council uh to negotiate um a contract that works for um our community to keep it as safe as possible and those are my comments thank you thank counc thank you council member Arius council member colan thank you Madame mayor um I wanted to thank uh vice mayor cow for bringing this matter up um Chief first of all Chief thanks for giving us that update because you was really boiled down to that one question do we have water in the in the hydrants right but um uh vice mayor K head on a a really good point and it's something I've been talking about not only for the fire department but for the police department as well is that we need to Future prooof these departments and so um you know and that's not just equipment and fire stations but also Manpower uh you know it takes by my estimate take three years to train a firefighter to really know his job to be out uh reliable on the street by himself and probably five years or more for a police officer and so we need to be looking ahead uh more than we are and we need to and and I'm going to be talking about this dur we go through the budget process coming up soon is making sure that we have the resources committed for hiring people for the future and what I call Future proofing and so I look forward to seeing your uh report that the vice mayor requested uh to see what the what the fire department looks like you know we're doing a new a new uh master plan but we never talked about you know what are we going to do about Staffing for police and fire uh to meet those objectives so uh I'm very interested to hear those so vice mayor thank you for bringing that up I really appreciate that's the end of my comments thank you council member commment council member Smith thank you mayor uh council member Aras mentioned the jpa and I I had some time ago I think a year or so ago when we were going through the budget presentation or we looked at the where the fire stations were and there are no city of Bakersville fire stations in Ward 4 there are County fire stations and I think that city of Bakersville citizens in W 4 should have a city fire station and and I know that's part of the jpa and that discussion to be part of this uh would be welcome thank you thank you council member Smith vice mayor thank you mayor uh I want to thank council member uh Coman for bringing up something I was just too excited to share as well but the same uh request um when this report comes back in including what the staffing needs are um have those been stagnant what are the real what is that number what are the real needs of our fire dep Department in terms of Staff because it's true we can have the infrastructure but if we don't have the people uh and we don't know and we're not recruiting in the right places or in the right ways uh to fulfill those roles um you know that that would be incomplete uh what are call call volumes what do those look like I think it's uh very important for the public to know and residents to know that call volumes have uh just exponentially increased for the fire department um and an Emergency Operations plan was mentioned I'd love an update on that and what the needs are there in um finishing developing updating that um so those uh those are what I would add but thank you council member colan for adding those and agreed on getting an update in education on the jpa uh for the points that council members Smith and AIA brought up thank you thank you you have a motion on 7 D3 please cat your votes motion is approved with council member Weir absent thank you next item please consent calendar public hearings item 8A through 8 C for approval at this time I'll open consent calendar public hearing items 8 a through C is there anyone in the audience who would like to request that a hearing item be removed from the consent calendar if so please come forward this isn't the time to take testimony only to remove the item from the consent calendar hearings seeing none does any council member wish to remove an item seeing none at this time consent calendar public hearing items 8 a through C is closed vice mayor motion to approve consent calendar hearing items 8 a through 8 C for approval thank you you have a motion please cat your votes motion was approved with council member Weir absent thank you Madame clerk next item please reports item 10A uh update to the Council on the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development 2025 to 2030 consolidated plan for the city of Bakersfield thank you before we begin please note that if you're here to speak on reports items 10A the city clerk will call for public statements after staff's presentation each speaker will be limited to a two-minute time limit there will be a 20 minute time limit per report item assistant C city manager Helen thank you mayor we have uh director uh buyers here to share with her us the presentation welcome please go ahead thank you mayor and City Council Members the item for before you today is an update on our Consolidated plan process an analysis to impediments to fair housing choice and the citizen participation plan I'm going to be going through what is our Consolidated plan and also um a couple of these other items for our timelin under the requirements established by Hud so our Consolidated plan it's requ IR ired by Housing and Urban Development in order to receive uh some of our funding every 5 years it documents the community needs it does require that we go out to the community and have a lot of Outreach and input from the community um and so it identifies the strategy there are certain topics that we have to identify specifically and that's housing and homelessness Economic Development public facilities and infrastructure and public services so uh Hud's mission is to create strong sustainable inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all we are an entitlement City because we have a population greater than 50,000 which means we are um entitled to receive cdbg funding annually the funding sources uh that we have specifically we have our community development block grant which we refer to as cdbg home investment partnership program which actually City Council took uh action on uh some home funding in the previous public hearing we have emergency Solutions Grant and then we have the housing opportunities for people with AIDS called hwa um our Consolidated plan development we did a variety of Outreach and I'm going to go over that a little bit more in a second uh from that we uh have some draft Consolidated plan goals set on the feedback that we gathered and that's why standing before Council today to uh ensure that Council also knows about the goals but also approves of those goals so our anticipated resources we do this uh over the next 5year period based off of this fiscal year and so over the next 5 years we are anticipated to receive uh close to $34 million cdbg or this HUD funding um fluctuates every year sometimes a little bit more sometimes a little bit bit less but it has remained fairly consistent over the last couple of years so we are talking about almost 34 million over the next 5 years the analysis of impediments to fair housing this is a requirement it's also a requirement by the state as part of our general Plan update and housing element that we do this analysis of impediments to affirmatively further fair housing and so it evaluates um a lot of our programs it evaluates how our uh how our local um residents are receiving housing and just making sure that um landlords aren't utilizing um prejudicial policies and so it provides steps to remove or lower the barriers to fair housing choice and so that was one of the things we worked on in this process is this analysis of impediments so what does the community engagement process it was pretty robust uh we had three Community workshops I do have staff attending tonight Nina Carter she leads our community development program we also have Adriana and Daniel and they were uh present at several Community workshops we had two in person one online they met with our partner organizations there were one-on-one meetings with key stakeholders uh we presented it meetings we did have surveys both online and paper uh in English and Spanish and here we are tonight with the informational presentation to city council uh which is one of the requirements we are within the 30-day public comment period and we'll be bringing back an item in May so we developed the uh a Consolidated plan website that is located on the city of Bakersfield Economic Development we had a press release we worked with our mark marketing team had some social media um we emailed information like I said we provided those surveys in paper and online and then had some news and radio interviews we worked with our 39 we worked with 39 Community Partners from 17 organizations uh we met with 37 different residences uh we also had in our survey we did receive uh almost five almost 500 responses which is kind of sad when you think oh we have 412,000 but that was a great number I think our goal was 250 responses and so we were able to double that through all of our engagement so some of the questions we asked and these are the results of those surveys what are the areas of need that people wanted to see these $34 million of funding go towards and so 78% did respond with affordable housing and when we talk about affordable housing we're not just talking about low-income housing affordable housing is um making sure that our residents aren't cost burden cost burden is what's considered when our residents are paying more than 30% of their income towards their housing and so this was an area of need most identified uh 65% wanted to ensure that we continue to have services to the homeless Community uh Economic Development job creation and that's going to come up again in just a second our Public Services 47% Community facilities making sure that we have facilities that our residents uh can utilize infrastructure we utilize our cdbg frequently for safe routs to school for sidewalks for um those kind of things and that's the infrastructure curb gutter sidewalks that's the infrastructure we're referring to and then also accommodations for those with special needs these are the ones that came out uh as being what the community was most interested in so we had a couple of themes that ran throughout uh affordable housing like I just mentioned having affordable rental housing but also first-time home buyers they're starting to be more and more emphasis towards uh residents wanting to have that wealth building activity of home buyers um or being a homeowner but there are concerns about increased rental cost or increased housing cost we've talked about this a couple of times since covid we've had a 40% increase we are the second highest in the state of California for our rental market increase in cost um we've had 40% increase in home value which is great when you're the one that owns the home not so great when you're the one who wants a home um addressing homelessness Contin continues to be a concern of our community but Economic Development this kind of ranked a little bit higher than what it has in the past having job training uh living wage we've found that our living wage isn't increasing at the same rate that our housing is increasing and so that has become an area of concern for our community we changed our proposed goals and I don't know if it can really show up here hopefully it shows up better and your printed copy um to to include in our affordable housing more home ownership opportunities um prevent and reduce homelessness it was a pretty statement 2020 to 2025 but we want to make sure that we're increasing our support related to mental and Behavioral Health there's lots of conversations prop one was passed we have the bip application that we went for that's really targeting uh our homeless population's mental stability um um and then improving our community infrastructure increasing vital Services um and so more specific than just this generic service these vital services that we have and including in our special population our children and youth as well as uh seniors and persons with disability I'm sorry I'm kind of losing my voice some of council hasn't heard me speak before I don't I don't always sound like this um so sorry that it's given up a little bit bit so we did our community outreach and our surveys September through November the draft Consolidated plan like I said that's out for review uh was created in December of 2024 um we're having this Outreach with Council right now and this was a public hearing um our submission to HUD has become a little bit clouded so HUD likes to do this thing that we have to every year for our action plan not tell us what our funding is but we still have to move forward with all of our public hearing all of our uh information gathering and so they've done it again that we cannot submit to HUD until we actually actually receive this year's funding and so that's why the submission to HUD is May or June dependent on when we receive those numbers from them um with that uh we did include some proposed amendments to our citizen participation plan our citizen participation plan is like I said an earlier item tonight was a public hearing for home funds that we had to do a substantial amendment to add a project to that uh currently we do public hearing notices in English and Spanish we provide a 30-day um 30 days to the public opportunity to review it also uh every year we have to do an action plan and so the citizen participation plan is really how we reach out out to our community and it uh guides that HUD has included that social media is a valid form of public engagement and so those are some of our amendments in our citizen participation plan uh if you have any questions or comments for the program uh I also have staff available to help answer those thank you director buyers I hope you feel better and now Madam clerk do we have any request to speak from the public no public speaker cards have been received thank you colleagues any requests to speak I don't see any yet council member colan thank you mayor um thank you for doing this uh doing this hard work I really appreciate it um do you and and this might be a broader question for you for and for maybe the city manager's office what what can we do to get more Community engagement I mean you're you're basing this on you know right around 1% of the population and in ordinary statistical analysis that would be too small of a sample group to make any conclusions from but we're we're kind of forced to draw these conclusions based on this small sample size so what can we do as a council as a community to get more for engagement I think we find that question across the board uh director Burns right now is doing a general plan Amendment or a general Plan update which guides the development of the city for the next 30 years and we continue to have very small community engagement I don't know um Mr Howen if you have some I can address uh a couple of things that we're trying to do I think I think the ability to reach people where they are meaning everybody's on social media right 90% 95% of people have some sort of so social media touch so if we can get people to respond to an online survey through social media that's part of that additional Outreach I will say my uh the past place I worked at uh the the size of the population there was 2 million people and we had 200 people that responded so even smaller sample size that we were making decisions on our HUD funding with that same Outreach so the fact that we're getting a little bit larger um uh participation on this effort is a good thing I think the other part of what we struggle with is we're competing with a lot of different uh things right now in terms of people are interest not interested in telling us how we should spend our homelessness dollars or our um ESG dollars or our housing dollars and so it's it is trying to get maybe more education out there of we need to hear we want to hear from you we we need to hear from you um which we continue to do we continue to get um education messages out we've got our podcast we've got other ways that we can uh transmit and get information out to to let people know I think uh director Burns can also share um some insights that he's he's had uh during the general plan process and and the housing element process of other we we tried the all of the above method in terms of trying to get uh more engagement but the the response of close to 500 responses on U the size of City I think is is pretty typical director Burns do you wish to comment I I think through our our Outreach with the um General plan housing element um we were seeing sample sets of like 100 200 so actually 500 is actually a pretty successful Outreach compared to what we've done with others and I can say our uh Team from rencon um cander gel she's finished her PhD in and basically in Outreach was her her uh thesis there so we have someone that's very versed in it and um that's type sample set so I think what uh Miss buyers group has done is is actually quite quite great thank you we will take that compliment let me ask you a further question about the the responses you get you did get have you developed any analysis of the responses themselves like I'm not TR to ask for names but but uh any socio demographic information that you have on on the people that did respond did engage we do we it was about 20 Questions we asked um age we asked zip code we asked just trying to identify like where are we receiving the majority of comments I think that's important because if you have engagement it's typically the people who care about what it is that you're talking about and so by targeting or by finding out what ZIP codes people lived in we were really able to see who cared the most um I believe it was um ' 06 93306 was first or second and so the east side of the community uh did respond more than the West Side uh and so from that you try to determine do we need to be doing more engagement in are other areas um those are the type of things that we evaluate we didn't ask salaries or we didn't ask income levels okay uh thank you I have no further questions mayor thank you thank you council member Coman so from the city of Bakersfield to everyone who's listening online and to all of your friends we invite you to give your input we invite you to engage with us we want to hear from you as together we shape our future council member Smith thank you mayor I just wanted to comment on the U affordable housing being the top item as always and and there are things that we can do about that and things that the developer Community can do about it and as we've stated you know we we want to streamline permits we want to not have any more regulation or fees than necessary and you know help make it easier to have smaller lots and I think uh as we talked about last week was about the U down payment assistance also encourage the development Community to to build smaller more affordable housing I was mentioned tonight that that we've lost first-time home buyer and know there's multiple reasons for that but one of the reasons is we just build bigger houses and so you know smaller houses on smaller lots and more affordable uh can serve more of the community thank you thank you council member Smith council member Gonzalez uh thank you so much for the presentation great job I just wanted to Echo a couple of comments from uh my colleagues real quick um number one um yes council member Smith is is correct you know affordable housing was identified as the number one issue and I keep saying it over and over again we need to continue to uh induce more affordable housing development from from City Hall uh and build more housing much more cheaply much more quickly and and much more much higher quality uh for for all residents and so um I'm going to continue to press that along with my colleagues um and to council member Coleman's question about um re uh Outreach it's an interesting question because it actually came up when we discussed um some of our Outreach strategies related to the housing element I believe and um one of the things that I've observed from the city is that we're we're all doing wonderful things and there all these departments that are reaching out to the community for various different things in fact within the last year we had Outreach efforts related to the ATP the housing element the parks master plan um now this plan I mean there's a lot of requests for feedback out there I think that there's a need for some better coordination along among departments so that we can uh communicate clearly that we're not um uh you know uh spreading ourselves way too thin but actually you know being able to work together so that we can more effectively receive feedback that's actually quality feedback and and because I think it it's hard for some when we're hearing from this department one one day and another department another day and someone's having a community meeting at Central Park one night and then the next week it's about a different topic so you know for lots of us in the community when we hear from the city it's all just the city we don't can't differentiate between this department and that department it would be nice if we can better coordinate so that we think about what what the enduser is experiencing in terms of these requests the other thing uh that I think is really important is that we really look at and this came up maybe four years ago now when I when I first made this uh referral is that we look at uh a promotora strategy where we actually have people within City Hall whose responsibility it is to actually go door too and knock on doors communicate with residents ask them uh survey questions and get a better sense of what is um is happening in our community and then also the second piece of that is communicate with our residents about the services that we actually provide about you know our mobile app and how they can access that about um all of these wonderful programs that we have uh for residents throughout the community I think that would be very very helpful and it would actually strengthen our relationship with residents throughout the city and then also I I think ultimately help us improve that response rate um in any survey in the future but anyway that's it great job thank you and vice mayor motion motion to receive and file you have a motion please test your votes thank you director buers motion was approved with council member Weir absent thank you madam clerk next item please new business item 12a approval of council committee's calendar for January through December 2025 thank you please noted if you're here to speak on the new business item 12a the city clerk will call for public statements after staff's presentation each speaker will be listed limited to a two-minute time limit there will be a 20 minute time limit per report Mr Helen I'll have uh our city clerk uh touch on this item mayor go Council the um Council committee calendar was developed uh around various um meetings and with cons consultation with the chairs of the Committees and is uh awaiting your approval thank you madam clerk do we have any public speakers regarding this new business item mayor go no speaker cards have been received thank you colleagues do you have any comments seeing none ice mayor oh are you uh council member Coman thank you mayor my only question was uh you know I love the I love the color drawing but I don't remember what committees I'm on SO okay but what I asked for last time and then we weren't given that because yeah we we can get um a calendar just for you on what your committees are yeah thank you very much I appreciate that that was my only question thank you mayor thank you Council vice mayor um motion to approve the calendar for our committees you have a motion please cat your votes motion is approved with council member we absent thank you madam clerk next item please Council and mayor State thank you council member Bashir Tash uh I have a few things that I'd like to to say um one of them is in regards to the Outreach I think that uh councilman Coman can back me up on this the most successful Outreach that uh we've seen and been a part of was the campaign that we ran to win the seats that are in front of us and that took a lot of door too uh and it also I mean we had I had multiple events where 10 people would show up 15 people would show up even with free breakfast burritos offered and such uh but I got the rawest uh information and really get to know my constituents and the constituents of our city by knocking on their door um I think that I mean that was over 10,000 people um and and that was just for me to get elected so I think when it comes to making huge decisions that impact our city uh we're never going to get the results 500 people even though that's a a decent amount is not a good amount to base multi-million dollar decisions on for our I think they deserve better than that and so I think that we need to adjust how we get community input and not just people that are affected by it that are that are fired up about whatever is going on at the park and needs input because most people are at home raising families taking care of their homes working their jobs and they don't really have time to go to events but you catch them at home and whether they're on your side of the fence in your belief system or not you're going to get some information that is uh uh reflects our our cons constituents which is who we represent um and then the second thing that I'd like to just kind of it's a more of a pondering Point um that was a big basis for me uh running for city council and that that gets tied into like even the fire safety and uh pedestrian safety and walkability and like I agree with all of that and I have a bike and my kids have bikes and and fire is important and um and our fire department having the resource they need to protect us is important but both of those things half the problems that stem surrounding those things are a result of a lack of strong Public Safety uh when we approve the measure uh to increase our tax it was it was wed to the constituents that it would be an increase in our Police Department so that we would feel that Public Safety actually impacting Our Lives which hasn't been felt um uh the groups of 50 bicycle riders that go down the street with no helmets on that turn into some type of uh that that should be something that gets held accountable uh helmets would would mitigate a lot of the injuries and deaths that happen and and most people don't wear helmets anymore or the drivers that speed around and close intersections and spin donut I mean all of those things are directly affected by Public Safety which would improve walkability and bikeability and all that stuff but we have to hold uh people that break the law accountable for that kind of stuff fires half the fires in our city have been done by Transat my business has been set on fire I've reported multiple fires vacant buildings property owners that just let their buildings go to to to just nothing not being held accountable and so all of these issues stem from a lack of felt presence in public safety if we want a community that's going to be Pro business where business owners like myself and other people on the council want to create businesses and grow and provide jobs that pay for people to get into houses business owners have to feel like their assets are going to be protected their staff is going to be protected the the shopping center is going to be protected again that's Public Safety and I think that half the uh stuff that we make decisions on and have uh issues with stems from Public Safety and people being able to feel like they're safe enough to go out uh people feel like they're safe enough to develop to to grow their staff um so that's enough of my my soap box but I just I would like for everybody to think about that when you think about the issue that that comes before us what's it stem from I don't want a bigger dust pan to clean up the mess in front of us I want to put we need to hold people accountable so that we don't have a mess to sweep up in the first place um and that starts with I mean Public Safety over and over and over again and making sure what people uh voted that very very slim marginally passed uh is being done for what the constituents uh were led to believe um not just throwing money at random things uh there's got to be some accountability and and and I believe it starts with us making good decisions uh again I'm not uh saying that you know I don't like any of the things that were set before us but if we dial it back and we take it to a granular level I think that a lot of it stems from a stronger presence in public safety would fix a lot of these issues and would also keep us uh uh you know being financially responsible with taxpayer money whether it's a grant or local I mean it was all built up via taxpayers and you know that's important so that's all I have thank you council member BOS council member arus thank you mayor uh before I uh highlight a piece of legislation that I want us to take a look at I just want to respond to uh council member Bashir tash's comments um I I think hearing kind of the essence of of your comments I think we agree um I think that we have to take a balanced approach um to not only you know improve the uh infrastructure of our local community uh but also to make sure that we're holding folks accountable um I think there are many uh including myself on this dis uh that have been really frustrated um you know certainly myself since 2020 um seeing skyrocketing uh crime numbers early on thankfully because of the calet program and other efforts in the community we've been able to bring that down um but you know at the end of the day uh if you talk to anybody uh the Biggersville Police Department uh prior to this past election cycle there have been significant challenges uh with booking particularly repeat offenders um who have ravaged places um like the Valley Plaza which is in W one um you know we we see this as you know uh not not only an organized retail uh the theft issue but you're right uh folks do not at least prior to prop 36 uh did not feel that they were going to be held accountable for committing those actions um and I am really grateful for uh the District Attorney's advocacy to uh get prop 36 across the Finish Line I think it's going to significantly change um I think the attitude of some of these criminals so I just want to say I appreciate that and I think we certainly share a brain on on on those issues the other issue that I wanted to highlight um is that the United States Department of Justice uh just yesterday uh last night in fact issued a memo to many of its employees um to actually charge the US attorney's office um to hold local and state officials accountable if in fact they do not um enforce the um Federal government's policies and new policies on immigration and deportation I think that that is particularly troubling uh not even from just a political lens um but I think it's deeply troubling because um at the state level in California we are beholding to sb54 which is a sanctuary State policy which is in direct conflict uh with much of the policies that we're seeing coming out of this uh uh incoming administration at the federal level um so I just ask that um you know whether it's in-house staff to monitor that particular piece of policy or even uh leveraging our uh contracted lobbyists uh to monitor it and and provide some guidance on how we can uh navigate ourselves and make sure that we are in compliance with the law thank you thank you council member arus council member Smith thank you mayor I just like to pile on I guess on the council members bashash uh on accountability and enforcement we we've heard numerous times how our Police Department you know arrests the same guy twice in one day you know we arrest him and and the sheriff will not put them in jail it's not because of state law it's not because of federal law it's because the sheriff says he's full and I know we've been working for some time on different solutions but it's time to do something in that area to get these people off the streets the repeat offenders they can and should be in jail our police department does a good job they arrest them and they need some time out thank you thank you council member Smith vice mayor thank you mayor uh and thank you to my Council colleagues for um all of their very important feedback um my comments are of a lighter tone so I'm taking a different direction but I've been thinking a lot about um just our Community Arts programs and initiatives and uh just how meaningful uh uh different Arts programs are to placemaking and I was driving by the Bakersfield uh Chamber of Commerce building and it just looks so wonderful it just brightened up that Corridor um and then there's individual projects just happening in different parts of our city um in the Auto Mall for example we've had uh we have some new installations coming but I want there to always I want us to always be thinking about what we can do more around plac making and I I'd love to request a presentation be made to our Council on the economic impacts and positive impacts of the Arts uh within our city and I know uh my colleagues some of my colleagues have worked on this initiative in the past um but I could really use uh this presentation and I'd love for this to be uh something that we uh Center and prioritize as a council um but all good things so thank you thank you Arts give Wings to the soul flight to the imagination and Life to everything else thank you council member and vice mayor and next uh council member Gonzalez thank you mayor uh council member bashash um um made some really excellent points about public safety and how a lot of these issues that we discuss really are rooted in public safety and it's something that many of us have felt strongly about as council member audius mentioned uh for quite some time um you know one one of the reasons why I led the charge for um measure n was to enhance our Public Safety within the city because we were we were declining we saw fewer and fewer officers per capita and we were unable to respond to the requests and we saw police response times rising and no real resource in order to get to those needs and so um to date I'm I'm really excited because when in in 2018 we had 389 sworn officers uh to date uh we have 480 sworn officers that includes the current Academy um but uh you know because of measure n we've been able to actually um host or or hold toies per year every single year uh we've actually hired over 350 police officers of course we've lost officers because they've retired they move away they change professions there's a lot of reasons why we lose officers we can't necessarily control that uh but we can control the aggressive recruitment effort uh and theems and the uh concerted effort to get uh that net gain up but we are we are very close to getting to that net gain of 100 police officers and I'm excited about that uh I'm sure that we will get that done uh within the next year or so um again we can't control for people leaving the department um but um I want to say another um you know good job to our human resources department um the police department and so many other uh folks at City Hall who are working who are working steadfast on this particular initiative and have not lost sight of that goal but thank you so much for your comments I think it's well said and um I'm looking forward to our continued conversation as we address those needs thank you thank you council member Gonzalez during this historic week we unite as fellow Americans as the people of Bakersfield to forge a future as one nation under God indivis isible with liberty and justice for all we are so blessed to live in this great country where we can share different perspectives but I would call upon all of us no matter what our perspectives might be let us unite in valuing in respecting one another let's move forward as Americans together and Forge that wonderful future for our community and our for and for our nation together I had the privilege this last week of attending the meeting of the US Conference of Mayors the annual meeting where we discussed priorities that were common to us Across the Nation Housing Public Safety infrastructure Technology Innovation homelessness and jobs and you'll find how much we all had in common as we came together what a privilege it has been to give voice to Bakersville and they even knew about Bakersville I had the privilege of meeting with congressman's valo and Fong and then also with Senators Schiff and Padia actually a one-on-one with uh with each of them uh and that was in addition to all of us coming together to give voice to our cities and we are just so blessed to live in this nation where we can all come together so that's what I encourage us as we move forward in 20 25 let's continue to honor let's continue to respect one another to Value one another as one nation as one city under God indivisible and with that we stand a journ at at 6:42 [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]