This video captures the Marina City Council meeting on June 16, 2026, featuring presentations on youth empowerment programs (Village Project Emanata Warriors), recognition of local achievements (Dean Zujene Athetherton's gymnastics success), and community infrastructure planning. The council discussed a utility user tax measure for public safety improvements, with FM3 survey data showing 49% initial support rising to 65% after information sessions. Public comment addressed concerns about drone surveillance technology, fireworks safety, and downtown development. The council approved a motion to move forward with roundabout implementation on Del Monte Boulevard and Reservation Road, with construction potentially beginning 3.5-7 years after approval.
Marina City Council // June 16, 2026
Added:Recording in progress.
All right, we're we're close to a important photo photo opportunity, so we're going to get going. Welcome to Tuesday, June 16, 2026 at our regular Marina City Council meeting. We have some special guests. We have Claire and we have James and their mommy and daddy are with us.
We're so happy that to see you here. Uh and so we're going to have a roll call, please. Anita.
>> Council member McAdams >> here.
>> Council member McCarthy >> here.
>> Council member Biala >> here.
>> Mayor Pro Bisher >> here. Mayor Delgado >> here. All right. Do we have any changes to our close session schedule? Uh, thank you, mayor. No, there are no changes.
>> Okay, so we're going to step down. Well, any comments from the public on close session items?
Anybody online?
No. Okay. So, we're going to step down and go into close session. And when before we step out of this building, we're going to take a picture with our special guests. And I'll turn it over to Council Member Biala to tell us exactly how to do this. And then we'll come back here uh at 6:30 for our open session.
>> Well, actually we could rejourn and then we can go up to the in front of the guys to take a picture. Is that okay?
>> Do we need to adjourn >> or I mean just go to close session?
>> Close the meeting for the night.
>> Yeah.
>> All right. So Kathy would like you like us to step down now.
>> All right.
get started.
>> Thank you everybody for being here. It's going to be a very long night. I believe uh we just came back from close session.
We've been there since 5:00 pm and our city attorney Renee Ortega will summarize that for you.
>> Yes. Thank you, mayor. So, council provided direction in close session but took no reportable action.
We have some wonderful presentations tonight, but before we get to those, I'd like to ask you to stand for a moment of silence. And after that moment of silence, Gwen Athetherton is going to lead us in the pledge of allegiance.
Thank you Gwen for being a good sport.
Okay, our first presentation is the village project emanata warriors and who will be leading this for us?
And we have a couple of we have a few Good evening, mayor, um, council members. My name is Raina Vasquez, and I am here today on behalf of the village project and our Emenyata warriors.
First, I would like to thank you for your continued support of our work in the community. For many years, our Emanata program has been dedicated to empowering children and youth of African descent through cultural education, leadership development, mentorship, and identity building. One of the most meaningful meaningful aspects of our program is helping our youth understand who they are and where they come from.
The educational trips we organize are learning experiences that bring history, culture, and leadership development to life. The impact of last year's trip to Ghana continues to be felt today um through the growth and development we've seen in our youth. It has been inspiring to see our Jagna warriors share what they've learned and experienced with our younger warriors.
Some have written songs and poems reflecting on their experiences and their connection to their heritage. This year we are planning an educational and c cultural immersion trip to Panama where they will further explore the African diaspora, visit more visit important historical sites, engage with local communities, and deepen their understanding of global black history and culture. We are extremely grateful for the city's support in helping make these opportunities possible and we respectfully ask for your consideration of this year's $10,000 con um contribution request for not only our Jagna Warriors educational trip to Panama but also to support the Marina families we serve. Um which Miss Regina will um talk about briefly. Thank you so much for your time and for your continued investment in our youth.
>> Good evening, mayor, city council, city manager. Um, I'm Regina Mason and I'm the co-founder of the Village Project.
And I just want to uplift what Rea has already said, but I also want to say that for 18 years, the Village Project has invested in the city of Marina. In fact, we have clinical therapists that are uh deployed to several schools working with children in the community.
We also have many families that are receiving um untold numbers of services that are from the city of Marina and um they come to uh get re-entry services and a myriad of other services. One of our students from Marina just graduated from York and has been accepted to the University of Nevada. Um, we have eight other students that are all they've known them since they were kneeh high to a duck, so to speak, and they all graduated this year and they're all going to four-year institutions and they're coming from underserved backgrounds. And so, this is the type of work that we do. And I just want to say that we really appreciate the partnership that we've had historically with the city of Marina. Um I will now let the Imminata Warriors talk to you a bit. Thank you.
>> Good evening Marina City Council.
On behalf of our group, I would like to sincerely thank you for your generous support of our educational trip to Africa last year. Your contribution helped make that experience possible and it provided us with memories, knowledge, and cultural understanding that will stay with us for a lifetime. This year, we have the opportunity to participate in an educational trip to Panama. We will be grateful for your consideration of a donation to help support this experience. As with our previous journey, this trip will allow us to learn, grow, and open our perspectives through firsthand cultural and educational opportunities.
Thank you for your continued support of youth educational programs and for considering our requests. Thank you.
>> What was your name, sir?
>> I'm Zachary Alexander. Thank you.
>> Uh I'm Quincy. I don't really have a script, but I do want to mention something. Uh, you know, I learned a lot in Ghana, and I gained a lot of experiences. It was really great being able to go back to where my ancestors came from. And something I did get from Ghana is was the name Cojo, which I'm actually my dad recommended. I could use it as my artist name for making music and I think that's something very special that I got from Ghana.
Thank you.
>> Thank you, Cojo.
>> Hello, my name is Antonio Parker.
Um, I didn't get the pleasure of going to Ghana last year, but I have been on many different field trips with the village project and it's allowed me to learn things I never would have learned before about my history, my culture, where I come from. It's allowed me to see myself across many different places, see um my culture represented throughout different places, throughout different um professions, different places.
It's it's really helped me and inspired me to grow as a young black man myself and to really dive deep into my history and learn who I truly am. And it's given me confidence as a person as well and allow me to try things I never would have tried before and learn things I never would have learned before. So yeah, >> thank you Antonio.
Um, hello. My name is RJ Parker and I would have to agree with everything my brother here, Antonio said. Um, this program has given me a lot of opportunities to grow as a black young man and learn more about my culture, where I have, why I come from, and kind of how I fit, how people of my race, including myself, fit into the community and just in society.
Um, this program just has hard to explain, put into words, but in short, it's just helped me grow and given me confidence and has taught me so much. So any I would like to thank you for your consideration and anything you can provide for the village project. Uh we'd be very grateful.
>> Thanks R.J.
>> And I think that that is it. Both R.J.
and his brother are twins you can see and they live in the city of Marina. So thank you very much for allowing us to speak on this evening. Thank you, Regina.
I wanted to give a special shout out to Cojo Quincsey because I saw him recently be a lead in the play Hairspray at York School and his character was Seaweed.
And Seaweed is a character that uh performed some amazing songs like a showstopping number called uh Run and Tell That. Anyway, he was an amazing actor in that play and it's great to see you here, Quincy Kojo.
And uh thanks to Village Project, you know, there's not too many nonprofits that take youth to countries around the world like Ghana and Panama. And we all know what an impact that has for all of us, but especially when we're young, able to do that. It's wonderful. Thank you. Uh Council Member McCarthy.
>> Thank you, Mayor. I just want to a shout out to Mel and and Regina and all the mentors when I look at these young men.
I really see the mentors. Um and that to me is what was so special. I you know I certainly had my fair share of mentorship growing up and there are people that I think about every day when I go to bed at night and I hope these young men um think about the mentorship that they've received too. So, thank thank you to you for what you do for Arley.
>> Adams.
>> Thank you, Mayor. Um, we have a sister city in Japan, Usuzu Puni, and um and uh you know, I really um I sort of connect that work to to this work, right? I mean, I I look at the impact that the Marina High students um have had. I mean, and really thank you to council member Viala for her leadership and and work in that. And so for me, um you know, with the village project and and our um investment and support of this work, it really brings it all together and connects it nicely. So, um and also, um you know, I I I think the timing is is foru fertuitous with with Friday being um Junth. Um, and so I know there was some great celebrations this last weekend. Um, and I just again thank you um to the Masons for their their ongoing work and leadership and mentorship.
Thank you, >> Council Member Ba.
>> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And of course, Mel and Regina and Raina, thank you very much. But I want to say for all of you young people who have come today to to speak here, I know it was probably a little nerve-wracking to come to the DAS, but it really is special when you come and thank us for things. That just really really does does it for me. So, thank you really for taking the time out tonight to do this. Thank you.
>> All right. Uh our city manager has some input.
>> [clears throat] >> Uh, one of the things that I heard from their presentation is is a request for $10,000.
We haven't um we're in a new budget year. We haven't budgeted for that. And so if council is interested in that, we can put on the agenda for a future council meeting and bring that back to the council.
>> All right. I think that'd be a good idea. I see nods. And let's go to Mayor Prom Fischer.
>> Thank you, um, city manager. That would be a good idea to put that on a future [clears throat] agenda. And just like council member Viala, I wanted to commend you for speaking so well because I know it can be um scary to do, but you didn't show that. So, thank you all for being here and and wishing you good travels. Traveling is so good. It opens our eyes. It it being exposed to other cultures, other countries. It's it's wonderful. So, thank you for being here.
>> And you're welcome to stay. You're welcome to leave as when when you wish.
You're not captive here. Thank you very much all for coming here.
All right. Our next presentation is to a special individual, Dean Zujene Athetherton. And I mean this is going to blow us blow you all away when you hear about this proclamation.
So I'm going to come on down and read it. And I'll ask Dean to come up and join me just in front here.
What a future.
>> Yeah.
>> So, Dean, I don't know that we've ever had an individual living in the city of Marina that's accomplished what you've accomplished, but it sure is special.
And in recognition of your outstanding athleticism in the field of gymnastics, we want to read a few words about you.
Dean Zu Jing Athetherton.
>> Su Jing. Sue Jean Athetherton, thank you Jean, won first place as an 11-year-old in the 2024 All-around National Gymnastics Association's Championship in the level six category. This includes achieving a final score that combines results of six routines and crowns the most versatile gymnast. What are the six routines?
>> Like what you mean?
>> Like vault.
>> Oh, vault, mushroom, highball, pe um rings and floor.
As a 12-year-old in 2025, Dean placed second in the all-around national championship in the level seven category. So, he's moving up. As a 13-year-old in June 2026, Dean won first place in the all-around NGA National Championship in the level seven category, as well as first place in the high bar, the rings, and the pommel horse. His team, Rising Star Gymnastics, is a Monterey based training facility. His team placed first in this year's national gymnastics competition.
Dean has always received strong support from his parents, his grandparents, and his coach, Sage Barkahal. Now there now therefore be resolved that we as a city council standing behind you of the city of Marina along with the entire Marina community where we all live to hereby proclaim and extend our collective pride and congratulations to you Dean for your achievements as a national gymnastics champion. We wish to thank you publicly for demonstrating such exemplary dedication, years of hard work and success on this 16th day of June, 2026.
Thank you, Dean.
>> Now, special people like you always have to give a long speech. So, what would you like to say?
Um, thank you for supporting me and it will help me and get me confident and yeah, thank you.
>> So, we'll take a picture just and I and then we'll ask the council to come down and then we'll ask the family to come up.
Yes.
And while the council is coming up, Dean, why don't you tell us who's in your family today that came with you >> um at Nashville?
>> In your family, who has supported you over the years?
>> Um uh my mom, my brother, my sister, and my dad.
>> Right. And who's not here who supported you a whole bunch besides your dad?
>> Uh my pop.
>> Your grandfather.
>> Mhm.
All right. Thank you, >> D.
We'll have family come join all of us.
And the last picture will be just and his family.
It's all place. Let's let the mom and I places.
>> Can you Can you see >> now? We'll leave the family for the final one.
All right. Thank you, Dean. Thank you, family.
Congratulations. That's a family success.
Okay. Um, tough act to follow, but we think we've got it. We're going to introduce our new fire chief, Kristen Mau.
I don't know if I can follow either one of those, but I'll try. Uh, thank you, Mr. Mayor and Council and City Manager Long for having me um and letting me introduce myself. My name is Kristen Mau. Um, that's the fire department right there.
So, [laughter] was that timed or timing?
>> But, uh, thank you for having me. Um, I started as a firefighter in 1999 as a firefighter medic, and I served at a department named Clark County Fire District 6 in Vancouver, Washington. I served there 26 years, worked my way up to the ranks, finishing there as fire chief for the last 5 years. Um, I could have retired. I was kind of enjoying that time off, but something in me was calling to come back and serve. And so I started looking at opportunities and places to go and I had never heard of Marina, California, but um the recruiter called me and she said, "Kristen, I think this is going to be a great fit for you and you should check it out." So I listened and I did. And uh from the moment I first interviewed here, I knew it was a special place and you have a special city. I felt really welcomed.
The professionalism was high in all aspects of the testing process. And then I was lucky enough that city manager Long called me back and said he wanted to talk to me some more. I interviewed with him from 9:00 in the morning till 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon. That's the longest interview I've ever had on record. Um and it was the most enjoyable time. And what he first said to me is, "I'm going to sell you on why you should come to Marina." And uh he did. He it worked. So um even after that, the fire department, every interaction I've had with them has been completely professional. And I know they had to go on a call, but um I didn't ask them to be here tonight. And the fact that they were all standing in the back and supporting me speaks to their professionalism and the support that I hope I'm going to have over years to come. So, I just want to thank you for giving me the opportunity. I'm really looking forward to serving this community and serving this fire department. Um helping it grow and enhance its services to take something that's already great and make it better.
So, thank you.
>> Welcome.
I also wanted to not to take the thunder away from Kristen um and she's going to do great here, but I also wanted to just recognize Mark Sweeney who's been serving as our um acting fire chief for the last five, six months now. Mark has done a great job and he's going to be really important in Kristen's transition of coming here. So, thank you Mark so much for the last six months and we don't have Lane too much longer about another month. But Lane not only saw to the hiring of Kristen, but also our police chief Randy, our recreation director, Elizabeth, police chief Ishma, police public works director Ishmael, assistant city manager Courtney, HR director Belinda. Um, not sure else, but I wanted to point out that before we had our police chief, Randy, we had an acting police chief named Steve Russo. Much like Mark Sweeney was acting fire chief, Steve Russo did an excellent job when before we had Randy and then Steve Russo, you know, handed the baton to Randy and I'm sure they had a lot of transition passing the baton there. My point is that thanks to our city manager Lane Long who's been here for 12 years, we've had an excellent lineup of directors and management staff and it it has to, you know, it starts at the top. It's got to It speaks to Lane's ability to pick and to um to inspire good people to uh to take the position. Like you heard a six-hour interview. So, I want to thank Lane for for bringing on good people and I want to thank the good people for coming to the city marina and doing such an incredible job. I just can't remember, you know, any of you that have done a bad job and it just speaks to the the quality, the caliber of our little community of Marina. Thanks everybody for for that for your contributions and thanks to Lane for seeing in you what we've all seen since he hired you. Very much appreciated.
Okay, so now we're going to move on to council and staff announcements. If there are any staff announcements, let's take those first.
Good evening, Mayor Ham and council members. Um, I just wanted to give a little reminder about our 4th of July block party uh that is scheduled for Saturday, July 4th out at the Marina Airport. It'll be starting about 3:30 in the afternoon and it will go till uh 9:00. Um, we will have a number of different bands, food trucks, vendors, uh, touch a truck display, um, and just lots of kids activities. So, it'll be great fun for the whole family. And then we'll also have a, uh, a special launch pad for safe and sane fireworks if anybody wants to bring their own. Um, and that'll start at dark. And so, we just want to encourage everybody to come out. We hope to see you there. And, um, yeah, we're excited about it. so I can answer any questions if you have any.
>> Thank you very much, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth's our recreation and cultural services department director. She's been here for a couple of months and she's been fantastic. Any other staff announcements?
On next Tuesday, June 23rd, the state lands commission uh at the regular meeting is having a um an item on the agenda that is critical to the city of Marina. um uh this meeting. It starts at 12:00 and the item that they're going to consider is a lease to Calam uh water company to operate their slant wells in property that the state lands commission owns that is in the city of Rita and that will absolutely impact our uh our fresh groundwater that we have here in our community. And so we're going to be publishing information on our website of how you can um join the state lands commission. It's up in San Francisco is the meeting. You can go there in person if you want. You can uh uh join it by Zoom from your home from your home. We're going to set up a big TV here at our city council chambers and you can come here and um join it on Zoom here at our council chambers at our on our website. We're going to um put together some talking points of the key issues that um that this um Calam water project is critically impacting our community. And so we'll have that on our website. Also, uh council member um Biala is actively involved with this. If you have questions, please contact her directly. And also, Council Member Viser or Mayor Pertim Viser, they'll be your conduit for additional information as well as our website. But we encourage all of our community to get involved.
Let them hear of how important our groundwater is and and um how this um these wells from uh CAM are really going to impact our future groundwater. Thank you, Mayor.
>> Thank you very much, Lane. So, yeah, we hope to see a lot of people in this room uh lining up to speak on Zoom. It's nice to be amongst each other with each other during these uh hearings and this is one of many hearings that we've had and we'll have maybe some others coming up on the same issue. Really important issue. Our future water is almost nothing more important than that. All right. Uh so now let's go to council members.
Council member Biala.
>> Thank you. And I just wanted to add that um we had confirmation today from the state lands commission that we can have um people come to the the zoom podium so to speak um in a group and so that we could have one speaker um that with four up to four people behind them standing there but also getting credit for um being a part of the testimony as well.
So you can come and speak or you can support one of the other people by standing with them. So, please don't be, you know, bashful that you don't you you can't, you know, public speak and whatnot. Okay? So, please contact us and we'll help that um organization. Okay.
Thank you.
>> Thank you, Kathy. Mayor Prom Fisher.
>> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, Council Member Biala, city manager, and our mayor will be in San Francisco. I will be here in the council chambers. So if you come come around noon or shortly afternoon and we will help you with scripts or if you just want to stand there to support one of the speakers just please come on over next Tuesday the 23rd shortly afternoon in this these council chambers. Thank you.
>> Thank you Elizabeth. Let's go to council me Adams.
>> Thank you mayor. um in honor um and recognition of Junth that takes place this Friday um we celebrate the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans as well as the ongoing pursuit of freedom, equality, and opportunity for all. Junth serves as an important reminder of our nation's history and the work that remains to build a more just and inclusive community. Um the city offices will be closed um this Friday on Junth and I think that's the first time that um that has taken place. Is that correct? Last year was okay. So the second year um and then so we will reopen regular business hours on Monday.
Um and then also I wanted to thank and congratulate staff on the Gloria Jean Tate Park opening. Oh my goodness, what a park. [laughter] Um, I've been there several times. It's packed. Pickle ball courts are packed.
There's adults exercising, kids playing.
My dogs love the dog park. Um, and it's really a special time for our city um to to see that tangible work um and community investment. So, I just I really wanted to thank staff, everyone involved. I know they're working through the kinks and working through the hiccups. Um, that'll just take a little time. Um, but overall, just what a fantastic asset for for our community.
So, I've heard that we're like the place to be now. So, [laughter] thank you.
>> Thank you, Jenny. Council member McAdam.
I'm so sorry. Council McCarthy.
>> Thank you, Mayor. Um, as the recreation director mentioned, fireworks season is upon us. Um, you are welcome and encouraged to report if you believe fireworks may be illegal to law enforcement. You can do that by calling non-emergency, which I think is 831 uh >> 384 3847575.
Um, I find the telephone prompt to be unbearable. So, I always go to Monterey Spark. Just Google Monterey Spark and it's an online reporting form. Um, I find that police response tends to be just as quick, if not quicker, by using that online form. Um, there were some complaints in Preston Park about fireworks just today. So, again, you're encouraged to always report. Our professional law enforcement officers will know how to handle any situation.
So, um, second item I wanted to mention was, um, this council had approved funding for spay and neuter services. My understanding is that, um, is in the works. I don't know if a formal date has been set.
I don't believe a formal date, but it is close. And so we'll let you know.
>> What I would encourage anybody in need of spay and neuter services to do is contact snip bus directly and ask them when their marina clinic is scheduled to be held. Um they will be in marina before the end of the year offering lowcost or I believe free. I don't remember the the details of spay and neuter services. I cannot tell you the number of city council meetings that I've sat through in this room with likely unneutered cats below our feet. Um and it was just not only frustrating because of the noise but um because the lack of care that the community shows towards these animals.
So thank you mayor. Thank you Brian.
Mayor Ban Vision.
>> Thank you Mr. Mayor. Um, the Marina Coast Water District starts offering financial assistance with water bills. If you're on the PT care program, please visit marina mccwd.org.
There's a limited time window to apply and after that is I think it's while supplies last. So, anybody on the PG& care program, please check out mcwd.org.
Thank you.
>> All right. Thank you. There's a couple other firsts that have happened recently. Our public works department took the initiative to find a designer and plant over a thousand uh different well over a thousand local uh native wild flowersowers in front of Vinceagio Park by the parking lot where it before that it was a tired looking landscape and now it's a beautiful flowering well-maintained loved uh location. So check out this new native plant garden in front of Instamagio where you parked your car to walk in. Really amazing. Thank you to Ishmael, the public works director that kind of took the lead to make all that happen uh last Saturday. The other first is that uh our recreation staff joined up with our HR staff and uh held the first ever marina volunteer appreciation event at the community center. There was an incredible spread of food uh for all different kinds of diets. I'm talking vegan, vegetarian, meateers, etc. It was just a wonderful spread. and all the volunteers that came to be appreciated.
I think they left feeling appreciated. I have a feeling this event will be one that grows in size, but this was the first and I think it was really wonderfully successful. So, thanks especially to the recreation staff and Elizabeth, their leader, but also to all the other staff that were involved. It was a great event. I I learned that day that on June 30th coming up at 6:30 p.m.
at the Rockyhan Community Center, there will be an art in the park planning meeting to plan and and and share the plans uh and get feedback on the art that's going to go into the all-inclusive playground that's going to be built next year by the hands of about a thousand community volunteers. So, um, I hope that some of us can join the June 30th, 6:30 p.m. across the parking lot Rocky Han to hear and give feedback more about the art that will that can go in that wonderful park.
All right. Uh, so now we're going to move on to public comment, and this includes anything on our consent agenda that you'd like to speak to or other things that are not on our agenda later tonight. We'll start with the folks in the room. Come on up. You have up to three minutes.
>> Thank you, Mr. Mayor and council members. My name is Fred Watson, the co one of the co-founders of Fort Tag, the Fort Regional Trail and Greenway Project. Please pull item 10 G4 from the consent agenda. My comments tonight follow a letter that myself and Scott Waltz sent to the council yesterday.
Hilltop Park is a real gem. You can use a great internal trail system to reach the top and watch the sun set over the ocean while standing in a natural environment and to be able to do that forever. Immigen Parkway is a great road and it has on it on the north side of it a really great 12-oot multi-purpose trail that connects Preston and Abrams parks to areas to the west. As part of the Fortag project, Tamy is just about to build a connection from that engine trail in the Preston SE Sea Haven area across to where 8th Street comes down to Fifth Avenue. We've designed that trail to connect directly into the 045 mile trail segment along 8th Street that is mapped in the packet tonight. Everything is set, for example, for young families in Preston and Abrams Parks to be able to safely bike toward the coast and up onto Hilltop Park to see the sun set over the ocean.
Many thanks to everyone who's made this possible, the developer, staff, consultants, past and present councils, Tampy and CSUMB.
There's just one small but very important glitch.
As drawn in the map in the packet, the 8th Street Trail doesn't actually connect to Hilltop Park. It's blocked by an 8-ft nature strip and then there's a narrow 5-ft sidewalk and two very tight 90° turns. There's not, as you might hope, an 8- foot wide connection to the existing system of 8ft paved trails at the park. We need to make sure that the particulars of the easement agreement tonight do not constrain us from being able to fix this. And we need to fix that glitch to make a familyfriendly 8-foot connection between 8th Street Trail and the summit area of Hilltop Park and to make a loop out of the dead end dead end segments that are there.
Now, to look at this another way, you wouldn't build Highway 101 in the Bay Area right past SFO airport without actually having off-ramps to allow you to get to the airport. It's the same thing. If you build a segment of a 30 mile regional trail system past one of the best parks in one of the best cities, there's an expectation from the community that you'll incorporate a safe, accessible, intentional connection from the trail to the park. Please pass a motion tonight that makes certain that we will get that connection. Thanks.
>> Thank you very much, Fred. And there's been much discussion about it tonight, and we'll get to that in a moment.
Good, mayor, city council, wonderful staff. Um, I wear a lot of hats. Oh, Mike Mohler, resident of Marina. I wear a lot of hats in Marina, but tonight I'm wearing the hat of Repair Cafe Marina founder. Um, and I'm excited to announce the long-awaited return to the repair cafe and marina on July 15th from 400 pm to 6 pm at Vince Damagio Park thanks to um the generous support of the city marina and their recreation and cultural department. Um, I am writing the shirt tales of another event that was happening there. Anyway, um I had planned to hold more repair cafe events sooner. Um the first one was May of 2025 and it was pretty popular.
Um life got in the way, but um residents kept asking me to organize another one.
I couldn't wait any longer and you have to give the people what they want, right? So um what is a repair cafe? Uh I'll it was founded in the Netherlands actually in 2009 by a environmentally conscious um woman who decided that we [clears throat] throw too many things away and um if she can get skilled people and community members who have broken items need to be fixed, they can get together and keep things out of the landfill, save money. And I think now is a uh a better time than any with um you know rising prices, inflation, uh tariffs, um that we try to keep things uh try to fix broken things and try to keep things out of the landfill which is always good. Um [clears throat] the repair cafe actually has an exciting future. Um it's I plan to grow it. um in the um in the process of reaching out and finding more volunteers, I was um approached by some other organizations here in the region and um we have some partnerships developing that will be really great for Marina and the community as a whole when it comes to sustainability and the repair cafe. Um so I invite everybody to attend. Um, you don't need to bring in a broken item and you don't need to be able to fix anything. You can come and have a cup of coffee, have a snack, um, talk with people, and just enjoy your community.
Um, I think that's pretty much it. I hope I didn't forget anything. Thank you very much.
>> Thank you, Mike.
Anyone else in the building wish to speak?
Hello, mayor, council members. My name is Nolan Aragon. I'm a resident of Marina and a local business owner. I am concerned about the approval of flocks drone as first responder technology through the consent calendar without a more detailed public discussion of its long-term implications. Unlike fixed cameras or license plate readers, drone technology introduces an entirely different level of government surveillance capability, drones can observe neighborhoods from above, monitor activities over large geographic areas, and collect video footage of residents who are not suspected of any crime. While the stated purpose may be emergency response and public safety, the city should carefully consider how this technology could be used in the future and what safeguards will be in place. Recent concerns surrounding flock safety in California have centered on data sharing, oversight, and public trust. Several California jurisdictions have terminated or suspended flock contracts after discovering issues involving access to collected data and concerns about transparency.
These experiences demonstrate the importance of establishing clear policies before expanding surveillance capabilities. A respectfully request answers to the following questions. Uh, what specific public safety PL problem is this drone program intended to solve that cannot be addressed through existing police resources?
[clears throat] Excuse me. What is the total cost of the program including equipment, software, maintenance, training, insurance, and future replacement costs? How frequently will drones be deployed and under what circumstances? Will drones be used only for emergency response or can they be used for general patrol and surveillance purposes?
What restrictions will exist regarding surveillance of private property, backyards, parks, public gatherings, and community events? How long will collected video footage be retained?
Who will have access to the footage and data? Can drone footage be shared with outside agencies, including federal agencies?
What auditing procedures will be used to detect misuse? Has the city evaluated alternative public safety investments and compared their effectiveness against this technology?
Public safety and civil liberties are not mutually exclusive. Residents deserve both. For approving expanded aerial surveillance capabilities, I believe the community should have a full discussion regarding costs, benefit, privacy protections, and accountability measures. Uh I have also printed off a couple reports that have detailed Flock's security issues with their hardware and uh various problems with uh user access by unauthorized users. So, I have copies for all of you up here.
>> You can pass them out, Nolan, if you'd like.
While he's doing that, let me ask our our city manager. Um, the Nolan has asked several questions, how might we answer those, Lane?
Wait, is it normal for us to answer them on the dis tonight on a consent item?
>> No. So, it' have to be pulled and put at the end of our agenda. Okay. All right.
Thank you, Nolan. Anyone else?
>> Good evening. I'm Jan Shriner and I sit on the board of the Marine Coast Water District as well as the Monterey County Democrat Central Committee. But tonight I'm here as a former public works commissioner, as a cyclist, and I want to speak a little bit about 2009 2010 when as a chair of the public works commission, I worked on the pedestrian bicycle master plan. And that in those times, we were looking specifically at connectivity. And it was a it was an early time in GIS. our city staff were unable to create maps from Google maps or um [clears throat] GIS layers and so out of sort of a limitation of what we can do here in Marina I turned to CSUMB and was just so in awe of the maps that Dr. Watson was creating and the idea of forte.
And so a lot had gone on um leading up to that time in regards to University Villages and Z Haven, but even more has gone on since those days. So I would just ask that you reflect on the disconnect and the imbalance.
And [sighs] Marina needs a unification and a connectivity that we have not yet seen.
So I embrace the new growth, but we need to connect to everyone who is here already. And a lot of our folks uh even one of our board members last night rode his bicycle to our meeting. A lot of us are turning to the bicycle as gas prices are hitting $7 a gallon and maybe who knows it goes up from there, right? So, please pull that item, give it a really hard reconnecting kind of a thought and follow the forte maps if you can. Thank you, Jan.
Okay, let's go online.
Welcome, Denise Turley.
>> Hello. Good evening.
So, um um some of this will be a slight repeat.
Since we are bringing Kristen on, brand new tonight as fire chief, I'm going to do a little bit of the history of Fourth of July fireworks here and uh then proceed forward with the conversation.
Brian, I only wish that the resources you mentioned actually worked, but sorry, they don't. So, um, at least not on my phone, and I have never successfully left a message or gotten a call back without having to go through the police chief himself.
Not good in an emergency.
So, uh, Kristen, um, so fireworks, um, in the city, um, are, uh, prohibited and, uh, basically we have started the hell that is going to be the next couple of weeks where we have behavior that you would expect in a riot regarding fireworks.
And the only way to call in and make a complaint to you is through the county non-emergency and emergency services who switch themselves to voicemail if they're overwhelmed. So in a real emergency, forget getting through.
So, uh, to start, um, briefly to frame this, uh, last week, um, we had two incidents at, uh, the park at Preston Park where at the Pony League baseball games, fireworks were let off, not once, but twice. And I just want to say to the persons who participated, I think it was awful tonedeaf to go into a neighborhood who lost three homes less than six months ago to an unexpected fire to light off incenderary devices, no matter what they were, so close to that home. Hello.
Those people still have PTSD and shame on you.
I will yield back a whole 10 seconds.
Thank you.
>> Thank you, Denise.
Grace Silva Santella, welcome.
>> Hi, Mayor and City Council. I want to express express my pure joy at having dedicated pickle ball courts in Marina.
It we I have been waiting a number of years. I know I have spoken to you. I've spoken to the recreation and cultural services commission supporting pickle ball and marina. And on June 6th, I was there from about 10:15 until 3:00 in the afternoon. And it was one of I I felt I was in my pure happy place. I had been donated to my to me uh 15 uh gently used pickle ball paddles from friends that we were giving away. I gave uh some to two young families and they were so excited about getting these free paddles. We gave free um pickle ball balls to some of these uh people who were showing a genuine interest in playing.
The courts are really popular and people are really excited about the courts that'll be coming to Sea Haven. The players that are playing there are Marina residents. They're coming from Selenus. They're used to going to other places. I can walk down to these courts which is really exciting. the um I want to express uh my gratitude and a big thank you to Drea in the recreation department who met with myself, Joel Johnson who's a marina resident and a recreation uh commission member and another pickle ball player from Monterey, Mike Kennedy. and we worked on the signage that you'll see there at the the um on the courts and also they took care of a problem we saw on the courts and had it fixed by June 6th. So just want to express real gratitude to you all to city staff to city manager who unlike other cities has supported pickle ball in the city of Marina and uh tomorrow morning I'll be there at 9:00 if anybody wants to watch me play pickle ball. So thank you very much.
>> Thank you Grace. Let's go to Linda.
Welcome, Linda.
>> Yeah, thank you, uh, mayor and council.
I live directly next to the city zoned ballpark in Preston, which is [clears throat] fully surrounded by residential homes. [snorts] Although the facility is zoned for municipal use, the surrounding neighborhood is entirely residential. Amplified [snorts] music, megaphones, and fireworks from city permitted events carry directly into nearby homes, exceeding reasonable residential noise levels, and creating avoidable safety and fire risks.
regulatory provisions that still apply.
Mun uh the municipal uh noise ordinance uh noise limits are based on where the noise is heard. When amplified sound from a city zone facility impacts homes, residential noise standards apply. The California Noise Control Act um requires local governments to protect residents from excessive noise and authorizes restrictions on amplified sound affecting residential living.
Public nuisance law. [clears throat] Any activity that interferes with the com comfortable enjoyment of property is a nuisance regardless of zoning. Loud amplified sound and fireworks in a dense residential area meet this definition.
Fire code and fireworks restrictions.
Fireworks, consumer or improvised are prohibited without proper licensing.
Fireworks set off by attendees at a city zoned ballpark still violate fire safety rules when they endanger surrounding homes.
land use compatibility requirements.
Even cityzone facility facilities must operate in a manner compatible with adjacent residential uses. The city is responsible for mitigating impacts from its own permitted events. As a resident, I'm asking the city to revise its permitting conditions for this ballpark to prohibit [snorts] amplified music, megaphones, and any fireworks at events held at this location. Strengthen security and enforcement to ensure compliance with noise, safety, and fire prevention rules.
Every resident has a right to safe and quiet living conditions. Zoning does not exempt the facility from protecting the surrounding community. I respectfully request that the city enforce existing regulatory pro protections and update permit conditions to safeguard the neighborhood. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much, Linda.
Let's go to Carrie Hansen. Welcome, Carrie.
Hi, sorry about that. Can you hear me now?
>> Yes, loud and clear.
>> Thanks so much. Um, I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Carrie Hansen and I'm here attending this meeting on behalf of Flock Safety. So, I will be happy to answer questions. I won't do them now. Um, but if there is time at the end of the session and there continues to be questions and we'd like to go over that with the community, I'm happy to do so.
and I can yield back my time.
>> Okay, Carrie, before you go, I didn't hear your topic. Can you repeat what your topic was?
>> Oh, sorry. I am Carrie Hansen here on behalf of Flock Safety regarding the drone program that is um up for a proposal.
>> All right. Thank you, Carrie.
>> Thank you.
>> Let's go next to Paula. Hello. Welcome, Paula.
Good evening. I'm following up on some of the comments made by other people who live out here in Preston and Abrams Park. I sent in uh what I thought was a robust email to all of your attention.
So, I know you have the details of this.
And it's not just a complaint about fireworks. It's a complaint about the lack of policies and procedures and oversight and enforcement of activities conducted at the sports park here in Preston Park and perhaps even at others.
Specifically, there is a need for clearer guidelines governing acceptable conduct at permitted events and meaningful real consequences for violation of those guidelines. When I reviewed the sports field application, I found that it doesn't explicitly prohibit fireworks. And of course in the city of Marina um you know safe and sound are allowed. However in this housing area the residents who live here are prohibited and that's because we have a lot of dry vegetation and we have vulnerable property personal and public property both. So um there you know such a restriction should exist at least for this sports park up here. And the lack of real-time monitoring at these events further complicates enforcement efforts.
You know, I know it was referenced earlier by Councilwoman McCarthy to call the police department. Well, the problem is often times by the time the police can um get out here, the violators, the people who are the perpetrators of this are gone and cannot be located. So, um, you know, and and given these recent incidents, one occurred at 8:41 a.m. in the morning, and when it happened, it sounded like an assault weapon. It did not sound like fireworks. We're not at a nice sky. We couldn't see that they were fireworks. Later in the day, it was evident. And it was also evident that they were illegal because they were going way up in the sky. Um but but this is this is a problem because later in the day was 12:41 I believe and the police had gone out and as well as the pony baseball president and had asked it to stop. So clearly self-regulation and reliance on it by the event organizers or the participants is insufficient. So, additional mitigation members uh measures should be implemented by the city of Marina to ensure accountability, protect residents, and safeguard both public and private property. And I have enumerated those in my um email. Some of them have to do with a revision of the application itself. Some of it has to do with specific consequences should there be a violation. And some of it is the encouragement to the city to do some type of surveillance whether it's uh cameras that are turned on and also I believe that the city marina should have Greyar publish uh to the residents here when these events are happening so that they can better distinguish that it could be in fact fireworks or something happening up there rather than assault weapons. Some people were absolutely terrified and texted me thinking they needed to take shelter. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much, Paula.
Okay, we'll go ahead and close public comment.
And I think that um regarding 8th Street 10 G4 that Fred Watson and some others commented, I think it's best to pull that to let them know uh what some of us found out today, which is good news about the easement agreement that we're going to consider tonight. That's on our consent. And I think that uh Nolan did a lot of work and answer asked a lot of uh well thoughtout questions. And so at some point tonight, I'd like to ask the police chief to briefly answer those questions and give Nolan an opportunity later to meet with uh Chief Hopkins for more detailed discussion, but that includes pulling those two items. And um council, would you rather put those two at the end of agenda tonight, which is our normal practice, and that's probably not going to be satisfactory to Nolan or Fred. they'll have to wait till the very end of this meeting and it's going to go late, but at the same time, we want to get to those main issues that we have that are very important to our our city. Um, so let's do that. We'll pull those two items and we'll let um bring them up at the after our action items or perhaps after 10 A and 10B and maybe at that point we could take them a little sooner. Why don't we do that look real quick so Fred and Nolan and other commenters know if they should if they choose to stay or not. I'd like to ask our city manager if C and D 13 C and D um are important for tonight or if we could uh do these two consent items before 13 C and D.
Uh Council Member McAdams, do you have comment?
I'm seeing [clears throat] about the uh agenda order.
>> Yes. Okay. Go ahead.
>> Yeah. I mean, I think we need to stick with how we usually do business. Um and unfortunately, that's part of it. We have people that wait in the audience till 10:00 at night >> regardless.
>> Regardless. So, um or we can move it till the next meeting and then it can be on the top of the agenda. But I noticed that the council um like the agenda or what Mr. Ortega like where did his item go that keeps getting pushed and pushed about the council?
>> Yeah.
>> The meeting efficiencies like our meetings are so inefficient that we can't even talk about meeting efficiencies.
>> Right. So let's table the question about the other thing. Let's stick to what I um >> Yeah. So, so my suggestion is that it goes on the next meeting agenda cuz we're not going to get to the two items.
Okay, >> that's what I'm assuming. And um you know, and and there's other people here that are here to talk about the ballot measure and all that stuff. So, I would say if you don't want them to wait till 10 o'clock at night, then we can assure them that we'll hear it at the next meeting.
>> All right. Thank you, Jenny. Mayor Pro Fisher.
>> Thank you, sir. While while I agree with council member McAdams that we usually need to stick to our routine, I think 10 G4 doesn't well it probably already has been pulled now but I thought we could just quick give a quick comment because we know that all the uh feedback that we received all the questions are not about the agenda item but about a design which will be brought back to the council at a later time. So when people are aware of that, they might just not want to wait tonight. And I don't want to hold up this agreement because this road needs to be constructed.
>> Thank you. Um, city manager Lane Long, what do you think about C and D? 13 C and D >> on on 13D. Um, the issue here is that uh it's just an easement. Um, the actual design >> 13D or >> third, sorry. Yes. 13D.
>> I'm looking at 13 C and D. Uh, which we to ask how important they are that we hear them tonight.
>> Those are critical.
>> Those are critical. Okay. So, I think that Council McAdams is correct. Um, is it is it okay, Lane? Is it not critical if we um don't even pull the uh street, 8th Street, but we do uh pull for a further meeting the flock item. Or is that flock item import critical for critical for tonight?
>> I don't think the flock item is critical for tonight.
>> It is critical. [clears throat] Okay.
>> All right. So I think um I would suggest that we go to council member.
>> Uh that was a new piece of news that it's the flock thing is uh is critical.
So, I was going to suggest something else, but now I Wow.
>> Okay, Kathy. I think I'll suggest that the flock item um be approved tonight at the end of the meeting, even though it's we can make some folks wait, and that we see if any council wants to pull the 8th Street item after we hear the very brief >> second >> uh reference to that. So, I don't think we need a motion as long as we have consensus. Yeah.
>> Uh, so the flock item will be at the end of tonight's action agenda, which will be rather late if we get to it, and we will because the chief says it's critical. And then the 8th Street is part of our agenda. Let's go there now.
Uh, city manager, can you give a brief uh summary like 30 seconds or less on the 8th Street easement agreement?
the the [clears throat] item before council is just a a small portion that we need to get an easement from CSU and B and timing is really critical because we need it before um Vana uh is gone. Um the actual design that were some of the issues that were raised by uh Dr. Watson. Those are going to be discussed by staff um and that'll be brought back to council. We can certainly reach out and talk with Dr. Watson and others that are interested in that design part of that.
>> Okay.
>> My brief comment on that is it's my understanding from Edri uh de la Rosa our I'm sorry Edri de la Rosa of our >> I'm sorry de los Santos. Thank you. um that the design is completely up in the air um as far as all the things that the public tonight expressed concern about.
How it's going to be connected to Fort, how it's going to be uh a gateway to Hilltop Park, that whole area. The design that's in the packet is outdated.
There's a new design already, but it's not final. that this may or may not go to a commission before it comes to council, but it will come back to council for design review. And so all the things that Elizabeth and I see in agreement with the public's comments because we've been talking about this for a couple days, we we we feel we feel very confident that the design is still to come. So tonight's placeholder design is just to get the easement agreement with the university. It's not to approve the design. And so I just want to ask the city attorney if the if we pass the easement agreement tonight, the way that it's written, does it allow us to basically design um the four tag connection to Hilltop Park as we wish?
>> So So yes, thank you, mayor. So um I'm not going to I don't know that I can comment on the design issue. I haven't looked at where that sort of stems from in terms of that it's going to come back to council. So, what I will say is the item before us tonight doesn't limit whatever else is out there in terms of the design in the sense that um this agreement is is just that is for a small piece that is needed to complete the roadway as I understand it. Maybe the city uh I'm sorry, consulting engineer Edri can can advise better because I don't understand the full scope of what other agreements may govern and require this design to come back to council.
>> Okay.
>> So, so we've given a lot of time to this given that we're not pulling it. Um but it still if any council member wants to pull it, we'll take it up at the end of this meeting. Uh otherwise, we're likely to approve it as part of the consent agenda tonight, trusting that the design is still down the road. soon. It has to be done very soon because we want to build the eighth street. It's ready to be built, but we don't have a design yet for this important hilltop connection.
Council member Viola, >> I think um uh Edri had his hand up.
>> Yeah, I'm just I'm just worried about spending too much time on it because >> then I'll make a motion to accept the uh agenda pulling uh only the flock safety um 10g2 and have that put at the end of the agenda.
>> Second. Okay. Uh seconded by Mayor Prom.
Um all right. Any other Let's go to Council Member McCarthy.
>> Um so there's no >> no final questions or comments. We'll go to a vote. All in favor, please say I.
I.
>> I.
>> Opposed, please say no. Okay. That motion pass unanimously with us. Thank you everybody. We'll move on to the public hearings. The first one regarding Seabbze Landscape Maintenance District.
>> Yes, please.
Hello, council, city, city council, residents, mayor Bruce Elgato. Thank you for having us here today. I want to bring the public hearing for the LMD district of Seabbze the Seabbze Landscape Maintenance District.
So just want to do this presentation just so the public knows and the city council also knows. The Alaska maintenance district for Seabbze was established in 1996 and it includes 36 lots that is on the northern end of the city of Marina.
Mhm.
The proposed fiscal year 2526 had a assessment of 182 and 42 a year per parcel or $15.20 20 cents per month uh for each parcel that has residents and the outgoing plan maintenance for this district will be uh 3,500 per part.
Next slide please.
Exhibit C uh by the engineer report shows the fiscal year 25 20 24 25 26 and 2627 uh reports just showing um what the dollar amount is for each district. Next slide please.
Here we go um with the comments and questions. I did receive a message from William M. from Hanova.
Um he's a retired Army Corps engineer and he show he shared our he shared his thoughts on the maintenance that was going on.
We will review the specific location that he identified and make a coordination with the maintenance contractor if appropriate. Uh the purpose of tonight's hearing is to consider the annual asset levy.
However, staff will continue to work with residents regarding the maintenance concerns and severe several uh expectations within the district.
Slide, please.
The next on the agenda will be the open public hearing for the Monterey Bay Estates Lighting and Landscape Maintenance District.
Next slide, please.
>> Okay, let's open the public hearing on the Seb landscape maintenance assessment district. If there's anyone in the room that would like to speak to this, please come on up to the microphone.
Not seeing anyone, anyone online that would like to speak to Seab Breeze, please raise your hand and we'll call on you.
Okay, we'll close the public hearing and I would motion that we adopt the resolution before us confirming the diagram the assessment and ordering levy of $18242 for fiscal year 2627 as an assessment for the seabbze landscape maintenance assessment district and authorize city clerk to file a certified copy of the diagram and the assessment with the Monterey County auditor controller prior to August 1st, 2026.
>> A second.
>> Okay. All right. Landro, thank you for the good report. Anything more that you want to provide input regarding Seabbze?
>> Um, well, I just want to think thank uh Mr. William Henova just because he was the one resident that emailed me regarding this and he couldn't make it because of a medical procedure. But just want to say thank you and we are working to see how healthy this district is in terms of the uh piggy bank as you would say just because it is um it's not in the best shape.
>> It's getting lighter. [clears throat] >> Yes sir.
>> All right. Thank you Landre.
>> Council member McCarthy. Thank you mayor. Um as always I always have questions about these landscape and lighting districts. Um, I guess I'll start with that retaining wall. So, does that belong on somebody's property? So, this district were to be dissolved, that retaining wall would be responsible of each lot owner or or is that on city property?
>> So, the retaining wall would be per the property owner. um they would be responsible just like if a tree was in their property, it would be their responsibility as well.
>> Okay. Um I appreciate your comment on we're trying to find out the financial condition of these landscape districts.
Spoiler alert, spoiler alert, they're in terrible condition, right? And um I was shocked that this council voted to dissolve the other one that was in um bad condition, but the writing's on the wall. It's coming for these two. So I think as a city we have played some role in engaging with these entities to um try to help them understand the risks of when these dissolve if they dissolve and um I mean $16 a month or what what's the current monthly assessment?
>> Indeed it is uh yep 182 and 42 cents per year per parcel. 16 bucks a month isn't enough to cover expenses for um so I mean the again the writing's on the wall either the assessments need to go up and I believe the voters or the residents have to approve that or there's trouble down the line you know and it's it just feels very awkward voting to approve this knowing that it's not sustainable but those are my comments. Thank you mayor.
>> Thank you Brian. Let's go to Mayor Bruten Fischer.
>> Thank you Mr. Mayor and thank you Lisandra and I agree the outreach to the residents needs to be very clear needs to be made very clear what will happen if it gets dissolved if people don't vote to increase their their um contributions. It's it's unsustainable.
You cannot do maintenance uh based on fees from 1996 with costs in 2026. So yeah, when the outreach to the residents happens, please make it very clear what the options are and what it will mean to them for them. Thank you.
>> We'll do. Thank you.
>> Landro, is Cypress Cove the name of the district that was dissolved?
>> Yes, sir.
>> And I think it was the second district that was dissolved because there was a tiny one on Bayer Drive that was dissolved about eight or 10 years ago.
Do you remember that, Lane?
Yeah. So, I think we've had two dissolved. And the issue is that every time we go through the process of asking the the residents to increase their assessment, they decline and that's their right under Prop 218. So, we have no way to require an increase uh from the residents of the district.
So, the district landscaping, etc. gets worse over time because there's less money. There's less value in the in the assessment. As inflation goes up, it does less labor and less supplies. It pays for less labor and supplies. So, option one, assessments go up. As council member uh McCarthy said, the staff, our staff has been highly involved in some of these districts, and it's not it's not resulting in a majority vote, not even close to a majority vote. It's it's a landslide no every time that the 218 vote has been put to the residents of any of our districts in the last couple of decades.
So the second option that council member McCarthy M McCarthy mentioned is trouble. So the trouble is that the degradation of the landscape district.
It's an interesting ethical question that where I live, uh, the city takes care of my lights and any public any, um, landscaping that's not related to my house. And that's true for over most of the city except for these landscape and lighting districts and the dunes and Marina Station, which is under construction now. But the majority of our city, all residents pay for street lights, landscaping that's uh in in in public area. So it's a little unfair to make these residents of landscape districts pay for something the rest of us don't pay for. It was in the contract that's the paperwork they signed when those developments were built. Um, so it's according to agreements that are in writing, but it doesn't feel fair to the people that live there. Uh, so I just want to point that out. Uh, and ask a question that gets asked when we do these on a pretty regular basis to staff. staff. What do we do when the quality of these districts becomes uh uh an eyesore and maybe unsafe etc. What are the city's options and Landro or city manager or city attorney whoever is appropriate?
I think we we do very similar what we do to the Cypress Cove when it gets to where there [clears throat] becomes safety issues. um and the district is not willing to uh increase the funds to address that, then we bring it to the council and recommend dissolving at that point.
>> Then after dissolution, how are the safety and aesthetic issues addressed?
>> Since these improvements on private property, it's the private property owners responsibility. And so in the picture he had there, it had a wall.
Typically, we don't build walls on backgrounds in Cypress Code. They plant all these shoots, trees, retaining walls again that we don't typically do. And and those are uh improvements put in by the developer to for those improvement or for that development to move forward.
And so in this case, you see that wall binder is decaying. At some point, um, we would come to the council and say, um, you a recommendation to, um, to terminate the district because the safety issues are, um, continuing to grow and the district isn't willing to address them, then it really kind of um, forces our hand. So in this case after we worry we to dissolve this district and the wall continues to degrade and it's the responsibility of the land owners to fix it. What happens if they don't fix it and the wall falls or becomes a safety hazard? It's the landowner's responsibility.
Okay. So, do we send code enforcement to the land owners whose lots are occupied by the wall?
Uh, I see Ishmael. Ishmael, can you come on up because this is the toughest question. We see we see a downward trend and we're asking what happens at the end.
>> Uh, yeah. What what you recommended is what most cities would be left with if there's a safety issue and it's not the city's property. um then code enforcement would um be sent out to deal with the property owner.
>> Okay.
>> Un unless Lane knows of some other way to that he's handled in the past. Yeah.
It's not it's not an easy situation for sure.
>> Okay. Maybe stick around Ishmael. I like I have a question for you, but we're going to go to Council Member Viola.
>> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I remember the last discussion with Cypress Cove and some of the um residents there were very disturbed that the other majority of the residents were not willing to uh to increase the the rates when when it's so evident you know the the um degradation that's happening. So in those situations I I feel for the ones who were trying to increase but at the same time you know that group has to have the responsibility to finding the majority in order to uh comply um you know with um uh you know the the increases. So um we're kind of stuck there. But in in in the recent conversation saying that it converts if you dissolve then the um uh the um uh the district then it reverts back to individual ownership. So, it sounds like, and I just need to reaffirm this with our city attorney, there is no remedy available to to say that once it converts, once it's dissolved, and once it converts to the responsibility of the individual property owners, that there is no other legal remedy that can have the city subsume those responsibilities because we do it for other other >> So, I mean, I think two things. If you're talking about the improvements that are on private property, those will become improvements that the property owner is responsible for.
>> Yeah.
>> Anything on city property on the other hand would be the responsibility of the city.
>> Okay. So, I'm just saying, for example, that brings to mind the whole issue of sidewalk repair. That has always been um the individual homeowners because that's what I did. I ended up, you know, having to repair it because it was kind of in no end's I didn't own it and yet I had the responsibility to maintain it. And yet the city has made a decision to go ahead and um and to repair the sidewalks, we as a city for property owners.
And yes, it's not it's it's not our property per se, but it doesn't it didn't seem reasonable that the property owner should be fixing and maintaining sidewalks in front of their houses. So I'm I'm just saying that is there no way to kind of look at this situation and a little differently because quite frankly, you know, we keep seeing the same items come up and and really it it it just feels kind of, you know, senseless to me.
>> I mean, the sidewalks have a specific statutory scheme, so that's sort of kind of a different, you know, paradigm altogether than what these are landscape and lighting districts.
>> Okay. So, you're saying zero zero chance other than saying that it goes down and then we enforce and >> Yeah.
>> Yeah. I mean, not not that I can think of. You're saying if if for some reason some of the property owners say, "Oh, city, you've been taking care of the this retaining wall, so now you you still have to do that. Is that what you're asking?"
>> Yeah. Or that we do it. We assume that >> that that's a separate that's a sort of policy decision and we'd have to look at that if that were to come back to council if you wanted to undertake that obligation.
>> Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Kathy. Mayor Berture.
>> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Uh, city of Tuna, I remember we were told we cannot use public funds for repairs on private properties, and I agree that sidewalks are different because they're used by the public.
>> Yes. So, again, we'd have to look at that. If that were something that the city council wanted to consider, we'd have to look at it from that lens >> because other people will come back to me to us because we, you know, they had to take care of their own trees. Now the so when you start that cycle where do you stop? So so I think the main message is to to communicate very clearly with the residents to really explain what will happen because I spoke with a resident from the uh district that we recent that recently was dissolved and she stated that she didn't understand if she had understood she would have voted yes and so u because she didn't want to do this to her neighbors. So, please be as as clear as possible. Yeah. So, thank you.
>> Thank you, Elizabeth. Council member McCarthy. Thank you, Mayor. I didn't mean to get us too off track here, but I guess um to reiterate the recommendation for me is create like a onepage flyer to these residents that says, "Hey, these are the risks. If if you know your district is clearly in financial trouble, doesn't seem to meet its obligations, you know, it's heading down the wrong path. if it dissolves. These are the things that it means. Code enforcement will come after, you know, the homeowner for a crumbling wall or a tree that normally the the landscape and lighting district would maintain, right?
And um that can be very expensive and you know without the help of the collective, the individuals are going to be responsible there and and there's a lot of risk there and you know ultimately it's the property owners that get to make that decision. So um with that I move that we approve um this item.
>> I second.
>> Oh is there already a motion? Okay.
>> Okay.
>> All right. Uh my last comment is um what can we do different Landro Landro? Um regarding outreach that we haven't done in the past.
What we've done so far is reach out to the residents via mail and via the paper.
We could do flyers or not flyers but uh door hangers for the residents because we understand that some residents rent um and the addresses that we find on our back end aren't the residents addresses.
it's the homeowner and the homeowner doesn't always communicate to the uh renters if there is something like they're going to uh city council. So maybe door hangers would be the best option just to communicate more to them.
But that would be my only suggestion.
>> Okay, Ishmael, do you have more input back? No. All right. Um, I think we could probably agree that a robust outreach would include flyers and some other components. Um, there's not that many people that live in this district, but there couldn't be some other kind of direct communication. And I don't know if the renters are part of the loop unless they're going to pressure the land owners. But I think as Landjo mentioned, it's the land owners that need to be contacted and a flyer on the door of a rental households might not get to the landlord.
So it seems that staff should come back to us with a plan of outreach that we feel comfortable is the most reasonable approach to get through to the residents the the pros and cons of what's what their choices are. Does that sound reasonable?
Let's go to Council Member >> Biala.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, since this is small neighborhood, you know, it seems like we should have sort of community kind of informal maybe at somebody's house, you find the resident that really wants to promote this uh increase in in fees and stuff, and then you ask them, can you go to your neighbors? Can we have a, you know, an informal discussion at somebody's house? And we invite the city staff to come articulate the consequences of of you know whether you choose to do this or not because I think that that helps a more of a one-to-one contact you know flyers and that kind of stuff is great but this can easily be by a community meeting.
I agree. Uh this was um like the resident William did. He uh did send an email out to me, was the only resident that did that. Um we could attempt to do something like a community meeting and have it orchestrated a little bit by the residents just because they are the people impacted by this. Uh so we'll look into that.
>> All right. So we know this issue as council member McCarthy said is going to come up every single year with every single such district. And so I'd like to suggest a friendly amendment to the motion that uh city staff engage with to preppy tree pepy Smith to work with staff to come up with an outreach plan for these districts. And it we have a year before we have to go to these districts again with that outreach. But anyway, that would be my friendly amendment.
>> Did I make the motion? No.
>> Who made the motion?
Okay. So, I'd like to make a friendly amendment to my motion. I accept the friendly amendment. There's a second.
>> All right. And mayor, I'm happy to support that, but you know, we live in a city of 50% renters. So, getting a community meeting probably isn't going to work. Um, if that applies in that neighborhood because the renters aren't the ones that make the decision, they're not the voters. Um, and in terms of engaging Tripy Smith, I mean, I use AI to create a flyer in 30 seconds. I don't know that I want to spend thousands of dollars, but if that's what it takes, I mean, I'm supportive of it, too. I just think it's a fairly easy task to create some, you know, quick flyer that helps explain to the owners like, look, your landscape lighting district is in trouble and these are the risks. Yeah, I think that flyer, a community me, checking the addresses of the landowners, sending them mail, trying to contact them by phone. I think Treepy Smith is probably the best supportive >> entity to put something together and bring back to us and say, "Here's what we want to do. We think this will cover it and then we get to decide if it's too much or too little."
>> Kathy, your face tells me you're not happy.
>> I kind of agree with Council Member McCarthy. I I just can't see us spending, you know, um a a lot of high consultant money for doing this for I mean, I think we need we know they know what to do.
>> Um [clears throat] uh mayor and council, we we have um I think most of you know we we stole Donna from Wreck and Cultural Services. So, we have somebody that can help us with flyers and um social media uh posts and and we will work with code enforcement who has access to um property owner contact information. Uh so, we can bring a plan back to you, let you know what we're doing to reach out to that neighborhood.
Um if necessary, we can plan a Saturday and and our staff can go knock on doors if necessary to we'll do everything we can to get as much involvement. But I I I will I will say this. Um the last time we went through this was cy uh uh yeah, Cypress Cove. Um we had community meetings and had five people show up. So uh and I don't think um [sighs and gasps] that particular situation was hard because the uh there was more residents that were not ever going to have uh expenses than than would trees. So, it was always going to be a majority saying, "I don't want to pay extra." Um, and hopefully we don't have the same situation here, but we we can bring a plan back to you. Uh, we can do it internally and and we we'll bring something robust to you.
>> Okay. So, I'll modify my motion that uh staff come back to us with an outreach plan for all the districts, which are maybe three left, um, and connect with Trip EPI Smith as appropriate so they can provide some input on the plan that staff comes up with.
Second hold to Pepe Smith if necessary. I I first would like to see the internal uh communication. So, I'll modify the motion for staff to come back to us with an outreach plan and then we can decide if we want to engage with Trapey Smith on that plan. Second hold to that. Yes.
Okay. Anita, are you clear on the motion? Okay. Assandro, anything more?
>> No, sir.
>> Okay. Council, we ready to go? Uh, all in favor, please say I. I. All oppose, please say no. Okay, that passed unanimously. And we'll do the same similar uh deliberation for the next item, Monterey Bay Estates.
See, you want to run through the assessment amount accessor.
>> All righty. So, Monterey Bay Estates, this district consists of 162 single family homes. Next slide, please.
For this one, we have uh the proposed budget for the 2627, sorry about that, is the 77 and4 a year or $643 per month for each of the residential lots.
Some of the work that is covered on this one is the beautifification of the landscapes and the tree trimming. Next slide, please.
Some of the stuff from the or some of the info from the uh engineering report shows some of the dollar um value that is left in the parcel which is going down. uh contrary uh it is um coming down just because of the increased cost. Next slide please.
For this landscape district, we did do the same reach out for that that we did for the seabbze. Um but we were not met with any uh outreach from the residents.
And that is what I have for this uh hearing or public hearing. If anybody wants to follow up. All right. Thank you, Landro. Let's open a public hearing. Anyone in person want to speak to this issue, please come forward.
>> Especially if you're an electrician.
There we go. Uh, I would how how were the uh notices sent out because I live in this district.
>> No, no, Nolan, you need to talk to us.
>> Okay. I Well, I was asking how the notices [clears throat] were sent out because I don't recall receiving any notice uh about it. Um, and then the other question I had is what uh this it says this is for lighting and landscaping. Um, for the lighting anyways, uh, does the city actually maintain the street lights in this area?
Because I was actually just walking the dog this morning and I saw PG& actually changing the street light in this uh, neighborhood. So, I was just curious if the city is contracted with PG& or if PG is contracted with the city to change these light bulbs or if they are PG&'s uh property to maintain themselves.
>> Great. Thank you, Nolan. And we'll answer we'll answer your questions as soon as public comment's over. Anyone else in person?
Then we'll go online. Anyone online want to speak to this issue? Please raise your hand.
Not seeing anyone, we'll close public comment. And Landre, how were notices sent out?
>> Notices were sent out via mail or the uh back end that we have for all the addresses.
Uh if a if a new resident moves in, they buy the house, how how does it change to their name so that we know not to send it to another name and gets lost in the mail somehow?
>> I wouldn't have the best answer for that one.
[clears throat] So, so we have access to um uh the the same system that escrow companies have. Anytime a new uh a property deed is recorded into a new um uh owner's name, when we look it up, we have that new owner's in uh information that same day. Um so the the addresses, phone numbers that we have is the same thing that an escrow company would look up. Um, I I I couldn't answer why sometimes people don't receive it. I I I will say this, if people are like me, they don't check their mail two, three weeks at at a time, and when they finally do, they throw away 90% of it without reading it. So, it's possible that that happened. Um, but and then we also get a lot of phone numbers that are um in the in the escro records, but um off when we call.
>> All right. So, uh, how good are we at the city of getting updated homeowner names from when they turn over?
>> We we don't get it until we pull the report again. So, so, so if if we pull it right now, um, whatever is is on people's records at that time, title reports, that's what we'll get. If something changes tomorrow, we won't know until the next time we we pull that information. Got it. Yeah, I think Nolan has lived there for a couple of years at least, so it wouldn't be that issue.
Six, seven years, six years. Thank you.
Um, and he checks his mail every day cuz sometimes there's bills in there.
>> Okay. And then another question is that the lighting, is it maintained by the city or PG or how does that work?
>> So, uh, even lights that are owned and maintained by P Gen, we still have a contract. We still pay the um uh monthly fee for those.
>> You mean the the the energy, the power, the electricity?
>> The energy, the power, the electricity.
Yeah. There's a perlite fee that the city pays for those.
>> Okay. All right. Thank you.
So, council, I just want to ask you the question. Just like the last Seabbze district, what's your sense? What's your gut sense about the outreach that we're doing to reach these folks?
Council member McCarthy. Um, first I should note that this one appears to be in slightly better condition than the other one. Um, you know, I think outreach um to the owner on record is is what you have to do. It's it's a public record, right? I can go to the county courthouse and and see who lives at, you know, a certain address or who's on title. Um, I mean that who legally has the right to vote, so that's who you should reach out to.
I don't know if that answers your question, but >> yeah, I'm just thinking in the case of the public member that spoke, pretty sure he his household didn't get mail. So, it makes me wonder, you know, is there more we could do to ensure homeowners get at least getting the notice? So, I'd probably go to the county and figure out where that disconnect is or maybe work with staff and maybe there is something that we're not seeing. But >> yeah.
>> Okay. I know. I get all kinds of notices from the city. Some nice, some not so nice. Okay.
Mayor Pretend, >> you could could also deliver doortodoor on top of mailing. And of course, you will reach the tenants then as well. So maybe in the doortodoor letter, you can say if the if you're a tenant, please pass this on to your landlord to the homeowner.
>> Yeah.
>> Just to try to do more than one.
>> So it goes back to what we talked about earlier.
>> Yes. Council member Bale, you have the last word >> to say this, but we do have one resident in that district of 162 F homes. So, start with that person who's in the audience and and work with them to, you know, think about some ideas and outreach to their neighbors.
>> We'll do.
and it's up to staff to come back with a outreach plan that may include connecting with um you know known people who have expressed interest like Bill Genova. Okay. Um I'll motion that we adopt a resolution before us ordering the levy of $77.14 fiscal year 2627 for the assessment of the Monterey Bay States Lighting and Landscape Assessment District. Then the city clerk would file that certified copy of the diagram and assessment with the Monterey County Auditor Controller prior to August 1st, 2026.
>> I second.
>> All right. Uh, all in favor, please say I.
>> I. I.
>> Okay, that passes unanimously. Thank you for all your work, Landro.
>> And I'm sure that Edri is glad to be off the hook. He's normally the one that does this work, so thank you for standing in for him.
Okay. Uh, we go to 13A. Am I on track here?
>> All right. So, we go to the user utility tax item. And who will be introducing this for us?
I will, mayor. So, first we're going to have a presentation by FM3.
They're the survey group who recently conduct conducted a a statistic statistically valid survey in Adam. uh Surenshin will be making that presentation. Uh and then following that, our city attorney uh Renee has a presentation on the actual utility user part and then after that we'll be uh ready for um public comment and council comment.
Okay, Adam, we've promoted you to panelists.
Welcome.
>> Uh, hi everyone. Adam Sunshine with FM3.
I'm glad to be with you and thank you for the opportunity. Um the the nice thing um compared to the prior times that I've been uh here to speak with you is we actually have the a good opportunity for a successful ballot measure uh for the city. So looking forward to taking you through those results and then we'll uh take any questions that you have at the end. So I am going to uh go ahead and share um my screen with the PowerPoint. Hopefully that's coming up on screen for you all as well. And >> we see it. We're ready to go. Thanks.
>> Great. Thank you, Mayor. So, um, to start, let's talk about the methodology of how we did the survey. This was conducted recently from May 6th to the 21st. We uh interviewed people who would be considered likely November 2026 voters in your city, meaning that they are folks with a a past voting history that goes beyond, you know, showing up once every four years to vote for president. They're a little more frequent voters than that um and would be expected to vote in a midterm election. We did 312 survey interviews, which means we have a margin of error of plus or minus, let's call it five and a half for easy math for questions that are asked of everybody. We get into some of the details, you'll see there's sometimes we've asked questions in slightly uh variations of wording where half the group is getting one question, half's getting a different question. In those cases, the margin of error will be larger. Uh we reached people a few different ways. We did um email we did uh live telephone interviews um on both cell phones and landlines as well as sending emails and text uh message invitations for people to take the survey online. The online survey is protected. It's not like one of the ones that kind of shows up on Facebook or next door and you could take it 50 times or send it to all your friends. Each person has one opportunity to take the survey. Uh we'll share some uh results and how they compare to surveys done in 2016, 2022, and 2024. Uh we we offered the survey in English and Spanish and you might see some of that doesn't quite add up to 100% and that's because we've rounded decimal points. So starting with just the the big picture views of how things are going in Marina, we still have about half of voters who would say things are going in the right direction.
Uh 50% compared to about 29% who would say wrong track and 20% who find themselves in a don't know some things are good, some things are bad. Uh you know I'm not quite sure how to answer that question.
We are seeing this trend in many many communities these days of uh of people being concerned about how the way things are going uh with more negative numbers than we've seen in the past for a variety of reasons. And uh you know we find anyone who is at half of voters thinking things are in the right direction. We consider that to be a pretty positive result given the general mood and the fact that if you were to ask people for example how they think the state is going um you find over 60% who think it's headed off on the wrong track.
Um we also see uh quite good favorability numbers for the city's public safety and parks and recreation department uh as well as um your local small business owners. So we gave people this range of very favorable in the dark blue, somewhat favorable in the light blue, somewhat unfavorable in the the pinkish color, very unfavorable in the dark red, and then the gray bars are some combination of they haven't heard of that group or they don't have an opinion. Uh we lead off with the fire department at 87% favorable, only 2% unfavorable. A few people that uh don't have an opinion. Um, so kudos to to the work that's been done there with over 60% having a very favorable opinion.
Nearly as favorable as your fire department is your local small business owners, 84% have a favorable view, 3% an unfavorable view. Um, with about, you know, more than four and 10 who have a very favorable opinion. So, uh, this is something that we're also seeing as a trend around the state, an increasing perception of favorability towards local small business owners. In your community, you have some, we tested some other departments, your parks and recck department and your police department, both scoring very well in the 70% range.
It's extremely common for fire departments to pull better than police department. So, uh, we we not we're not seeing a surprise in in those numbers, but a a 73 to 17 ratio for a police department is very very positive and and one of the better that that we've seen recently. Uh, public works is a little bit further down, 54 to 16, but largely a group of people that are not really clear on how to rate that department.
About 30% who fall in the category of haven't heard of them or not really sure what they do enough to give an opinion.
[clears throat] City government and city council both get uh favorability ratios of about 2:1 compared to the the favorable to unfavorable. So good numbers there as well. You'll see both of those numbers are pretty close to that right direction wrong track ratio, right? Of of about half who would say things are going in the right direction.
We've got about half who rate city government and city council as as favorable and then in the range of the mid20s who would say either things are going in the the wrong track or they are unfavorable about those groups.
Um we also in really importantly actually even more importantly than what I just shared with you find that over seven and 10 voters now think that the city has an at least some need for additional funding which is an increase from 2024.
um we're at 71% only 8% who would say uh there's a little need and 13% who would say there's no real need and we almost always find a very strong correlation between uh this question and opinions on any kind of revenue measure for a city and so to see an increasing sense there uh is really beneficial if we're thinking about the viability of a measure. So, that's all context just to set you up and get to the mood of how your voters are feeling as we come in and look at this ballot measure. Uh, we find the best way to to assess the viability of a ballot measure is to give people a 75word ballot question to react to. So, not trying to get ahead of you and say this is a,000% what the measure has to be, but they need something to respond to so that it's more than just a conceptual question. Uh so we gave it a title, the Marina 911 Emergency Public Safety Community Services Measure and we referenced some of the illustrative examples of how funding could be used.
This is uh positioned as a general purpose measure. So you don't have the ability to lock in uh these uses, but they are um examples meant to replicate where we think uh the city has been headed here. Ensure firefighters, paramedics, police officers response to emergencies and natural disasters by funding police and fire stations.
prevent disruptions to city services, provide safe play places for children, and provide general municipal services.
Then we have a bunch of legally required language. So, shall the city of Marina's measure establishing the 7% utility users tax generating approximately $3.6 million annually until ended by voters be adopted, requiring low-inccome rates.
Um, and then some fiscal accountability provisions which are inherent in the measure, but a lot of people are not aware of that and it's helpful to remind them right in the 75word question. and that's public spending, disclosure, audits, and all funds spent locally.
Now, on the initial reaction to this measure, we're just about at that 50% threshold that is needed uh for this measure to be successful. And that says to us that there is import the importance of ongoingformational outreach. Just to preview the rest of the presentation, when we provide information with people about what this measure is, what it does, how it benefits the community, we see a pretty strong increase in support. well above the 50% number. Um but we see at this initial level we're within the surveys uh 5 and a half point margin of error there at 49% 42% saying no and about 8% who are unsure. Uh we also see a little bit of softness in terms of the that 49% with only 21% who feeling like they definitely would support this compared to 28% who are in the probably or leaning yes category. That's another thing that gets addressed with additionalformational outreach.
Uh just real fast to give you a sense that there is plurality support uh for this measure uh in each council district um with uh not a lot of statistical difference here. Right from 46 yes to 53% yes in a survey of this size is not that different especially when we're breaking it down into these four council districts with relatively small sample sizes.
Um, so then the next thing we want to look at is some of your voters priorities for this measure. As we talked about before and as you know with a general purpose measure, we're not promising certain funding uses, but we are uh talking about what voters top priorities are and how that aligns with the city's priorities. You'll also see within here some of the the the questions that we've asked are more about the outcomes from the measure. Um the the accountability provisions that are in in the measure. It's not just about how the money is going to be spent. So, um, in this question, you're seeing, uh, the choice of extremely important in the dark blue, very important in the the next color blue, somewhat important in the light blue, not too important in red, don't know in gray. Uh, first thing to take away before we get into any of the individual spending priorities is how low the red bars are and the gray bars are, the not too important and the don't know. you have a whole series of of uh attributes of this measure that nearly all of your voters are saying is at least somewhat important to them. Right? So, we have things even though only about half are saying, "Yeah, I'm willing right away to support this measure and and the the funding mechanism, they like all the things that come into the measure." So, uh, just to give you a little bit of a sense here, um, some of those extremely high priorities are related to maintaining safe and clean drinking water. Uh, emergency or natural disaster response phrased in a few different ways here.
Public safety described in a bunch of different ways and a different elements of that. Um, accessibility for disabled residents as it relates to your public buildings. Um, and then some of the fiscal accountability and uh and sort of outcome language. So there, for example, you're seeing maintaining the city's long-term financial stability with the 86% of people saying that's important to them, extremely or very important.
Requiring spending disclosures, 85% extremely or very important, requiring all funds spent locally, 82%. Right? But the the other elements are are more in terms of the way the funding would be used. As I mentioned, public safety, response to emergencies, natural disasters, the drinking water, etc. If we look at the next slide, we see a couple items that are statistically very close to what had been mentioned on the prior slide. That's repairing streets and potholes at 81%, preventing disruptions to city services at 78%. Um, and then you can see some of the others requiring audits, recruiting, retaining police officers, funding local fire stations, um, supporting ADA access at public buildings. Again, this is where I was mentioning, you know, different variations of similar questions with accessibility for disabled residents compared to ADA access. Um, these are all still high priorities, right? You're still in the three range of threequarters or above for all of these elements of a ballot measure and ways that funding could be used. They're just not at the top top of the list like you saw in the prior slide.
Uh if we get down to uh the next range here, uh this is where we're starting to see, you know, the the mid60s, the high 60s for extremely are very important.
The reds not too important are now creeping up to about 10%. So they're still pretty low, but uh but they're part of the the conversation at least.
Um here's where we get some of the other items you saw in the ballot question draft. Providing safe children's play areas, for example. Um you also have lowing lower rates for lowincome residents that gets uh 71% but only 27% extremely important. Um and the uh disruptions to city services um scored very well. It's a little bit softer when we tie that more directly to city hall itself. That's the idea of the phrase providing uh preventing disruptions to city services. Um but it comes in at 66% when we reference city hall.
Um the next thing we wanted to do in this survey is uh something I mentioned earlier which is simulate the kinds of information that the city could be providing to people if this measure is moving forward. And I know some of this outreach has already been done. Um but this is an opportunity to bring it forward within the survey context and simulate if everybody in the city got the same kind of information. Um and there's a lot of text on these slides.
I'm not going to read it all, but you can look at kind of the the the themes on the in the parentheses here. These are statements we provided to people and they told us that they were convincing as reasons to support the measure. Um, these are very or somewhat convincing in the 70s and 80s for a measure that just about 50% of people were initially supporting. Right? So, we're 30 points higher in terms of them saying these statements are convincing. Again, not going to read them all, but you get the sense of streets and the need to repair streets, your uh medical response times and the locations of existing fire stations and what that means. Um your ability to have uh community space serving seniors and children and the need to repair that upgrade uh go beyond what you have now. city hall, which um is not in and of itself a hu a a huge priority, but when we tell the story, um it does resonate with people. We just have to be more um descriptive than saying we need to build the new city hall. Um referencing that the city's been growing and public buildings haven't kept up. Um that's also a compelling theme for voters.
Um some that are okay but not quite as strong still important to reference uh fire uh their aging fire and police stations uh in and the not keeping up with earthquake safety standards and they need to do that the fiscal accountability I talked about earlier little bit softer when we talk about the fact that doing these making these changes later will cost more than doing it now um or talking about the amount of crime that's been uh happening in the city and needing to maintain response times and patrols Uh here's maybe the most optimistic point in this survey and that is after we provided that information to your local voters. Support for this measure went from 49% up to 65% yes for a majority vote measure. So you need 50% plus one. We are 15 points over that number. Um well outside that 5 and a half point margin of error. We've nearly doubled the definitely yes vote from 21 to 41. Um while the definitely no stays about the same, right? There's going to be a core group of people who are just not going to budge on a measure like this. Uh that that they're concerned about the cost uh for themselves or for others. Um and pretty much no amount of communication is going to change that.
But uh you can see that many many voters are open to more information and maintain their level of support or or excuse me increase their level of support when they hear why you would do this measure and what it would mean.
Okay. Um now we wanted to make sure we're providing both sides of the story.
We also gave people um the kinds of statements that might come up if this measure is put forward uh from potential opponents of the measure. If there are those who are organized, right? and they're going to talk about cost of living and and uh you know all the other sources of funding that you should have and the way you spend money in general.
And then we reass.
And what we see on the right hand side now of this slide is while that opposition takes a little bit of a bite out of the support, it's still maintained at nearly six to one, right?
And that's simulating a pretty robust opposition effort similar to how we simulated a robustformational effort where everybody heard uh that that kind of information from the city's perspective. Um after that opposition, we're still again above a majority vote threshold and outside of a 5 and a half point margin of error um on the survey.
and we feel pretty good about the potential for this measure given this outcome and particularly assuming that the city can do the outreach and information sharing that we've simulated in this survey. Um another uh piece of good news here compared to your prior surveys uh in 2022 and 2024 which were testing bond measures. We see that uh after information and even after opposition support for this measure is substantially higher than we found in either of those surveys. And again in those cases you were looking at a twothirds measure. In this case it's 50% plus one. So, a much um softer bar to clear and a more uh a measure that more voters are open to.
Uh we wanted to explore some of the other considerations that you have to think about as it relates to this measure. Um there's uh different uh options for how this could be constructed, different ways that you could look at it. Uh, one was to ask um if there was a a measure on the ballot at the same time as measure A that was an advisory measure um would that make you more likely to support the measure less likely or no difference? What we see is about four and 10 um who say it would make them more likely only 20% who would make them much more likely. And for the majority of people, it would have no difference. Um or they're not sure how they would react, plus another 7% 8% who say it would make them actually less likely. Um we then followed that up and or or looked into the details of that. And really the people who said they're more likely to favor your UT measure if there's an advisory measure on it are the people that were already saying they were going to vote yes on the UT measure to begin with. Um, when you look at the people who are no voters on the UUT measure, it's a relatively small gain, almost offset by that no vote, excuse me, by that less likely vote. It also doesn't necessarily mean just because they're more likely that they're going to cross over the line from no to yes. I could be a no voter who's a little more likely to support the measure, but I'm still voting no. Um, so to us it feels like an advisory measure um is not worth the the the the direction of doing that and uh we always worry about potential voter confusion if there's more than one measure on the ballot at the same time.
So our advice is is not to do that. Just stick with the the revenue measure that you've been discussing.
Uh we also asked how voters would feel if it was a 7% UT with reduced rates for uh lower income residents or a 5% UT uh with the same rate for all residents.
And they could tell us they'd support both of them equally. They would vote yes, they'd vote no on both of them or they just pick one or the other. And it does look like the 7% overall rate with a reduced rate for low-income residents has more support than a 5% across the board. Okay.
Uh then lastly, we uh wanted to give them some background on the potential for a new city hall building and the fact that the city is considering several locations. And if voters approve the measure, the city's planning a process of public engagement to pick the final site. And does knowing that make you more likely or less likely to vote yes on measure A? We see that about a third of voters say that's making them more likely, just 7% less likely. But for the vast majority of people, it it's not making a very big difference one way or another, right? about 23% are in this somewhat more likely category. 3% somewhat less likely and about six and 10 are in this no difference, not really sure number, which leads us to believe um that's probably just a fine process to go forward with. It's not going to um build a lot of support. It's not going to cost a lot of support. um there there may be some people who care a lot about that, but for the average voter, it's not probably a central part of their decision-making.
So, that leads us to uh a couple conclusions. Um we see that a UUT measure for your city is viable for the November 2026 ballot as long as there's a commitment to ongoing outreach and communication about the measure and its impacts. We know there are rules that change once the uh city council decides to put that measure on the ballot. You still have the opportunity to do some objective information which we think is important. Um on the initial vote, support for the measure is very close to the majority vote threshold needed. Um in some ways that support is similar to the results you've had on past bond measures, but in this case you need a 50% plus one threshold, not 2/3. um additional information that you the city can provide leads to a jump in support all the way up to 65% and the measure stays well above the majority vote uh that's needed when you simulate robust opposition messaging. Um further after information and opposition in the survey supports higher than in past surveys. Um and that's in part bolstered by the fact that more voters now perceive that the city needs additional funding than we've seen in at least the most recent survey.
Um, a lot of really high priorities for this measure from your voters. Again, as you recall back to that slide with lots of different items on it into the 80s, 90 percentile range for extremely or very important to be part of the measure. Uh, it's really the services and the outcomes that come from investments in infrastructure, not just the infrastructure itself. uh maintaining safe and clean drinking water, emergency and natural disaster response, public safety, accessibility for disabled residents, repairing streets and potholes, as well as preventing disruptions to city services.
Um really important for voters that there's fiscal accountability, public spending disclosure, audits, uh all the money staying local. Uh an advisory measure, as we said, doesn't really seem to be particularly helpful or necessary for this measure. um and more support for a 7% rate uh with low-inccome rates than a flat 5%. So, um I know I just threw a lot of data at you, but I'm happy to stop there and take any questions that you may have.
>> Thank you very much, Adam. Let's go to the public, starting with the people in the room. If you'd like to speak, please come on up. You have up to three minutes.
There is there >> good evening Mr. Mayor and council members.
I was concerned about um low income.
It would be based on their rates.
Um, in an apartment building, water, sewage, and garbage are paid for by the landlord.
And how can you determine who is low income? Say 50% of the people are low income, the the rest aren't. How are those people how is that rate paid for them? That's one thing. And the other thing is whoever did the survey for FM3, they reached me. They talked to me for 15 minutes. So he did his outreach.
Thank you.
>> Thank you, Eileene. And we'll get to your question as soon as comment is over.
Thanks for the presentation and I apologize if I missed it.
um was 300 and some odd uh folks that they surveyed. Um do you know what the survey um recipients income level was? Um whether they are renter or not? Um and I had another question but it left my mind. Sorry.
Thanks.
>> Thank you Mike. Anyone else wishing to speak?
Hello, council and mayor. Any folks? Um, definitely a communication plan behind this. U you know, there's a couple things in my mind that are unclear. I hear a lot online whether it's restricted, unrestricted funds. I hear a lot online whether or not it's going to be allocated to capital projects. So, a definite communication plan.
>> Now, hopefully everybody is able to hear me. Um, but hopefully a a communication plan would come out behind that because I think that's really needed because on the face of it, it looks like you're trying to backdoor a capital expenditures project. And that essentially in my mind flies in the face of Proposition 218 if that's what you're actually trying to do, if that's what's actually trying to be done. Um, so I just think a good communication plan behind it and be above board, accountable, uh, transparent. I think that would help go a long ways in this um, endeavor.
It's really all I had to say.
Thank you, Philip. Thanks.
Okay, let's uh, go online.
Kim Cohen. Welcome Kim.
>> Hello everyone. Uh, is my Zoom working?
Can you hear me?
>> Yes, we can hear you loud and clear.
>> I would just I'm a resident of Marina.
I've lived here since 1998 and I have seen, you know, we have uh I have seen the state of public buildings and as a resident I feel like if we're going to continue to attract the best possible talent of employees and others to work for the city to create the city environment that we want, we need to have adequate facilities ities, including making sure that we have fire stations that are built to modern code, earthquake resiliency to keep our city safe in an emergency.
And it's unfortunate that the bond issues didn't pass, but the if it takes a utility tax like this, I am in favor of it. Thank you.
Thank you, Kim. Let's go to Denise Turley. Welcome back, Denise.
Thank you. Um, so, [snorts] um, I just wanted to correct, uh, or add more info to an earlier speaker. Just because you're in a m multifamily unit does not mean you don't pay utilities. It means that the landlord gets a super bill and prorates you. Um, >> what me?
>> I'm going to wait for a second till that's cleared up.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah. Thank you. So um so so multif family unit does not mean that um they they do not pay services. Most do mobile home parks do uh if you rent from Greyto or several other landlords you do in a thing called commm services.
So, um there is a way to determine um the income, especially if the person is an apartment renter, because you had to declare your income to rent there in the first place, so they know what your income is. Thank you.
Thank you, Denise.
Anyone else online, please raise your hand if you'd like to speak.
Okay. Uh, well, let's get the Moto G Stylus 5G.
Welcome.
Trying to unmute you. You might have to push a button on your end.
>> There we go.
>> I guess this is Tommy Bola. I don't know. Something got my name got disconnected because uh I was out of town and I'm driving.
But as I get to Marina, my cell phone goes in and out, so I miss quite a bit.
Um but I don't know. I'm kind of against taxes, bonds, and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I think if we find a way to cut corners and trim I don't understand. I guess the first question is why couldn't we just take some of the existing buildings that we do have to save on this tax initiative or whatever it's going to be called a measure or whatever. I mean I I just think that a lot of people are on fixed incomes. You have a lot of renters. How I mean it's going to create rent increases.
It's going to create more homelessness.
I think I think yeah, definitely you need uh some infrastructure updated.
There's no doubt about it. But it seems like if you do go ahead with this, I mean, anything new that you guys build, fire station, uh city hall building, you're not going to build it in the center of Marina. You're going to build it over there in the south. you're going to approve their community and kind of leave Central Marina abandoned. I mean, if we knew all the plans, which we don't, and then you want to pass this thing in 2026 in November. I mean, I don't know. I'm lerary about I want to see, you know, I want to see more before I vote yes on any any tax measure. I mean, everybody I talk to on fixed income. I mean, this is just going to lead to higher costs for everybody, more rent, the lease increases.
Um, you know, yeah, we need support our police and fire. I'm not against that.
But uh you could take the existing police and fire and turn that into a uh a police station, 100% police station.
And the fire station, I would level that old post office and that vacant building that has a lease sign in there. That can be your fire station right there. I mean, Delmani is starting to look, you know, it looking at the library back when Delmani was bustling, it looked really well. It doesn't look too good now. It's because everybody's leaving and going to the south.
Why couldn't we just take some of those land and existing buildings and go and develop that right in the center of town? Why? That's my question. Why can't we do that and save money in the long run?
That's all I have to say.
Thank you, Tommy.
Anyone else online like to speak?
All right, we'll close public comment.
And Eileen had the first question. She asked, uh, how is low income determined if we go with some kind of an exemption for low income?
>> Um, one of the things that we're going to rely on [clears throat] is the P Gen Care program.
and and I don't have the list with with me, but they um uh if you have a uh like if you're on the WIC program, if you're on SNAP, if you're on these different um assistant programs, you automatically qualify for PG& um and so anyone that would qualify for PG& they would automatically qualify for our lowinccome rates and we'll be putting together that longer comprehensive list, right? Um, Tommy asked, "Why not use existing buildings somewhere in town, such as the old post office, which is right here on the corner of Palm Avenue and Delmani Boulevard, or bulldo?"
Those are answers you can get on our website. Those are discussions. We've talked long long ago that the most um cost-effective and efficient way is the program that the council um has before voters right now. These existing facilities to repair them, to fix them is not the cost-effective way. They're way beyond their useful life. They're not even remotely large enough to fit our our growing needs of our city today.
So, we've already looked at that and those uh answers are on the website.
That information is on our website.
All right. Uh Mike asks, "Were demographics recorded such as those uh for the the income level, the renter or homeowner status for those 312 surveys?"
And Adam can answer that.
>> Yeah, happy to do that. Um, we did ask people uh to selfidentify if they own or rent their home in Marina and 67% said that they owned. 29% said that they rented. 4% were uh people who chose not to answer that question. And and I just want to flag for everyone that that's not meant to be representative of the total population of Marina, which I'm sure has more renters than that, but it is the the population that's expected to be voting in a November 2026 election, and that's the the group of people that we're tasked with surveying since that's ultimately is is making the decision on this measure. Um, we did not ask personal income um because we found that so many people um prefer not to answer that question in a survey even though it would have been uh a relevant category to know when we look at things like low-inccome rates and other demographics are meant to reflect the the likely voters. Um so geography, where they live in the city, age, political party, gender, etc. Did anyone note questions that I didn't just address?
Okay, we have a second presentation from um I believe from >> Renee is going to >> Renee our city attorney. So, so it's going to be a combination of uh Lane's going to on the first eight slides and then we'll jump in. My partner who's online uh Pearl Pearl Mutter who you met before uh will uh finish off the presentation.
[clears throat] Next slide.
So, at our last council meeting, the council's [clears throat] uh asked us to come back with three things. Number one was um [clears throat] the rate that we would want, excuse me, and which utilities should be covered and the exemptions that we' put forward and and so um we'll be providing [clears throat] the information for that and that's the the specific information direction that we need from council tonight.
Next, uh this is what we've talked about. Um the need for facilities is um uh we have completely outgrown our our use. Um they don't meet our sa safety standards particularly um our public safety building. We have accessessibility issues. We have storage issues. We have ADA issues. um these buildings are um deteriorating and um we operate off of off of [clears throat] a balanced budget. As you see, many of the communities around us are as they've been adopting their budgets, they have been um having major shortfalls and reductions and layoffs and and we have a balanced budget and we have a um a very good future. Our ongoing revenues support our ongoing expenditures. But one of the things in budgets is uh they typically don't you aren't able to save up monies for these large capital expendure expenditures and there's several reasons um for that.
[clears throat] Number one, they're just large and you generally don't have you just barely have the funds to meet your operational costs. Uh the other reasons are if you try to save up for it generally you're saving up for a long period of time 10 15 20 years and the cost of inflation and the construction costs outpace your ability to save and so you're you're always getting behind.
Uh and the other part is there is just a generational inequity issue. Uh so that um a taxpayer today if they're if you're setting aside money to build new facilities or improvements that they want. So they're putting aside money but they're not seeing the improvements for 10 15 20 years and down the road then uh some new person in the community um they they receive that benefit benefit. So there's inter generational equities um but um we don't have have the revenue for capital projects is the bottom line like that. Uh next slide.
So, we've had a lot of meetings. Um um Adam talked about we had the measure uh two years ago in in 20 uh 2024 and um we got 60% voter approval and so clearly even back then the voters um understood the problem and supported the problem. Uh we just weren't able to hit the 66 and 2/3 requirement for general obligation bond. Um we've had a lot of meetings. One of the uh important things that the council uh directed staff last um fall was to put together a citizens advisory committee. And so we put out uh invitations and we got 13 responses. And so we just invited all those members to be part of the committee. uh this committee it was led by um Tepe Smith by writer Smith and he's on the meeting today and they had three inerson meetings and one final Zoom meeting and they prepared a a report that they've submitted to the city council and the uh committee unanimously recommended that we um that we build uh all new city facilities, city hall, police and fire Uh, one of the things uh that was very impactful and helpful for that committee was at the very start we took them on a tour of the city facilities and when they walked back they said they had no idea how how bad things were and that was one of the recommendations from the committee and and so we've been doing community tours. Uh we've done four separate ones now. We're going to continue to do them every third Thursday of the month at 6:00. And 98% of the people that walk through the the buildings, they all come back and they're just appalled and they just say, "You absolutely have got to get these facilities replaced. They walk through our police and fire facilities. Um then you'll look and you'll understand um how behind and how bad those facilities are." And so that that's been very useful and helpful.
Um and uh the bottom line is that report from the citizens advisory committee said it was un unanimous. They recommended uh the council uh consider replacing all the facilities police and fire and city hall and they also recommended um a utility user tax at 7% um up to 7%. What they said is we need to do it once. Let's do it right. make sure that we have sufficient money uh to get them built um so that we don't kick it down uh down the road. Uh then we've had other meetings in March and our most recent was April and we've gave some rough estimates of what a utility user tax would be and our presentation today will have more refined numbers on that.
Next slide.
um what our our architects that have been involved with this for a couple years R&T they've estimated that the cost um and these are last year to build uh new facilities is 69.25 25 million total. That would be for new city hall, council chambers, police station, and fire station. Um [clears throat] we have through impact fees and other fees, we have about $19 million. And so the cost for um for really the city hall police and fire station is about $50 million. Um, we put this slide up on here just um, uh, early on the process and the citizens advisory committee was the same thing in the council was the same thing is we had a lot of questions about our recreation in this campus and we said let's just put that on hold. We aren't going to discuss that in this ballot measure. This is what we're going to uh, focus on. Uh, but this just let you know that that was the direction from council is we aren't going to focus on these recreation facilities. So, we're just putting this out there so people can understand why we're not doing that. Next slide.
Uh, one of the things about the utility user tax is in Monterey County, most of your cities have a utility user tax. In the state of California, they give local governments three primary tools uh to operate um their cities. One is the sales tax, one is property tax, one is transient occupancy tax or hotel tax, and the other is utility user tax. Our city here in Marina actually had a utility user tax. And then in like 200 five 8, something like that, um the the voters um did not uh uh voted to not continue the utility user tax. This show just shows the the cities in our area kind of what their levels they t tax at.
Uh all almost all cities that do it, they'll tax gas, electric, water, mobile phone, and most do cable.
Next slide.
Um what we are proposing is uh to um put a utility user tax on those uh typical utilities that they cover water, gas, electric and telecommunications and cable TV. Internet is not taxed and that's by um federal law that you um can't tax uh internet. We're recommending um a 7% utility user tax.
We think that that will um cover building the the facilities. We know that even though right now we say we need 50 million by the time we get through this ballot measure and then get through the designing the facilities and put out to bid, we're going to be a couple years down the road and we know that construction inflation is going to continue to increase. And so I would estimate that we're going to see another 10 million that we're um going to need down the road. and and so uh we agree with what the citizens advisory committee recommend is to a 7% utility user tax to be sure that we have sufficient funds to do >> [snorts] >> uh [clears throat] what we need. Uh the council directed us um to look at exemption options and we have um some of those I think Rene will uh that'll be ne next slide. Um there we go.
[clears throat] Uh so these are some ideas that council could look at. We could do um just low income for you P Gen and CARES if you qualify for that. And I mentioned earlier you have all these other programs that that if you um are into those programs then you automatically qualify for care. So it's not just income only based um and that would would streamline the um administration proh process very easy on our end. they just have to show proof of service for PG& or that they're in the care program.
Uh council talked about seniors and so another option is to do with seniors over age 665. But if we did that, we'd want to do um we're proposing to do it under um 75,000 a year income so that those have higher income um would not be getting um an exemption or a lower rate for utility user tax. Then the next one is just put that uh uh level up from 75 to 100,000. And the next would be uh care program and all seniors would qualify for the low exemption. And these numbers here um kind of show you where um how much the 7% would generate. So, um if uh if we did just the 77 7% utility user tax, uh we would be at actually $66.8 million. Um which is above the 50,000 that we need, probably closer to the the or the the 50 million that we need, probably closer to the 60 by the time we get under construction. Then you see the other scenarios here. um low income if we did a full um uh full exemption for all the utilities that is at 53 million.
If you did a half rate of three and a half% instead of the 7% uh it'd be 60 million and then if you just exempted only say gas and electric um and you'd see 62 million and so you can just see the other options there. We do um we do have I apologize um um copies of this for the council. We'll get that printed really quick and get that up here on the council dis um uh and I'll yeah for that but al we also have Adam Sorenson's presentation that um yeah so we'll get that to council um next slide uh and then >> Pearl can take take from here.
>> Okay. Welcome. Welcome, Pearl. Thanks for joining us tonight.
>> Sure. And I can't quite see myself up yet, but I'm hoping you can see me. And um good to see council members again.
Again, it's Pearl uh Pearl Mutter from Chahway and Weinberger, Rene's partner on um election matters.
So, I just want to walk you through the next steps if the council wants to proceed with placing this on the ballot and talk um very briefly about a couple of uh overarching legal issues and then come back to um um to the decisions you need to make tonight to give uh um staff direction. So, the path from here, uh, Lane went over sort of all the meetings you've had, but the path from here to getting a measure on the ballot is we, uh, we would recommend that, uh, if the council wants to proceed with this, you direct staff to come back, um, at your July 7th meeting with a draft resolution, um, to place the measure on the ballot. and and the measure would consist of the ballot question which would be based on the ballot um question that um that was presented to the voters with some slight modifications that we'd be working on over the next months as well as the ordinance that actually adopts the tax measure. utility user taxes are relatively complex because there are a lot of details about um about how you actually impose the tax on different utilities. But the key issues in terms of policy issues are the one that Lane's already gone over which is the amount of tax the tax rate uh which utilities you want it to apply to and then what exemptions if any um you'd like. So I'll come back at the end of my presentation the city council direction on those but I just want to give an overview of the path. Um we you know we intend our plan is if so directed to come back on July 7th. Um and we believe we'll be ready to do that. We're working with a consultant who's working on the the the technical details of the ordinance. You know if if for any reason we're not able to come back July 7th and that is our intent. We actually have until August 7th. That's the last date for this council to put any sort of measure ballot uh tax measure or other measure on the November election. So, you've got uh you've got another meeting on August 3rd, which is the latest regular meeting at which you could place this in the ballot. Um but August 7th is the final date, and so you could in theory hold a special election. We are not recommending I mean a special council meeting. We're not recommending that. I just wanted to make sure you had all the um um that information in front of you. And then if you um if you adopted a resolution placing this on the ballot on before August 7th, that would then appear on the November ballot. Um and if the measure is um uh um adopted, it would become um by a 50% vote. Uh it would become uh the tax will become binding and go into effect the following year. Uh so the next slide, I did want to just briefly go over what it means that this is a general tax as opposed to a special tax. Um the council's pre previously given the direction that it wants us to be a special tax but it um but there are a couple of critical things here I wanted to underscore. One is that um the voter threshold for special tax is a simple majority. So 50% of the voters voting on it plus one is what's required to pass.
Um that's not the twothirds majority that um that applies to bond measures or to special um taxes. Um, one the major import of that is a general tax. By definition, the funds raised by that tax cannot be legally restricted to any specific purpose. And so, while we've been talking about and and clearly your public based on the poll response has a lot of concern about these public facilities as a legal matter, the funding has to be available for general municipal services. the council um uh has the option of what that would be what the money is used for in your annual budgeting. And if we were to um um um use bond financing, so use this tax stream to um for bond financing for capital facilities. At that point, the money would be locked in. The bonds would be for that purpose, but legally the tax uh revenue would be available for any general purposes, municipal purposes. Um next slide, please.
And so uh you know that's basically the overview of my presentation. The three key issues we're looking for for D direction from tonight are again what utilities should be taxed at what rates and what specific exemptions should be included. Um and I just want to end with the next slide which is the recommendation um that Wayne covered with um so if you got the covered utilities there you've got the rate in terms of the exemption staff recommendation was to go with um the low-inccome care exemptions and uh an exemption for uh seniors plus 65 with an income um cap of below um $75,000 per year.
And that concludes my presentation.
>> All right. Thank you very much, Pearl.
[sighs] Okay. Let's go to council comments, questions. Council member McCarthy. Thank you, Mayor. A couple hopefully um quick questions. First of all, um so for those that aren't aware, our water service is a is a special district. It's not a a private company. And I'm reading online that that is often in some cities the kind of the designator of of what utilities get taxed whether it's a municipal service or a a private entity.
My question is is um sewer and trash why those weren't recommended for inclusion and sewer in particular um if if staff has any downsides to including sewer.
Um yeah, we [clears throat] looked at that and for some reason um when you look at cities across California that that um charge utility user tax, sewer just is one of those utilities that they typically don't. Um some do. I think it's probably around 20% of the utilities that do charge cities that charge a utility user tax do sewers, but the far majority don't. Now, it's not that you can't.
>> From a mechanics perspective, if the council wanted to do that, there would be no it wouldn't be more difficult to collect the tax on that than any other utility.
>> Yeah, I I think it'd be it's one entity, Marina Coast Water District, so I think it'd be very straightforward with them.
>> Okay. Thank you. Um, another question I had was um, regarding the exemptions and the the the income limit. If council wanted to change something between 75,000 and 100,000, let's say 85,000 because that's 80% AMI roughly for Monterey County and then index that for inflation. Is that a challenge or is that doable?
>> Let and Pearl answered that.
I mean, I I don't see any issue with that. I don't I just don't think we have any figures for it. Earl, I don't know if you have any thoughts.
>> Yeah. No, in terms of I mean, it's certainly legal to do that. Whether that's easy to implement would be a question we're going to be meeting with uh the consultants who actually implement these tax because I'm it it actually takes some technical expertise to to implement that. whether or not the CPI uh increase would be you know add a significant cost to implement but that's something legal you could do legally as Rene said we just don't have the projected numbers of of what that would do to the revenue you would generate >> yeah obviously the challenge there is $75,000 today is going to be very different in 101 15 years so I I struggle with that um I'll end right now by saying that you know and I I've said this all throughout the process I mean I'm I'm very challenged by this regressive tax that disproportionately impacts lower income people. Um, however, having said that, I mean, I I think that it's absolutely right to take it to the voters and and let them decide. And I think that historically this council has expressed support for that. Um, and if that is still the support of the council, I'll be supporting that as well. Thank you, Mayor.
>> Thank you, Brian. Council member McAdams.
>> Thank you, Mayor. Um, I think for me with the exemptions, um, what I'm struggling with is how I mean the P Gen, the care program, that's straightforward, right? When you get into like, you know, household income, etc. I think it just gets complicated as far as how is staff going to figure that out and then what if your income changes one year and then one year it doesn't. Um and then I don't know how the city would um continue to sort of annually have that you know qualification survey or whatever. So for me that's just um complicated and the you know P Gen the care it's tied to um you know like recently in San Francisco and even here um the income guidelines were increased. So, you know, they're really the um I think have that expertise and have the experience and they're stringent on their reertification which is annually.
We are not good with that at all. So, I want to like stick with the care um qualifications and not tying to any sort of um household income. Um because for me, you know, $75,000 whether you're a senior or a single mom is still $75,000 and that's really challenging to live on in this area. So if we are going to go down the path of coming up with whatever number, um then I want it to be all-incclusive and not just seniors because a dollar is a dollar and you're struggling or you're not. Um I am also interested I mean it sounds like other cities um you know how do they track and um and sort of stay on the exemptions?
Um you know again we don't really have a good record of leases and keeping track of things. So if if an outside agency is doing that and doing the collection and all of that, great. I don't want staff to think that we can possibly take this on. Um and then I I agree with Council Member McCarthy like this is not for the five of us to, you know, to decide. Our task is do we let it go to the voters? Absolutely. You know, absolutely we do. We were so close. um with with the prior me ballot measure that was tied to um property taxes and the homeowners were upset and wanted you know everyone to have a little buy in. Well, here is that opportunity and we're hearing from the same group now they're even upset about this. So here's that you know we're going to have that 25% that are just going to be hard nose. We can like do cartwheels and light ourselves on fire and they're not going to ever support any taxes. So I think that um you know it is up to the voters and um you know usually the the loud voices are are the voices who are retired and have means and have the time to come and participate. So um at the end of the day this is absolutely up to the voters and if you can't stand taxes great you vote no. And if you are excited about the new park and you want to invest in our city a little bit every month and have more new facilities, then you would support this and vote yes. And that's just really easy and basic for me. Thank you.
>> Thank you, Jenny.
Um let's go to Council Member Miala.
>> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, first um what was so impressive to me is um the the survey that said essentially that um people uh would even uh vote for a higher percentage if there was um exemptions for low income. but for uh and and even putting it lower at 5% with um uh with um no exemptions, they didn't like that. And I mean, I just think that that's such a statement about our community that we are a caring, very um uh uh thoughtful community and it just showed through. So, I was very proud of of you know the people who answered the survey in that way. Um let's see on um the the PG&E um care um I think that that probably already includes a lot of seniors and the reason why we we chose to say seniors under 75,000 was because seniors as a group I remember that we were saying well not all seniors um are low income and so we shouldn't do a blanket. So, I don't think that we need to go back and include other people who are under 75,000 because they would fall also under the um the the PG& care program. So, I think I think I'm fine with the PG& care program and it's a system that we don't have to replicate and we don't have to then, you know, agonize over all the details. It's it's kind of a triedand-rue system and I think we should expeditiously, you know, um uh you use that already um established system and um and then I think um because we're the only ones that it seems um that don't um include the cable, I think for just consistency sake, um I think we should just add that and and therefore, you know, we sort of adopted the regional standards as well.
And I don't know that that makes a huge amount of difference anyway, but it just seems odd that we've got all the little X's on every box except for except for uh us on cable. So anyway, that's my three thoughts on on things so far.
Thank you.
>> Thank you, Kathy. Mayor Pretend for sure.
>> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. City Manager, will it be handled by a third party if we would go the route to include?
[clears throat] We've been in discussions with MCWD and they use the third party for the veric verifications and yeah, that's probably what we'll do.
>> Oh yeah, because they just are they just started their program so we can learn from them and um and I agree with council member McCarthy. If there would be an income limit, it should be indexed annually.
Will that happen?
>> You got it. Um that's asking Pearl um logistics of of doing that. How do we do that?
>> So as I understand it, if it's the care program, then we would just would automatically be indexed.
>> So the care pro program like council member McAum said that's that's easy.
But if we would like if we would choose to go the route to also include a income limit that should be indexed because otherwise 30 years from now it will be laughable.
And Renee, if I if I can interject on that, I you know, I I you know, it's legally doable to index. I imagine that the third all the third party entities that administer these kind of types of exemptions have a way to do that, but we can confirm that as we're preparing the origins. So when we come, you know, if that's the direction of the council, uh assuming that's doable and easily to admin, easy to administer, we could include that. If for some reason it turns out it's exceptionally difficult to do that, we would let the council know that. But I you know I suspect it's it's doable.
>> Thank you. And um social media lots of people are of course are asking what exactly is included like uh Marina Coast will it include the base charge and um of course water consumption but also wastewater collection charge and then there's a fire service fee which is $3.
But will it include all those four items or >> um >> you don't know yet?
>> Yeah, I'm not positive. We'd have to look at all the individual items. I'm not comfortable say yes, it would cover all would have to look at that.
>> So detailed information will be available.
>> Yes.
>> Okay. Thank you. And I just I know many people online did a uh of course you compare your own usage your own expenses. I was lower uh probably because we do have solar panels. We have a wellinssulated home but we were higher for water because the I live at the former one of the former Fort or in the former for developments and Marina Coast has a different fee structure for those. So just we need to be as transparent as we can and I think we should have different information for that. I don't mind that we are higher there but it also includes apartment complexes.
So those are my oh and I do have um for the public because of this I dove back into the pg.com website. It has so much information many many years ago in my previous previous life previous neighborhood I communicated a lot with them. They came to a they even came to a meeting for our neighborhood and um you can look at on pin.com you can have your usage and rates your energy usage details. You can compare with similar homes. It's it's actually really cool and you can um look up your energy use and then you can download your data into a spreadsheet. I mean it's the options are unlimited but I think it's very important to or for people who are interested it can be very um important to look at how is your usage do do I use a lot more than similar homes and how can I conserve this was a good thing that could come out of this so thank you all right thank I wanted to ask a couple questions I asked them earlier today and um the answer wasn't wasn't ready to be given.
So the first question is on exhibit A where it shows how much u would be collected depending on which option we choose on the exemption half and then it shows how much bond capacity would be the result of making that choice. And my question is, does the bond capacity half of this exhibit A include the revenues coming in from commercial or is this just the residential?
>> Yeah, I wasn't able to get back from our consultant. He did it he wasn't available. So, we'll have to answer that next time.
>> Okay. Um, another question is related to that one.
If you go to table 2A, it's residential.
It's a bunch of numbers, but it shows, for example, in the bottom right, $260,000, 600 $260,000 and $600 to be collected every month if we do a 7% UUT with the P Gen exemption.
So that's a monthly revenue, 260,000. Let's call it 261,000.
If you multiply that by 12 months, you get an annual revenue of 3.1 million.
But when you go back to exhibit A, it says in the appropriate the correlary box, it says 3.5 million, not 3.1 million.
So, there's a $400 difference between multiplying 261,000 by 12 to get an annual re revenue from the PG& exemption and the 3.5 million that's here. And so that's why I ask if the commercial is included in this table. And even if it is, it doesn't really add up because the commercial, if you look on page Table four is $970,000 a year would be collected from commercial customers.
So if you add the $900,000 a year to this right half where it talks about bond capacity on exhibit A, it doesn't add up to the numbers that are here, but it gets a little bit closer. So I just think that we need to have a connection between these tables of figures and our choices and our bond capacity that results from the choice we make.
Um, I had a question of how hard it is to track income because council member McAdams was one of those people that said, you know, it's very complicated.
And I've heard since she asked that that a third party would be likely to be hired to do that. And then I heard that it might be difficult to index it to inflation.
Um, but it's probably done. So, how do we get an answer tonight about how hard it is to track any variance that we choose beyond the PG& care by itself? And have we already got that answer that it's doable? Don't worry about the complexity. It's doable.
>> No, we we [clears throat] think any any tracking outside P Gen would be very complicated. Even MCWD, their third party just verifies people on the are on the care program or on other programs that um that meet the care qualifications. So any anything income qualified, you would have to be looking at um tax statements, income statements um and that becomes very complicated at that point.
All right, that's enough for me. We'll do a little bit more later. Council member McCarthy. Thank you, mayor. I just want to make sure we're all talking about the same thing when it comes to exemptions. Um, so first I'm reading online that Union City UT exemption tied to HUD income limits 80% AMI Del City UT exemption tied to income thresholds that reference HUD or state defined limits.
City of San Bruno uh income qualified exemptions tied to HUD limits, public assistance programs. So that speaks a little bit to the possibility of it. But more importantly, let's talk about the care program. you're 70 years old, you make $46,000 a year, you don't qualify for care. So, we're not offering exemptions to those folks. You expect folks to live off of $46,000 a year and and not get an exemption. I'm just a little bit confused because they wouldn't qualify for care.
>> If you go on the website, it lists all of the pro. So, if you qualify for there's like multiple programs, you're automatically in care or you can qualify by your income if you're not in the programs.
>> Okay. So, you don't qualify for Medicaid or >> social security with all of those things, right?
>> Excuse me, Bri Brian and Jenny. Let's have one person at a time.
>> Oh, sure. Sorry.
>> Thank you, Mayor. So, um yeah, I guess I'm just I want to speak a little bit to that piece about income qualifications.
And I think Council Member McAdams is absolutely correct. Yes, there are other ways to qualify for care. Um, but I really worry that we are putting seniors in a position to not qualify for these social programs but also not qualify for the exemption.
Um, and I know at previous meetings, council member Visher mentioned that, you know, some seniors absolutely have the ability to pay and I do think we should be very intentional and careful about that. Um, but I wonder often myself what it's like to be on a fixed income at at, you know, later in life and and and wondering if, you know, I'm going to be able to pay the cable bill, people that, you know, the phone bill, whatever it is. So, um, I'm a little worried about going to the care only mo model, but I'd love to hear I mean, if somebody has a compelling argument as to why that actually works, I'd love to hear it. Thank you, Mayor.
>> All right. Thank you, Council McAdams.
>> Thank you, mayor. I mean for me it we don't have the staff to manage annual what I mean we don't even do that at Preston Park or I mean so um that's like where I struggle with and that's why like the care is really easy you either show that you um are a participant in one of the programs um and for me I like that because a lot of um a lot of college students are on are are on CalFresh. A lot of seniors are on CalFresh. Um a lot of families are on the reduced or free lunch program. So there's tons of different programs that um if you participate in, you automatically will um will get into care. And if you don't participate for whatever reason um then you can, you know, show your income that way. So I mean that I that's what I struggle with. I don't want to go down this path of like trying to administer an exemption program because then we'd have to basically hire, you know, somebody to monitor that. Um, and that's where um I I think it just it gets complicated.
And again, like 85,000 for a senior.
Well, the other side of that is 85,000 for a single mom with three kids. Like, how do you pick who gets the exemption?
It's the same amount of money. Um, so I I would really advocate that if we we are going to pick a number and tie it to whatever that it be inclusive of everyone and not just seniors. Um because I I don't I mean I don't know why um what's so compelling I mean of course I want to support seniors and I also want to support working households or students or people on disability and on and on and on.
tons of um different groups that have their own um unique um levels of I mean I don't like to say suffering but they have their own barriers right and so who am I to say that well only seniors are going to be able to be exempt it should just be this is the number and anyone in that number can qualify um I'm not able to pick All right. Anything more, Council Member McPS?
>> Okay.
Um, some comments I have are that the difference between a bond that we tried two years ago, measure U, and a user utility tax that we're talking about tonight, is that the bond measure had an equity equalizer in it. in that if you lived in an apartment, you were probably going to spend less if measure U passed than if this measure passed.
And I've always believe that property owners are in a better position uh in a lot of ways that relate to finances than your, you know, the average property owner compared to the average renter.
There's an inequity there. There's a gap there. And if we had a bond that had passed, there would have been some equity built into it because the renters would have paid less on average than the property owner. So, there was a built-in equity. There were some property owners where that was their number one uh objection to the bond. So, why aren't apartment or renters paying this, you know, and why is it all on the backs of the property owners? We want something different. And we also know that if you're in an apartment and your landlord pays more that is there's probably going to be some pass through so that you're not skatefree. You're going to be paying something but it's probably going to end up being less than what a property owner would would do.
We did not that's one thing that we did last year or two years ago. We went with the bond. We did not have a citizens advisory committee. It was kind of a top- down approach. the city council started it and the city council finished it. One of the objections, it wasn't one of the biggest, but it was there was that we should had a citizen advisory committee. So this time around when we started fresh, we said, "Let's go ground up. Let's do the citizens advisory committee first and then we'll bring it to council."
The citizens advisory committee was compo comprised of opponents to the bond and supporters of the bond. There were probably more opponents than supporters in that 13 person committee, but we don't really know that because it it wasn't something that we required them to tell us. But we know some of the people that were on that committee were definitely nos on the measure U. and that that committee looked at all the same stuff that we had looked at prior to the bond ballot measure. I was surprised, relieved, excited, happy that they came unanimously, the 13 to the same decision that we came to as as far as we need a police, a fire station, and a and a city a city hall.
They also understood that we need a new community center.
But they were given full realm, full full reign to make their recommendations. So they recommended a few things that were of their own initiative. They recommended that we go for the three facilities excluding the community center. They could have said go for all four, but they said don't go for all four. Go for these particular three, fire, police, and city hall.
They also said for us to consider Vinstagio Park as a second preferred site for city hall. We didn't put that in their heads. They came up with it on their own initiative and they unanimously voted to m to um city hall going to MST site on reservation road as the first preferred option site and Vince Deaggio a second.
They also opted to go with a user utility tax and not a bond. They also opted to go to a 7% utility tax, not a 5% or a 1% or whatever. There are some other things that they did that are probably more detailed, but we thought after we got that report, we make the final decision. But why would we go against the citizens report when it was just as logical as our perspective two years ago for the bond? Maybe I like the bond better. I mean, I do, but that didn't work. It almost worked, you know, but it didn't work. So now the citizen advisory group which include some very respected members of our community and some that are new that we don't we don't really know that much about um but they were unanimous and they had all the same information that we had two years ago. They walked it, they talked about it. They kept us out of the room. They didn't want us in the room. They wanted to do their their they wanted to have their own process where we weren't boogering it up in any way. and they came to the same conclusion that we came to along with the public. You know, we went through a lot of public meetings two years ago.
That process two years ago came to the same almost exact decision as this year except this year we started from the bottom up as far as public coming to, you know, weighing in. So, I feel confident that for the second time in two years, we've gone through a process that ended up basically the same. We need fire, police, city hall. We also need a community center, but that advisory committee recommended against that. And anything we do that's different than that citizens advisory committee, we better have a really darn good reason because we're just poking the bear to some extent by not respecting the citizens advisory committee. But it's our decision. It's not their decision. It was their recommendation. But I see no reason to vary from their unanimous report because it was it was good report. happens to be in line with what we talked about two years ago, except we would have liked a community center, but for us to add onto it a community center, you know, that just kind of upsets the whole apple cart, but I would love to have a new community center instead of what we had there. Um, so I support the UUT. I support the 7% and I'm not going to uh die on the sword for any of these options. I like the PG care only. I also like the $75,000 a year senior added to that. But I do uh respect the the opinions that have been discussed that if I'm a poor senior, you know, down on my my finances or I'm not a senior down on my finances, you know, um I think that we give seniors the nod because they're on a fixed income. And if you're a younger working person, a mom with three kids, you're out there working, you're bringing in money, you might get, you know, you have a chance to get to to take a second job or whatever. Not if you have three kids necessarily, but I think that's why we always pick out seniors is because they're toward the end of their life. They have a fixed income. So, we we try to reach out to them. Before I started today, I wanted to ch to to pick that $75,000 a year uh senior plus the u lowincome care, but I'm I'm happy to do the other. And then what was was that the three that we needed and the utilities? I don't understand the logic behind including video streaming and not including waste.
What's the logic? Is it just because more pe more cities include streaming than than waste? So, we're doing the same thing. Is that >> Yeah, we're trying to follow the standard that is out there in cities in the industry. And the standard is they typically don't charge uh landfills.
They don't typically charge sewer.
>> Okay, let's go to Council Member Biala.
>> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um so I just [clears throat] want to frame this as an amazing um support by our public dur for this survey because everywhere in California and probably the nation there's just this anti-ax um sentiment across the country and here we are uh you know our residents are saying they believe in the direction of of our government of our city council of our departments and they have a higher opinion when I think that if you ask most jurisdictions in California, they probably say they have no no confidence in local government and the leaders. And so I think that again, Marina is very special in that way. I think when we look at our exemptions, you know, whether we want to exempt all uh people under 75,000 versus just seniors, I think I'm agreeing with um our mayor um about there are reasons why we singled out seniors because of the fixed income.
Youth may have 49,000 as an income, but they may it may be a temporary situation. they have the ability more for more job opportunities than seniors etc. So I think they're not exactly apples to apples and we think of the exemptions as have to be info folded into our ultimate goal. We need $50 million for the objectives that we've stated. So, if we're now going to exempt everyone who is under 75,000 um income, um I think we need to say what does that do to our overall ability to to um to have a result of 50 million.
And I don't know that we have that calculation and I'm sure then uh we would have to figure out how to get to 50 million still. I'm sure that would reduce that amount considerably, but I don't know. I I don't know if the analysis here has has done that comparison.
>> Thank you, Kathy. Council member McCarthy.
>> Thank you, Mayor. Um, so I'm kind of looking at this a little bit as how do we sell this to the voters, right? How do we make it the most palatable? And is FM3 still on the line?
>> Yes. Um, >> they're on. And also, uh, Trip Pepe Smith, Ryder Smith is on the line, too.
So, a question for them and I I may have missed it, but is there any evidence that offering the the senior income related discount um or exemption rather gives a higher polling for for the measure?
>> Uh we didn't differentiate senior specifically. We just did low income and 7% with a low with low income rates fars better than 5% with a flat rate uh and no reduction for certain groups. but we didn't try to tease out how you would define that low-inccome rate or seniors versus other groups.
So is it fair to say though that offering the income based exemption for seniors generally would would gather more support especially for folks in that class or >> yeah I mean certainly if you were asking seniors if they think it's a good idea to have a low an exemption for low-inccome seniors you're going to you're going to find some support there.
I think, like I said, we we we asked about low income rates in general, not low income and being specific that it's low-inccome seniors or differentiating seniors from anybody else.
>> Okay. So, I think, you know, and I don't want to go too much back and forth on the the the lowinccome piece, but for me, I think the reason why you do target low income is it is easier to manage than managing everybody. It tends to be a class that is just generally more responsive, more able to fill out the paperwork. I think that that's why cities throughout California do target that that group. Um, I'd like to start building a motion or offering support for um option the lowinccome um approach to reduction of UUT would be the low-inccome qualify for care and seniors 65 and 65 plus and under an amount that is in the range of 85,000 but that staff will tie that to AMI. I or I like 80 I think 80% of AMI in Monterey County right now is 83,000. So, um I think that's how other cities do it.
If it's not feasible, then I would ask staff to come back and have, you know, provide another solution that's in line with that. The only other thing that I'm struggling with are the utilities themselves. I'm kind of thinking that we should include sewer. Um but I wanted to get the rest of the council's feedback on that. I think that it would, again, talking about selling to the voters, I don't think that that would be something that somebody would say, "Oh, it includes sewer. I'm not voting for it." Right? But if we do include it and it passes, it ensures that we have the funds for what we need them for down the road.
So, I think that would be my motion.
I can restate it.
>> Yeah. Go deeper.
>> Yep. Um that we receive the presentation from FM3 and the opinion survey. We provide direction to staff regarding the specific characteristics including the rate which would be the 7% the covered utilities which would be all of the staff recommendations and and adding sewer and that the exemptions be those that qualify for PG& care and those 65 and older but under 80% of Monterey County AMI. Okay.
>> Okay.
>> I'll second for discussion. [sighs] Uh, do you have any more input? Brian, let's go to Council Member Biala and then McAdams.
>> Uh, I don't think that I could support this sewage because if no one else around us is doing it and you talked about how we market this, I can just see us being challenged and said, "Why did you include sewer? no one else is doing that and then we're back to saying why are we trying to get more money from people and so I think I I you know it it doesn't make sense why why nobody's doing it but for us at this point I think it it would be considered a little risky if we went out ahead of the crowd.
So I would not want to see that but I could accept the 80% of AMI.
>> I'm happy to amend my motion to remove that if the second still holds.
>> Okay. So you'd have 7% you'd have the staff utilities not including sewer staff recommended utilities which means no sewer and a PG care 70 65 years plus who are under the 80% Monterey County uh AMI >> okay Kathy any more input let's go to council member McAdams >> thank you mayor and thank you council member Piala for saying that I And I was thinking, you know, the last thing we want to do is provide any ammunition for, you know, people who are passionately opposed and that's going to be it. Like, oh, the council's greedy and they want money from Sue. So, I just would rather we not even um go down that path. Um, and then also with the citizen facility, citizens advisory committee. I mean, I appreciated the mayor's comments and the mayor's praise because they did exceptional work and that really brought me along is like, you're absolutely right. Why would we steer away from from the work that that we that they did and the recommendations that they provided?
So, um, thank you for amending, you know, your your motion. And, um, I do think it's important because when you I was looking at the table, it's like Santa Cruz is the only city, um, that this is tied to their sewer and they're at 8 and a half%.
Um, I think it would be helpful to know um, and obviously not right now, but when this comes back, the years that the utility um, user tax rates were implemented in these cities. Um, cuz Pacific Grove, their senior um, exemption is based off of household income less than $12,000 per year. I mean, that's in like you're living in your car, right? So, I'm curious to just see sort of, you know, when the other cities like as you know, we're comparing when um when they were adopted by the voters. So, um but I'm definitely in support of the the motion that's on the table.
>> All right. I have a a [clears throat] question and a comment. The question is, can staff track down those cities that are mentioned in this table, Seaside, PG, Santa Cruz, and can they can staff confirm that they're currently charging those rates because it might be that they passed that number, but they're not at that maximum because we have future councils will have to just will have the ability to go below 7% and the ability to go up to seven, but not above. These cities probably have the same. So maybe Santa Cruz is eight and a half% but maybe they're at 5%. Or or whatever.
There might have been some changes. So it'd be nice to know. The reason I asked that is because I had a meeting with a resident today and that resident asked that question. You know, how do you know that these other cities are actually charging? And can you, the city of Marina, uh reduce this 7% if warranted in the future? And the answer is yes, we can. if if uh if property taxes go up or we get enough money from other deals like Mercedes that we don't need all this user utility tax. I have a feeling that when we get serious about maintaining all of our city facilities, we're going to need millions more to maintain those citiz going toward these three buildings that that we're talking about tonight. Um, darn. I had something very important to say and I forgot. So, it must not be Oh, yes. Um, we're we're we're not all the way there yet because even though we're we're moving toward the $75,000 limit, we haven't talked about if if if those folks pay zero full exemption, or if those folks pay 3.5, which is half, or if they're only exempt from gas and electric. And it's important because which of those three we choose dictates how much revenue we're going to make. So if you look on the bond capacity side of exhibit A, you see that if we give them a full exemption exemption, we bring in about 51 million and we need at least 50 and it's not taking into account, you know, the increase up to 10 million by the time we build these. So we probably should shoot for about 60 million. But that being said, if you cut it in half to three and a half%, then they're paying something and we're getting about 59 million. That seems to be kind of the sweet spot as far as being able to afford these facilities. And then if you just exempted them for gas and electric, which I haven't heard anyone say that, it raises the revenue to 61 million, which is maybe a little more than we need, and not giving them a break on those other. So, I would suggest that we consider adding to the motion which of these three numbers we want. They pay zero, they pay 3 and a.5%. Or they just get the discount based on gas and electric. And I would suggest the the middle one, the 3.5%.
>> Brian, your motion is being built. What What do you think?
>> Can you remind me what page or can you tell me what page you're looking at?
>> Exhibit A, table one. It looks like this.
Okay. Or table nine on earn that page nine on the handout.
>> Yeah, I see it now. Um, so the three 3% cut the seven in half to 3.5 on all utilities.
>> So, I'm a little confused on what you're proposing though that for the exemption.
So I I yeah I see where that is. But um >> So you mentioned 75,000 but you didn't say do they pay zero? Do they pay half?
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. Well um Okay. Yeah. I don't know that I have a strong opinion. Um I did note council member McAdams question about $12,000 Pacific Grove ordinance apparently adopted 1971 and today's dollar is about 100,000. So it's right in line with what we're kind of looking at. Um the uh yeah, does council have a preference on the exemption?
>> Uh I'll motion we go to the end of the next item. I'll second. All in favor?
>> I >> I >> Please proceed. Brian, >> I would say Brian, I'd like to make a friendly amendment to your motion that we uh charge 3.5% to the exempted group or to the exemption to the reduction group. That's in the motion to attain the 58 or $59 million level.
>> Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. C uh mayor pretend Fisher >> since the motion includes the second it will be higher than 75 it will be more like 83,000 you said so the numbers will be lower right >> so we need to take that into consideration hopefully it will still be enough but yeah >> good point >> so it's not going to be 59 million it's going to be somewhere between 59 million and 58 million not that big of a difference 500 grand so >> you don't know >> well you kind of do know because we got that 75,000 figure, we got the 100,000 figure. So, >> if it's linear, we don't we don't know.
Yeah, >> it's probably linear. Uh, council member Viala.
>> So, I just need confirmation from our city manager because I was looking, you know, I have been in my head 50 million, 50 million, and now we've got 50.9 million and if we did the 3.5%.
I is is that I know it's always nice to have a cushion, but is that really essential? I mean, are we going to be in trouble if we go for a 50.9 million?
>> Yeah, I can guarantee you that in three years, by the time we construct, >> construction cost will have gone up significantly. I can't tell you how much, but I think targeting in that 15 to 60 million range >> um should do that. Okay. And if we follow our promise and we only use this UUT toward those three facilities, whatever level that cost is below whatever revenue 7% brings in, we can bring that 7% down >> to meet our needs.
>> Okay, sounds okay to me.
>> Okay, any further comment before we go to a vote? Okay, let's repeat the motion one more time, Brian. Sure. So the motion is um that we provide direction to staff regarding the specific characteristics of a utility tax including the rate 7% the covered utilities which are all of staff's recommendations exemptions for lowincome care qualified participants and seniors 65 and over that have an income under Monterey County 80% AMI and that the exemption be half the regular rate on all utilities, three and a half%.
>> Or the discount, right? The reduction, >> right?
>> Okay. And the second holds all of that.
So, are we ready to vote?
Okay. [sighs] Uh, and then staff's going to come back with some information, but it's not in the motion. Don't think it has to be, but I do you think, Lane, that staff wrote down the questions we wanted to get answered? We have good notes. Yes.
>> Okay, we're good.
>> All in favor, please say I.
>> I.
>> All oppose, please say no.
>> All right. Thank you. That motion passes 5 to zero. Thank you to Earl and Adam, Renee, Lane, um, for all this information and any other staff that were involved. And thank you to the public for being involved.
Now we're going to move to uh Delmani intersection with reservation road and Delmani corridor with some reference to del to I'm sorry reservation road corridor with some reference to the Delmani corridor but not much.
>> Mayor we got Alexis with trape Smith who's been um uh leading our community outreach outreach efforts on this. she conducted our committee workshop and and uh so we'll turn the time over to her.
>> Good evening, Alexis.
>> Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the council. Thank you for that introduction. Uh city manager Long. So, yes, my name is Alexis Gillum. I am with Trapey Smith. I've been supporting your comm's team that's been uh providing the outreach and education around the um vision to action shaping Marina together. and I'm going to be splitting my time with um my colleague over here with Kimley Horn Frederick. Uh so I'll start us off to kind of go over the outreach that we just recently finished.
Um but you're going to hear a little bit of repetitive um from the last presentation. Um I know I was remote then and it's good to see some of you in person. So if I get next slide.
So, our purpose for the downtown um outreach and this was a focus on the reservation road and Delonte Boulevard corridors uh was to gather the input on the future of downtown Marina. And just to be clear, this is how your residents want to experience this area of downtown. Um and it's to support and inform the implementation of the existing Marina downtown specific plan as it relates to this area. We did conduct an in-person community workshop on March 24th. We had about 52 participants. Um I see some familiar faces in the audience here tonight as well. And then following that uh with the feedback that we gained from the March 24th workshop, we did do um an expanded community survey. We wanted to capture the broader community um that wasn't able to attend in person. And so that's what I'm going to highlight a little bit tonight. and a lot of it did confirm the findings that we shared in our earlier presentation in April with the council. Next slide please.
So just again to recap March 24th 52 participants we had an open house um and facilitated breakout sessions um that was supported by your city staff and a consultant team. And what we heard there in a nutshell um was more walkable and welcoming active downtown placemaking at its finest. uh strong support for local dining, retail, community spaces and events and a desire to maintain Marina's character. Um so the the spirit and essence of Marina as it is today um and was previously and then the um preference for horizontal uh lower scale development um meaning what's there currently as your horizontal so you've got one groundf flooror use um and was looking there at a one to twostory um residential but not a focus on large density um was the feedback specifically from that workshop. Next slide.
So, the online feedback form that uh ran for a two-eek period May 26th through June 9th. Um it was voluntary um and the uh report results are in your council packet. I can get into those in specificity, but for now we're going to keep it highle overview. Um so this was shared across all city communication channels. Um we had a total of 231 responses. Um, and I do want to make sure this is not as your previous agenda item had a formal um, and scientific survey. This was an informal community feedback. So, I just want to distinguish those results. Um, and just in full transparency, there was the um, early posting um, that we did have um, some issues with two of the questions that was open for 24 hours. Um, but we did uh, get about 28 of those responses.
their feedback is reflected in the information that you have here. Um, since it was of two questions specifically, we still felt that the rest of their uh, responses should be uh, part of the overall report you have in front of you. Part of this we asked the demographics, the current downtown experience, safety priorities, character and development, the streetscape, uh, implementation. It was about 20 questions total is what we asked the residents. Next slide, please.
And so now we're going to get into the core priorities. Um again, since this was an informal feedback, what you can look at this as is a way to um have quantitative themes um or really those pulse points of the community. So gathering and connection. We heard from the significant majority of the respondents, uh 69.7% that it was very important to create a downtown where people could gather. They wanted those shared cultural experiences. Um the workshop participants echoed that as well. Again using terms like plazas, spaces for community events, even farmers markets, things like that. Um next slide please.
So the next priority uh was streetscapes and aesthetics. Uh enhancing the streetscapes. And one of the the parts that we heard and it was echoed through the survey was looking for the shortterm investments. what could be done um sooner rather than later. Obviously, still going to the long-term priorities of the council that's already set the vision. Um but what would be available there um and so in the next [clears throat] 1 to 5 years uh specifically for investments in streetscapes and aesthetics just to make that more aesthetically pleasing. um instead of it uh the area being dominated by the large parking lots um and lack of that visual appeal uh to see more trees if they could more uh greencapes, landscaping and even facade improvements if that was possible. Next slide.
Pedestrian and bicycle safety. This was the most emphasized part of uh the survey response. Um again, this is a confirmation rather of the um participants of the in-person workshop.
Uh what I want to highlight here is you know it's it's not a complete move away from autocentric but really wanting to carve out that space that is walkable and for bicyclists in this area. Um it was very important and we had a lot of open comment boxes. So that allowed rather than just multiple choice answers, it did allow the residents to provide further sentiment around how they felt or their experiences and why they were choosing to select this. Um, so it really helped kind of hone in on what they were looking for. Um, wanting that uh safer crosswalks, more dedicated bike lanes, requesting wider sidewalks.
So again, not eliminating traffic, but wanting to slow traffic significantly.
So there could be shared spaces for the multimodal traffic in uh again this spot. So um combined uh there was the support for reducing traffic speeds and again the consensus for all of it was the increased pedestrian and bicycle safety. Next slide.
[snorts] So thoughtful development and economic growth. We touched on it a little bit, but the community was really looking for businesses that again maintain Marina's unique and approachable scale, the character, um, having those shared experiences, all of that coming together, wanting to have restaurants or cafes, um, arts, cultural, family-friendly spaces, somewhere to spend, um, nightife and have that entertainment. Um and again just to reemphasize the the residents advised that they were not looking for an overly dense um or urbanized vertical developments. Uh they were really they were open to mixed use but again wanting to to maintain um the city's character with that uh and visual openness. Next slide please.
So as when you ask the question you get all the answers. So, uh, the mixed opinions when it comes to the, you know, perceptions around roundabouts. Um, again, shared consensus that really focusing on safety. Um, and I'm going to turn it over to Frederick here in just a minute. But so, while there is the consensus in slowing the traffic down, um, doing so and and how the vehicle by which that happens is where it remains a debate for the residents. Um, again, because we asked open-ended questions, we were able to gain some of the insights as to what was forming the responses. Uh, driver confusion, uh, was one. Um, really wanting to, um, make sure that traffic flow was allowed for.
Um, not wanting to redirect traffic to areas that traffic doesn't exist currently. Um, so what we heard was a lot of opportunity for education around this. Um, next slide, please.
So that gets into the the implementation and next steps. Uh when it comes to the education, we hear the strong desire to see action in the near term. We talked about that with streetscapes and aesthetics. Uh the support for lowerc cost visible improvements um and that largecale projects obviously they be done um together um and nothing be done shortterm that isn't ultimately going to support the long term. Um but really it around any sort of traffic improvements and traffic flow and infrastructure really want to focus on building that trust and familiarity with roundabouts.
Um we think that the city of Marina could really benefit from that. Um talking about the stats and statistics because again that shared consensus is the pedestrian and bicycle safety. So for the answer to the question, um really sharing the data and information and I believe there's even some statistics directly available for the roundabouts in Marina that we can talk about um and that any sort of temporary quick build demonstrations when it comes to infrastructure um would be a a sound investment to help the community get used to um something like that in different areas. So that in a nutshell is the uh community survey and feedback overall for the outreach. Happy to answer any questions. Also want to um invite up Frederick to talk a little bit more around the education aspect.
>> Thank you, Alexis. Good evening, council members. So we have uh I'm going to run through three sets of slides. One is just a refresher on the two corridors that we've brought to you previously with reservation road and Delmani. Talk about the operational benefits and the security hority of the roundabouts compared to signals and then I'm going to dig a little bit into some of the questions that were asked and some concerns that we've heard and also um bring some newer safety data um for you as well. So, um, first we're going to do reservation road and I'm going to go as fast as I can. If I go too fast, just stop. You've seen all of this. Next slide, please.
So, the reservation corridor basically focusing on downtown, starts at California, goes all the way down to the Monty and and Road. Next slide, please.
Um, we looked at signals versus roundabouts, right?
Um this really shows the comparison between where the roundabouts would be located compared to the signals. Next slide please. And then the crosssections in essence between the two are the same on the segments. Right? So we keep the number of lanes. We will have medians right bike lanes and nice sidewalk. Next slide please.
Shows the middle section for um signal length um option for four lanes. And this is what the existing looks like.
Next slide please.
And this is the section north of forest to um California was mainly no race medium but a two way medium to provide access to all the drivers. Next slide.
So for the roundabout, the first section between Delonte and Vista Del Camino, um sort of the same cross-section, four lanes of traffic, um nice wide medians, and then the roundabouts at both of these sections. The roundabout at El Monte is a larger roundabout because it's got a more traffic to deal with.
And then once we get the downtown sections, the roundabouts get slightly.
Next slide, please.
This is the next section between Vad Delino and Crescent. Um, so we're basically replacing the signals with roundabouts. So we're keeping most of the driveways. So maybe a couple of them that we need to turn into right and route out. There's one of them I think we need to close. Next slide please. And this is the last stretch and then up to from Forest to California. But you can still see the cross-section um maintains capacity and we provide all the capacity at the intersections. I think the last time I presented I said in an urban environment congestion happens at the intersections right that's where all the control is in between is where people travel really nice about this is the the the footprint the the the improvement with how the community um and that local environment for slower speeds is really important and bicycle and pedestrian movements as well and then safety. Next slide.
Uh this was the roundabout at Telmoni and Reservation Road um where we have a heavy demand coming westbound in the morning going southbound and then at reverse commute in the afternoon. Next slide please. And oh yes, we do anticipate that we could put in RFBS at that intersection because of the heavy movement of vehicles. And so those are the flashing little lights that will give the pedestrians an option to feel safer when they cross.
>> What does RFP do?
>> It's a rapid flashing beacon. So, it's these uh if you look at the photo on the right hand side, it's ones that um they have a little flasher that comes on the either side of the road and pedestrian pushes a button and they flashing they're flashing rapidly. That's where it comes from. It's a yellow yellow light.
Next slide.
So the levels of service comparison shows that um you know the the level of service for the roundabouts are better than what the um level of service would be for the signals. Next slide.
And then of course because the level of service is better, the travel time improves with the roundabouts, right?
Despite that there's a much lower speed.
Um this is in the eastbound direction.
Next slide.
Westbound direction. the same that the travel time with the roundabouts improve.
Um, we need to realize that this is just the aim and the peak hour and the PM peak hour. There's tremendous benefits throughout the day. Remember about 70 80% of the traffic happens outside of the peaks, right? So, so there we this is only looking at the peak hours. So, there's still all those benefits for travel time and safety in the off peak periods. Next slide, please.
So, let's look at Delmonte corridor. And this is the corridor that I think council approved to move forward with.
Um this was a presentation that was made with the streetscape plan with Bianca.
Next slide please.
Again we looked at roundabouts versus signals. Next slide.
Um so that's a basic layout. We had um two roundabouts, one at Palm and one at Rind Dollar. Um and then there was a sort of a flashing beacon for pedestrians. um for mid block crossing between um balm and reservation on on this option we or when we looked at Delmonte the option for um for a roundabout at the Del Monteian reservation was not on the table yet. So that's why you don't see it on these graphics that came later. Next slide please.
Um this was just a sort of a look on what the existing uh gra looks like. um you know not very inviting. We heard um you know that today also that you know the the the old corridor is not inviting for pedestrian and bicycle uses and it's in need of upgrading. Um next slide please.
Um the cross-section um would be again about the same between the signal and the roundabout corridors on the segments. The improvements really happen at the intersections themselves where we have more capacity for the roundabouts.
Next slide please.
Same cross-section that you can see.
Next slide please. For the roundabouts.
Um here are some travel times again. Um so we can see that for um the signals um the northbound direction um is slightly more with the um roundabouts compared to the signals. I think these are all the signal travel times AM and PM and the roundabouts are at the bottom. So an improvement on travel time very small. It's much smaller on this corridor because there's only two roundabouts. Okay, next slide please.
Then southbound direction. Um the same slight increase in the roundabout option but very close to each other in terms of travel time. Next slide please.
Uh these just show sort of the comparison between the signalized layouts and the and the roundabout layouts. And very important to note is that we do have the fourlane facilities at the two roundabouts. Right. Um we do is is again that's for that added capacity that we needed and there were concerns about that we're going to narrow the road and do the road at the intersections. We're not we're providing that capacity at the intersections that we need to get through for vehicles and also vehicles turning in and out of the intersections.
Next slide please.
Um we will have several bike and pedestrian crossing options on Del Monty. Um where the roundabouts are specifically and then that midblock Hawk, it's a hybrid uh beacon. So it's one of these where the red lights come up and you push a button, red lights flash, pedestrian crosses, light goes dormant and vehicles can travel. Next slide please.
Um we had several options for treatment and there will be striping options to enhance pedestrian and bicycle activity.
Next slide, please.
That there's the picture of the actual Hawk signal that will go up mid block.
Um, next slide please.
Um, so this is just I'm going to run through so Bianca's images. So this would be the existing um image and then the next one shows next slide please.
show the rendering of uh how we would convert and provide additional pedestrian and bicycle and especially focusing on the landscaping elements of it. And the um the bicycle feature would be um one seamless connection with the with the pedestrian facility and there would be a protected bike lane as well.
>> Great. Uh are we northbound or southbound here on Deline?
>> Looking northbound. So this would be approximately at >> so one lane only northbound >> past the intersection. Yes, one lane but at the intersection two lanes.
>> Okay. What is that side strip next to the car?
>> We need a fire needs 20 ft width. So we have 12 ft for the lane and 8 ft shoulder.
>> But you don't drive in it, you don't park in it for emergency vehicles.
>> It's for emergency vehicles. Okay.
>> Thank you.
>> Next. Next slide, please.
And that was an image with Bianca's rendering for the median specifically.
And there you can see the travel in the in the lanes.
Next slide, please.
So now I'm going to share with you data.
And this is data. And I I remember when when councelor McCarthy asked about the book by traffic engineer by Dr. Wes Marshall and I think we you lesson from that book was data data data. Right. So I'm going to share with you data and I want you to take the data and make some decisions based on that because the data doesn't lie. It's real numbers. It's not something that is in the book that we figured out and how are we going to use it. This is all real information that I'm going to share with you now. Um so the first one is public attitude towards roundabouts. Um this is the NEHWA study that was done. You can see the dark green was before time people were before the implementation people was very negative and after implementation you know the opinions shifted to neutral positive and very positive. So um that's that's just real information that we have slide.
Um we did also a survey very similar to what Trape did um we did when we did work with Bianca and this uh this is a slide actually from the presentation that she made um after that or during that presentation the what I wanted you to look is at the top right end is where there was actually a 62 62% um favor favor favorite vote for the roundabouts right so um you know we had good data in there for who's using it. What do the people want? It's very the same message came through from what we saw with every survey.
>> What was the what was the survey that resulted in those numbers?
>> It was also an online survey and it was like we had 62 responses and it was very much the same. So it was like a survey monthly. We posted QR codes, we the outreach meeting and the popup event that we had. People would scan that and respond to the survey. So it's an opinion survey. 2026 >> uh 2025 I think this is when we when we did the the the Del Monte corridor.
>> Okay. Thank you.
>> Okay.
>> Um very interesting is the high percentage of people that said they bike and walk um as well. Right. It's not that modes but it shows that there's that need to provide multimotal facilities.
>> And can you speak to the 4159 lower left or lower right 41% four lanes 59% two lanes >> oh yes sorry um yes um so we when we were asked the question was asked about preference for four lanes versus the two lanes and the two lanes was justified because of the lowering of the speed right and people not passing each other and um still maintaining capacity so 41% of the people voted for four lanes and 59 votes on the segments.
Next slide, please.
you you approved um probably a couple of weeks ago, maybe a little longer, a couple of months ago, a vision zero plan and TAMC did a regional study that included Marina. Um and this is the vision zero safety act plan for the city. That document is available I think on Tam's website as well. I'm going to share with you a little bit of data out of that that tells a different story. I the one thing that popped out from this study because what it did it compared quite a few cities in Monterey County to each other and Marina was at the top of the list for bad safety data that stood out to me as a eyesore but it of course the eyes becomes an opportunity to get ranked. Next slide please.
Um it was datadriven analysis. Um you know just wanted to share that with you.
It was nothing here was sort of invented. It was all data that was collected. Um crash data specifically.
Um but the focus was on um injury and fatal accidents. We got to keep remembering that a lot of crashes don't get reported to the police so they don't show up in a database because if I'm an offender bender, you know, we exchange information that doesn't get reported.
So, so the crashes here are less than what's actually really happening in the next slide, please.
Um, something that stood out to me is what we call vulnerable road users. Um, so those could be in older community specifically, uh, people that bike, people that walk, um, and how important they role the role they play in moving about in the city and how we have an obligation to protect, right, and design features that take into consideration their vulnerability on the roadway. Next slide please.
Um some nice data here. I think again this sort of replicates back to the data also we had with with um with Bianca. Um you know quite a bit of usage bite usage pedestrian usage. Can we go to the next slide please?
This is um so so what we did in that study was we took the safe safety data and approached it from a systemic um measure and through that systemic measure we identify routes and we call them high injury routes in the city of Marina the orange roads that's shown in this map are your high injury routes so we see reservation road MEN road and Delmontian remember this is our data on MJ before it was converted into the roundabouts.
What the data showed is that 80% of the crashes occurs on 12% of your miles.
Right? So these are corridors that need some measure to make them safer.
Next slide, please.
So now I'm going to dig into what the data from the FHWA says about roundabouts. Right? So we do know that for signals and we know the majority of intersections on these corridors are signals but the reduction in fatal and injury crashes are 78% when you convert a signal into a roundabout. For stop control it's actually higher and that is just because people need to take gaps, right? And it's hard to take gaps especially for vulnerable road users.
These things all become more difficult the more the more vulnerable you are on the roadway. Next slide please.
>> [sighs and gasps] >> the if so so I want you to look at this and I think we've seen this graphic before if the speed doubles from 20 to 40 the chance of surviving or the increase in a fatality goes up eight times.
So speed is the primary source of killing pedestrians and cyclists on our road.
Next slide please.
Um, I think we're all familiar with conflict points, how many conflict points there are in intersections. Um, you know, signalize or stop versus roundabouts. The fact that you're going at lower speed, the fact that if crashes do happen, they are far more severe um in nature at S at the signal on stop the low speed sideswipe type accidents that happen in in roundabouts.
The data currently that we have on crashes in Marina um the ones that do get reported are primarily DUIs. I have been I think at a city council meeting or two where the chief of police said it's the best DUI catcher that you have in the city. Um some of the recent even the crashes on the new engine roundabouts too have been UIS right so under the influence and they couldn't negate the movement around the next slide please.
There was concern about how do bikes use a roundabout and how do pedestrians cross and this becomes extremely important. So bicycles have two options and if you're a spandex rider you can take the lane. So that means you don't drive on the side of the road. You'll go in front of the cars because the reason is you're going to drive the same speed as the bicycles going through the roundabout. So you take control in between the cars. If you don't feel okay and you cannot do that and you cannot manage 20 miles an hour, all the roundabouts have exit ramps and you can cross it with pedestrians on the side.
So that sidewalk become wide. It becomes the fast rail facility cross the intersection and then you can come back and there will be an entry ramp again through the side street.
Slide please.
There's a whole bullet list here about why roundabouts are good for the drivers. The slower speed is rule number one. Crashes the if there's a crash is very forgiving. Mistakes are not lethal, right? Um longer decision making time so you have time to make a decision on what to do.
Um no demands to accurately judge closing speeds of traffic. So sometimes if you're sitting at a stop, somebody approaching at 50 m an hour that is 35 miles an hour, children especially and older adults have a very hard time judging the speed, right? And then the gap acceptance in finding a gap is not great and then that's when we we get crashes. Um we talk about low energy crashes. Um the visual scan that you have at a roundabout is basically this.
When you're at an intersection and you got to move for pedestrians, it's a 180 movements. And we've got a couple of those graphics coming up.
And it's a very simple decision- making.
You will always have traffic or pedestrians like either just to your left or just to your right for pedestrians because they can cross both legs. But traffic will always approach you from your left. So you look to the left, look for the gap, go.
Next slide, please.
Um so this has a couple of we got a transition there maybe and then we can go there. So for pedestrians the challenge that we have is making vehicles making right turns are looking you know or may not be looking for pedestrians that cross in the sidewalk and you may think um it's okay and pedestrians will know what to do. There were two parents that were um killed in Gilroy a few months ago um by a right turning vehicle um at an intersection.
All the striping was there. There were no side distance problems. So it is a a fact that that right turn movement ped when a vehicle makes that right turn movement um you know the pedestrian becomes vulnerable. Um we do trust the lights too much. We think if we get a green light that that's protection for us if we enter the roadway. It's not right. It's just tells us you can walk.
Now, the fact is that vehicles may not um see that green light or not look for you or maybe look for other cars. Um if we have unprotected left turns, so it's a permissive left, right, I would always be looking for cars from the front and a gap and then I go and then if I go and there's a pedestrian in the crosswalk, it becomes a problem. Um I can also share with you many cities have at schools now because kids are the ones that are most vulnerable they have eliminated the permissive left turns and they put in protected left turns for safety of children. Um next slide please.
And this shows the visual angles that you need to have to be able to see and all the angles that you need to look for where you look for a pedestrian or a child or or a pedestrian crossing. Next slide, please.
We can push the slide again for the transition.
Okay, then go again. So, those are the movements and that shows you the only angles that you need to look for while you're traversing through the roundabout to look for that pedestrian that's crossing at that location versus the four green spaces or the arrows that we had in the previous slide.
Next slide, please.
Um, maybe before I go into this one, I I didn't put a slide in about crossing times, right? So, currently, well, actually, there's going to be a slide later, so I apologize. Um there was a question on funding sources. So currently all funding that becomes available is really related to safety and placemaking. We do not see projects that have signalized improvements getting funded at all. Even if it's um pedestrian improvements, active transportation planning improvements, seldom do we see signalized projects getting funded. And also very few cities here actually build these types of improvements out out of their pockets.
They all get funded. You can go to Selenas, Seaside, um you know even your engine, those have all been built primarily with grant funds or traffic impact programs. So I've listed here the most recent sources of information, some federal, state, and local funds that is available to help build these facilities.
Next slide, please.
We're almost done. So, La Hoya Bird Rock, I think we spoke about that the last time. This is probably the oldest corridor that I'm aware of in California. Um, you know, and um they have 22,000 cars a day. It's a single lane um facility. I'm going to share that with you. We have about we forecasting about 20,000 cars a day on on Del Monty and also on reservation.
So, about the same volumes from on a daily basis. Next slide, please.
Um the top left side slide is what it looked like or the photo is what it looked like. 78 ft of crossing space, right, for a pedestrian. Um the bottom slide and the two right slides show you what it looks like now. So they've trimmed down, provided a nice median and see how the the the urban space right adjacent on that corridor has redeveloped into really nice outside space. So that's the downtown feeling that you're looking for. um outside cafes. Um it it was just a tremendous improvement for the corridor. Next slide, please.
Uh so, five roundabouts in a row. Um and um it's also a coastal town, lot of visitors um plus all the locals. Next slide, please.
This is an aerial image. So, we took a couple of um drone footage, so I wanted to show you. Next slide, please.
So on this next one, um, so this is a drone footage of operations. And you can see with those volumes, let's look for a bicycle. Let's look for a bus. And we're also going to find a pedestrian. Um, also see how the cues dissipate, right?
They do get busy and they go through.
See, there's somebody waiting for a pedestrian to cross.
on the left side listening crosses bars go the other side wait so there were a lot of fears from people that it's not safe and people won't stop and this has now been in place for 10 years and people do stop and they stop in the right way the space is there for them to stop and people behind them stop as well again low speed um bicycle is actually taking the lane there was a bicycle going from the left to the right diagonal right through the circle So everything that we spoke about is happening at at this intersection. Let's go to the next slide.
Um so there's a pedestrian here and also again bicycles. So let's run that one.
So there the cars stop, pedestrian crosses one direction, cars go. See on the on the right hand side, pedestrian crosses over the cars go. Look at that short distance that the pedestrian is crossing in. Right? It's not you. The car doesn't need to wait for the full crossing. It's only for that 14 ft that the crosswalk is there.
Next slide, please. And there's a bicycle. Oh, missed the bicycle. It's okay. Next slide, please.
Um, there's just more footage. Um, so, so in that footage, right, you saw everything that you will see on Del Monte and on Reservation Road. There will be buses, there will be cars, there will be fire trucks, there will be pedestrians, there will be bicycles. And they all travel in the right way. Yes.
Is there education? Absolutely.
Everybody needs to learn how to use them. You have a few roundabouts in the city, you're probably a little bit ahead of a curve. Um, we do see that older people h are having more challenges with the roundabouts because it does require some interaction and and that's that's the education that Alexis spoke about.
Um this is a project in Escondido. Um that roundabout was installed I think 6 months ago. Um also in a downtown um they um they did diagonal parking and parallel parking. They saw a 20% increase in businesses and business activity since the roundabout wasn't was installed. I think also um if you go talk to Jennifer Schumac if you want to call her she won't stop talking about the success of this project. Okay. um you know and I think on La Hoya there was also a little less than 20% increase in economic activity. Yeah, next slide.
Well, that was just her testimony. Next slide. I think that's about it. So, I think you know we wanted to bring back the concerns that we've heard at the community meeting and you know show you facts, show you data. Um you know and then I guess we're up tonight for discussion on what to do with the corridors.
Thank you.
>> Thank you, Alexis. Thank you very much, Fred. Um, let's go to public comment, starting with those folks that are here in person.
>> Hey, how you doing? Um, I'll keep it brief. I I sent a whole bunch of questions. Some of them were duplicates.
Some of them were probably answered if I would have dug a little deeper. I've been digging through this roundabout stuff and this traffic stuff for the last, you know, four years, 5 years worth of meetings. I don't know what happened to the intersection um plan that seemed to be a total go in 2022 and 2024 and then all of a sudden roundabouts appeared. And I suspect I always suspect it was funding driven, uh grant funding driven. Um, I'm a little troubled by projects that are designed around grant funding.
We had all these meetings. I don't know how many people, people that live here, people that shop here, people that drive here need to tell you that they don't want any of this. And all I hear is, well, it's sad that the public doesn't understand. It's sad that the public just hasn't had enough data. crammed down their throat. And I can tell you something with all due respect, sir. Um, data can lie, does lie. It lies all the time. It can be skewed. It can be cherrypicked. And I can likely pick apart every slide that was just shown tonight. You're going to decide what you're going to decide. I can see some members up there beaming um during this presentation. And um whatever you [clears throat] decide, good luck to you. It probably won't happen for years anyway. With any luck, it can be reversed before a shovel hits the ground. Thanks. Bye.
Thank you very much, Mike. Anyone else?
Uh Mr. Mayor, members of the council, this my name is Kim Cohen and I was on Zoom at fire, but thanks to the miracle of my own two feet, I walked down here because I wanted to make sure I was here uh to make public comment for this. Um, I used to I think I'm particularly qualified to comment about this because I actually used to live in the former Starbucks building that's about 150 ft from this intersection and I've crossed that intersection on foot in the daytime and nighttime many, many times. And believe me, when you cross that intersection any time of day, under any traffic conditions, I don't know how wide it is, but you feel like you are playing a game of Frogger with your life. And it is clear to me after seeing these presentations and that this kind of idea will increase the level of pedestrian safety vastly. Um, so I would encourage this project to go forward. Thank you.
>> Thank you, Kim.
Anyone else like to comment on this?
>> Hi, thank you. Uh, my name is Laura Learner and I wasn't planning to comment until I heard something in the presentation uh when the engineer talked about um permissive left turns and I drive a lot. I have a long commute every day and I just was thinking about making a permissive left turn at a place I do a lot and I've had several close calls because you know I'm crossing I'm trying to find that gap with the oncoming traffic and I'm like I got a gap and I go and there's and then there's a pedestrian that seems to just show up out of nowhere and I just feel like I have this you know fear like I can imagine if I ever accidentally hit a pedestrian how horrendous that would be and so if there's and I'm not you know I'm more used to inter signal intersections than roundabouts. Of course, I mean, we all are, right?
Chain, you know, but if there's evidence showing that I'm less likely to accidentally hit a pedestrian and hurt someone, I I would be in support of that.
Thanks.
>> Thank you, Laura.
>> All right, let's go online.
Erica Graham, welcome.
Hi, mayor and uh city council. Um I just really hope that we can see this project move forward. I'd love to see um this plan actually um move forward with the full one lane on each northbound and southbound direction from um off of the highway uh Rind Dollar all the way to reservation with a roundabout at reservation. Um I've lived in this city for a really long time. I walk, bike.
Um, I use a reservation down um through that entire area and I have for many years and pedestrian safety is always it's super scary. I watch people almost get hit. The the intersection at Delmani and Reservation is always super dangerous to be able to cross. Um, I've done it with my kids biking, walking multiple times. It's very, very scary.
Um, I would love to see this plan uh come into place. Um, and really I feel like we have so much less traffic than we used to. reservation in Delmani used to be more highly used before we had uh in gym parkway that was um the main route and I wasn't a huge fan of the roundabouts but after using them um to get back and forth um one intera just using them they have actually kind of grown on me and although we are all starting to um use them a little more wisely and it's less of a challenge um that I've noticed. They are more safe and they're easier to actually get through. Um there's no longer a long wait coming off of the side roads and getting onto the main roads. Um, and I would really hope that uh the city council can vote on on the safety part of this um and bring this walkway, bike way, and one one route uh one road, sorry, in each direction um as a part of the plan because I really feel like it is the safest and most efficient uh means of travel, especially with the new housing coming into place. Um it's going to be safer for our students that are traveling um across the streets to get to schools from the high school down into the communities, from the elementary school, from the preschool.
Just for our families using these routes, the bikers, the walkers, it is just safer all the way around. And with less traffic traveling this road, I feel like this is the safest route. So, I hope this council um can really consider this. Thank you.
>> Thank you very much, Erica.
>> All right, let's go to Moto G Stylist Tommy Valle, I believe.
>> Yeah, I'm a daily bike rider. Can you hear me?
>> Yes. Uh I'm a daily bike rider. Um, I ride Immunen from reservation all the way, you know, almost as far as I can go and then I cross over uh, Men, but roundabouts and the crosswalk I feel are way too close to the roundabout. Even though I don't have to look at a lot of things, I only have to look at, like the gentleman was saying, but that car is in motion. and he doesn't have to stop when he's uh parallel with me going down um but I press the yellow light and I look and I don't see a car and then I blink, my eyes blink and I open again and there's a car coming around making a right toward my crosswalk. That crosswalk is too close to the roundabout. It needs to be another 30 ft away. It's too close for them to make a decision. They're in motion and I'm crossing. And and the other question I have is, is it okay to cross that crosswalk on a bicycle? I don't know if the police chief is there, but am I breaking the law by riding my bike across that cross walk? I guess that's the first question because ideally it's still dangerous. They are in motion.
And they really don't see me a lot of times because if it's a Tesla, they're looking at their TV. They're not looking. I I have to make eye contact.
Now, every car has tinted windows. So, you know what? I just wave cars through.
I don't press the yellow button. I wait till all the cars go by. I don't try to stop traffic. I finally realized that I'm not going to cause any commotion or reduce the flow, especially on commute commute times.
The crosswalks on engine are too close to the roundabouts. There's not enough time for me to even think about crossing or not crossing because the car is coming and making a right turn. I'm thinking he's going to go through the roundabout and continue parallel with me.
It's the roundabout is safer, but it ain't no It ain't no cat catwalk.
You still have to be very extremely observant because cars have blind spots.
They they tint their windows. They're drinking their coffee. People driving Teslas are looking at their screen. Uh if you put all those roundabouts on reservation, I mean, I think you're going to end up I think it's cool and everything, but you're going to ruin downtown. People are going to want to continue to go because they don't they're not stopping.
So, it's not going to be a stopping destination downtown.
Simple as that. Good night.
>> Thank you, Tommy. Let's go to Grace Silva Santella.
>> Hello, Mayor and City Council.
Uh, so I am especially anxious to hear how council member McCarthy speaks about this item next to former council member Frank O' Con. Brian is the person who I see walking around the most in Central Marina's core downtown area. So, I'm going to be curious to hear how he his his take on this.
I last night spent a couple of hours listening to your October 1st, 2024 city council meeting. And the traffic consultant you have who just gave the whole presentation about roundabouts at that meeting gave you a a a very extensive presentation about traffic signal improvements to the intersection at Delman and Reservation Road. Myself and Jeff Jeff Markham were the only two residents who asked questions.
>> [snorts] >> I left that meeting feeling extremely confident that we were moving forward with some major improvements to pedestrian safety. you had $1.7 million of grant money in hand and one year, 8 months later, I'm I confused and can't understand why we haven't uh we we did not move forward with the work that you were all talking about a year ago and 8 months, one year and eight months ago.
I'd like to know if you have arranged any meetings with the business owners in the core downtown area of Central Marina to hear what their feedback is about roundabouts and about reducing reservation road from two lanes in both directions to one lane in both direction. I'll remind you as one who walks this area often that the intersections are in fact five to six lanes wide when you factor in left and right hand turn lanes. Uh, and I'd like to know from start to finish, what will we be looking at for a roundabout at Delman and Reservation Road and replacing all of these signal lights with roundabouts along Reservation Road from start to finish? 2 years, 3 years, 5 years. If we could be get an answer on that, that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Grace.
Okay, we'll close public comment and we'll start uh with with Grace first and we'll go backward uh from start to finish allin down Boulevard reservation road roundabouts.
Uh how long will it take for implementation?
So, C council has already approved Delmani um uh Boulevard, the medium project.
They've approved it. You've approved the streetscape and the designs. We applied for funding for the roundabouts and and only got did we get any funding for the Delmani roundabouts?
>> That that application went in uh three weeks ago.
>> Okay.
>> We'll we'll know around September, October.
And so, um, as far as the median improvements, um, we are ready to move forward with that, um, right away.
>> We've gotten to this point and then once you [clears throat] started getting feedback and looking at the Delmani intersection again and the roundabout, council put a pause on that and we heard back from the public. And so we put a pause on on that project until we're to this point, but we're ready to move forward. But I think we're about 90% of the construction drawings finished. So it's just a matter of um that last 10%.
Ishmail can clarify we can go out to bid maybe be under construction maybe October >> for the for the median >> for the median part. Ishmael, do you agree on that timeline?
>> Yes.
And then as far as the roundabouts, what would you suggest?
>> So, so if you if you hear from the feds or the state today that you get money that will be allocated to in the next year, then you're going to start your design process. Um, so construction could happen um anywhere from three and a half to four years out. You could be shovels in the ground or >> what?
>> For the roundabouts for if we get money for the corridor on Del Monte.
>> Okay.
>> And remember, we have the money currently more than half of the money for Mjen H or Delonte reservation, right? So we have the 1.7 million already.
>> So that's Delmani. uh the intersection of Delmani reservation we have um we have the 1.7 million that is ready to go if council gives direction to move forward on the roundabouts then um then we move forward with the designs uh we'll we'll need about 3 million more dollars we have over 11 million in transportation um impact fees that I that we can use for um to complete that project. And then as far as reservation road and uh Frederick can can respond to that.
So reservation road is probably a little further out. Um you know there will be next cycles coming up for safety money.
Um, you know, I I just the the there was a bipartisan um grants that just came out and the amounts of dollars that were being made available for projects like Reservation Road. There were plenty of them throughout California in our area. I think Capola got 5 million for their car. So, um, don't know if they're going to build it yet, but um, you know, they and and they and they had two fatal accidents on that car. So, it's really safety data driven and I think I told you that Marina has the worst data in Monterey County. So, I'm thinking you are lowhanging fruit for um getting um grant funding for these improvements.
>> So, Frederick, can you repeat the outyear timeline for reservation road?
>> So, let's say we go next year for reservation road as a grant application, right? That means that you will and you win the money, you will get it in the following year. So we probably seven years out I would say for starting construction on reservation five to seven years.
Okay. Uh have we had any meetings with business owners yet regarding roundabouts and reducing reservation road from two lanes to one lane in each direction?
uh meetings specifically with business owners? No. Uh 92% of our respondents identified as residents of Marina um to do any sort of outreach with business owners. Specifically, we would recommend partnerships with stakeholder agencies within the community to be able to have sitdowns with your business owners to to gather that input.
>> All right. Tommy asked if it's [snorts] legal to bicycle across the crosswalks that are at the roundabouts on Immun Parkway.
Um, [sighs and gasps] so on Immunen Parkway, no, he's supposed to push his bike across. Um, you know, if it is a class one trail, but once you get to a crosswalk, you're supposed to cross to push your bike. Um, if there's striping that shows a bicycle facility, so you can get a green stripe adjacent to a pedestrian wide stripe, then the bike can ride.
>> But currently, there aren't the green stripes.
>> Correct. So, he's going to push awake.
>> Okay. Uh, I didn't get any other uh questions written down in my notes. Did anyone note any that I missed? Okay, let's go.
>> I think Mike had asked why the change from the traffic signals to the roundabouts when they're initially approved.
>> Yeah. And I think Grace said something like uh she's confused why we didn't do those improvements. I'm sure she would like to hear that as well.
So Fred, back in 2024, you presented to us as a city council uh on the traffic signal improvements that you recommended >> and uh there was 1.7 million. And we had a couple of public members tonight asking why we changed from that signal light improvement design, signalized intersection design to roundabout preferred design.
>> So I have to blame you. Council asked the decision or asked the question, could we perhaps do a roundabout subpreservation and we said yes. Um and then we would start and then this intersection would turn into a roundabout for Delmontian reservation. Okay. And I think it kind of started once we really went through that Delmi road process, looked at the roundabouts, looked at the data and the information and and saw the huge safety improvements and the improvements of the corridor. Then council said, can we also look at the intersection here and that's when we started to make that shift. And that was deja vu for me because the two roundabouts near the library on Reservation Road were originally designed to be new signalized intersections.
And before Lane got here, we were told as a council those two intersections wouldn't work as roundabouts.
When Lane got here, I forgot why we why he took a second look. if you asked him to or he's just on his own initiative.
But but Lane took a second look and said, "No, we can do roundabouts there."
And so we did roundabouts there. And then we get to reservation Delmani.
Uh no roundabout and then it became doable and so now we're considering it. Um do you have any input on those two at reservation?
Do you have a memory of when Christine Dioro was here in that kind of time frame?
>> Yeah, it was around 2013 time frame. Um, so your first year here, >> correct? This is the first year. And really that goes back to to the general plan. Our general plan, one of the the things if when we have intersections, um, if roundabouts work, it gives direction to put in roundabouts. That was a general plan that was developed by the community. And as the data comes forward, I mean, there's no question that roundabouts are safer for pedestrians, for cars, for bicyclist, and we're seeing that. Um, what'll be really interesting is once Engine Road is open for a year to really see um the data that Brad, I have a question. Um, in in our staff report, you talk about um kind of doing an experiment, my words, not your words, on reservation road, trying out the one lane in each direction in segments and roundabouts with one lane and if they interim condition and if it works well, turning it into a a two-lane roundabouts and and I guess two, can you and two lanes each a full build out of the downtown. Can you explain that analysis summary that's in our staff report?
>> So the the analysis that we did um had a full buildout of your downtown which is substantial, right? I think um you know and it's very highly likely that you're not going to see that full development happen in by the next 10 20 years, right? So it's um and I showed you La Hoya, right? that has about the same volume that we were forecasting for your downtown operating fine as just single lane roundabouts. So you have the option of building a the first just two lanes with some roundabouts. There may be improvements at the roundabouts to accommodate turning movements in and out of the driveways. Um but that's an option and we can always reserve the rightway.
plan the road, build some lanes, and as the more development happen in the future, you have the ability to to widen the road then >> not an experiment. It's a phased >> Exactly. It's a phased approach. That's exactly it.
>> Okay. And is there any reason to consider a phased approach to Delmani Boulevard?
>> Um, no. Delmonte. Um so we already with the ex some of the existing volumes and some of the future volumes the two roundabouts towards Rin Dollar and Palm they have heavy volumes already. Um you know a lot of people come down ride a dollar to get onto the freeway and coming back. So you know we needed that capacity that in the analysis it was um unambiguous um you know needing the the four lanes from Palm going towards the freeway.
>> Okay. My next question from Lane is in our staff report there's a slide that refers to our downtown revitalization specific plan that was approved in 2024 and in our staff report it says policy M-1.17 support the implementation of roundabouts and lane reductions on Delmi Boulevard. Similarly, continue to evaluate the feasibility of lane reductions on reservation road to calm the flow of traffic and further the city's goal of creating more inviting streetscapes.
And goal M-1 that was associated with that policy was that we're shooting for we're we're planning for a downtown with safe and efficient pedestrian and vehicular circulation that encourages people to gather, walk, cycle, or use public transportation. So, I didn't know that those were in the downtown specific plan, but they but they are. And so, can you speak to what we're doing tonight consistent with that downtown plan?
Yeah, I think it is absolutely consistent with that down downtown plan.
There's a lot more in that plan um that these improvements um um implement that will implement the downtown. One of the the differences that Alexis pointed out was in the downtown vitalization plan, it talked about really high density um residential, which would be, you know, five, six, seven stories high. And the feedback from the community, and Alexis um can speak more to that, but the feedback was, you know, we're more interested in mixed use. Yeah. retail maybe one or two stories above that. So that's the one thing different um that going through this process that we've seen from our downtown vitalization plan, but everything else that we're proposing tonight is absolutely consistent with that plan.
Okay. Um thank you Fred. you skipped this slide when you were going through your presentation and it's also in our staff report and it talks about 32 conflict points at a traditional signal intersection versus eight conflict points if you have a roundabout and that's a one-lane roundabout. So can you speak to those conflict points comparison to one lane roundabout and then mention two-way roundabout conflicts because this doesn't have two-way >> correct >> two-lane and we're talking about two lanes in some like on reservation but not on Delmani they'd be one lane but no deli will be two lane. Yeah. So please speak to those three options.
>> So we have an extra lane through the roundabout. So every dot that you see there is going to double. So there would be 16. But you also got to remember if I have a four-lane roadway facility, I also double the dots.
>> So there's the same increase in the number of conflict points, right? If you compare a four-lane intersection to a fourlane facane intersection to a two-lane rather.
>> Okay. So in this slide it says four leg intersection, 32 conflict points. Yep.
Is that two lanes or one lane?
>> One lane. So if we have two lanes in Delmani Boulevard, we have 36 conflict points at Palm and Delmani and well we have 16 with a roundabout, right? But that and then we'll have if we keep the four lanes for the signals and it's it's going to double up on what you see on that graphic.
>> Okay. How about Palm and Delmani Boulevard?
>> Right now there's a signal light.
>> Yep.
>> There's two lanes each direction, right?
Yeah. Two lanes. Yep. And >> so are there 64 conflict points at that intersection today?
>> Can you give me a minute so I can just do my math here?
>> Sure.
>> I'm trying to understand the data.
>> Yep.
>> Or the math behind the safer roundabouts that everyone who studies this says that they're safer.
I think that's an important point to illustrate why they're safer.
And Fred, while you're looking that up, interrupt me when you're ready, but I got some information from Tamy today because in that vision action plan that's in the back of our staff report, it talks about three roads in Marina accounting for 80% of our high severity crashes and they only represent 12% of our roads. And those are no surprise. Delmmani Boulevard, Reservation Road, and Engine Parkway. Those three roads are 12% of our road miles, but they have 80% of our high severity crashes.
And so I asked Tamy, well, between those three roads, how many did Delmani Boulevard have? How many did the Reservation Road have? How many did I parkway have? And the answer was that in the the 5-year period 2019 to 2023 when the study was done, Delmani Reservation Road intersection had one serious injury and six lower injury crashes at that intersection.
And Delmani Boulevard itself had seven serious injuries and 20 visible injuries that weren't serious. Reservation Road had three serious injuries and 60 visible injuries. Engine Parkway had one fatality, five serious injuries, and 80 visible injuries. My point is that we have good data on the accidents and injuries that are occurring on our roads. And it's helpful to keep that in mind when we're working prioritizing where we spend our money on these roads. And of course, we're going to try to prioritize the most dangerous roads. And Delmani and Reservation Road are two of our three most dangerous roads. So, making them safer is not just a a cool thing, but it's it's it should be our high priority when those are our most dangerous roads and we're trying to make our town more walkable and safer for everybody.
Okay, Fred, do you want to talk about conflict points? So, I'm going to add another 14, right? If to the signalized intersection, right? If one of the legs have four lanes. So, two lanes on one leg, four lanes on the other one. So, I'm adding another 40. And so, I get to 46.
>> Oh, I see. Because Palm Avenue only has one lane, east, west.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Got it.
>> Okay.
>> Okay.
>> Okay.
>> So, so how many conflict points at Palm Avenue today?
You said you added 14.
>> 40 40 46 >> 46. And with the two-lane roundabout you're proposing, how many conflict points will there be?
>> 16.
>> So 46 compared to 16. And that's one way to explain why roundabouts are predicted to be safer.
>> There's >> and and speed speed, >> right? There's 30 more ways to to to hit.
>> Yeah.
uh with Palm Avenue Delmani today compared if it turns into a roundabout and also the roundabout will reduce the speed. Okay, let's go to Councilman McAdams.
>> Thank you, mayor. Um I'm curious. So I when I was researching this um a lot of cities are doing pilots um for like 30 to 180 days and then collecting data before like making big investments and just sort of seeing um how the public is um you know interacting reacting to this. Is that something that we can do?
And then um you know for me so I think I'm the only one up here who drives to the peninsula in the morning. Um and if you haven't done it I would recommend that you do it. Um and especially during the surf bus line that construction it easily added 20 minutes to um my commute. And I understand that, you know, you um can get in the habit of going the other way or whatever, but um that was to me a test of the road diet and it was awful.
So um that was my like real life experience. Um and um I I do like roundabouts as well. Um but I do think that it would be important to have this pilot project. we can have the data, you know, I mean, we can sit up here for 45 minutes and talk about how safe it is, but if um it's really impacting our residences quality of life, commuting times, getting to school, etc., um I think that, you know, that's when we would hear from that's when people are going to show up to the meetings, right? Um so can you elaborate on the pilot program?
>> Um I would want to say yes but we have not looked at it. Um obviously a lot of the pilots that cities do are easier intersections. They don't I wouldn't do them on a major corridor. They would try it on maybe a residential street single lanes and you know we have quick builds the other words we're using right now.
So those are options but I would be you know um we can look into that more but um to tell you absolutely we can do a pilot right now somewhere on this corridor is it's going to be it's a maybe >> or maybe on a part of Delmani I mean I'm just curious that's when people are going to wake up right that's when people are going to go oh I my business is down 20% or wow I want to go here but I have nowhere to park or no way to get off So, I think that um it it's important even um if it's a very small space, but if you're hesitant to do a pilot, well, I mean, we're talking about months and months of construction and so what what is the difference with that?
>> I I So, so the pilot is not going to exactly replicate what the construction's going to be, right? So, the the roundabout's going to have specific geometry to it, right? And if I do the pilot, I can't exactly replicate that geometry. And so, so you're not going to get the safety benefits. You're not going to get the crossing distance, right? So that's why I say if it's a simple that cities that do these do them where it's simple and it's easy to implement, right? Um the challenge, yeah, I'm I'm I it's going to be hard on the money and the reservation to do pilots. But I I can you speak to your experience on Delmani is is exactly what the modeling said would happen is one of the options was if we narrowed it down to one lane with the signals what would happen and it it showed it be a total failure and so so that is what the modeling predicted with that. It said Demani narrow it down will only work with roundabouts. So without roundabouts, you absolutely have to have two lanes and that's what it showed.
>> And that's why Palm Sorry, thanks.
Thanks, Lane. Palm and Rind Dollar are two-lane roundabouts because we need that capacity going down. When the surf came, they closed down, you know, the section where we're going to provide two lanes.
>> Okay. I'm still interested in in some sort of pilot. You >> can let me um I I will work with staff and we'll get back to you.
>> Okay. Great. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Jenny.
Mayor Protent Fisher.
>> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, and just what Thank you for your presentation as always. And just what you said the when the surf project happened, that's not how the road diet will be and there were no roundabouts. So when people say this was a mess, that's not how the design will design is. So this is not the results that we will get. And for the rest I am, everybody already knows I'm from the Netherlands. I just spent three weeks in the Netherlands again. I rode more and more [laughter] I drove more roundabouts in three weeks than most Americans have driven in their life probably. It it works. It it just works.
And it and when I was young, we had a few roundabouts in the country. That was it. And now almost all the intersections where traffic has to go are roundabouts.
And and they didn't do it because they don't work. really and it is safer.
There are there is data and uh and people say data can lie. Just experience will show you. So I wish that everybody could go there, experience the roundabouts. And by the way, all the more and more of maybe all the downtowns that I visited now have a um speed limit of 30 kilometers per hour, which is about 20 miles per hour. It's all about safety uh especially for pedestrians and um uh what is it called? Bicyclist. So even I get tired at some point. So um so I and I believe the data I believe the designs I believe that the anything you show us it's there is a reason that Yeah.
[laughter and gasps] >> Yeah. You know but what we saw everything we saw. So, um I don't know how how what what more I can say to try to convince people. It's so Oh, I do have one question for the city manager.
Uh MST, how will staff make sure that they get involved at the right moments and not when things are done deal?
>> We'll absolutely get them involved in the design phase.
>> Okay. Thank you. and >> that'll be on Ishmail's shoulders.
>> I'm writing that down. Okay. Thank you.
I I don't have more. Thank you very much.
>> Thank you, Council Member.
>> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um and I I have to say that I'm a big supporter of roundabouts, too. I just um I'm glad you put in the La Hoya um San Diego uh picture here because it I just and I don't know where it's coming from, but we have on our uh reservation road 1 2 3 4 5 6 seven roundabouts and La Hoya at least has five. So I you know because I was wondering like does any any other place have that many roundabouts?
So I'm glad we have one that says five.
>> I can maybe share the city of Carmel I think only has a few signals left in the city. They have now and that's not not this car the other car Indiana.
They have now basically got rid of most of their signals. They fully going for for roundabouts and you know I was just in Norway and there are cities that the size of Marina that doesn't have a single signal. Everything is round. It's like >> and and it's like this where there's one one long street and there's cuz sometimes I wonder if if there was a big stream of traffic and they're they're slowing down but they're going through every, you know, roundabout and if you're trying to get onto reservation, let's say, but there's a steady stream because there's nobody stopping. I mean, if if people are doing this correctly, it's kind of just flowing. Is there any is there any hybrid like do you ever put like one signal someplace amongst all of these to have a stop so that at least when the traffic starts there's a gap so somebody can get in. So that's the next level of roundabout design is to have a signal control and that signal will come on when the the side street can't get in but the signal is only on when it needs to stop and the signal goes off and the rest of the time in the offbeat it operates like a normal signal.
>> Oh okay. So that's uh so that's something we can build in from the start.
>> Oh okay. So it's not really like just a signal but it it is there to help.
Oh, okay. That's great. So, how many of those do you have then?
>> Like on like like in this this situation here on reservation road like how many would you have?
>> I need to check with our guys. We we we planning those currently on Bar Road in Selenas.
>> But they have not been constructed.
>> Well, that's brilliant. Thank you.
[laughter] I didn't know that we could do something like that. Maybe you told it to us, but I it never registered that we would have a way to put in breaks of continuous flow of traffic with roundabouts.
>> What what I do know happens before that and that's when we all pick it up is if the roadway the main line gets congested, right, and people can't find gap. What usually happens in the roundabout there people will get curty gaps. So somebody coming in, they will know somebody's waiting. It's just like an always stop, right? People will give you or two-way stop. giving you the opportunity to to enter the stream, right?
>> Yeah, >> that's what will happen as well.
>> Okay. I wasn't counting on people's goodwill.
[laughter] >> Okay. And then um you know, we just understand now that we cannot have a road going from Delmonte across to second because of um because of habitat and and threatened species.
So what we thought would be a connection between the old and new marina, so to speak, we're not having that anymore. We can't. It's, you know, it just uh sounds like that it's never going to happen.
And we can't even even put a pedestrian and and ped pedestrian bicycle road even. So when we have this Delmonte uh um roundabout, you know, at um you know, at Del Monte and Reiner, I thought that that roundabout was explicitly for having the connections going across, you know, with this new road. But it does that change anything if we don't have that possibility anymore?
>> No. Rind dollar will be its own roundabout. Um depending on what happens further out on um Batton Parkway coming down there may be some additional measures. So Baton Parkway coming down >> will necessitate the Okay. So it won't be like a four-way thing. It'll be three-way roundabout.
>> Okay. Okay. Understand.
>> Okay. That's about all I have. That's all I can think about at this time of night.
>> So Kathy, I I encourage everybody to look at the webcams, especially during peak traffic on the roundabouts at Mjen Parkway, to look at how the side traffic enters the roundabout even during the busiest times. It has zero problem. Just watch it. It's like amazing. It's just like the videos that we saw today. You don't have people waiting to get in nearly as long as they used to wait for the light to turn green when it was an intersection at or market. For example, Abrams and Immun is the busiest intersection on Imun Parkway where there's a roundabout and it's 247. You can watch it. Pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, trucks, buses. It's flowing like it's a Sunday morning >> and it's peak traffic.
>> I will do that >> night and morning.
>> However, Reservation Road seems to have so many more street intersections than Imun. So, it's a little different in my mind. You know, I can >> Yeah, I think you're right. And so does some of the examples we saw.
>> Those downtown examples he he showed us, it was downtown. It was just like very similar to that. Mhm.
>> The other thing I want to say, um, we have a we have a couple of pages in here. You didn't go over it, these northbound travel times. Can we get this up on the screen, the northbound travel times, because it speaks to what Council McAdams talked about, um, and that is that surf construction zone was congested and it seemed like it totally backed up traffic and took you a lot longer to get through it. The flashing sign said, you know, expect 10-minute delays or whatever it said.
So, that was a construction zone. We all know that when you drive through a construction zone that's narrowed barely for your car to fit, everyone's going to go slower. You're waiting for traffic lights to turn red. It's a mess. And so, we had a mess. And that's no surprise.
But when you go to this northbound travel times, it compares the existent the existing four-lane road to reducing the lanes but keeping the signals to reducing the line lanes and having roundabouts.
And it shows you how fast you go from point A to point B.
And it's slower with existing.
It's even more slow if you reduce the traffic and you keep the signals, which is what happened during surf.
We reduce the the traffic lanes, but we kept the signals. And then it's you move through point A to point B fastest if you have one lane with roundabouts.
But that's a fully constructed project.
surf construction zone was not a fully constructed project. It was a construction zone with K rails on both sides and you felt very unsafe and so everyone went slow and they were backed up at the signal lights and it took 10 minutes sometimes to get through that.
This is not going to take 10 minutes like during surf construction. It's going to take 1 minute 11 seconds in the AM and 1 minute 14 seconds in the PM, which is a little bit faster than other options, but you're going slower and you're getting through faster, which means you can see what's around you. It's safer, but you're saving time. You're saving commute time a little bit. So, if it's safer and you move through faster at a slower, safer speed, where is where is the problem? If if it's safer for everybody and it's more efficient for traffic, aren't those the two most important things? Safety and efficiency of traffic flow. So I know if you look at this data it, you know, you have to come up with uh intuitive or or gut feelings, you know, opposition. U and someone said earlier they could pick apart every one of these slides. Well, we need to do that. You know, if you can pick apart these slides, let's, you know, let's have someone pick apart these slides.
But they're based on national trends and international trends. And the Federal Highway Administration is showing us some of this data. And what Fred is finding is that the local data is agreeing with the national data which says in in in simple terms, roundabouts and road diets make it safer and that's why you can get grants and it makes traffic more efficient. So it's not that we like roundabouts because we think they're cute. It's because they work.
And MGen Parkway is an example how they work. And Holman Highway is an example.
It turned congestion into a Sunday morning stroll. The difficulty I have with roundabouts downtown and on Engine Parkway is with the bicycle safety.
These are real people telling us real fear they have from their experience using these roundabouts.
And so Fred, uh, what's your thought on the safety of bicycles?
>> Mr. Mayor, just a point of order. We have been talking about this, but there's a clear majority that wants to move forward. Can we There's no question really.
>> Just one more question. Can you can you speak to the safety or unsafety of bicycles on Immun Parkway and what you're proposing at >> reservation?
So I think on reservation the speeds on the main line is going to be lower, right, than what it is on on on MGEN.
From a roundabout perspective, it will be exactly the same. If you don't feel safe taking the lane in the roundabout, you can get off and take the the exit ramp and use the crosswalk.
>> It's going to be exactly the same.
>> All right, good enough. Okay, who would like to make the motion?
>> Someone like to make a motion.
And by the way, I made a mistake earlier, so it's going to be quick, but we do need to do that golf shell conversion item. That was critical.
[snorts] >> And the drone. And the drone, too.
>> Oh, not the golf, but the drone. Oh, I got that wrong. Okay.
All right. Uh, did someone want to make a motion?
So, we've received the information. Do we have directions to provide?
Um, so we're looking for specific direction.
Do you want to move forward with the roundabout on Delmani and Reservation Road?
And then uh we want some direction on the reservation road quarter. Um do you want to move forward with that approval of that design concept or do you want to continue with more public outreach and discussion? I think it's essentially I think what we're looking at.
>> Okay. Was there a staff recommendation?
I don't have a staff report in front of me.
Uh our staff recommendation is um Delmanian Reservation Intersection move forward with the roundabout. Um uh and we would recommend um the approval of the reservation road corridor design with the caveat that if council wants more public input and um we can certainly do that. Um, >> okay. If we if we move ahead with the median construction, it is consistent with the roundabout at reservation road.
>> Correct. They they could work together.
Yeah.
>> And if we move ahead with the median construction and then we change our mind, then we have to undo the construction in the median. So tonight is important to get the median, you know, measure twice, cut once, right? Do the median once. Don't refigure it and then bust it up because we're going to change our mind. Uh, okay. So, I'll make the motion that we uh progress with Reservation Road, Delmani Boulevard, Roundabout Design, and the Reservation Road uh roundabout corridor design.
And if that doesn't get a second, then it dies for another motion.
>> I second. Okay.
Excuse me. I I missed the part about the medians on Del Monty. So, we cannot start construction.
>> We shouldn't start construction on Delmani until we make a decision at reservation road Delmani Boulevard intersection because the the median has to >> Yes. But we approve now to or agree now to go ahead with the roundabout at that intersection. So, motion.
>> Yes. So, the medians could be constructed and >> will have to be adjusted a little bit, you know, when the when the roundabouts go in at >> correct >> at Rain dollar and uh Palm, but the construction of the medians could happen now.
>> Correct. They will.
>> So, I would like to have that added to the motion to do >> that that's already been that's already in work. It's ready to go whether we do a roundabout.
>> Okay, then I misunderstood that. Sorry.
Yeah, the median is ready to go. Its configuration depends on what we say we want at Delmani reservation.
>> Okay. Thank you.
>> That's why it's held up. The median has been held up for this decision.
>> Now we can move forward. Thank you.
>> Okay. Any other comments or questions before we vote? Okay, let's go to vote, please. All in favor, please say I.
>> I.
>> All oppose, please say no.
>> Any abstensions? Okay, thank you. That motion passes four to zero. And we have one more item. Uh well, at least I'll motion that we take care of that other critical item because our last motion was that we were going to resume at the end of this item.
So I'll motion that we uh continue tonight until we get the uh 10 G2 that was pulled consent. Okay. All in favor please say I.
>> I.
>> I. All oppose, please say no. Okay, that motion passes unanimously.
And who pulled this? Oh, it was pulled for Nolan, right?
[laughter] >> Okay.
>> We had a whole list of questions that Chief Hopkins can answer.
>> Yes.
>> Thank you. And I um definitely uh appreciate you staying over. I know everyone's tired. Uh the reason that this was asked just to kind of stick with us is because if it's delayed one more time, we're coming into our summer months where we have National Night Out and we have our car week coming up and this technology, we had hope to have it up and running by then because it will be a gamecher for us to help us with our our uh our events. All right, so uh based on the late hour, I've tweaked this three times and I think I have it down to 10 minutes. So I'll try to get through it really really quick and I'll go by each question. And so the first one is what public safety program uh are we solving? Uh most of all of this information can be answered and is answered in our policy 612 which is posted online as well as my staff report. The drone program is meant to close time and information gap between when the officer receives the call and and when they arrive with a reliable information. So, right now we depend on uh 911 calls, radio traffic, and whatever fixed camera happens to be nearby. The drone can be overheard quickly and give us a real-time scenario uh in terms of what's going on with situational awareness before officers even step out of their vehicles. Uh so, uh let's see here. I'm going to condense this a little bit. Um policy 612 limits how our drones um use the situations where it enhances the missions of our protecting lives and property and where the means are not available or less effective and that's why we are implementing or asking for this new technology. The staff report spells out the goals which is improving emergency response times which is important for us uh enhancing officer uh and public safety and supporting critical incident management and increasing efficiency without adding staff.
Question three, how often uh how often and under what circumstances will we fly? The system may deploy be deployed when calls for service uh arrive or critical incidents or search operations, emergency management events and traffic incidents, perimeter operations and similar public safety situations.
Uh under policy 612, emergency mission must be approved by the chief, a commander or designate and every flight must be logged with the mission type, the objective, the flight time, approving supervisor.
Uh in doing that, uh this ensures that the deployments are tied to defined call types and documented approval and just not a casual or continuous patrol.
All right. Uh, question two. Total cost, I'm sorry. Yeah, wait a minute.
Three. Yeah. Okay. Total cost including program components. The DFR agreement is structured as a three-year term at $50,000 per year for an anticipated three-year term cost for a total of $150,000 plus tax. The mobile security trailer is also part of this agreement.
uh and it is a standalone one-year contract term for $25,000 plus tax for planning purposes is both continued for three years and the combined estimate value to be about $225,000 excluding taxes. Those amounts are all inclusive under the agreement. The drone hardware software, remote piloting program, air traffic tools uh or training, the mission reporting, the vendor support all wrapped into the annual DFR cost. The trailer package includes the camera uh the camera mask, the PTZ and the 360 degree camera, uh blue light and audio talk down funding comes from existing appropriations projected uh salary and operational savings. So we expect um about $619,000 and we're using those funds that uh we're not going to be using to pay for this cost going forward.
alternative uh considerations. Uh we continually evaluate other public safety investments such as staffing, training, and community- based strategies, lighting, uh environmental design, ex, etc. The drone trailer are not substitutes for those efforts. They are tools that help the staff that we already have so that they can respond more safely and effectively. Because programs are funded from existing savings, evaluations will be done annually and we can discontinue by providing timely non-renewal under the agreement. The city keeps the flexibility shift uh shift of resources if these tools do not provide sufficient value compared to our other investments.
Next, uh let's see here. Emergency response versus general patrols and surveillance.
Policy 612 again uh and staff report are very clear on this point. 612 allows drone use enhance to enhance the mission when other tools are not available or less effective and it identifies emergency training, pre-planning and disaster deployments as appropriate use.
Policy 612.6 Six expressly prohibits the use of USA drones uh video system for random surveillance, for harassment or intimidation, for discrimination, or for personal business, and prohibits weaponizing the drone. The staff report likewise states that these tactics or these technologies will be used only for legitimate law enforcement and public safety purposes and will not be used for generated or generalized or indiscriminate surveillance.
So this is not a roaming patrol drone.
We are trying it as we are flying it and using it as defined in mission specific uses restricting restrictions around homes, backyards, parks and gathering events.
Policy 612.3 addresses this directly.
Absent a warrant or extingent circumstances, operators and observers will not intentionally record or transmit images or of any location where a person would have reasonable expectation of privacy or for example a resident's yard or enclosed areas. The policy requires reasonable precautions to avoid even inadvertently recording such areas including turning turning or deactivating the camera when the uh when it's appropriate. Uh policy 612.5.3 also requires that the pilot pilot keep the camera focused only in the areas necessary for the mission. So yes, we may use the drone at parks, events, public spaces when there is a defined public safety need, but we are not authorized or how or to hover over backyards or record inside residents or curtage without a warrant or emergency.
And we will not use the drone to monitor lawful first amendment protected activity or target people based on race, religion, or protected circumstances or characteristics.
Next uh retention and how long the video will be kept. Policy 612.7 states are drone uh must be retained in accordance with our established records retention schedule. And for Marina that drone policy is a 30-day purge policy for routine uh drone footage unless the footage is being held as evidence in a criminal case and specific to a legal purpose. So in practice that means that evidentary video automatically is purged. Video is nonvid non-evidentary video is purged after 30 days unless it's needed in a case. Who has access to the footage and data? Uh policy 612 again requires that the program coordinator which we have assigned uh and reports directly to me implements protocols that the data intended for the use is for uh is evidence as start over uh requires that a program coordinator to implement protocols so that the data intended for use as evidence is accessed stored and retrieved in ways that preserves integrity and chain of custody including electronic trails and timestamping. were appropriate. The staff report states uh again that that you had that we submitted that both programs are governed by existing technology use, privacy, access controls, auditing, evidence retention, and records management policies. That means only authorized law enforcement personnel with a legitimate public safety purpose can access the drone data and those actions are subject to audit under our policies. And I'll add that uh our policies are evalu or we have a portal on our website um that you can click on 247 and it will give you all of our information from our ALPRs and also will show how it's used.
All right. Sharing with outside agencies including federal agencies.
Um this is where uh SB34 and S SB54 are mentioned. Our current configuration does not share flock data with federal agencies or out ofstate agencies and any uh sharing is subject to the California law. SB SB34 which deals with ALPR requires agencies using AL ALPR to adopt and use language and privacy policies to control access and use that when sharing and considering sharing of AL ALPR information. SB54 also is about the California Values Act limits who we can share that information with which gets in again to sharing making sure that um our program and any data sharing practices must not uh just comply with our local policies but also with state state policies as it relates to sharing of information with immigration.
Number nine, auditing and detecting misuse. Again, six policy 612 requires that the drone program coordinator uh develop protocols to fully uh document the mission, maintain maintenance and inspection of records, ensure retention and purge those records uh per our policy and monitor the program and provide periodic reports to the chief which I receive uh at least once a month as an audit trail audit policy. C612.5.3 requires that each pilot document the mission, the log, the included flight, the time, the mission type, and the objective and the approving supervisor. In addition, we are also reviewing this activity daily through a public trans uh transparency portal and also we conduct internal review at least every 30 days for an audit to confirm that these policies are followed and that no one else is accessing our system.
And number 10, alternatives and flexibility.
Um, so finally, the alternatives to long-term implications. This is one of the tool, this is one tool and a broader strategy.
We're not proposing uh to replace officers or community programs with drones. We are proposing to add a tightly regulated policybound aerial cap capability that we can use for officers to assist them uh to make their jobs safer and to provide better resources for our community. These agreements are structured with clear annual costs funded from existing savings evaluated every year for operational need and effectiveness and they uh may be discontinued simply by not renewing. The drone program is bound by a written policy 612. Our records are in evidence rules or u aligned with California laws SB34 and SB54. If council determines over time that this program does not believe or it's appropriate, we always have the option of coming back and revisit it. And I think I've answered all 10. If I didn't, I'll answer any questions that you have.
Um, Chief, >> thank you for that thorough response.
Um, I think it was really helpful that Nolan gave this to us in writing so we could see his questions in writing and give you some time.
>> Sure.
>> Um, forgot what I was going to ask on top of that. Um, so it'll come back to me, I hope, but I'll make the motion that we we can discuss it more, but just get going with this. Make the motion that we adopt a resolution authorize city manager to execute agreements with the flock safety for the deployment of a drone, first responder program, and mobile security trailer program subject to approval as to form by the city attorney.
Is there a second?
>> I second.
>> Some discussion. Council Member McCarthy.
>> Thank you, Mayor. Um, I think first as a courtesy, I would this gentleman that sat here for six hours just would like to ask if we can reopen public comment if he has something he'd like to say.
Um, he may not, but I'd like to reopen public comment for a two-minute comment.
>> Any objection?
>> I object.
>> I'm okay with it, but of course, we open it up for everybody then, right? Has to be open up for everybody.
Uh, that's what I said. Yes.
>> You said two minutes. Okay. We'll open up a public comment for everybody up to two minutes. Would you like to speak?
Nolan.
>> So, we'll go to people present first and we'll go online.
>> Uh, thank you again for addressing the questions that I had posed at the uh beginning of the meeting. Uh, I just wanted to go into a little bit of detail about the other things that I provided for you. Uh the first uh three-page report is a summary report written by John Gaines, a security uh analyst that did an independent review of Flock's hardware and security features and security flaws with that hardware. And then the second report, while it does contain bias language, it does provide information that uh proves that Flock employees uh were unauthorized and accessing Flock's cameras in other jurisdictions. And um I have currently uh have a um records request in with the city to find out what the past and current uh user logs uh access logs have been for the uh the cameras that have been installed in the city so far.
That's it.
>> All right. Thank you. We look forward to hearing from you what you find out. Uh, Chief, that was my other question, but anyone else uh online or in the room here that would like to speak to this, please raise your hand.
Let's go to Tommy Bola. Welcome back, Tommy.
Yeah, I think this drone thing is is pretty cool. I mean, but Marina's a windy town. So, if your flight time is normally 20 minutes and you have a crosswind and you're trying to get to the objective or a location, I mean, that can be compromised. We have a lot of fog. Uh, I mean, I But I mean, if it's a tool that the police need, I mean, I'm in all I'm I'm all in for it.
But if that thing hits a power line, then it crashes and hits somebody, you know, you got to be you got to think about that, too. But, you know, I guess this thing is pre-programmed. So, you could just press a button and say, "Hey, go to this park." and it'll fly to that park, say whatever park deu or whatever, and it'll get there, do what it needs to do on as far as surveillance, but it's got to remember it's got to fly back or go to this trailer. Maybe it's in a strategic location.
So, yeah. And then they can give the upper hand to the police and they can make uh quick, you know, decision in in seconds where um somebody's driving away or there was a shooting or whatever. So, it can be a very useful tool, but I'm sure it's automated. It keeps track of its battery. You know, it's only got so much flight time. It's got to go out there, do a recon, confirm, knock, you know, whatever, and fly back. I mean, if it's a tool, it's a tool. I mean, we're in the 21st century.
We better take advantage of it. I mean, sounds like uh just a piece of tool that the police department could use. But there's two sides to every story, I guess. Thank you.
>> Thank you, Tommy. Let's go to Carrie Hansen.
Welcome back, Carrie. Thanks for being patient all night. Yeah, of course.
Again, I just want to disclose that I do work for Flock Safety. Um, I'm also, you know, a person within communities that use these technologies.
Um, I do want to say as far as bugs, vulnerabilities, external, um, you know, independent researchers looking into these, um, Flock looks into all of these. Um, they ask that these people, you know, disclose it to them if they are real vulnerabilities. Um there are white papers and blog discussion posts all over our website as far as um disproving many of these and and how a lot of the hardware that has been described as having vulnerabilities was um you know not directly taken from the Flock lineup meaning you know Flock software not installed. So you're essentially taking, you know, raw hardware that, you know, doesn't have the security features of what we would actually be providing. Um, and in no instance have we ever um uh like lost um PPI like um you know, personal identif, customer data, anything like that. Um all of that has been misinformation. Um, and so as far as Flock and all of the technologies that we do offer, I definitely recommend, um, looking at some other pieces of information, um, seeing what's out there, seeing what we've done to combat some of this misinformation. Um, and then just, you know, a short comment on these drones. Um, they are such a huge value to the community. We're talking about having eyes on a, you know, level one priority 911 call at the time within um minutes. Uh whereby many people, you know, the police would not be able to be there for several minutes.
Um there was another community member that mentioned, you know, you know, we're we're getting these calls and the police aren't there in time to catch the people. It's like this is the technology that um allows for that.
All right. Thank you very much, Carrie.
Uh, Chief, uh, let's go to Council Member Riala.
>> Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Um, I want to clarify that this was a consent agenda item that was pulled. Um, I I I want to just clarify that a member of the public does not get to pull agenda items.
Correct.
>> That's correct.
>> Okay. So, that somebody had mentioned that and it's not true. Somebody up here pulled it. The other thing I want to ask, Chief, are all the things that you just relayed to us in 10 minutes, are they all things that could be found in our policy?
>> Yes, absolutely. You know, policy 612 and it's online. So in general, we we respond to public comments by referring them to the person who would know the be the most about it. And I I presume that you have talked to our city attorney and our city manager and we could refer a person to the policy. So that I'm saying that we pulled it and he has just reiterated in 10 minutes what we could have done in our reading of our own policy. So I'm just making a statement.
Thank you.
>> Yeah. Uh it's rare that we get something as organized in writing and it takes a long time to do this and make all these copies to provide us. So, I think when a resident goes the extra mile to bring something to our attention, it's respectful for us to go the extra mile to listen and and evaluate the information. We just This is unique. I don't know if we've ever gotten something this well put together. Maybe we have. It's It's very rare. So, it was worth the time. I learned more because of it. Uh, Chief, the other question I couldn't remember that I wanted to ask is, did you have time to look through the rest of this paperwork? And did you see anything that alarmed you that may be pointing out a weakness that the city of Marina has?
>> I've read through all of it. Uh, I went back to my office and scanned it just so I could have it on my laptop as well.
And, um, there's nothing in there that concerned me at all. Everything that I address, everything that's in our policy, everything that we uh state that we're going to do in our staff report covers everything.
>> Okay. The the most concerning to me was that it says in here that flock sales employees had access to footage and they were using it in unauthorized ways.
>> Anyone can say anything. I I can't put value on that. So, does does flock sales employees or other flock employees have access to the city marina's footage? We have a representative from every vendor that we have that has that's an administrator uh for that machine that we enter that relationship with. So, there would be someone whoever a representative is that um would have access to it. But again, we view our logs. Uh I view it with my coordinator who is Scott. We go over it monthly.
That's our audit. And then on our portal, it's posted every day. Every day it updates. So anyone can go on and look at how many flights we had and how we purge our data and what our policy is.
That's that's transparent. So, if we see something that's unusual either in our audit or more numbers, uh, and we know we haven't had any flights, then that's a flag for us.
>> Okay. A lot of this, um, concern was footage in gymnasia where children are doing >> Sure.
>> exercises.
>> That doesn't relate to what we're doing.
>> Not at all. No, nothing at Now, when we get the aquatic center going, are we going to have any reason to have camera footage that would be flock camera footage with inside the aquatic center sports center?
>> No, >> we have a separate we've hired a separate firm called client first that's working with our architects to look at all that and and absolutely we will not we'll be on top of everything like that.
At the same time, we will have have appropriate um security and cameras in the building um to keep an eye on everything. But um but no, this client first is we'll make sure nothing stuff nothing like that happens.
>> When I worked for nine years in a federal facility on Fort, we had cameras everywhere.
>> My assisted living where my mom lives, they have cameras everywhere.
>> So I I guess it's fairly common. and and Nolan, uh, you'll have to talk to me afterwards because we can't go back and forth with more public comment, but if you have more public comment or you don't, I suggest that you make an appointment with Randy to have more >> more give and take than you could do here. This is a very awkward for back.
It's very awkward for back and forth, but I think the two of you would be really great if you could talk because you you put a lot of time in this. So, it's not just a a conspiracy theorist, you know, you put a lot of time into this. Okay. So, there's a motion on the floor. Uh, council member McCarthy, you have more?
>> Yeah, just a brief comment. I mean, obviously, this issue is very controversial controversial. this article, what the flock from a couple weeks ago made the Monterey County Weekly. Um, I also had six hours to review the police uh manual while while we're waiting here going through the other items. And so I do see some pieces where I feel like the language could be tightened a little bit and I'm happy to share those maybe offline. But more importantly, I want to encourage the public Nolan to maybe review that and offer constructive feedback to the police department. Um, you know, if the police department agrees, then maybe it's too easy. If they don't, then maybe you can forward it to the city council and we can have a look at it also. But, um, just one I don't want to do all your homework for you, but one example is, right, it says that these will be used in circumstances where it's more cost well, it's always going to be more cost effective because guess what? Police officers are expensive, right? Like, >> um, so some of that language is just kind of a little bit too feel-ood for me. I'd like to see it a little bit more objective. Um, but as I've always said, I'm a huge fan of a lot of these technology mechanisms that, you know, really help solve crime.
So, I'll leave it at that. Thanks, J.
>> All right, let's go to a vote. All in favor, please say I.
>> I.
>> All say no.
>> Okay. Thank you, Chief, for all the work you did. Staff put together with your crew also to respond public comment. And so, we are very good.
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