Are we? Are we being? With apologies for being late, we reconvene for the regular meeting of the La Jolla Heights City Council September 9th. We've come out of closed session. Yeah, and discuss a fair bit. That's why we're late, but we have no reportable action, so that is all. Thank you. I guess I was supposed to call a roll call again, right? Mr. Bergman. President. Mr. Laird. Here. Mr. Zazula. Here. Mr. Bispisa. Here. An angle hard is here. Norm, would you like to lead us in the flag salute? Ready, begin. I declare the allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic of which stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and trust. Now, are we doing the presentation at this point or? Yes, we will start off with a. But first I wanted to say I'm sorry we were late and I'm glad everybody's surviving me. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Thank you. The first one up tonight is a proclamation for national preparedness months. September is our national preparedness month and it is a very important topic all the way around and our public safety and emergency preparedness committee. Do great work in that and so we do have a proclamation that we will be presenting. We have Mr. Kwan Lee, who is chair of the emergency safety and public safety emergency preparedness committee. So it's time I'd like to invite Mr. Chair Kwan up and we will present the proclamation to him. So as we were talking about earlier today, September is National Emergency Preparedness Month and our Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Committee does great works and great strides in trying to make the Hobber Heights a safe community and get that information out to the public the best they can. And so we have been done a lot of things. They went through the process. We've been designated a firewise community. We've found a lot of great workshops with the community and great attendance from residents for those workshops. And also we're looking at moving the next phase of ad and breaking the city's been broken into zones. And we're looking for zone leaders and some of those other things. So I don't hand it off to you, if you want to say a word or two. And yeah, I think as we begin this process to get the city prepared, we all need to come together and be the solution because if we wait, it's not going to work for us, but if we're proactive and some of the questions came up, how do we put the rough size of screens up and prepare your home for embers for mentoring your eaves or whatever it may be. So, you know, there's a lot of information out there. The magazine has a lot of great articles. We have a great team of the members of the EPC that are working. So if you're willing to lend a hand, you know, volunteer, we need zone leaders to disseminate information and check in on one another because if something should happen, at least we have folks that can get out and do some outreach to make sure that everybody's taken care of, especially our LD and those that are less mobile. So thank you for all the work you do. Thank you Chair. We do have one more presentation tonight. I'm proud of the certificate. So this is in recognition of one of our residents, Drew Cotonic. He has a, come on up, Drew. Hey Drew. So Drew, we just wanted to thank you for all the hard work you do. Drew has been a great source of information and outreach to the community related to trash and Republic Services and all the work that we've done with Republic over the year. Drew has been a great resident who works with Republic and staff. We talked to him almost every day. We have a conversation Drew but he does tirelessly out there looking out for the residents and trying to make sure that we can when there's issues or things that are going on he'll communicate that not only to us, but also to Republic Services. So as we move through this transition, hopefully you're in a minute or two, we'll see a new contract going out to where disposal. Drew will continue to help with them. We've already let where know that you'll be talking with them quite a bit. And they're looking forward to it Drew. But Angie and I wanted to thank you for all that you do for us and for the residents and for the trash services. I'm sure you will work just as tirelessly with where as you did with the public. And you are just been a great resource and we just wanted to thank you for all of your time and effort that you put out for our residents here in law rights. Speaking of trash services, we're going to, because it's such an important issue and many people have expressed interest. We're going to move item 17 next. And we'll turn it over to the city attorney. Yes, ma'am. City manager. The new city manager. We'll turn it over to you as special council, Patrick Williams, who will kind of be some of the topics in the discussion related to the process that we've been going through from our transition to where disposal. And all the deal points and the things that are contained in the agreement with them that is before you tonight. I'll hand it over to Mr. Mooneos. Thank you very much. Good morning. Good morning. Good evening. Madam Mayor members of the council, members of the public. This is a follow up to the issue that we addressed on August 12th at that time you'll recall after going through a RFP process and considering proposals. The Council subcommittee negotiated and talked through with several haulers and ultimately came to a recommendation for where disposal to be your new solid waste provider. Tonight's action is requesting a resolution to approve a franchise agreement with where disposal. That's the formal contract that outlines all of the services that they'll be providing. The kind of the core issues in terms of the level of service that the city receives in many ways are unchanged. But there are some important new issues that I want to discuss this evening that the public should be aware of and that the council should understand as part of looking at this franchise agreement. And my apologies there was a couple of discrepancies in the staff report compared to the final agreement. The first is the term. The agreement is effectively ten years with two one-year extensions, but instead of ending at the beginning of October in 2034, I wrote it to end at the end of June or the beginning of July. And the reason for that is so that when the annual rate increases occur every year, which occurred on July 1st, that if for some reason there was a transition to a new hauler, that residents wouldn't be faced with two different rate adjustments in the same year. So by making sure that the contract ends at the same time as the annual adjustments occur, there would only be one impact on rates theoretically at that time. The second issue was just an error with outdated data and it was the rates that were included in the staff report the the rate that most people will be Receiving for there monthly sort of standard service is $32.98 the staff reported Miss quoted what that dollar amount was In terms of the overall services that people will see and the differences that they will see Perhaps the biggest change that the city will see is that what has been called burrow service will no longer exist And burrow service is something that was occurring at Difficult to serve streets where the street might be narrow, might have overhanging branches or phone wires, or might end in a dead end, and it was difficult for a standard size trash truck to service it. So going forward, where we'll be using specialized vehicles that are small enough and agile enough that they can get up and down all those streets. So people who are currently paying borough service will no longer be paying that extra charge. So very many people are going to see a significant decrease in their monthly trash rate. There's some new terminology that's in the agreement. Reflect services that were already occurring, but just to try and keep it from being confusing, we put different labels on it. The first one is what we call residential scout service in the agreement. And residential scout service, there was some confusion in the past. It was sort of similar to Borough service, and that's the meaning where the confusion was. There are certain properties that can't put their trash cans out on the street. If you're able to put your trash can out on the street, it doesn't matter what the street size is, where I'll pick that up for the $32 and change price. But if you live up a really steep hill or driveway and your trash cans are collected at the top of that on, basically, on private property and a difficult to reach location, sometimes specialized trucks are required to go pick those trash cans up, bring them down to the street to dump them out and then take them back up. That causes extra cost and time, so there is an extra charge for that, and that's referred to in the agreement as residential scout service. So people who were receiving that previously will continue to see that. There is an additional service called Valais Service. Valais Service is available to anybody who wants it. And it's a service where it's kind of interesting. It's something that's very common out in desert communities, for instance, where people have vacation homes. They're not there to take the trash cans from behind their gate out of the street. So where we'll go to your behind your gate, get your trash cans, bring them out to the street to the area where they're going to be disposed of. There's an extra charge for that with the exception that if you are a qualified senior or disabled person, then that service is free. There is something written into the contract that ties some of these issues together, which is a requirement for a 90-day review. So there's an initial 90-day transition period, which I'm going to talk about in a moment, but when that period's over, where is going to go out and assess all of the customer accounts? And take into account where there will be opportunities for residents to save money on their trash and where there will be opportunities to reduce waste, which is an important issue for the city to increase your diversion numbers in order tost, where we'll go out and do this assessment. It'll make recommendations to residents and one of the things that will happen, which ties into the residential scout services, they're going to look at places where there's a common area, relatively common, not like exactly the same spot, but where you go up that steep driveway, if there's, for instance, a flat area up there, and maybe there's three homes built on that plateau. They're going to identify those areas, and if they only have to go up the hill once, then they'll only charge the same amount, and they'll split that charge amongst the three different homes that are up there in order to have some additional cost savings for residents. And they'll also look and figure out if there's ways that people might be able to mulch on their own properties. Something called grass cycling is kind of a new topic that you hear out in the waste industry. They'll be looking at ways that people could, you know, save on disposal by recycling their grass. And a bunch of other innovative ideas that they have in mind with a goal of really reducing the overall tonnage that's produced by the city which both helps your state mandated diversion requirements and at the end of the day for you know pragmatics standpoint it saves people money. One of the most significant things I think that's in the new agreement that we're proposed is what we're calling an annual curbside community cleanup day. So you're familiar with your quarterly cleanup days where a couple of the big roll off dumpsters are put out in the park or the city parking lot and people can come and bring whatever they you know trash they want to have thrown away there. What we're proposing to do is drive around the city and let people just put stuff out curbside. And once a year annually, they'll drive around the city and pick everything up curbside. They're going to continue to do the community cleanup events. If you have, although we'll be having two of those going forward instead of four, the idea is that they're hoping that the success of the annual event will be so significant that maybe over time you don't even need the quarterly ones but that remains to be seen. They're also adding in an e-waste collection event once a year, e-waste can also be collected during this curbside annual cleanup day so hopefully that will be a very efficient way to deal with that. And they're adding a textile collection of that where if you have use clothing, towel, sheets, those kinds of materials, they can be collected. They'll be continuing with the existing mulch giveaways that occur twice a year, but they'll be increasing that to four times a year. They'll, as I mentioned a moment ago, they're going to have new smaller trucks that they'll be using to service much of the city. They've got some pretty neat, innovative electric vehicles, electric powered vehicles that they'll be putting into service to help especially service some of these hard to reach areas. You might not see that until after the transition periods over just to make sure that the transition gets implemented. Those trucks can't go quite as long as diesel power trucks, gas power trucks, so they might save those until they get all the heavy lifting done and then just use them in the regular service down the road. They've added a new sharps collection program. Sharps are needles that people use, you know, people that have medication that require sharps. There are specialized containers that they will provide. They have two types of containers that they'll offer twice a year. One is a smaller container, but it's got a prepaid mailing label on it. Residents can request that and then when it's full they can mail it in. Alternatively you can receive a larger container and when it's full we're a little arranged to come and pick it up and take it away for you. So some different options on that to just try and keep that material out of the waste stream. Interesting, those needles poke the people that work in the recycling facilities and it's a serious health hazard so it's a real interest on their part to make sure we keep that stuff out of the waste drain. Where we'll continue with Christmas tree collection that already occurs, there'll be a viannual newsletter going on. The on-call bookie item service will remain with two free collections a year for residents. The hope is that that may over time not be necessary if the annual curbside collection is successful. And we'll also be continuing with the ability to temporarily stop service for people who might go on vacation or have construction projects and that sort of thing. There's sort of a high level goal that if where can use the curbside collection, the annual curbside collection of that successfully enough, there may be some room there that down the road we may be able to eliminate some of the other things that are going on because we're on the necessary and then that gives them the opportunity to sit down with the city manager and the city council and then subcommittee and figure out there's other things that you'd like to see instead of those. And the waste industry is transitioning all the time. All kinds of new things are coming up. So if they can save on some of the things that they're providing for you by making more efficient on a one-year basis, then perhaps they can offer you something else down the road. But that's written into the agreement to be sort of flexible and we'll see how that goes. The probably the most significant thing for the community in the next 90 days is going to be the transition. Transitions can be painful, change is painful. Where has been told in no uncertain terms that their number one goal is to keep residents happy, to do everything they can to try and satisfy their needs. The transition, those going to have a few things that people need to understand in what transition means in this context literally is that the republic containers that people currently use will go away and where containers will be brought in in their place. Between October 1st and November 1st, all of the republic containers will be switched out by where. People can just keep using the republic containers until where comes and collects them. They'll empty the waste that's in those and take the republic containers away and leave the where containers behind. The where is operating from information was provided to them by Republic and sometimes just in the transition of information that doesn't end up always being 100% accurate. So one of the things that residents should be mindful of is that where's going to come out with if they think you have three different trash cans, one for green waste, one for recycling and one for trash right now based on the information they have on a list provided to them, that's what they're going to bring to your house. So if it turns out that you have something different and that you want something different, where as first goal is going to be to try and give you right then and there what you want something different. Whereas first goal is going to be to try and give you right then and there what you want. It may not be possible to do it immediately. But under no circumstances, we'll take them longer than the end of October to try and I'm sorry. By the end of October, they will have switched everything out by the end of the transition period. So by the first of the year, everything will be sorted out. So every customer has exactly the level of the transition period so by the first of the year everything will be sorted out so every customer has exactly the level of service they want. People who don't have the level of service they want are going to be a number one priority for where to come out and make sure that they can accommodate them but the first thing they have to accomplish is getting all of the republic containers removed and put the where containers in. So there's going to be a little bit of a time lag potentially there only if the information is not correct. And hopefully that will be a very minimal issue. The second issue that could occur that's related to that is that where is sending out bills at the end of September for services that will start in October. Now the good news is that the bills are going to be, in many cases, lower because it will reflect the new rates that where will be charging. It may turn out that there are errors. And if there are errors where it's committed to fixing all those errors and adjusting everybody's accounts within, certainly within 90 days, if not sooner within the first 30 days. There will be a welcome packet going out within the next week or so. There'll be a website that where disposal will have with a link on it, you know, one of those little drop down boxes that says Lehover Heights that people can click on to get information. Where we'll have a phone number that's dedicated for Lehovra Heights online soon. It's been a little bit of a scramble. They have to have all this stuff ready to go by October 1st, but until you hopefully vote to approve this shortly, they don't have a contract yet. So some of these things aren't in place yet, but they're ready to roll on this by Friday, maybe Monday on a number of these things. They have to get the city managers approval on any of the materials they send out. So they've got the materials ready to go and they just need to go through the formalities of having the city approve it. So that's sort of a high level summary of what you have. A couple of other points I should mention, there's a law known as SB 1383. It relates to organics recycling. It's a very strict law that the state of California has adopted and imposed on all cities in the state. And what it requires is that the city must mandate that everybody has a trash collection system where you, what's called, source separate three different waste streams. So you have to put all of your green waste and organic waste, your food waste in one container, all of your recyclables like cardboard, newspapers, aluminum cans, and another container. And then you regular trash, the stuff that goes in newspapers, aluminum cans, and another container. And then you regular trash, the stuff that goes in the land full into a third container. And you're not supposed to commingle those materials. So there are provisions in this agreement that require everybody to have these three different types of containers. And that may be something new for a lot of people who, in the past, even though frankly it's been the law for a while, we have not really been really handling their way streams in accordance with it. It's something that the city faces $10,000 a day finds on if they're not in compliance with. The city does currently have a waiver from the state, so you don't have to worry about those fines, but that waiver is going to expire. This new agreement is structured to implement all the requirements of SB 1383 right away when the transition is done, whereas focus is going to be to make sure that the city is in compliance with all of these laws. And there's a lot of expense by the way that's involved in that for where the state has imposed incredible reporting requirements, record keeping requirements, where is going to be responsible for keeping track of all that on behalf of the city. The law goes into so much detail that literally there's a requirement that they look inside people's trash cans on a regular basis, like a small sampling of customers to see what's being thrown away, to make sure that the waste streams aren't contaminated, and they have to do audits of roots on a regular basis to see if not only individual cans are contaminated, but if they take all the trash that was collected from a given waste stream, they have to dump it in the ground, they go through it, and they see what percentage of that waste is contaminated, and if it exceeds a certain threshold, then there's a remediative actions that are required by the state to occur. So it's kind of a brave new world so to speak when it comes to the way that we handle our waste. It is an important issue. Greenhouse gases are estimated to be caused 65% by the gases coming out of landfills. So the goal is to reduce that by these recycling efforts. So that I think concludes my comments. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Are there any questions? By the council? I do have one speaker card and then I understand Mr. Wears here. I'll call Steve Blackden. Sorry, I did that. That is black, that's it from Road. Thanks. Looks like a good effort by staff, the Council and the City Attorney's Office. Thanks. There's no contract agreement, at least that I've seen. Hopefully this will be held over as the contract is not available as of 6 o'clock. We couldn't see it thus I'm not able to make any meaningful comment. It looked like the rates came in less than we were told. That's what your resolution says. And now we're hearing that higher rates are being brought forward tonight. Then what's the story in the franchise fee? 10 percent. Is that a one-time fee or an ongoing fee? Annual payment of over $100,000. The report says where will do the paperwork and report? So what is this for? It's enough for a full paid position. And this looks like a trash tax or fee in the residents and is equal to two-month service payments. This should be voted on by the residents and separately itemized in the bill. Republic was forbidden from speaking about or putting the administration charge on the bill that was hidden. You shouldn't be afraid for residents to know what they are paying that the city is getting. I'll just bring an up some things because there's no agreement to review. Hopefully the new carts will have the similar muted colors as the existing ones. Most important, most important, the trash service charge to be per residential unit, not by lot. The state has imposed ADUs and SB9s on us and fees now have to be per living unit, or else residents will be subsidizing those units even though they won't benefit from the high rental income. Thank you. Thank you. And J. Ware? Madam Mayor, would you like me to address a couple of little comments? Oh, yes. It's particularly the fact that the agreement, in my opinion, or my question would be the fact that about the agreement just being made available. So in no particular order of importance, the agreement wasn't made available because it wasn't done until about two o'clock said hey, there's a tremendous amount of work to put this together in a very short time frame. It was provided in accordance with the Brown Act. We certainly wish we could have had it out last week, but it just wasn't physically possible. I will tell you that the agreement terms reflect the discussion that we had at the August 12th Council meeting. And even though the staff report for this meeting had the wrong rates on it, the rates that are in the agreement are the same rates that we discussed at the August 12th meeting. In terms of franchise fees and administrative fees, the proposal process involved three different companies and all the companies knew that this was something that the city was interested in and they put in proposals based on this. Where's proposal is significantly less by more than 50% than one of the proposals and you know, significantly less than the other as well but really big difference and you know, free market kind of came into play and where felt as though they can absorb the franchise fee. It's not something that the residents are going to pay. I mean, obviously at the end of the day, it's paid for through the trash rates, but they gave us a number that they were comfortable with that they pay. It's not going to be on the bill because it's something that they pay from the gross receipts that they receive. It's not something that the city is imposing on residents. In terms of individual dwelling units and ADUs, that is something that we're very keenly aware of. And the contract is written so that each dwelling unit, as we define that, has to be a customer. So if state imposed ADUs to pop-up on properties. Somewhere where you might have one house right now, one dwelling unit, you might have four under the ADU laws and nothing you can do about it potentially. And if that were to happen, there'd be four different trash customers that would have to be paying for the service so that they're not being subsidized by others. I think I covered all the questions, but're not being subsidized by others. I think I covered all the questions but if not, I'm happy to. My specific question would be, is there any legal requirement that the contract may be available more in advance of this hearing? No, as I mentioned, we made it available in compliance with the Brown Act and we've been working closely with the Solid Waste Subcommittee, so it's not like this is a surprise with the Council in terms of what the provisions of the contract say. And again, they're the same. It's long-winded lawyer words that reflect the deal points that we talked to you about on August 12th. Thank you. Are there any additional questions or questions for more information? Now, Mr. Ware. Sorry, I keep calling you up. I'm not sure. So a couple of questions. Do you have folks that are active in social, the social media up here in the heights? Because there's quite a bit of churn going on in the social media right now about the transition. So do you have someone monitoring that? I would make sure you're in next door. I think as a franchisee up in the city, you can get access to next door and then I would also talk with the administrator for the Lahabah Heights Residence Facebook group because there's quite a bit of people commenting in there about the transition. So Drew is doing a great job of trying to hold down the fort for you. He's posting some very accurate information, but you should probably have a more formal presence also, just so you're aware of that, especially as we go through the transition period. And then lastly, for the council members, are we going to have a phone number for you guys that we can use when people come to us with concerns that we can get to someone in your company right away. Yeah, I just I just want to make sure that you know obviously our phone numbers are public and so I want to make sure that if we're getting calls, we've got someone that we can reach out to right away. Yes, we'll go down along a lot of our makes. Specifically phone number that we reach out of my staff, but we'll also provide you with a phone number really depending on if you have something don't have for a spot issue. Perfect, thank you. We were given the information that you will be mailing out citywide some information to the residents before October 1st. Could you tell us what your communication plan is? and we can tell what pressors can expect, what are the cards, what are the two cycle, what those are the three ways that are planned. Thank you for asking. It will be the winner to their no work. It will discuss how to feel the same citizen, this time this time also, and Valet's visit will talk about that. A lot of other information that the President can see, but also speaking about the transition, then we want to look at the spectrum to see our trust rally about the city, our first actually searching, your public hearts that are out on the field. It will be then changing them and out through the public heart cover, with the exact same level of burst and every cluster has, but they will be wearable first. And then it changes the movement with alterations on the air. So it's quite a bit. The first, when customers see our burst and the balls will have a micro-idead that will discuss the side of the engine that will be stuck, what goes in the first and the walls have a micro-identical discuss. The site of the agenda will discuss what goes in the part of the... And if you don't get another one, I don't have a part of what they would call the other three. So I'll be in the part of that. I'm going to leave. And so they'll be getting... The residents will be getting a package in the US mail that will have all this information. They may link a little bit of a camp over there for the link, which we'll come up at the end of this month, and that they also get a fire with their cards when they get their first alert. There should be enough information hopefully that I have to say. I think that information happened as you've seen that there are some websites that we've created to come get all this information out onto these websites as well. So, just to check the C button. Thank you. And maybe just you could give a 30 second summary. I know this has been out there, but how long your company's been in existence, where your headquarters are, and a couple of some other cities you serve? Absolutely. So we are very small, so I think in the business in 1968, my mother-father, Henry, were still company. four five minutes on the agreed process in material and to this which is solid here. We also service. There is a very good amount of all the, they follow the similar, like, similarly, they follow the trail roads that is like west of Louisiana area but they're down in the pocket. For someone that I heard, five or six thousand, commercial customers Thank you. I know last time you came to the last meeting and you brought some members of your staff. Is there anybody here you want to introduce? I have to introduce the staff that are actually involved in the office of Denver for where it's both. He is actually in the field of the government to build a couple weeks. The president is already something challenging. First, we're facing, he's also back to any of the residents. Probably he had some big personal connections to the cell phone number. And he will be fully able to figure out the situation and the problem with the other on the project under this issue, because we also feel that the A, the drug management issue is clear that we can go smoothly and in terms of our day. I'll be named, and I'm going to be a question to the next floor. It is going to be your big ladies on the street, all the social media, media questions on that. Jason has a lot of our recording and I'm curious to know your agreement. That will be the end of the week. We'll be the agreement and then they'll be, like I said, a community. That should be out in the next few minutes. So we'll be all the social media and the outreach. Thank you very much. Any other questions? Just a comment. I just want to thank the team and J. Where. I thought the negotiations went very well and you were very receptive to the needs of the community and everything. And I just look for a good transition. I know it's going to be a little bit difficult for you during this time. But for Mr. Blackden, we've got the agreement here and it's 100 pages long so I think you'll find that it's very extensive and covers virtually everything we need for the city. So thank you much. Thank you. I guess I'll pull it back to the council. And again, I want to thank Mr. Laird and Mr. Bergman, who worked long and hard on this. Any other comment or discussion? May I have a motion? I'll make a motion to adopt resolution number 2024-27 and approve in an exclusive franchise with where disposal and corporate are for solid ways to handling services in the city and authorize the mayor to sign the franchise agreement. Second. Mr. Zizula? Yes. Mr. Pispisa? Yes. Inglehart's a yes. Mr. Larity? Yes. Mr. Bergman? Yes. Thank you all and thanks to the Weir team and I hope everything goes fine. Going back to our narrow-no procedure, we'll go to public comments. I have a comment from of Lehover Heights. I am also running for the City Council men position. I'm speaking on action item 21. I believe this is a very important action item as the gate will improve the safety of the writer and the horse. And it's for the gate that's in the park as for the horse horse arena. Actions 21 is the gate replacements of large and small horse serenas. The authorizes the finance manager to amend the budget to increase the count of 5,975 and authorize the city manager to sign the purchase order, per the city's purchasing policy, and project updates and deadlines. The arena gates are for safety and to keep the go- I mean the horses from escaping. The safety keeps the gates close while riding in a arena and it's the safety issue. If a horse runs loose it will be able to get away if the gate is open. An accidental escape, horses can escape if a handler accidentally leaves a gate open or if a horse unties itself or if the rider falls off the horse. That's why I believe this issue is really important and that the gates should be a priority. Thank you. Thank you. John Dominguez? Good evening, John Dominguez. I've got a crash road. Just three quick things. Projects that I volunteered for lately and I just wanted to give you a quick update. First one is basically, is to thank the mayor, Mayor Engelhard and also council members of Miss Pisa and Mr. Bergen for participating in the last trash pick-up that we had in July. It's coming up again October 19th and I know this is being recorded and hopefully folks will be watching this later so letting everybody know that October 19th is the next effort to clean up us in the road and that's my first item. The next item is the EPC, last emergency preparedness committee meeting. It was rather productive. There was a lot of discussion, a lot of planning. We actually had attendance, residents attending the meeting. And I would like to propose to the city manager, and since we have the Councillor here, to start using the evacuation zone app, because we've been talking about it for two or three months, but the residents have not really used it for anything. And I think we're getting past the point that we've been talking about it and the residents are losing interest in it. We promoted it at the music at the park. We've talked about it at the meetings. So what I wanted to propose is that the city manager hopefully can give us permission to hopefully use the emergency app to start posting where the road closures are at, where the temporary control points for traffic may be happening due to an emergency, due to pre-planed closures. Because if you do go on social media, one of the things we people can plan about is how many times they didn't know about a specific road closure. So if we give them another option, another app for them to quickly look at and see where the road closures today. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. Thank you. So if you had this app available now, for example, I am one of the editors that actually go into the Genesis emergency zone application, the app, and be able to post where those locations are that the road closures may be or temporary situations for the residents to start using the app. So by the time we have an emergency they will have the app already, they will be familiar with the app so they'll be able to mobilize faster. In the meantime, we can start, they can start learning it now. And it really takes us for myself. And a few staff members to start using the genesis function that pushes out information to the public facing website. So everybody can see through the app what's going on with the road closures today, tomorrow, for how long. It's got to be taken down at 3 p.m. the afternoon. Call me, I can do it from home, or you guys can do it from home, or it's that flexible. So I'm just promoting it to be on live as soon as possible. And so we can start using it and get the residents familiarized and how to use it. There's options if the city manager would think, would think about maybe giving us permission to use the app and push out the information as we need to, when we need to. For example, as a resident, I'm here seven days a week. So if you need my assistance, call me and I can put up the information, take down the information, whatever it may be. And there are other residents who are also interested in learning how to use the Genesis system to provide the service as a volunteer. So that's my second item. My third item is that Ms. Susan Brooks graciously provided us a EPC. I'm a volunteer for the EPC. I'm not a member. I'm a volunteer for the EPC. Provided us a booth for the October 5th yard sale at the park. So at the booth I'm going to be representing or talking about the EPC becoming a member and what the EPC folks do and what we're trying to do as members or volunteers. And also I'm also a member of the Firewatch. So I'll be talking about Firewatch, to by this interested, and knowing about far watch. And also, again, promoting the Genesis app and how it's used have people downloaded. So that's another one of my upcoming projects. And also, of course, I'll be talking about promoting the road cleanup. So that's my status updates. Thank you. John, before you go, do you mind listing the website? Do your email for a cleanup? One more time for people out there. Do you want to mind saying the email for cleanup? What about it? Yeah. Okay, the email for cleanup, it's actually, it's called beautify LH, a Gmail.com. BeautifyLH, at Gmail.com. Due to this last article that was made by the Heitzlife, I have gotten a couple of people who have sent me an email asking to be part of the next cleanup crew. So it's working. And hopefully we will also get another email for the EPC, speaking of emails, for the emergency preparedness committee. So we can start helping out people with how to use the app, how to download the app, and do they need help getting emergency equipment for the next emergency or whatever it may be. As emergency preparedness, that's what we need to do. Start helping each other and start through the email, start asking, hey, can you help me with this or whatever it may be? So there's another email that's hopefully it's coming up. Thank you. Thank you. Stephen Blan's at Run Route. John Dominguez brought to mind the signs on Haasienda that August, now September, expect delays. What it doesn't say is why. I'm curious. I think it's the line work. But what it doesn't say is why. I'm curious. I think it's the line work. But maybe those signs can't do three messages. But if it can, it would be good for the driving public to know why there might be delays. And then, secondly, going back to the contract, we heard that it's provided as per the Brown Act. I just checked the city website, it's not there. I looked on the table, it's not with the agenda packet. It's not on the table. So where's the public copy? I'm pretty good with contracts, but I can't read them. I can't see them. We've already passed it, so it would have been nice for the public to have an available copy. And maybe we can have the City Manager explain the signs and maybe even Deputy Beltran explain the copper theft that's been happening on Hossie and some of those issues. We can speak that with Mr. Dominguez at one more call and he'd like to make it real quick. Hi. In regards to posting information as far as road closures. Not only would they see the icon of the road closure, but they would see an actual explanation of why it's closed, for how long it's going to be closed. So yes, there would be an explanation as to why and how, and when it's happening, for how long. Thank you. Thank you. Did you want to elaborate on the closures on Housianda or the potential closures? Sure. I can elaborate. So you've seen some message boards that are scattered around town. Those are work that's related to Verizon. Verizon is in the process of updating all of their wireless sites, which are located on utility poles, in and around all through town. So the one that was said August originally, now says September is for that, is the work that Verizon has been doing out there to make improvements to their equipment out there to boost some of that cell signal, especially for people of Verizon customers in the nights. We could talk with them about adding a little more line in there because I just talked to another resident who thought it was something else than what it was for that. But we also have had a great amount of wire theft, copper theft, specifically a long Aussie under road. There's been people that have been cutting down the frontier lines. So going up the poles, however they're getting up there? We have some ideas and some leads on that now, but actually cutting those telecommunication lines and then pulling large sections of those cables down. So you'll see frontiers been out quite a bit, all over town, we're making replacements of all that copper theft that's been out there. We've been working closer with the Sheriff's Department on that. And also some of the people in the areas where there have been several rounds of this in a couple of locations. We've been talking with some of the residents out there that they see people out there doing work at night or something. That's odd to call the Sheriff's Station to call us and we also gave them some contact information for Frontier as well so they can try to report that information out to them as directly and quickly as we can to hopefully curtail any more light deaths. I wasn't clear. Is there some specific activity that looks that is relevant to Copperthew? Are they out there with several people in three in the morning? Yeah, it seems to be overnight hours when they're out there, we feel that they're accessing it using like a bucket truck. So a truck that you would normally see those utility workers on the pole up there working on it. So people may think that they're actually working on the lines. But they're actually in the process of cutting those lines and then pulling them down from pole to pole. So it's been happening in those overnight hours, really early in the morning. Really early in the morning is what we've been seeing to happen. Mr. Prispeises? Is that okay? Okay, I don't have any other public comments. So moving on to committee comments. Whatever that, what is committee comments. Whatever that. What is committee comments? Okay. City Council comments. Anyone? Administrative report, city manager's report. And I guess Mr. Rafferty is, you'll see later in the program, officially going to be or is our city manager at this point and we welcome a board he's been doing a good job and hope you keep it up. Thank you, Mary Council for that. That vote of confidence we've been having a good time. We've been able to accomplish some things in a short period of time as we saw earlier tonight so it's been a great working with everybody and look forward to keeping that going. I'll keep it brief for City of Angels item tonight. Mostly we've been continuing with the recovery through the FEMA process from the storms in February so today most of the day myself or City Engineer Gerald and Grace were out with our FEMA representatives mitigation specialist and their damage assessment engineers and grace were out with our FEMA representatives, mitigation specialist, and their damage assessment engineers. We were out looking at the sites where we had damage from the storm. So, we did one whole day of that. Just happened to be unfortunate. There was 103 degrees today, but we kind of worked through that process and we'll be doing another complete day to go out and look at the areas where we've seen damage, where we've made some repairs and some other areas where we need to make some further repairs and or mitigation. So it's one of those steps in that process with FEMA. So we spent a good chunk of the, you know, pretty much the whole day today was dedicated to being out in the field with FEMA and working through that process. So we will regroup again next week and we'll have another day of inspections with all the engineers and people from FEMA and our mitigation specialists for that one. Thank you. City Attorney's report. No report. Community development report. The community development report is submitted for you tonight. In the month of August, building issued 15 building permits. We had three code enforcement complaints that came in. We closed four code enforcement cases. We issued seven stop works in the month of August in closed nine permitting construction cases. We took in seven development applications in planning. I'm going to approve three projects if you have any questions. I'm happy to answer for you. Questions? I have Chiefs report. Good evening, Council. Mayor. Fire Chiefs report is for you here. We had 57 calls. We're down three on average for the month of that was August. We had some interesting 22 ALS calls, 20 BLS calls, three public assists and seven fire calls, five TCs. I was asked to remind people that when we, they have a emergency there to dial 911 rather than the fire admin office during the day. I think someone had an issue and they called the Fire Admin office, Don was out for lunch and left, they left a message and it was something that was urgent and Don didn't get back from lunch until an hour later and I would just encourage the residents that if they have an emergency, there's something that's emergent happening at the house. Don, I'm one one, we do not dispatch out of Le Hobber Heights anymore, LA County dispatches for us. So that's how we get notified and how we receive our calls. That's one. The other thing that I wanted to bring to the, to your attention, I guess I'll wait for that for the item 16. I'll bring it up when it comes up. But that's all. If you have any questions. Questions? Mr. Pispiza. What's the status on the delivery of the new engine? The delivery of the new engine was slated for October. And Chief Martin, I would like to go out to Wisconsin I think that's where they're building it and take a look at it before we ship it out here but I would be very surprised if we received it by October but I will get back to you on it. I always think that they make promise and then there's always delays and other things so I can get back to you on it. I always think that they make promise, and then there's always delays and other things. So I can get back to solid data on that. And then with the number of active wildfires, have we sent anyone to any of the wildfires? We have been unable to staff due to the qualifications of our captains, they don't meet the minimum standard for... Well, we have a couple captains that meet the minimum standard for Cal Fire and the federal system, but their hours will build up so much that they would tie them out before the end of the fiscal year. So we are being very conservative in that area. We have not sent anyone out. Any other questions of the chief? Sheriff's Department report? Yes, ma'am. We've mentioned the grand theft of the wire up in La Brae Heights, especially on the center road. Thank you. And I forward some information over to our detectives regarding these four incidents we had last month and I think there was a few before last month. And Frontier had scheduled to change from copper wire to fiber optics. This kind of crime has not rampant. It's just been happening here for the last two months only. Now somebody was aware that they were going to change this wiring. So they've been cutting the wires without any electricity going through them. So I just found that particularly interesting. I'm not making any allegations of just pouring this information over to our detectives. We also had one agrived assault and that was in the unincorporated area of the harbor heights. We had one vandalism that occurred in the Gulf course on Repsado, I'm sorry on East Road. That was the course early morning around three o'clock probably and they broke the fence and did some damage to the grounds. And that's all I have. Thank you. Any questions? Moving on to the consent calendar. Does anyone wish to pull any item? May I have a motion? To approve? I would move the acceptance of items 9 through 14. Second. Mr. Bergman. Yes. Mr. Larry. Yes. Inglehart's a yes. Pesbiza. Yes. And Mr. Zuzula. Yes. Okay. 15 protests during unpaid brush clearance costs. Thank you, Mayor. I'm excited before it's tonight is the cost of recovering brush clearance. So fire department has done some abatements recently and as part of that process, we do allow those property owners the opportunity to come in and make several options for them to get to doing the clearance themselves. Even once we do the actual clearance, we have them the opportunity to provide to pay the invoice when the work that's done. And obviously lost cast last case scenario is for us to record a lien. There are five properties that are up for lien tonight. Those ones are attached as attachment to the resolution. So the recommendation is for the City Council to overrule any protests and adopt a resolution number 2024-25 for the recording of leans for brush clearance. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer. Any questions? May I have a motion? Public hearing. Oh. Any public comment? No, I don't hear any. I had a question. Mr. Pispiza pulling it back to the council. Yeah, sorry. Hey, Raf, is there a way to just a question on the the table here that's not here that's exhibit A. Is there a way to add a column for each of these properties so we can see the total lean on the property because I know some of these are repeat offenders. Some of these are repeat. So can we get another Angie sorry to add add more? I think it's probably you. Just a column that says totally in on the property. I just want to make sure that if we're starting to get up into the $100,000 or $150,000 mark that at some point we're're at, you know, we've exceeded the value of the actual property with, you know, the whatever leans there are on that property. Because I gotta believe most of these are vacant, right? Not all of them are vacant, but most of them are vacant, yes. We can look at adding the column. I just want to make sure we don't get to a point where we expose the city to more costs than we can recover. And I don't know if the city attorney has an opinion on what we can do there. Is there a way to force a sale if we start getting close to the value of that property? Usually the county requires four years before they'll foreclose on something. So there's a time delay, which is a problem and then it becomes a question of sort of the balance between the amount we'd spend and the fire risk if we don't. So we generally have to wait the four years before we can foreclose on something. Yeah, I wouldn't say we would stop doing the weed abatement. I just want to make sure that if some of these properties are in the quarter million or half million I mean I don't know how many years we've been doing it but some of them I seem to recall every year there on that on the list That might be a good project Any other questions? May I have a motion? I'll make a motion to adopt resolution number 2024 to ask 25, confirming the report of costs incurred by the city and authorizing assessments as leans to be placed on the tax role's effective September 9, 2024. Here's Azula. Second. Oh, I mean, I'd like a second, please. Do you want a second, I'd do? He'll give you a second. Okay, very enough. Mr. Bergman. Yes. Mr. Laird. Yes. Inglehart's a yes. Pispisa. Yes. And Mr. Zazula. Yes. Number 16, support for federal legislation to provide funding to local communities for fire station improvements. I think the chief is this Mr. Robinson or the chief or both? It was a little bit of both of them. I'll hand it over to them. Thank you Mr. Oldridge. This item has been in process for some time now. As I'm sure everyone's aware the condition of the apparatus bay that our fire department uses is somewhat less to be desired. It's aging, it's small, and it's not really adequate for the services that we provide here. We were looking for potential federal assistance on this and came across two bills, one called the Fire Station Act, and then the other is a companion house resolution. So we have both a Senate bill and a house bill that are pending. The Senate bill is in the Homeland Security Committee. The, there is no senator in the Western United States that has supported the bill. There are 11 senators that have done so. California has two senators, only one of those senators is on that committee. And that happens to be Senator Butler, who replaced Senator Feinstein. So she's not running for the position, so she's kind of a caretaker in that position right now. We've written to her the mayor's Senate letter to her office urging her to begin involved in this, express her support for the bill, and perhaps break loose $7.5 million in funding for a variety of fire departments across the country. The bill would fund a volunteer fire department and there's also another 25% of the funds that would be open competition. So really 50% of the funds at least would be available for an application by LaHabra Heights. So that's encouraging. It's a source and we meet the qualifications. Last week I had an opportunity to meet with the State Director for Senator Butler. And I expressed what our interest was. And she said that she would do several things. She would talk to the senator about sponsoring the bill becoming a sponsor. She would also look into legislative support that she may be able to engender for the bill. And she would also look to other grant opportunities beyond those two bills. She had recently done a legislative search for grants for fire departments. And she said that she would share that information with us. So expect to see that information coming in in the next few days. The apparatus Bay, as I mentioned, is aging. It's over 30 years old. I'm not sure exactly how old it is, but it's too small for what we do here. And so we can't get all of our equipment in, we can leave it out in the elements that requires repainting to keep it protected every few years. That's costly. If this federal funding became available, we would hope to have adequate space for all the emergency service providers, the equipment, the supplies, all of the things that we use day to day. Our fire chief has expressed similar concerns to his staff about the needed improvements and I'm going to just turn it over to Mitch here for a moment. Okay, thank you, Tom. So you guys all walked through the fire station. You've seen the conics containers that we're using as the, as it has been built out over the years by different fire administrators that have worked here for the city. They've expanded the footprint of the fire station with five conics containers that are holding different parts of what it takes to run the fire department. So when we talked and did the walks earlier, when I started here, we saw the cracks, we saw, we did the core sampling, we saw that the foundation was uneven. We're having water rushing through when we have rain. It's uneven and sinking because it's next to the riverbed. And then we have all these extra containers that we're using. So if this legislation were to pass and it was supported early by the city of Lehover Heights and through your political connections, then the chances of us being recognized and being allocated the funds up to 7.5 million to help construct and repair a fire station in select communities across the nation. They even seem to, the way this for legislation is being written out it's they seem to favor or at least acknowledge volunteer departments throughout the United States and it would be if we have our We have our word out there. We have our feather in our cap already Maybe we could be in a position to be allocated some of these funds should the legislation pass So Tom brought this to my attention. I thought this was a really good way of maybe parlaying off of the archuleta funds that we had that got us the fire engine but couldn't get us the fire station. Perhaps this is a choice that we could all come together and use and support through your contacts with the supervisor and whoever. My understanding is Adam Schiff, the representative from Burbank is running for the state senator's position when that comes up for a reelection and he's right here in Southern California so that might be something that connections could be made with him as well. In addition, he is one of five California congressmen who support the house version of the bill. And if he moves into the Senate, it stands to reason that he would be supportive of the Senate version. Our congressman shift is pretty high profile also. So it would be nice to maybe have him helping us. So tonight what we're looking for is we're recommending to you a resolution that would be adopted by the City Council, perhaps giving a little more weight to the city's support for this legislation. It may not make it happen, but it's worth a try. We have added two, whereas if you will, two clauses to the resolution that was in your agenda packet. One talks about the 733 acres of the 20 Hills Habitat Preservation Authority and that being a urban interface zone, it is susceptible to fires and that is a potential threat in the community something we need to be prepared to deal with and also we noted that the population in Lahabar Heights has a number of residents who are aging some are in firm and they look to the fire department for special attention and protection if they needed. So with that, we would urge adoption of resolution 24-26, supporting the passage of Senate Bill 977 and House resolution number 1814. Authorize the mayor to contact LoBRA Heights federal officials requesting support of this important legislation. And I concur with that. Any questions? I have just a couple of questions. This is a no cost item, right? This is just, we'd be right in support, like. Right, it's basically, if the legislation were to pass, as it is, it would open up a $750 million pot of money for 100 grants across the nation. And then I did not hear you in your presentation, you were saying, I think it was a lady who was going to get back to you and she, who was that or what was it? Her name is Sandra Gonzalez. She is the State Director for Senator LaFonza Butler. Okay, thank you. Any other questions from anyone? Well, it seems like we should give it a try. Ha ha. Moeved approval. Do you need a motion or just? I don't know. Do we need a motion for this? I think we... You need direction. I... I just said move a purgol so I can... Yep, that works. Okay. I need to... Okay. All right. I'm getting lost. Okay. Which does that all right? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Number 18. Updated cost allocation plan and citywide fee for service study. Item 18. I think Mayor and Council of the sign of a free tonight is a proposal to update our fee and cost allocation study for the city. Something that has taken place a few times back in 2010, 2011, went through this process, did it again in 2017, and it's been a little while since we've done that. Generally, the rule of thumb is every three to five years to re-look at and re-go through your cost for services and your fees from that one. So it's been a little bit over the high end of that part of it. We reached out to cost revenue specialists who prepared our last fee study for that to get a proposal for them to go through and do a couple of things. It would be a cost allocation analysis and also just a general fee review and cost for services. As I go through that, it is quite a lengthy process. It does take quite a bit of time to go through that as they meet with all of the departments examine all the fees. Look at the time motion that it takes to be able to carry out all these specific projects and our tasks that we have before us. So this will update it. So the cost for that proposal for them is $24,850, which is actually $1,100 cheaper than it was the last time we did it. So this fee has actually gone down a little bit and they also have the data from the last time we did it. So as we went through that process, they could refer back to the data from the last course of fee reviews and changes we did and implementation through that process and updated it for our current capacity for that. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer. Are there any questions of the city manager? I have one question. Can we include the But the habitat authority on the brush clearance we get so much money each year for fire service that Supposedly takes care of their responsibility for that entire habitat area. Can we in in the fee studies, can we include that or they take a look at that and come up with a number? Yes, something they could definitely look at, and we had a brief conversation with them related to that topic, something we can include as part of the scuba services. Okay. Sorry, just a clarification. You had a conversation with... Cost revenue especially this. Okay. Yeah. They read the contract with the habitat authority? Do you know? They haven't looked at our agreement or contract for it, but they're going to do is they're going to look at it holistically. They will take that into a vantage to consideration. You know, also, we don't have very many similar other areas, going to look at it holistically they will take that into a vantage to consideration. You know also we don't have very many similar areas but they will look at those cost of providing services and what it may take and what it's what the cost of providing those services are. Yeah I would question why the cost would be any different than any other vacant piece of property in the city and I know that landowners in the city play significant more than the habitat does for the same basic service. Although back in the original contract, I don't know, it will be a lawyer question but back in the original contract the city agreed to a certain fee with an escalator clause that we didn't follow up on very promptly, but it's worth looking at. I did ask Mr. Robinson if there was a list of the fees that we would be looking at and he gave me, this was very last minute. I believe if you look on your dice, you'll be a packet. There is a packet of all of our fees. Where is that? Should be one of the bits of information that were handed out here right before the meeting. So that's our fees. Okay. Thank you. No, wait. Oh, yeah. So they're going to do all every one of these. Yeah, they'll look through all those and then they also look at just general how we do things, how we function, who does what, as part of that review. Okay. I did have a public card from Mr. Bligen. Thank you, Stephen Black and Citron Road. It's good to do periodic fee studies. Hopefully some fees will go down due to efficiencies learned during COVID. Maybe some might be eliminated due to not really being needed. Something I've mentioned before, just a real puzzlement. Lean Charger, please. I'm going to go back to the may be some might be eliminated due to not really being needed. Something I've mentioned before, which is a real puzzlement, lean charges for trash sewer and weed abatement, not non-payment. It would seem, though I could be wrong, that the amount of work to submit a lean to LA County is more similar than different for each of these items. It residents a charge from $5 to $1,700. County is more similar than different for each of these items. It residents at charge from $5 to $1,700. I hope the fee study will look at those. Danger of doing a fee study without also looking that if things could be done more efficiently, efficiently, or less expensively, is it institutionalized as any inefficiency. An example when the city got the permit system around 2007, 17 years ago, we were told that could do online permitting. If we had online permitting, it could make the permit issuance cost close to zero. Thank you. Thank you. Pulling it back to the council. Is there any discussion? I have a motion. Make a motion that we award the, sorry, that we select revenue and cost specialist to perform the city allocation plan and fee study that we direct the city attorney to prepare the necessary contract and we authorize city management to award the contract to amount of $24,850. Second. Mr. Zazula. Yes. Mr. Pispiza. Yes. Michael Hartz-E-S. Mr. Laird-E. Yes. Mr. Bergman. Yes. Number 19 fiscal year street improvement project. Construction and management award. Thank you, Mayor and Council. This item was before you last month related to the cost to do in the street project. At that meeting we awarded construction agreement to Onyx for the actual construction portion of the project. The other part of it is construction management and inspection of the project. At that time there was a question about the cost of doing that service and had direction to go back to NV5 and look at their fees and their cost for doing service. We went back and worked with Gerald or city engineer, their engineering team and Peter who is our construction manager. We looked at the last several projects to look at the average time that we were actually doing. Doing work and how many hours we were doing in the field and construction management to make it as realistic to the cost of what it actually is to provide those services. So it has gone from the original proposal, was $192,364,000. They've reduced that down to $168,000, $159, is the reduction, so a little bit over $24,000 in reduced fees from them, sharpening their pencils, going back and looking at what it actually takes construction hour-wise in the field, construction management time, doing agreements, middles, tracking, change orders, punch list items, getting all the documentation done and completed. That is their reduced proposal to put it back more in line with what the cost of services are. This proposal is not a guaranteed amount of money. It isn't, that's what the fee is. It's based off time and material. So the faster the project moves and the less problems and issues we run into, the less time we spend in the field doing inspection, the less time we do construction management, and those fees will be a little bit less. My recommendation is for the council to select MV5 to move forward with it. Peter Saldalgo, who is our construction manager, is an excellent construction manager. He has done a lot of different projects. He's done a lot of projects with us. He is meticulous with his tracking of material submittals and notes and meetings and keeping everybody on point and following up. So he does an amazing job with that. And the inspectors from MV5 that do the work in the field, our top notch Mike Helmlose proposed to be our primary inspector for that particular road project. Has done a project here in the past. He did it when we did RJ Noble, when we did work on Dorothy and Neball and Cyprus over in those areas. He was our inspector for that project. Works very well with the community. He works all the staff, we're sort of the contractor. The cognizant of the hours that he's in the field, he's only working if there's work going on that needs to be done. He's also the one that's charged with keeping track of the tonnages that come in, the areas of the grind, the areas of the digouts, so he reviews and approves all of those things. He coordinates that daily with the form in on the construction company to make sure at the end of the day we have an accurate amount of material that was ground and material that went back in for those tree projects. So it's a very key pivotal role for it. So that's their revised proposal that they came back with us for. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer. So is this associated with the work on Haasienda? Which work on Haasienda? The road work on Haasienda. Yes. So I don't think I can vote on this, right? Even though it's not directly related or can I vote on this you cannot Any questions or comments of the remaining council I Know mr. Bergman, you were just a comment. I want to thank Rafferty for going back and meeting with NB5 to sharpen the pencil on this. And otherwise, you know, we're looking at doing an RFP for the work. And I know we've got a good team here that you worked with before. And I respect that, you know, that they're knowledgeable and all that, and they'll do a good job for us. So, thanks for going back and saving us $24,000 out of the thing. So, I guess with that, I'll make a motion to award the construction management and inspection contract and V5 in the amount of 168,159, and authorize the finance manager to amend fiscal year 2024 25 budget to increase the amount number one on one dash four five 450 PWD that's 68 30 by 72 10186 and authorised to a manager to execute the contracts in the form of form approved by the city attorney second in the form approved by the City Attorney. Second. Mr. Zuzula? Yes. Angle hearts of yes, Mr. Laird. Yes. Mr. Bergman. Yes. Can you move? 20. No, 20. City manager, city clerk. Somebody may be moving. The point employment agreement. Thank you mayor. I'll take that one. This pertains to a employment agreement for Mr. Bullridge to be the city manager in the city clerk in the official capacity. The main points of the agreement are as outlined in the staff report, but for the public, the term it's a three-year agreement from today with automatic one-year extensions, all else notice is given not to extend. Salary is 149.680 per year. 650 per year. There are benefits included as are standard with other city employees. In lieu of receiving a city vehicle, the city manager because of the need to traverse the city and be on call 24 hours a day, we'll get a $300 per month automobile stipend and a severance if the employees dismissed without cause. There is a four month severance that is granted, which is low among industry standards. Of course, if there is a reason to dismiss for cause, which I'm sure there will never be, the severance does not kick in. So those are the general points of the agreement. I'm available to answer any questions. Are there any questions? If not, then it's just a motion of the council. Any comments? Any discussion? May I have a motion? Make a motion that we approve the employment agreement with the referee of Oak Ridge as the City Manager City Clerk for the City of city of Lover Heights. So again. I just want to say that since I've only been on the council a couple of years and I want to congratulate Mr. Wilrude. He's worked really hard and there's well nothing's perfect A lot has been accomplished. And congratulations. Mr. Zizullah? Yes. Mr. Pispisa? Yes. Inglehart's a yes, Mr. Laird. Yes. And Mr. Bergman? Yes. And I'll just say, I know we voted, but the citizens of La Haberite were incredibly fortunate that Rafferty Wildridge was at the helm during the swimmer storms. His intimate knowledge of the city and intimate knowledge of how to deal with that issue as it pertains to the city was priceless and allowed us to recover as quickly as we did. So, you know, it's not often that you have someone with that institutional knowledge that's willing to step up and play a leadership role with a little bit of risk moving from, you know, member of staff to a member of leadership, literally the CEO of the city. So I appreciate Rafferty for taking that leap and that leap of faith with us as a council. And he continues as he indicated earlier, spending the day with the FEMA people. So terrible way of being indoctrinated, but you got through it, so good. Thank you. I'm not sure if it's that the gates, the large riding arena, the gate was knocked off and we're not able to reattach it as the condition of it was too poorly. Remaining was left to remaining of it and then one of the smaller arenas it looks like somebody was really trying to get out of there fast and put a nice big dent in a kink into that gate and there's been talk of a horse that was running a little wild and bars just way through but those have been damaged and need to be repaired. So we did go out and ask fence companies for quotes. We did receive three quotes, and they arranged from just over $10,000 to just under $6,000 to replace the gates at the larger arena and the small arena, which is definitely something as we had a speaker talk earlier tonight. It was definitely a thing that is needed for the safety of the horses that are in the writing arena and just the people using the park as well. So the recommendation to the recommendation to night is for the city council to authorize the finance manager to amend the budget to increase the count 101 450 PWD 6610 by $5975 of authorized the city manager to sign the purchase order. Her the purchasing policies and authorized staff to schedule the work with Wolverine events to complete the work as soon as possible. Any questions? So I know we're going with low bidder, but given I think that what we heard earlier, the credit quality and safety related issues, are we looking at, did we provide a design for those gates to make sure they were built a certain way and did we consult with some of the horse folks in the city and make sure they were okay with what we're doing? Are we just replacing like for like? We're replacing like for like. So, swing gate that will be on the main writing arena will be similar as it is. Same with the sliding gate. We'll place like for like. Okay. Any other questions? I have a motion. Move approval. Second. Mr. Bergman. Yes. Is there a priority? Yes. Ingleheart, yes. Miss Beesa. Yes. And Mr. What's his name? Yes. Okay. What's his name? Yes. Okay. Number, what are we? 22. Project updates and deadlines. Project W. These are the ones we look at. For the most part, we're sort of in a similar situation. Anticipated, does delivery some time in October? They're working to try to find us saying earlier today. Figured out exactly when we may be seeing the fire engine coming in, so we have a hard number for it. As we did tonight, we'll be making a transition from Republic services to where, over the next few weeks. We did meet with our representative from Community Development Block Grant related to doing the ADA ramp at the park. So one of those big questions became related to doing a design build project for that and spending those dollars through that process and where they sometimes require plans and specs to go through their review and approval before they will give us the okay to move forward with it. After meeting at the park with our representative from CDBG, they were okay with design build, so we're in the process of drafting that RFP to release it, so we can move forward into design build fashion to replace the set of stairs that are railings that are damaged and not a very correct steptight as you come down those stairs, and also include an ADA ramp that will allow for accessible parking spaces in the upper lot, the park. The park is a very good place to park. It's a very good place to park. It's a very good place to park. It's a very good place to park. It's a very good place to park. It's a very good place to park. It's a very good place to park. It's a very good place to park. It's a very good place to park. It's a very to look at that. There's some language that has to be added to it specific to their federal dollars that we utilize. So we'll make sure to include all of that in there. RFP before we release it for the park. Other than that, that's all I have. Let's say anybody has any questions? Mr. Kespiza. So where did we end up with up with the and we can I just want to make sure this list is comprehensive So I don't want to add something that's not on the agenda But where did we end up with the water project that was going on at the park and the park improvement projects Are those did those something happen to those or? No, we're still in the process with the water improvement portion of the park that we're going to be doing for that one. So I know Thomas spent quite a bit of time with not only the county, but the start water systems representative to try to answer some of those last questions we had related to funding and the cost for the public. I don't want to get, because they're not agendas. I don't want to get, and I mean, we're not going to get into the It's related to city projects so you can Alright, we're good. Yeah still still in the process and the other parker And so we have we're looking to sort of how we can Expend those monies as fast as possible which may go towards replacement of trees in the park And other parking lot improvements around the ADA where we'll be doing And Are we okay wasn't this going to be a design build or? No, I know. I know the, you mean the ramp thing? Yeah, back to the ramp. Well, that's what he said. It's going to be a design. How much remind me how much money do we save not having MB5? I think MB5 is going to charge us like 50 grand or something. So I think a little of like around $60 to $1,000 for plans and specs. Well thank, thank, uh, whatever the company's name is here for taking that on. That's great that we can save that money. Um, number, let's see. So, okay, we don't need anything there. I don't think. Okay, next, 23, consideration of contact for grant advocacy services. I don't know whether I should, you could start. I was going to hand it over to Mr. Robinson, he can give you a quick little segue and then we can have the discussion related to the side. This side was brought to us by the mayor who expressed interest in seeing what we could do to increase the level of activity we have in terms of grants and seeking those funding sources for the city. She came to us with a particular proposal from a particular company, Townsend Public Affairs. They have done a lot of federal and state and local grants work for public agencies of all sorts, schools, counties, cities, special districts, all sorts of folks. And seem to have done a very good job bringing that money in. They represent also more than 100 different legislative proposals in recent years and have seen those through to enactment and law. They're a very capable company, one of the largest serving California public agencies in Washington. They propose to do some grant work and specifically there is a revised package which I believe you have received tonight that says they would, they're targeting their proposal now on this sheet to a proposal for the fire station bill that we talked about earlier, but it could be any number of potential grant sources that the council would want to seek. They plan to contact Senator Padilla, Congresswoman Sanchez, the second senator that will be filled at the election time. They wish to work with the various offices while in advance of the deadline for the grant to prime them for contact and gain their support if possible before the actual grant awards are considered. And all in all, it's a very professional proposal. It is a $15,000 cost from kind of start to finish. And that's the middle of the application to a decision by the grant agency. Cities would be responsible for the administrative work and the financial work necessary to track and report on the grant. So this is something I don't know how often this has been done by the city in the past, but it is an interesting proposal. They believe do work for the city of the Harvard to the south of us and many other cities, as I said in California. When I met with the senators of contact for California last week, I asked her about this proposal because it was touching on the same fire station legislation. And it was her opinion that she was a little surprised and said, I'm not sure you need at your size, you need this type of service to get funding that should be coming to you fairly routinely. There may be other things that you would need to do more than this particular application. My tag to that is, you know, I am a per's retiree. I only have a certain number of hours that I can be with the city. So if you want to get someone who can be here for a longer term on this particular project, that may be worth doing. And that would be your choice. And with that, I just say I'll answer any questions you might have about this proposal. And maybe ask the part did I miss anything? Well, I was going to say what happened was I decided I would, I've invited Justinia Garcia here. She's on the emergency preparedness and I decided a couple of months ago I would see if we could get a grant committee going to try to write, just see if we could get grants. And I had heard that LaHobre used this company. And so then I guess Justina and I, I'm not quite clear, we decided we would call them up and see if they had anything to offer and what it would cost. And I don't know if you wanna come to the podium. So we had a couple of conversations. And if you look at the documentation, it says Townsend Public Affairs proposal, they've been successful in getting fire stations or for several cities here. So it seemed like they had a good track record and they sounded very positive. So it wasn't that I started out looking to hire this company. It was just generally to get a grant program going in the city and sort of backed into this and then when we had the conversation. And so I know Justina knows a lot more about grants than I do so that's why I invited her to say what she thought about this or so maybe not a lot but I'm just in a garci and I'm part of the emergency planning committee here with the city of law rights and One of the things that I started to do on the committee is look for grant opportunities and met with Mayor Engelhart and discussed what the most priority items would be. We talked about the need for fire bay, for the apparatus here. I think we're all very proud of our fire department and the work that they do and this is a deserving Item to have on as a priority item for funding I think that we've done some work researching potential grants We have found wonderful people in the community who say they can help but we are all volunteers and I you know You're very generous in saying I know a lot more. This is not exactly what I do for a living. I just happen to work, you know, for an organization that provides grants, so trying to find resources. And looking at what we need here in our city, at the fact that this is something important, something we want to bring about, and it can be a million dollar cost, I think, is what was estimated. The research that Mayor Engelhart did with the City of La Habra was to understand how other cities are securing grant funds for this type of work. So Townsend Public Affairs came up. Their proposal is $15,000. You just heard it is to submit at least three different applications or proposals on our behalf, but it also involves doing the pre-meetings to ensure that there's awareness of who we are, what we need, and that there is, of course, the submittal of the applications and then follow up. It's a big dollar amount, so I thought that vying for that with volunteers can take a long time as we go through the learning process. This is not a guarantee. We don't pay the agency $15,000 and get a guarantee of $1 million. But I think it's a much sure shot. Then, you know, we appreciate the trust and in the volunteer group and folks are very willing to do it, but I think for something like this and it's an important item and it's a big price tag. It's an option for consideration that we can work with an organization like Townsend and hopefully be successful in the 25, 26 federal earmarks I'm appropriations funding. Yeah, if you look down, this was a, you typed up the document called Townsend Public Affairs Proposal. I did, yes. It's a summary. We went back and forth a lot of emails with Townsend to better understand the proposal. So I thought it might be easier instead of having everyone read through a long chain of emails to simply give you a summary. I mean, it was just shared. It is, it's going to support the city and securing funding through the federal earmarks in three separate requests to center Alex Padilla, Congresswoman Linda Sanchez and then of course to the second senator following the November 2024 election. It's for the one project three different ways. I think they're also offering to do just broader research on grant funding that's available, maybe for other needs that the city may have. And their proposal lists working with the offices in advance of the deadline to inform them of our priorities priorities and then of course preparing and submitting their packets and then advocating for the project as registered federal lobbyists before during and after the submittal. So there's an investment of time of course and in knowledge on how to write the grants, what to put in the grants, how to make sure that the grants represent the types of projects that are being funded. And I think that's where we could learn a lot, also this volunteer group from Townsend Public Affairs that we can continue to do this and be successful for the city. My interest is again in apparatus pay. And it would be nice if the funds that Mr. Robinson is looking at those are tied up in committee. I mean they haven't even gotten out of committee yet and they may never get out of committee. So this is just to consider but it but if you look that it seems like when we had the conversation with the representative, he was very positive and listed these other fire stations. So it seems to me, A, while Mr. Robinson is obviously pursuing what sounds really good. It's still stuck in committee. And if it gets out of committee then we might not get that. And who's going to write that grant? So that's my thought is maybe this is worth giving it a try. Mr. Laird? Mr. Robinson. You mentioned that. You talked to these folks and they had, and I may be in the stating this, but it's not like, reservation about a small city doing this. Could you expand on that, please? Yes. When I was speaking with her, she indicated that she had three items that would be of interest to us. One would be a run, a special run that their her office does for any wouldn't query coming in about grants. And it's basically these are the grants the federal government has available that you may be interested in. Okay, and maybe you're not interested in them, but they're still available so we want you to know. Second thing she had was a run that she had done of that same database, but specifically for a fire station in another area of California. So she said she would send us that. Third one was if you were familiar with the community project grants that the various members of Congress can award to their communities for One to three million dollars typically That's one level of funding. There's then a an appropriations bill that would include a specific line item for City of La Habra Heights The boats for both of those have left for this year She said there's a third package of funding, and she said she would send that information to me also. I can't describe it because I was not familiar with it. She said she would send it to me, and when I see those three two items of which I'm already familiar with and look at the third, what she said would be more beneficial to our cause. And I can answer your question more directly. But what she was saying specifically about the use of this type of lobbyist firm to obtain funding for a relatively small city looking for a grant that should be available to us because it's written to include volunteer fire departments and so forth. It's not like you have to go out and find a cause or find a funding source that you can fit into. This one's right for us. Mayor is absolutely right though, it is stuck in committee. And that's why I've talked about getting the senator butler to endorse it, she's on the committee but apparently hasn't taken a position. We made that clear to her in a letter to her and to her staff in conversations. Now I've got to the right staff person and had a face-to-face conversation with her about it. And she was very pleased and gave me her personal seldom. So I think we got through in that conversation. So that's exactly what they want to do with this firm. Okay, we're just a little ahead of them on that particular build. That's why I said if you want to go for another bill for another purpose that may be perfect. On the other hand, if you want to turn this over to them, that's your prerogative. that she had applied for a grant for a fire department somewhere else in the state. She provided them information on grant funding sources for a fire station. So basically a full report. And how did that fly? I'm not sure. Okay. Sure. Jim, one last question. I'm asking, what is the $7,500 figure based on and I asked that from the standpoint that let's say Next year we would want to use the same company for another grant of some sort for something Is it 7,500 a shot or is it based on some other factor? My understanding is that the charge that this company has proposed is $15,000 and it's half up front and half, I believe when it's about enough to check the language they use. But they are proposing to make three contacts to three offices, the two senators and the Congresswoman. Okay, we know those people except for the vacant position at this point. And they're going to do basically three separate advocacy type things that are going to contact the office. They're going to prepare and submit request packets and they're going to advocate for the project as registered federal lobbyists. You are all elected officials. You can speak to your brethren in but any subject you want to advance. And I think you have more credibility walking in the door typically than a lobbyist because you're elected to represent the people of your community. Okay. But it's door number one or door number two? The truth. Thank you. Do we know when we'll know whether this bill ever gets out of committee? I suspect the bill, it's a two year bill, it's coming up on the end of the legislative session. And if it hasn't passed pretty quick, it's not going to pass and there's an election going on. So I think it's prospects are dim in this legislative session, which would imply that it's going to come back the next time around. We don't have to wait and see. It's just a question of whether we want to move forward at this point. And we have this proposal, which is an option to consider. We could also put together a plan with your knowledge. I'm sure that the council here, if we said we need you to go speak to this particular office and support this particular proposal you'd be happy to do it. But we need a strategy. What are the grants we're going to go after? Where are the dollars that are available? How do we go after those grants, when are the applications do, when is our best bet to do the pre-work to have those meetings, then submit those applications and do the follow-up, and who's going to go speak to home, because I mean, I think it's great that we have these opportunities so we need to act on them and if we decide we don't want to pay someone else to do that work, then we just need a better plan to figure out how to do it ourselves. I would just propose that we can look at both alternatives side by side. I don't know which would pay bigger dividends I just know that Folks are busy and if we've gone this long without an apparatus bay then it's for a reason I you know Want to make sure that we don't lose the opportunity in the upcoming federal earbikes cycle to Bring some of that grant money here to the city and and take care of these projects that we need Yeah, I have gone to a couple meetings at Sanchez's She holds them for various cities and they're very well attended by mayors and and I don't get the impression that it's gonna Be easy to get a million dollars from Sanchez's earmarks so going to be easy to get a million dollars from Sanchez's ear marks. So her grants I think are smaller, but I think she does want to give our city something, but not this perspective or not this amount. Madam Mayor, it may be appropriate in not trying to put this off, but it may be appropriate to have staff bring you a report at your next meeting based on the information that comes from this Senate office. Generally that are available, fire grants that are available, and whatever other funding levels they recommend that we consider. Well, if we know that in a month, that would be fine. Yeah, absolutely. So why don't we just table this a month and that's... I want to get us an apparatus pay. Thank you. Thanks very much for coming down. Okay, 24. Any individual council member information items or attendance reports? Any public Public comments not on the agenda? We're adjourned.