City Council — September 8, 2026

Really? Yeah. We will see. Ask our city clerk to please call the roll.

Council members Kendrick and Ortiz are absent others are present.

Thank

you.

The city clerk posted orders of adjournment of the August 11th, 2026 meeting and the agenda of the September 8th, 2026 meeting in accordance to state law and City Council Housing Authority successor agency to the Redevelopment Agency Policy. We have a proclamation on today's agenda for National Preparedness Month and Chief Coe would you please come up and receive the proclamation.

Hi chief. There's a lot of whereases and wherefores, but I'm going to read the end and then I'll let you talk to us. Now therefore I Bill Wells mayor of the city of El Cajon together with the City Council do hereby proclaim the month of September 2026 as National Preparedness Month and be it further proclaimed that the Mayor and the City Council of the city of El Cajon urge all citizens and businesses to develop their own emergency preparedness plan And work together towards creating a more prepared community.

Congratulations, Chief. Thank you.

Thank you Mayor Wells. Respecting members of the council and city staff I'd like to introduce you to Heartland Fire & Rescue's Emergency Preparedness Coordinator Andy McKellar who has few tips for the community to share when it comes to emergency preparedness.

Mayor, Council, those attending There's only three things you've got to really worry about when it comes to disaster preparedness. You need to make a kit. If you can't get to the store, you can't get anywhere else, you need a kit at home that's got all supplies you need to shelter in place. You need to be informed. Good sources of information, trusted sources of information, not social media but the ones from the county, from the city again Trusted sources of information only.

And the third thing is to make a plan. Sit down with your entire family and go through that plan so everybody understands what it is you're trying to do, and it's very easy to build a disaster plan. You can go to heartlandfire.org and click on our preparedness button and it'll walk right through the process of how to make that plan. So those are the three things I would suggest people do. Thank you.

Well thanks, and sir your name again is?

Andy McKellar. I

just want everybody to know who you were now you're famous. Oh

boy.

Thank you for your support and helping us carry out our mission with emergency preparatives thank you.

Hey we speak for the whole council when we say we're so proud of our fire department and all the good things you do for the people of El Cajon thank you so much Angela, I'll come back to you. Let's go to agenda changes. Staff, do you have any agenda changes?

No sir.

Council? No. That brings us to consent items. Consent items are routine matters enacted by one motion. Pardon me. According to the recommendation listed below With the concurrence of the City Council, a council member or person in attendance may request discussion of a consent item at this time. Council members, do you want to pull any of the consent items?

How about staff?

No, sir.

Angela, do we have any speaker cards for consent?

Sir, we had two both of them remote comments And for item one, it's not logged in. So the next and last comment for consent is truth tonics on item 10.

Truth are you

there? Okay great I guess you can. So item 10, you know I didn't even know it wasn't consent. That's how last minute I prepared but this is easy because it is a $500,000 grant from the Corporation of Fraud known as BANDAG. So I looked up the address and I see that it is proposed to have a bunch of stack-and-packs next to single family homes all around if I have the address correct and I want to know why? Why? Because there's not even a major transit station nearby There's just some bus stops. Maybe there's going to be more bus stops in the future, but that doesn't make sense even that theory of transit oriented development which is a cute name for the United Nations Agenda 2030 plan.

But it doesn't hold water because just because somebody lives near a bus stop in an apartment and overpriced apartment doesn't mean that they're actually going to use the bus stops. They're gonna have cars so my question My question, plural, will there be parking guaranteed? Will it all be taxpayer funded low income housing because we know what that brings. That can bring more fire needs, more law enforcement needs aka costs.

Have you factored that into your grant? I doubt it. What are the traffic mitigation plans? Because there will be more cars and I am not against redevelopment especially of El Cajon But I am for protection of community character. And anybody that does not think community character is important, then I ask you why do you live where you live if it's not unique?

You can live anywhere. You might as well move. And I just want you to remember that this is an existing community. There are already homes there people bought or rented those nearby homes knowing what they were getting They did not sign up and pay a lot of money, or maybe little money later for blocks to use in triple traffic. So I'd like to hear the plan for this development. Thank you.

All right. Any more speakers?

Sir before we continue, I have a card from Andre Smith but I don't know what item he wishes to speak on Mr. Smith. What item did you wish to speak on? I said on general, on general comments. Okay public comment okay thank you no other cards sir.

Okay then like to make a motion then to approve the consent items second Moved and seconded please vote.

Motion carries by unanimous vote of those present.

We're now a public comment at this time Any person may address a matter within the jurisdiction of the City Council Housing Authority successor agency to the Elkhorn Redevelopment Agency that is not on the agenda. Comments relating to items on today's agenda are to be taken at the time the item is heard. Please note that state law prohibits discussion or action by the city council on items they're not on the agenda.

Therefore this is not a time that City Council will be answering questions about issues that you might raise. However we are taking note of the matters that you bring up to our attention and we refer them to our city manager for follow-up as needed an item of course may be placed on a future agenda. Angela do we have any speakers?

Yes sir, we have five. The first one is Brenda Hammond.

Hello. I see you want to start out with fun right.

Always

OK for those of you up there on that stage if you think that Parkway Plaza is not worth saving you haven't shopped there on a Sunday. I was there last Sunday and it was packed and for the very first time I ate at five guys it was delicious And then may I suggest if you're going to continue with the speeding cameras for tickets or reminders, is it possible to add a second or two to the yellow lights on the Christmas trees as you're coming off the freeway?

And you know what I mean by Christmas trees. You guys do. I say this in every city, and in every city I say if anybody asks me to campaign for them because I've done it before. I'm going to show them this. Okay thank you.

Next speaker is Rich Ryle. I believe he stepped out, so we will come back to him. Mr. Smith? Thank you.

Okay yeah thank you.

Yes, my issue right now. I just left the police department right now. I'm a hit and run victim and I've been trying to get the...

Mr. Smith, would you speak a little louder please? I'm having trouble hearing you.

Can you hear me now? I'm a hit and run victim, two years. It was 2024. I've been trying to get the criminal part of the investigation. I didn't know you were having a meeting today, City Council meeting, and I just happened to see the signs directing me here. It's not a coincidence. So I just left the police department still trying to get my criminal part of the actual hit and run.

And I'm still arguing with the police department, and I brought a subpoena. That was their reasoning for not giving me the criminal part. Can you hear me now?

Yes sir.

So I brought the subpoena, and he's telling me that there's more to this subpoena. So I'm trying to figure out how am I going to get my criminal part of the actual case that I need to present when I go to court? So what's my next step?

Sir, if you leave your information with our city.

Well I did that before last time I came here and I talked to you before and you told me you were going to talk to the chief of police which he never called. He never called me so and I'm still going through this process is what I'm saying it's not it was just odd that I happened to come today and I seen you had another meeting I just stumbled up on the meeting I didn't know what was going on but But you got the information last time we talked. You told me that the chief of police called me and he never called me.

And I'm still having problems when I go in the lobby, they're still treating me like a suspect not a victim. My case is coming up so I need the criminal part. So they're telling me that they don't understand the subpoena I just brought in. I'm doing it right, you know what I mean? As far as what they're asking. They're requesting me to get a subpoena to subpoena the criminal part of it and it's just like a fast merry-go-round, you know what I mean? I'm just tired of being on that merry- go-round is what I'm telling you so

that's all I have to say. What I can tell you is that first off I'm sorry you're not getting the answers that are helping you but you're in the right department And the city council and the mayor don't get involved in police business. They let the police do their own business. Our city manager oversees the chief of police, but there Number one, I wouldn't want to talk about your personal information that we talked about in public. Go ahead. Talk about it's OK. I just it's not something I can do but I can tell you that you're going about it the right way. You're talking to the police department and if you're not getting answers from the police department then you can leave a note for our city manager. But that's about the only way we can help right now.

It's been going on two years so I've been doing this We're going to go ahead

and get

started.

Shame, shame, shame on all of you. The shame of our city is on the front page of the San Diego Union Tribune. City Council membership is a leadership privilege entrusted to you by the voters of this city. Mayor Wells, you have been a member of City Council for over 20 years. You've become the boss tweed of El Cajon. Under your failed leadership, downtown El Cajon is littered with trash and the human tragedy of homelessness. Your failure to accept a $5 million grant to alleviate the problem is a testimonial to your insensitivity to the needs of your fellow citizens. You are living proof that corruption occurs when an incumbent stays longer than two terms. You have allowed criminals to drain the public treasury, you have betrayed the public trust.

You are aware that former city employee Chris Berg issued an RFP without authority from anyone. I have testified that Chris Berg was following the instructions from Graham Mitchell and Marco LaMandri. You as City Council know this is true because the city is being sued by Berg for wrongful termination. In spite of this, all of you have refused to take responsibility for the results of your failed leadership.

Mitchell and LaMandri are like the Pied Pipers of Hamelin, leading the City Council like rats to the river. So far, the cost of litigation for wrongful and illegal actions have been in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because of your continued reliance on Mitchell, LaMandri, and the failed management of the PBID, you're faced with millions of dollars in damages to correct your mistakes. In seven days, all of us will be back here to hear the results of the illegally contrived attempt to increase the taxes of the downtown businesses. If the voters accept the tax increase you as stewards of the city finance will be asked to validate the increase. An ounce of prevention is better than millions in litigation today now.

Ask the city attorney to report back next week on the legality of the election because of the RFP or the use of the P-BID money to fund that election. The taxpayers expect you to make decisions that are based on the law. It is an undeniable fact that the current P-BID is sunsetted out of existence by the end of this year. The failure of this body to follow the law regarding the closing out of the assets of the PBID will result in millions of dollars in litigation costs. Next week City Council will have a chance to make up for all its past failures. The prudent course of action is not to address the election issue until you ask the city attorney to outline the liability of the city, specifically addressing the flawed RFP and the use of P-BID money to fund the CBD.

Another item for the City Attorney to address is what should the city be doing to fulfill its legal obligations to shut down the P-BID? Mayor Wells, City Manager Mitchell, Executive Director LaMandri have brought shame to all of us. Next week you can redeem yourselves by refusing to implement the new tax and start the process to shut down the PBID.

Last speaker is Truth.

Hi there, Truth. First I want you all to know that the audio is coming in great from this side. I can hear everything clearly so hope it's the same on your end of things. Next I think I'm going to continue talking about that. You can. I'm talking about lack of planning, because I think that's actually El Cajon's weakness. I recently had a discussion with a friend about El Cajon including about shock fest being canceled. I told him about other events also being canceled like America on Main and how bad I thought that was.

They finally asked me what's going on with El Cajón that they'd be having budget issues? And I actually have never thought about that so I try to think of answers I said, how weird is it to have a big mostly conservative brand city being doing badly? When you look to your neighbors like Santee they're doing great financially considering unfunded mandates as Minto loves to say.

And they overspend on events if anything that's my critique of them. Both cities spend a lot on law enforcement and maybe it could be argued that El Crun spends too much on tech toys such as on CalPERS Why do new businesses move to Santee and La Mesa, but less so to El Cajon? What is the barrier? Is it cleanliness because there is an issue with homelessness or drug addiction giving the city an unsightly look. And I would say that the city definitely does not address those issues like they should. It should be a very clean quick sweep instead you allow the promenade to be cleaned up every single day. I have never seen it cleaned Why not?

Is it the permitting process? Is it too complex? Does it need to be updated, kind of like your policies from 1972. I think that could be a problem as well. Has the city given too many grants to felled entities like the Chaldean Community Council that has provided zero return on investment with our tax dollars? Has the city allowed developments like Parkway to be owned by foreigners who felled miserably to maintain their property? That affects your tax revenue Fair question. Did that Israeli habit intentionally fall apart so that the city could eventually buy it on the cheap or justify buying it at all?

Why do non-locals like LeMandry get contracts in several different cities? How is it possible to have a uniquely El Cajon plant when this guy's got a lot on his plate? Just another fair question, not personal. Why haven't there been capitalizing on the long existence of Americans of a Chaldean consent? Because I would have supported a little Baghdad sign a long time ago. I don't think you should shy away from those things.

The point is, there's a lot of development opportunities than just buying a building because you have a very unique community and you have yet to promote it the way it should be promoted or maintain it the way it should be maintained. And I'm not critiquing you guys personally but I just see a lack, a big lack that you need to focus on Thank you.

Thank you.

No other cards here,

OK? There are no written communications on today's agenda. We have one public hearing on today's agenda item 14 is continued from the August 11th meeting regarding revision to the police initiated towing and storage charges and I'll have our staff tell us all about this.

Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, City Council. I'm Joe Crawford, Lieutenant with the Elkhorn Police Department Traffic Unit. We're going to talk about the proposed revised schedule of police-initiated towing and storage charges. All right so just a little background on May 27th Chief Larson received a request on behalf of the Consortium of Tow Providers Operating within the City of El Cajon to consider increases to the current fee schedule.

So who are our tow companies? We have nine tow companies right now, they are able to get a license through a special operating license with the city to be permitted to operate and respond to police initiated tows. And so examples of police initiated toes would be disabled vehicles blocking the roadway that police respond to. Vehicles involved in traffic collisions, or if they're non-operational creating a hazard in the roadway.

Drivers that would come into police custody for criminal activities such as a DUI or a traffic stop where a driver was being arrested for being suspended and also recovery of stolen vehicles where if the owner was not able to respond we would impound the vehicle or tow the vehicle for community caretaking Our current schedule of charges are here on the slide. You'll see that this was adopted in 2008, that's the last time we raised our fees and these are fees that are paid by the consumer to the tow company.

So I compared rates around the county. I looked at several cities which are listed here And what I found is that the descriptions of the vehicles varied. Some cities list them as Class A vehicle, Class B vehicle for example some list them as light duty medium duty heavy duty and what you see up there is the light duty or the class a vehicle price. There would be so much data if I put every single price up there. So this is just the light duty or the class A vehicle So this is the proposed schedule of charges similar to San Diego County rates.

You can see that the new proposed schedule would just simplify the vehicle description to go with a gross vehicle weight rating which is the manufacturer description of the vehicle rather than class A, B, C, D etc and the county rates are The entire county so that would include CNT, Lakeside and Rancho San Diego which is our area of the county. And then the fees and rates just to clarify on that that's paid by the consumer or sometimes the consumers insurance company that's who pays the tow companies there's no fiscal impact to the city and I included a vehicle code they would describe the itemized invoice So after one hour, tow companies are required to give an itemized invoice.

And I would recommend that the hourly rate after the first hour shall be prorated by the minute. And so my recommendation is that the City Council holds the public hearing and consider input from the public. And then adopt the next resolution approving a revised schedule of police initiated tows and storage charges. And per the resolution which was adopted in 2000, recommend that this be reviewed every two years.

Thank you sir. Let me see if there's any questions amongst the council? No I guess you did a good job thanks. Great thank you sir. Okay public hearing is open Angela do we have speaker cards for this?

Yes sir we do. We have two the first one is Dan Miller.

I think all the questions and concerns that we had were put out there by the lieutenant and I just want to thank the staff in the police department for all the hard work that they put into this and it's been a long time coming. We've as tow companies and Problems with abandoned vehicles on the street. We try and you know do a good job for you guys and be right there Johnny on the spot when when you need us, and so this helps out a lot in us being able to operate.

What company do you represent?

Countywide.

Okay are you guys all from the same place? Yeah

There's Clancy's and Road One and then Assad from USA.

Well thanks all of you for helping it's one of those things that nobody notices but if you didn't do your job there'd be Problems all over the city. So thank you.

I apologize sir. Yes Brad Ramsey

Sir welcome. Good afternoon. I'm with road one towing we also support the item today. I think most materials covered one of the reasons for today's catch up over 18 years it's actually less than the CPI and You're landing in the lower half of the rates of all the agencies. So I think it's good for the city and if we look at it every two years, that'll answer a lot of problems.

Thank you. Thank you sir. Yeah, that's probably the better

way to go.

No more sir.

Okay. I'd like to make a motion then to close the public hearing has been moved and seconded please vote.

Motion carries by unanimous vote of those present.

Council, open for discussion and or questions?

I think once every two years is a good way to we always ask that's good for now but when so you address that you've addressed the prorated after the second hour. So I think staff did a great job on this one and I'd be glad to make a motion to approve the item.

Let me just see if anybody else has questions or comments okay then their motions on the table The second was please vote.

Motion carries by unanimous vote of those present and sir before we move on we had someone sign in for remote comment for public comment. Sure she was not available at the time but would you.

That's fine

thank you Melanie Bennett.

Hello, it's a pleasure to be here. I'm so glad you're suiting me and thank you so much. Yes, I can hear you. May I go ahead? Yes please. Okay great with the extremely important November election coming up i'd like to remind everyone that a federal presence at the polls is illegal It's actually a federal crime 18 USC 592 with up to five years in prison. And then in May, Governor Newsom signed SB 73 which also restricts peace officers from interfering with election administration or disrupting election workers.

So my point is I just like to ask our council members and everyone at the meeting also To speak out publicly and to go on record, that you're ready to defend the vote. And so protect our citizens. Thank you so

much. Thank you. Okay I'm gonna move on now. We have five administrative reports on today's agenda. Item 15 is to review and consider Elkhorn sewer lateral policies. Our city manager Mr. Mitchell will introduce this item. Thank you gentlemen

That's my bike. Is the PowerPoint coming up?

Graham, is that your bike?

That is actually. What did you

run into?

It's not just a tree stump. I did not run into anything that time. Is PowerPoint coming up?

I don't know much about mountain biking but are you supposed to run into the trees or...

No, I've broken some collarbones doing that before so... There we go, thank you. City Council, Mr. Mayor, this is a presentation per the direction of the city council to present an analysis about the city's current sewer lateral policies and also some other policy options that the council may want to consider. The staff report is a bit of an introduction an upgraded memo that the city staff presented earlier this year, and it does present with this presentation not only the options but also some benefits and drawbacks for each. And so I'll go through those. But first I thought it'd be useful to...

My PowerPoint's not advancing. Oh please advance yes. So first I thought it'd be useful to have some sort of some basic definitions of what a sewer lateral is. So cities maintain a sewer main that runs down somewhere in the right-of-way, typically in the street and then businesses and residents connect to it and that's what's called the lateral. Next slide.

Typically, there is different portions of a lateral and you can see where the property line lays between where the sidewalk ends and someone's front yard begins. If we go to the next slide, the area that is on The property owner side of the property line is called the upper sewer lateral, next slide. And that part on within the public right-of-way is typically called the lower sewer lateral. There is usually a sewer clean out near the property structure and sometimes in most cases there's not actually but in some cases especially newer homes there's actually a clean out at the property line so there's two ways to get access to the sewer lateral.

Next slide. As staff was thinking about the different alternatives or options that the City Council may want to consider, we looked at a lot of different policy considerations. We looked at what other cities are doing not only in San Diego County but across the state and United States. We looked at or tried to define what is the scope of the sewer lateral problem in our community? What would be impact on The wastewater fund be what would the impact on residents be. What are some mitigation measures that the city council may want to implement as part of a different process, if we were to consider a different type of policy what are some mitigation measures that we can do to protect not only the city but also other consumers.

What are there ways to tackle the lateral, looking at just the lower lateral? So we looked at some of that. We looked at how do we is there a way to regulate an inspection upon the sale of a property? In fact, the City Council brought that forward to the Real Estate Board years ago, probably seven or eight years ago. And they were not very thrilled with that concept but that is something that the council could regulate as part of the sale of a property and then we ultimately looked at what is the ROI? Or what is the ultimate impact on the resident and the financial burden but also the protections that it would provide so those are some of the things that we were thinking about as we went through each of these policy options. So let's first go to the first policy option next one So the status quo is, the city currently maintains the main sewer line and residents maintain the lateral all the way from the sewer line including the part that's in the public right-of-way.

The lower lateral all the way to their property line or I mean to their home or their structure. Next slide. There's some benefits to this and there are some drawbacks. I mean the benefits are, this is very common practice all the cities in this county have that policy except for the city of Poway. It is a way to ensure that the rates for consumers are lower it limits the city's liability. It clearly shows where there's a clear boundary between our property or our responsibility We've heard there's some there could be some very large unexpected and significant costs associated with replacing a lateral.

And when there is a misunderstanding especially for our first time homebuyer there can be some customer or city dissatisfaction with our policy. Next slide. The next policy we looked at is this idea of the city facilitating or finding a third party sewer lateral insurance company, for lack of better words. And customers would have the opportunity to opt into it. I actually did something similar to this in another city. There were some drawbacks. I can address those in the next slide if you go to the next slide. So the benefits are it's voluntary, it reduces the risk to the city for sure and to the consumer. It limits our exposure and it continues to maintain that really clear boundary about what's ours and what's the property owners next There would be some administrative costs, we'd have to build that into our next rate case.

Typically if people are unsatisfied with the coverage that they get and I don't know about you but I've had some disagreements with my insurance company over the years typically if that disagreement happens the customer will look to the city because it's our ultimate umbrella policy There's really no guarantee the city can secure a company, especially under the conditions I would recommend that we pursue. And I'll come back to that in a second and then again many customers will remain uninsured because it is an opt-in program. The area that I ran into in the other city I worked for is the only way to get the company to participate with the city is they were allowed to market to our residents a certain number of times a year, and it came on a form that looked like it was from the city.

And frankly, it looked deceptive like it was a bill. So a lot of people signed up thinking this was a requirement and then they found out that it wasn't And when we tried to renegotiate the terms of that, they said that they're no longer interested. So in other words, the only way at that time that the company was interested in working with that city is if they could fool our customers. That became the message.

If we were to explore this option, I would recommend we build into an RFP very specific language about communication, use of logos and some things that we can do to ensure that the customers, our customers, our residents are not confused by the material that's sent out which may thwart participation from the private sector. Next slide. So the third option is rather than an opt-in program, the city could actually fund an insurance program for all residents that all customer or at least residential customer users would have to participate in. Next slide.

There's universal coverage. That's the best benefit. Everyone gets coverage. There are some legal questions with prop 218 and whether you can spread those costs across all the consumers. There is some inequity, someone that may have just repaired their sewer lateral and will have a sewer lateral at perfect Like working sewer lateral for the next 50 years, we'll be paying for everyone else's laterals for the next 50 years. So there's that inequity or that feeling of inequity. There would be a significantly more staff costs associated with this and it does potentially reduce the incentive to maintain your lateral because now you know I got some coverage. I don't have to think about the preventative maintenance that I should be otherwise thinking about otherwise The fourth is that the city would just maintain the lower lateral, which is similar to what the City of Poway does.

If we can go to the next slide. The benefits is that there are some customers that would not benefit from this because there are some customers that don't have a lower lateral or they have a lower lateral that's been recently upgraded or a new subdivision. I guess that would be a drawback too, but there is a benefit that would benefit some customers. It ensures that there's no damage to the main. One of the concerns that we always have is when someone's connecting to our main, there's going to be some damage. Now we control that because we would be the ones handling that and it would also eliminate the need for encroachment permits although we don't get a lot of encroachment permits for this type of work annually.

The drawback should be there would be a significant, or potentially a significant cost to the rate payer that would be passed on. There's the 218 legal question that we'd have to continue to analyze. It would increase staffs monitoring of the lateral so as you know right now we currently video inspect all of our mains. We would have to start video inspecting laterals. So we would have to bring on additional staff and those costs would be passed along to the rate payer Again, it reduces the incentive to maintain. And the other challenge is what if there is a lateral break that spans both the lower lateral and the upper lateral from say a tree root?

How do we handle that repair because let's say the property owner doesn't want to do the repair but the city does and so there could be some dispute over payment issues. The last is that the city would just take full responsibility of the lateral from the main all the way to the property structure. Next slide. It's the ultimate highest customer service, it would create a consistent program citywide, reduce sewer spills from private property but on the downside significant cost to the rate payer there are some legal questions at the 218.

It would probably give some exposure to our fund because there'd be unanticipated costs that we have to bank for. There would also potentially be a requirement to obtain an easement from every single property in the city so we could access it whenever we wanted to. Some properties have built over their sewer laterals, so we would have to require people to tear down fences or potentially other driveways that they've installed if that would get in the way of us maintaining And then again, the incentive to maintain. So those are some of the five options that staff thought through. Go to the next slide and staff's here to answer any questions that the council may have. Staff would recommend if staff was looking or the council was looking for a recommendation, staff would recommend we maintain the status quo.

It has the least impact on the rate payer and it's consistent with our neighboring cities. So, with that, staff is here to answer any questions you may

have. Thank you, Graham. Councilmember, do we have any questions for Graham? I'll start with

Phil. Thank you, staff. In the report can you go over briefly The housing rehabilitation, we have a loan program that's existing that could be used for this type of home repair.

That is correct. We actually have a, it's a pretty generous program if you are income eligible so you're of a certain income level you are eligible to receive a low-income or a low interest rate loan that sometime is forgivable depending on the parameters of the loan and it can pay for those types of repairs including sewer repairs

I'm seeing, is this about accurate? A family of four their income is $140,000. That's about right so. And it would go up with more kids

okay. The financing do some cities create a fund that people can Borrow against? We did not come across that, but we weren't looking for that specific question either. Are there third party companies that would loan for this kind of a thing?

I don't know that.

Okay. The third party insurance at some of the places, I believe the city of San Diego has a program, I think it's 150 bucks a month But I don't know how many people opt in and of course that city is 30 times larger than us. Do they use third party providers to Do that or are they doing that themselves.

So the insurance program that I participated in it was just that it was an insurance program so if when I had and actually utilized it to I was a resident of that city and I had a lateral backup. So it was incumbent upon me to go out and get the contractor work with the insurance company to secure the contractor and the city was not involved at all but I think our concern is there could be a situation in which there's a fallout between the insurance company The contractor and somehow we become drawn into that issue.

The protests that the realtors brought up a while ago, do you remember what their protest was? I think it was

just another layer of government bureaucracy to close a deal.

Okay all right those are my

questions thank you. When you looked into the cost of adding to the monthly cost Waste water is that what you're suggesting

we have not done that analysis That would be that way We would have to bring in a firm in to do a rate case when we bring our next rate case study We would have to have a firm analyze that as part of the rate So, we don't know how much it would cost the rate payers at this point

Okay, I because it could be I Could see being $10 Or

a thousand dollars. It's hard to tell that's why I mean there is a table in we did some analysis. I'll say it's more than back of the napkin analysis but we looked at three other cities that currently repair lower laterals so we looked at Riverside Ontario and Poway and we tried to ascertain how many repairs they are actually initiating in a given year and then but because they're all different sizes we did you know how many repairs per thousand they do and then we extrapolated that out amongst across us.

We think that Poway might be a bad example because there's a lot of newer homes that are connected to their sewer program so Riverside in Ontario might be better options if you look at the Riverside rate which happens to be the lowest by the way, they do have about 200 So they're averaging 23 repairs a year, but according to them they have a backlog of about 200 repairs that need to be done.

So they have this log and they have new repairs coming on so it's kind of first come first serve or if there is a spill that's occurring they'll take care of that. But as you know, you can have a broken lateral for many years and not even know it. And so those are the 200 that are on that list They're still functional but eventually need to be repaired. We don't know how many laterals we have, lower laterals that require repair so that would be part of the analysis as well perhaps to bring a firm in and do some camering of those.

Yes that also brings up another problem where somebody could say I want my sewer ladder repaired and it's got a minor problem but they want you to dig up the street and do the whole thing because we've got this protection.