City Council — January 8, 2026

We'll call this meeting to

consent calendar.

Assuming everyone's okay with that we'll go ahead and move forward with that so we will jump down to the agenda we'll start with item number six which is proclamation recognizing human trafficking awareness month We can bounce back and forth. Would you like to speak first or would you like me to? Oh, get ready for

it!

Oh gosh, the audience is ready. So Proclamation Recognizing Human Traffic Awareness Month. Whereas human trafficking is a form of modern slavery that occurs in every state including California wherein victims are forced to work in various forms of labor exploitation including but not limited to commercial sex acts and other services that are induced through force fraud or coercion and whereas due to its isolated and discreet nature Many individuals across the globe are unaware that trafficking exists in their communities and it is estimated that more than 28 million people around the world are victims of human trafficking. And whereas human trafficking victims face a cruelty that has no place in a civilized world, there's a crime that can take many forms and one that tears at our social fabric and debases our common humanity.

And whereas increased education about how to identify human trafficking along with increased knowledge of in-state resources and services for those affected by criminal exploitation can help decrease the number of future victims. Thank you all for joining us. And whereas Human Trafficking Awareness Month is an opportunity to recognize the critical role all Santa Barbara County residents play in preventing, reporting and educating their heinous crimes. Now therefore I Mayor David Silva do hereby recognize January 2026 as Human Trafficking Awareness Month in the City of Buellton and I call this observance to the attention of all our citizens presented this eighth day of January 2026. And we do have with us tonight Miss Anne McCarty here to speak on behalf of this so thank you for being here tonight.

Thank you so much. Good evening, Mayor Silva and members of the City Council and members of the audience. I am Anne McCarty. I'm the executive director of the North County Rape Crisis and Child Protection Center but I'd also like to introduce our board president Robin Bormley who came with me. I''m excited that she is here to also accept this proclamation on behalf of our task force Tonight I stand before you as something larger than just being the executive director.

I'm a proud member of the Santa Barbara County Human Trafficking Task Force. Our task force is a united front of professionals who refuse to look away. We bring together the District Attorney's Office, every law enforcement agency in this county, Homeland Security and committed community-based organizations. All of us working side by side with one shared purpose to stop human trafficking and to hold accountable those who prey on the vulnerability for profit.

Over the past decade, we have made meaningful progress. But let me be clear, human trafficking is not a distant problem and it's not somebody else's issue. It's happening in our county. It's happening in our communities like Buellton and it thrives in silence. That's why this proclamation matters by recognizing January as Human Trafficking Awareness Month You're doing more than just issuing a piece of paper. You're shining a light where traffickers depend on the darkness, you're sending a clear message that this city is watching and that the city cares and that there will be no safe haven here for those who exploit or harm others.

This proclamation also tells survivors that they are seen That their suffering matters and that this community stands ready to protect, educate and intervene. It affirms that Buellton is committed to being a place of safety, accountability and action. So on behalf of the entire Santa Barbara County Human Trafficking Task Force as well as our organization thank you for your leadership Your courage and your commitment to safeguarding the people of this community.

Together we will continue this work until exploitation has no place here, so thank you.

Thank you

very much. And one last thing. We have created some posters. I'm gonna leave them here for you and I have plenty more and I would encourage you Whether it be city offices or if you have private businesses, contact me. I will deliver more. We have larger ones put these in public spaces. I have a vision of them being in the bathrooms at the county park. Thank you for being here.

Can we get the picture? Oh, yes.

I was going to ask did your board president want to speak as well or did you just want to... Okay then let's go

ahead

and take a

photo.

Very behind the scenes.

Good to see you. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. That's right. I've never seen one. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank

And then kind of in a timely manner with having both of these discussions happening tonight, we will also be doing our item number seven which is a proclamation recognizing National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day tonight. Whereas the health and safety of the citizens of Buellton is important to the happiness, prosperity and well-being of our city's families and the community. And whereas the City of Buellton is the proud home of dedicated police officers who put their lives on the line to keep our communities safe. And whereas these officers stand as leaders and teachers educating the community about the importance of public safety. And whereas the City of Buellton appreciates the extraordinary efforts and sacrifices made by officers and their family members on a daily basis in order to protect our schools, workplaces, roadways and homes.

And whereas National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day is an opportunity to show our support for law enforcement and recognize the critical role that all law enforcement officers play in protecting and serving our community. Now therefore I, Mayor David Silva do hereby recognize January 9th 2026 as National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day in the City of Buellton. And i call this observance to the attention of all of our citizens present is that this eighth day of January 2026 and we are very lucky to have Sergeant Karosky here tonight to receive that would you care to say any words sir?

I just want to say thank you to the board, thank you to the audience and the city for accepting this. I'm accepting this on behalf of the department, lieutenant and mainly the guys out on the street. And we look forward to our continued relationship and service to Buellton and community. Thank you very much for your service.

≫ Thank you.

Would you care to speak on the item at all?

No.

We can do another group photo if you want, we're getting good at it! Okay. Moving along, we'll now move on to public comment. Do we have any public comment for this evening?

We do not.

Okay then we'll move on to consent calendar for the evening items one through five on the consent calendar would anyone care to make a motion pull for any further discussion

move to

approve.

Do I have a second? I'll second. Great.

Oh thank you So we had some pretty solid rains. We did have some flooding in the Maria area. The playground area was flooded, I believe after talking to staff it remains unclear as to whether or not that was ground saturation or a creek breach but I do believe we're investigating and trying to figure out what's going on with that. Aside from that I hope everybody had happy holidays.

Council Member Lewis?

Thank you. Thank you very

much.

Give my condolences to the Reagan family. Michael Reagan passed away, and he was here when we had our 50th anniversary of the Avenue Flags, and his dad was here if you know the history of it. And he's the one that was here when he was governor and put the flags in. And Michael Reagan lived in San Yanez, and he would just be around town. I saw him last year at the Christmas tree lighting.

Anyway, love and respect for his family and condolences. Thank you very much.

The only item is actually to follow up on the human trafficking. My item is just to see if we could maybe follow-up with, we have oftentimes a our Chamber of Commerce has their meetings every so often and be wonderful to be able to work with Kathy Vreeland to have an extension of an invitation for all those businesses to come to discuss about the partnership you just discussed so we could ensure we have those flyers and posters available in local businesses and

particularly the hotels

exactly And then if there's a means of also getting those items into our local park restrooms, that'd be great

for coordination. I'll obtain some more and we'll make sure it's good.

I want to thank you for being here. Eliminated

would be a good idea.

Yes.

You tell me where I need to get an

elevator. We'll do it together! Thank you and I really appreciate you being here tonight. And I know that with us being at the crossroads of two major highways, there's a high propensity for human trafficking to occur right here in the city of Buellton. And i think the more we say it out loud, the more and we normalize kind of checking and understanding that it's occurring. I think oftentimes we think of it being far away or something larger cities suffer from but it's happening right here and I think we just need to further explore that and talk about how we can provide resources to that so Please also challenge us to be better partners and all of that, too. So thank you for being here tonight.

I love a good challenge! So thank you. Thank you for being here. Other than that we'll move along to any written communication tonight. None this evening. Great. Do we have any committee reports? Council Member Hornick?

There was a Green Team meeting today that I was unfortunately unable to attend so I do not have anything to report. Okay. Council Member

Lewis?

Thank you for coming tonight. Councilmember

Sanchez? Arts and culture committee meeting on Tuesday and there's a couple of good projects coming up. They were undecisive on approving them but they wanted a little more information. They'll probably be coming to us next meeting and it was a good

So I was unable to attend the Arts and Culture meeting, so I'm grateful that Councilmember Sanchez was able to go. And I just wanted to mention that I've been appointed to the Community Services Policy Committee. So we're meeting in Sacramento at the conference but that had happened in between our last meeting and this meeting, so I just wanted to let everyone know that that happened. Thank

you very much. And nothing for me to report, so it's been... I know! It was a holiday. ≫ Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

As the council recall, it was requested that we bring back an item for discussion by the City Council pertaining to the potential acquisition of do-it-yourself pet microchip scanners to be placed in prominent locations throughout the community here. The Santa Barbara Animal Care Foundation has offered to provide these microchip scanners along with a plastic housing for them to be mounted within different areas throughout the city at a cost of $250 each. However, they have offered a fifth scanner if the city purchases four. So essentially that brings the cost down to approximately $200 each for the purchase of all of those. At this time, staff has some ideas for where these might well be placed but no determination has been made yet.

Before you this evening is an opportunity to discuss this item and if desired authorize staff to expend the funds and acquire the devices. If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them in the Santa Barbara Care Animal Foundation and Santa Barbara County Animal Services are here this evening to speak to this matter.

Thank you very much. Would everyone be okay with holding for questions until we get the presentation from the two people who have joined us in organizations? Great, so who would like to go first? I guess you could do a dual presentation too.

Are you giving me my banana or are you going to? I want to hold it this way. Find your

light!

So Mayor Silva and City Council members, thank you for the opportunity of coming and speaking tonight. And so I am Linda Greco with the Santa Barbara County Animal Care Foundation. And we are a nonprofit that's a friendship organization that works alongside Santa Barbara County Animal Services. And so in partnership with Animal Services and the support of Santa Barbara Foundation, we're encouraging and advocating for the placement of do-it-yourself microchip scanning stations to be placed throughout the county.

With that, it ends up being that there's thousands of animals that come into the animal shelter annually. The majority of them are stray animals and so on top of that then is the number of calls that Animal Services gets related to stray animals that are being seen by the community. And depending upon the priority of those calls is whether or not those calls can be answered on a timely manner. And so I think we probably all have our own experiences with We also know that we live in a community that loves animals. And as time goes on, we're seeing more and more families that are including animals as their family members not just as family members themselves but actually families that are choosing not to have children and choosing to have fur babies instead.

And so the loss of an animal is more than just a loss of an animal, it's a loss of a family member. And so when we stop to think of those occurrences that we've had where we come across a stray animal whether or not we've been able to secure it and what it is that we do from there or what it is that our community does from there. And let's picture What it would be like if we come across a stray animal, we're able to secure it. We're able to transport it to a do-it-yourself microchip scanning center, scan the animal, come up with the number that's registered for that, pull up an app on our phone, put those numbers in and have those numbers tell us where that animal belongs.

So what it does is a very exciting thing in the sense that it empowers our community to be a part of the story, a part of that reuniting of a family with their animal. And so they get to be apart of the win-win of this situation rather than just taking an animal to Animal Services and then wondering in the background did that animal find its way home? So in looking at what it is that these stations are all about, is that you've got they're very very simple. Is that you've got a housing unit and so this is basically the housing unit here and then we have a retractable We have a little device that fits on here. We have it off of here so that we're able to show people how it works, and this is the scanner itself.

And so if an animal is a distance away... I mean, it does pull out... How many feet is this? I

think 20.

Okay. And so then what you do is you push down on this little red button and hold it, and you scan the animal. And you can see here the instructions, We also see that there's a QR code here so that you can put your phone up to get the app. That pulls up, is that the AHA org? That is a directory that you plug in the number that is received off of here and then like I said what that will do is it'll display then the information on the animal. I did this probably about six weeks ago. There was a client that came into my shop and I said, you know what? I've got the scanner out in the car. Let me go get it. And so we scanned the dog. It happened to be that the dog came up with Santa Barbara Humane, so it was registered to Santa Barbara Humane. It hadn't been re-registered to the owner but the good thing with that is Santa Barbara Humane can be contacted to then find out the information to place the animal then back with its owner and so it's a real simple concept but a huge thing in regards to like I said how our public can be empowered to be a part of in real time doing something that is very, very valuable to the people within our communities.

So that's kind of what it is and so I would just say possibly questions that you guys have in regards to... Absolutely.

My apologies. Hello? Thank you. Any more hands? So one of the things Linda mentioned was the volume of stray animals that are coming into the shelter system and that it is far more than we get of other types of intakes. And in calendar year 2025, Over well nearly 4,300 animals entered the shelter system as strays. We took in about 6,000 so you can see that's more than two-thirds of the animals coming in are separated from their families and their loved ones and the additional piece that helps reunite This is It makes it that much harder for people to reunite. We're creating additional barriers, they have to get to the shelter during our open hours and potentially have to have money there could be fears about going into government. There's a lot of things to consider and so it just another aspect of why these are so useful and can potentially help keep pets out of the shelter system freeing up resources and getting them back to their families quicker.

Thank you very much. Do we have any questions at this time for our guests here?

What percent of the pets are chipped?

I don't know because we don't even know how many pets are in the community. Santa Barbara County has been offering free microchips for I don't know, five years at least. And we've since in the last three years we've put extra emphasis on sharing that information and hosting additional microchip specific clinics especially ahead of like 4th of July and things our database has half a million animals in it Not all of them have microchips, but every animal that comes through the shelter system gets a microchip. And we encourage the public to just stop by when we're open and get a free microchip as well.

Anybody can come and bring their pet for a microchip? Absolutely. If we put these around or where we put those around would that information be on because people could come by and say hey that's a chipper and then they go Idaho doesn't have one and there's a number we should go get him chipped it would be yeah absolutely I love that

We're going to talk a little bit

about microchips and how important that is. And so with that becomes that education, with hands-on use of it is that these things do need to occur. And so it causes more dialogue in the community and talking and people being more aware and taking and it being something that does become you know let's get 99% of the animals in the area that are microchipped. So great question.

Thank

you.

Any questions from Council Member Hornick or Council Member Lewis? My question is, has this been dispersed in any other cities or any statistics of how that's been working for other areas that have already adopted this maybe?

I don't have statistics on the success rates. One of the things that we're really good at in animal welfare is generating data and one of the things were really bad at is having time to look at it But I do know of communities throughout the country that have installed them. Our template for how to build them actually came from a group that was based out of, they're still based, they are based out of Virginia and they made like how-to videos and we went oh great, we can do that. And we'll be installing at least 20 throughout the county here Even if The direct reunification isn't 90% of animals that go to a chip scanning station get back home.

One of the things that also occurs is when that number is registered, the microchip companies and Petco Love Lost are notified and they begin sending out alerts, social media posts. They contact all the numbers they have. Our licensing system begins contacting So yeah, the networking and the success rate I have confidence will be high. But I cannot pull numbers out on that specific thing

yet. And also, in Santa Barbara County we have not put any up yet. City of Santa Maria I know is pretty well ready to go and Kiwama, the city of Lompoc were working with, city of Guadalupe were working with and so it just like I said getting out there and so this is where we appreciate so much the invitation tonight or Even the consideration that you guys have because like I said, it really is something that I think that we're going to look back on years from now and wonder why didn't we come up with this sooner? And I know Carla, you probably see at the Humane Society that people will bring an animal to the Humane Society.

And so that kind of interferes with what's going on with staffing. And so this is something like I said, people don't have to depend on someone else. All they have to depend on is a working machine being there and them being able to utilize it. So like I said, I think it really is gonna be a win-win.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here tonight. All right, without any questions for staff at this time or we can... I

have a question. So I'm a little confused by the report. So Santa Barbara County... Okay, I'm sorry. Santa Barbara Animal Care Foundation is the one who will be buying these from? Right. And that's a non-profit?

We're friends of organization that works alongside the county animal shelter, but we're a separate organization. So money that comes to us is not money that goes to the county. We support programs. And so

it's a DIY, but you all build it and give it to us. Is that how it

works? So the components that we have would be then given to you as far as this. This you can see has the county information on it. You guys would supply us with the city information that would be added onto here and then we would have basically this sign that would

And so really the only person that comes out of like location and how many we think we need, which is kind of a discussion item I suppose.

We can take a look around. I think there are a number of fairly obvious locations where we have people bring their animals. Riverview Park, the Dog Park, Village Park. We could place one at City Hall. Oak Park near Oak Valley Elementary School has a lot of people walking their dogs through there as well but if there are other locations Council wants to consider we can certainly do that.

≫ I can speak for that. That's a good question and thank you

I'm going to go ahead and start The shelter is full, which oftentimes it is. We have to send that person to the county animal shelter and then that kind of opens up a whole can of worms because what happens as the person finds a stray animal they bring it to us and we're grateful that they're doing the right thing, which they are but then oftentimes depending on our capacity or staffing or whatever situation, we might have to say to them, we can't take this animal. Can you please take it out to Lompoc Animal Shelter or Santa Barbara Animal Shelter or Santa Maria?

I certainly hope that people do that, but it is a big barrier to what we're trying to do. And these DIY chip stations would basically help alleviate that barrier in a lot of ways, especially if a person comes. The more we can manage the information, the better. Like if someone comes to the SYB Humane and Dog, and they're like, hey, I use that. And I know this person lives locally, we would be happy to call. Right? And so then because then we're not technically taking the animal into our into the

organization.

We do if it's for staffed Yes, of course. So but we're only open from eight to five. So I would love to have one actually at the Humane Society there because I think that's a logical place for people to bring stray animals. So one of the locations I think would be great. It'd be good because it's 24 seven

You mean the Humane Society here doesn't have one, but DOG does?

No no no. So the Humane Society here and DOG are the same. DOG merged with the SYB Humane Society so when you reference that it's the same location out in Buellton on the end of McMurray. We don't have a stand like this that's available 24-7. Our vet or the staff has hand ones that do. If you found a dog at 7 p.m. at night and you drove it there, no one is there to help you. So, unfortunately. So that's the other piece like obviously a lot of stray animals are found in the evenings and so this kind of is like one of those things where it's like oh I there is a place that I can at least start this process of reuniting this dog and most people who lose their animals are looking anyway

yeah no that's important

yeah so that's that's the that is why in my opinion these are important because we are trying to limit barriers between people doing for people to do the right thing which I definitely think this community wants to do for sure

If I may also add, one of the things that Animal Services would be happy to provide is a heat map of where strays have been found within the city limits if that assists with locations.

Do you

have

heat

maps?

I can have a heat map.

Any further questions?

We're ahead of schedule, we got time to talk. So one of the things also is when you were talking about the microchip scanner at the Humane Society a lot of times people will take animals to a veterinarian also like to their veterinarian and there again it's on the workload of what's going on within and I know our personal vet has said it different times that they just don't have time I'm going to One of the things I think that we could all say in life is when things get more complex, it's harder for us to decide to go ahead and go forward with whatever it is. When there's obstacles that are there, it just kind of like ooh, you know, I don't think I have the time to do this right now but like I said if you know that you can drive to one location, get it all taken care of and then that's great to know that campaign society would be able to be there if there were some issues along the way too if they're open so as far as taking them off.

Any further questions or we can I think the heat map would be a great thing. If it was up to me, I would say it might be a good idea for us to authorize a financial amount that then the city is allowed to move forward with work with our partners here and have them give the feedback of this is where we think it's most appropriate to place these. It seems like the quote at this

Yes, the council will note that under the fiscal impact section of the report here we did cite a number about $1,500. That would include the purchase of the units themselves but there's also materials involved in mounting that may depend you know concrete posts wall mounts however we want to do that when we find locations for them that additional five hundred dollars should cover those costs And I would suggest maybe that if the council wanted to authorize the placement of at least one of these, should the council purchase it at Paws Park, that we can expedite this and be the first city in the county to post one of

these.

I would like to see the heat map.

Absolutely, but I think that my thought was the dog park is it kind of an obvious location probably the location where you'd find more than not.

We could decide among us.

We'll bring back a list of proposed

sites and have the council look at it. We can go ahead and get some started and do the dog park, the Humane Society City Hall I'm going to wait and see what the survey says.

Do we

want to...

The motion is for $1,500. I have a motion and a second. Is there a second?

It could be an amended motion if you agree with it or it could be a substitute.

I amend, that's totally fine.

Okay so the amended motion that we have first and second on would be for up to $1,500 with the location of Oz Park City Hall and the Humane Society. Everyone understood? Is that okay? And we have our first in a second so we can get a roll call vote.

Yeah, I have to say I'm pretty impressed with this. I used the word before empowerment even with the human trafficking. I mean, I love the support Thank you and we look forward to working with you on this project.

≫

Thank you. ≪ ≦

Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. To facilitate tonight's report I'm going to go ahead and pull up a slideshow. So tonight I will be reviewing proposed budget amendments related to fiscal year 25-26 for the first quarter Um, on June 12th 2025 City Council adopted the biannual budget for fiscal years 2526 and 2627. As part as an ongoing review of the budget, the budget is reviewed quarterly.

Tonight's proposals are a result of some of City Council prior authorizations and some due to operating changes or recommendations based on current needs. So I will go ahead and start with a budget overview On your left, you have the current budget and on the right you have your proposed budget. These budget amendments net to basically zero or not zero but they make no change to here So it's a balanced budget. So for most of them, the revenue equals expenditures.

The proposed funding source increases by $641,501 and proposed expenditure increase of $707,539. So I will go through the three funds that these budget amendments impact. The first being the general fund. With the proposed amendments, as I mentioned earlier. The revenue increased and so did the expenditures. So based on the increases you're looking at a net operating surplus of 594,132 Uh, and that means a total use of about 5.7Million of reserves and you can see the total funding sources and total uses sources.

Still net 2 0 with that are. Target reserve level is still looking good based on 35% of operating expenditures, which excludes 1 time payments and also excludes the transfers out is about 4.2Million. which means about $5.1 million is available for future uses. Some of the uses per our reserve policy is funding accrued liabilities, for example debt service, pension, OPEDS, funding of capital improvement projects, one-time expenditures that do not increase operating costs or startup expenditures for a new program as approved by City Council.

So we'll start with the proposed general fund revenue amendments. The total proposed increase is $641,501. Most of that is a transfer from reserves. The first one is recognizing the OTS grant previously authorized by City Council. The amount is $47,369. And the transfer from reserves is to offset the increase and proposed expenditures. And that's about 600,000 is 594,132. So this slide just gives an overview of the general fund expenditures.

The departments that have proposed amendments are city manager city clerks human resources non departmental finance. Recreation, public works and planning. For a total increase of $707,539,000 So the first department, the City Manager Department. These two have been previously authorized by City Council. The first one is salary and benefit increases due to the updated contract for the city manager and this was approved on October 23rd 2025 or a total amendment of $25,236 And the second budget amendment followed the reclassification of the administrative assistant to administrative assistant deputy service clerk.

So that due to this classification, the allocations between departments also changed so the manager's allocation increased from 10% to 30%. And this was approved on September 11th 2025. For a total increase for the city managed apartment of 20,804. So, for the total city manager department is a proposed budget increase of 46,000 footage. And then moving along, this Department 403 which is the City Clerk Human Resources.

So the first proposed amendment again is related to the reclassification of administrative assistant. This change also impacted the allocation so previously the allocation was 15% to human resources And because the added duty of deputy city clerk that reflected a salary increase as well. As well, as the allocation from 15% to 50%. For a total increase up 36,201. The 2nd proposed amendment for this department.

I'm sorry to interrupt you. I am a little confused by this slide though because you say There's an amendment because of the Sinas Valley Bicycle and Pedestrian Outreach Program, but that resulted in no net cost to the city.

Can you clarify? Yeah, so in previous slides I mentioned we've recognized OTS grant of $47,369, so they're net to zero. We're just recognizing it in the budget.

Okay thank you.

You're welcome. Um, and then the last department in general fund is the planning department again. These 2 have been previously off authorized by city council. The 1st, 1 was authorized on November 13th 2025. And it's a contract to support the. The comprehensive general plan update and related long range planning efforts so the total amendment was 67,180. And the 2nd proposed amendment again was related to the reclassification. So, the.