City Council — August 24, 2026

I didn't notice that when I walked

in.

It's like a women's liberation march. I love it,

yeah.

I had no clue when I watched Brady Bunch that Marsha Brady was part of the... Can you imagine? Women's lib. It's totally far out and I was thinking, Marsha Brady was dealing with women's liberation. You think it's so much farther away but that fact that the Brady Bunch is having that conversation. So I appreciate everyone bringing that to our attention and I just wanted to make a conversation about Marsha Brady. So anyway.

Don't even start with me on that one, Jan. Anyway

All

right. Is this on? I don't know.

Try again. Hello? You are broadcasting.

All right, well thank you again for your continued support of the beautiful Buellton Community Garden. I just wanted to give you a quick update at how much the garden has grown this year and what your support has made possible if you can go to the next slide here This one here. So we now have this new covered compost area. We have a picture that's kind of hidden there, our new mulch machine.

This was our biggest physical improvement of this year. The new covered compost area is a dedicated workspace to process and reuse the material from the gardens. We've also added the mulch machines so we can turn more garden material back into something useful on site. We can go to the next slide here. I'm going to make this short and sweet. The garden really is growing every day. We've continued investing in soil, seeds, growing supplies and materials for improvement throughout the property.

A lot of the beautiful structural work you see is Greg craftsmanship. He's done an amazing job making these improvements not only functional but really thoughtfully designed You can go to the next slide here. Some of what you see reflects the city's support over many years, the work on the shed and other established improvements including our veggie washing station and the amazing beds. And this year we've continued building on that foundation making the garden more functional and productive.

And you can go to the next slide here We're growing a lot. So we've got carrots, potatoes, onions, squash, tomatoes, corn berries, green greens, green beans so much more. We also have all kinds of seeds that were currently jarring and we're organizing in the members shed along with soil and other growing supplies so they're ready for future plantings And this is just some of what we had. I mean, if you've been by, you see there's stuff all the time.

You can go to the next one here. One of the biggest changes this year is we've reorganized the way the garden is structured. So now beds 1 through 25 are now community beds. Before it was a little confusing and sporadic so now the first half of the garden as you enter is really designated for the community use And 26 through 46 are reserved member beds. We're going to make more of a line in the sand, if you will, so that people do know as they enter the reserved area to look but please don't touch.

But just to really empower people to come and join and have some berries, have some fruit from the garden. So we do still have some plots available for the community members who would like to participate just want to throw that out there as well you can go to the next slide here. The community beds allow us to grow Specifically for sharing as produce becomes available we put fresh food out on our community cart to enjoy. This is a little sample of what we had just some really bright heirloom fruits available, you can go to the next slide.

We've had a lot of fun community events and work days this year. We really want this to be a true community garden, not simply a collection of individual plots. We held at least four open community events this year along with member work days. We've had families and kids out here painted rocks and shared food and brought people together in the garden. And we can go to the next slide.

Education and community. We want to keep expanding that community piece in 2027, we plan to begin offering master classes so people can come learn whether they're experienced gardeners or new to growing. And you can go to the next one here. What's next? We know we still have work to do, our priorities going forward are better irrigation, perimeter fencing and maintenance and especially better signage. We have a new bulletin board and additional signage coming so it's gonna be much clearer how the garden works for anyone just wandering inside.

What areas are for community use and how people can participate? And we want to continue offering open community events. And we can go to our final slide here. And the garden really is changing and growing every day, and I hope you all get a chance to come walk through it. Our gates are open, and we'd love for you to see firsthand what your continued support is making possible.

Thank you again for your continued investment in Buellton Community Garden!

Thank you very much for being here.

The gate's pretty much open most of the time, so yes. We just ask that everyone be respectful of the space and yeah as long as that's happening we're open. Perfect thank you very much.

Thank you for all your

hard work. Thank you.

All

right

moving along now we'll go on to public comments uh for any non-agendized item do we have any public comment tonight?

We do we have one public comment from Miss Tracy Beard.

All right welcome back Miss Beard

I'm going to put my next hat on as president of the League of Women Voters for North Santa Barbara County. We have a forum on October 15th right here in this space over here in the Santianez Center right here at 246 and it's known as the Santianez Resource Center so we are there on October 15th from 6 to 8 o'clock for all the candidates. We've kind of informed our candidates and we thank every candidate for running for office because it's a lot to put yourselves out and run for office. We do have nine other forums around the county this year for North Santa Barbara County, and the league is trying to do their job to make sure that democracy is heard and to go out and vote so thank you very much and we appreciate your time

And just to confirm you mean it's the St. Louis Valley Community Outreach Center, Cafe 246 right here? Right here! Yep that's just to get it on the record for

everyone. Just to get it on the record for everyone thank you and thank you all.

Thank you very much. Okay moving along we now go on to the consent calendar uh we have items two through six currently at this time would any council member like to pull an item for discussion seeing none would anyone like to make a motion for items two through six

I make a motion to approve

items two through six. I'll second.

and Vice-Mayor Mead? Aye

All right we're moving on now to item number seven

Item number seven. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of the City Council. Item number seven is consideration of Ordinance Number 26-07, an ordinance to the City Council of the city of Buellton, California readopting Chapter 8.12 of the Buellton Municipal Code pertaining to the 2025 California Fire Code as adopted and amended by the County of Santa Barbara. This is the second reading for this ordinance. This is also the public hearing As the city attorney noted last time, the public notice requirements for the adoption of an ordinance by reference is different than the public notice requirements that would occur if we were adopting our own ordinance. In this particular case, we have the County of Santa Barbara has adopted a fire code and we're adopting that by reference So we use this alternate public notice arrangement, where we had the first meeting last time as a business item and the second reading for the ordinance this time is our actual public hearing.

I will just for the record kind of repeat what i did the last time. The fire code updates occur every roughly three years. The California Fire Code as well as a number of other documents are updated We do have a fire department in the county. And that happens periodically, roughly on an every three-year cycle and when that happens then individual jurisdictions go through and adopt their fire code. In our case since we don't have a fire The latest version has just any number of small technical revisions to the fire code that come about through this every three year process. But in addition to that, the county has also implemented a new fee schedule to more accurately reflect The last time it's my understanding the last time this fee schedule was adopted was about 10 years ago.

So it was time for I will note that in order for the county fire protection district to continue to do its job properly, This is a public hearing so I would invite the mayor when it is time to open the public hearing, take any public testimony and following the close of public hearing then consider the adoption of this ordinance. And I'm happy to answer any questions as long as they're not too technical.

Okay we'll bring it back first to council for any questions or questions of staff at this time?

No

questions. Okay, so seeing no questions we will now open public comment on this item formally the public comment is now open is there any public comment? We will now close public comment. We'll bring it back to staff or council for further discussion and it looks like that needs to be a formal ordinance reading. I'm assuming with our attorney you'd like the motion to be reading that entire line seven is that correct Mr. Murphy?

That would be wonderful thank you Mr. Mayor

I move to approve ordinance number 26-07, an ordinance of the City Council of the city of Buellton California readopting chapter 8.12 of the Buellton Municipal Code pertaining to the 2025 California Fire Code as adopted and amended by the County of Santa Barbara second reading.

And do I have a second?

I second.

All

right.

≫

All right.

≫ Thank you. has passed away, unfortunately. And the organization has reached out with all that he did for the city of Buellton. They are hoping to see if we could maybe have a proclamation inviting, recognizing all service that this gentleman had done for that and being involved with bringing the Vikings in to recognize a man who did a lot of service to our community. So I'm curious if the council would be okay with working with Pam Niko and that group to bring in some recognition from Mr. Nelson, if that's okay with our council?

≫

Okay. We'll get that coordinated then if that's okay. And then the other item is there has been a lot of concern and chatter brought up especially with thoughts about forecasted super El Nino situations and disaster preparedness and certification, and I'm just wondering if ≫ Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of the public.

≫ We have storm drainage facilities in the city and other facilities that are managed by other agencies. And we can identify those facilities and who is responsible for managing We have a motion to approve the floodplain

management.

Thank you. Okay great thank you all okay moving on to written communications. Okay, I have two. Really quick we'll go one the Santa Barbara Air Pollution Control District just released an air toxics hot spot program that basically is tracking where there are identified areas primarily from industrial spaces and one of it did have a look at the Vandenberg Air Force Base so if anyone's curious about that information it's on the Santa Barbara Air Pollution Control District It's called the hot spot program annual report, but it's a good opportunity for you to just be aware of the monitoring that's taking place. As a reminder this is a hotspot that is designated based upon a specific assembly bill I can't remember which one it was at this time so it's not to say We had a discussion just again We are one of the last We're kind of an island who still has call boxes along the 101 in various locations.

And they actually are cell phones tucked in there on like a 3G network and stuff of that sort, so they're taking a look at this. We usually spend about $100,000 a year in just keeping them active if that could be used for better resources whether that could be a text to 911 program or things like I'm going to turn it over to you, Mr. Buellton. And that's all I got.

Moving right along, we'll now go to business items and now turn it over to our city manager because I forgot the order we're doing this in right now.

That's quite alright. As I recall, we're doing 9-10-8. Perfect, 9- 10- 8, okay. Alright. So thank you Mr. Mayor, members of City Council. Item nine is consideration and discussion of law enforcement service alternatives I'm going to get a little bit into depth. We've got a longer than normal report that accompanies this item. I'm not going to get into depth on all of it, I just want to kind of give some broad strokes here and open it up for the City Council's discussion.

What we're looking for this evening is not a decision on anything in particular. What I'm hoping that we can get from the city council is some general direction that you'd like to proceed We'll discuss that a little further as we go. As the council is aware, we have been served by the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office for law enforcement services since the city's incorporation.

This is a longstanding very solid relationship that we've had with the sheriff's office during this period of time. However, a number of years back there were some issues experienced by the City of Buellton as well as the other The first couple of years we were able to work The last year that this took place, which was I believe in 2023, was the year that the existing contract that we'd had with the Sheriff's Office had expired and so we were no longer working under the guidelines and requirements of the prior contract. We were essentially starting from scratch at which point we did see another substantial increase to costs In just as kind of a general guideline, we were looking at Sheriff's Department expenses when I first got here in 2019 of about $1.8 million per year.

Right now, we're looking at about $3.5 million per year for Sheriff's Office costs. Now the costs that are associated with this are frequently pointed out to be one There's a lot more to our contract than that. And there are additional services that come into play whether the city uses them or not, the resources are available and the services are provided when necessary Nevertheless, the last time this contract was put forward, the City Council had asked that staff continue to look for alternatives to law enforcement service provision to see if this wasn't something that we could obtain at a more cost effective level.

Staff had reached out at that point to a number of different jurisdictions, among them the city of Santa Maria, the city of Guadalupe, the city of Lompoc. We reached out to the California Highway Patrol looking for alternatives for one reason or another each of those agencies was unable to provide service at that time Earlier this year we were approached, meaning the city manager for Solvang and myself were approached by the city manager from Lompoc to indicate that there was a possibility that Lompoc may be able to provide the service to us. They were investigating whether or not that could be done in a manner which was both cost-effective and would provide The city of Long Polk and the city of Long Polk has been working on appropriate safety protocols to ensure officer safety should they provide service out in this direction.

Those discussions have proceeded, and at this point it appears from the city of Long Polk that they would be able to provide that service to us. We have a number of officers patrolling the city at any given time. We're going to look at a contract with the city of Long Polk based upon the numbers that we have right now, we would be looking at a cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $4.1 million per year for I'm going to go ahead and get started. So the first thing we're going to do is talk about cost issues that would also include two patrolling officers at any given time a community service officer It's not as simple as this one, this provider can give us what we're looking for for less money or this one can provide us better service.

For a similar cost there are trade-offs as there usually are when you look at situations like this. As the council is aware I've been rather Hesitant to get out in front of this issue until we have had some more discussions and some more firm numbers than we had a few months ago. We've been given these numbers now, although I will note that they are not still not final numbers and we would be unlikely to see final numbers until such time as we actually entered negotiations to start firming up our levels of service and what those might cost I will note though that a change of service provider, if the city were to change the City of Lompoc we would be looking at in addition to that whatever cost was ultimately negotiated to provide the service on an annual basis there would be some initial startup costs.

Those costs would be associated with Recruitment and training of new officers that would be required in order to serve a larger area. Equipment, the full range of equipment that police officers carry, vehicles, radios those sorts of things. And what we'd be looking at in that neighborhood would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 million, probably a little bit more than that. 2.1 to $2.3 million. But again those numbers are not real firm yet.

So that would be essentially a one-time cost for the city to go in that direction and then revert back to the standard operating costs We had a large number of Long story short, it's not too late for that already. This is a fairly complex consideration before the City Council at this point. It's not as simple as bottom line dollars and cents, at least from my perspective. It has much to do with the cost as it does to do with the city council's desire as to what kind of police services that you would like to see for the community.

And with that in mind, I've identified a number of different potential actions the council might take that might bring us in that direction. The first thing I would note is that our current Sheriff's Department contract expires in June of 2027 which means that negotiations with the Sheriff's Department would start fairly soon by maybe at the latest probably the beginning of 2027 However, the current contract we have right now offers three one year extensions with the mutual It's been a long time since we've had an agreement of both parties, the sheriff's department and the city.

And in order to fully evaluate this and not feel like the council is up against the wall trying to make a decision under under a time constraint it might be worthwhile We've seen more than a little bit of response from the public, both in local meetings as well as on social media. And it would be I think it would be. Perhaps beneficial for the city council to be able to gauge the public's opinion on this as well as to provide some education to the public on what these alternatives are, you know what we'd I would suggest that the council consider maybe direction to staff to start undertaking some public outreach efforts. We could do a town hall meeting where we have a representative from the sheriff's office, representative from the Lompoc Police Department come and describe I want to start by saying thank you to all of the councilmembers for their hard work.

The kinds of service that would be provided under their arrangement could describe what kinds of options are out there if the council wants And we might want to dig into that a little further. In any case, again the one-year extension would allow time for that to take place and for the council to try and draw on this information from the public. You may or may not wish to undertake that with or under the auspices of an ad hoc committee.

You certainly can but it wouldn't be required. That's something that staff could navigate for you. The issue at hand, though, is whether or not you'd want to have a noticed City Council special meeting every time you had one of these. Or whether it would be meetings where you would want the public to show up and get the information they were looking for without having the entire council in the room because as you're aware under the Brown Act we can only have two of you at a time and in a room that's not a We're going to investigate.

And then obviously, well I shouldn't say obviously it's obvious to me because I've been dealing with this for a while It's my understanding that the City of Wampoa would require the participation of both the City of Buellton and the City of Solvang for this to work. At least, that's been the discussion up until now. That may or may not be something we could work out if one or both cities were not interested in moving forward So I would suggest that we, in addition to discussing this more with the city of Lompoc, have some discussions with the city of Solvang.

With their...I've been discussing it with our...with my counterpart there but certainly the elected officials in Solvag might have a bit of insight that you'd want to share as well or that they would want to share with you as well. Again there are more moving parts here than I could possibly get into at this report but what I'm looking for right now is just some general feedback and some general direction We have with us this evening the Chief of the Lompoc Police Department as well as the ≫ Thank you. ≪ ≦ ≤

All right, and before we bring up our representatives for adding further context with it I did want to just check in with Mr. Murphy if chance. Mr. Murphy could you also just help us qualify a bit of how best and most effective for us to stay in our lane on this discussion to make sure that we are abiding by the proper scope of this item so that we stay up and up?

Sure first of all I would have the representatives from each organization come up and speak Before you ask questions or comment I would then have any member of the public who wishes to speak, speak on the matter. Bring it back to the Council and at that point what the City Manager has asked for is kind of very high level direction. Essentially do you want to just continue negotiating with the Sheriff's Department as you have in the past? Or would you like him to explore these other options and begin to set things up?

In terms of exploration, he's given you a few items to consider. Talk about those talk about other types of administrative items how he could bring this to the community if it's a process that the five of you even want to go through By keeping it there, you're not making any ultimate decision. You're not even leading the public in one way or another about your ultimate decision. You're just focusing on process and tonight really is all about do you want to initiate this process? And if so then give the city manager direction and how to do that.

Okay thank you. Any questions for our city manager or our city attorney at this time before we bring up our guests this evening from our council? Everyone feeling good? Okay, so then I guess. I don't know if you randomize the order, so I'll do... Who wants to go first?

Very dangerous.

Good evening, Council Mayor. Appreciate your time here and the community. Wasn't sure if I was speaking tonight. I thought it was coming more for answering any questions that you may have but what I will share with you is this. Your city manager's correct when we were first approached about this a number of years ago there was no way that we could support expanding in the direction that we had not only for the full-time employee aspect of it but also for the technology side of it As of today, we went live on our new computer-aided dispatch records management and jail management system. And so far so good.

We were actually pleasantly surprised with the transition. That technology is a cloud based technology that allows us to now if we have an internet connection in your community, we can do all the work that we have to with our computer-aided dispatch records management system and manage the calls for service that we would undertake in your community. There is some hiring that needs to take place if you decide to go with the city of Lompoc.

We would have to hire an additional 20 officers to cover what would be needed for your community until we sit down and actually start having more serious conversations about numbers, The only time that those officers would ever leave your city would be if they were transporting somebody to our jail in law poke, and or backing the sheriff's department somewhere that should they need that.

So the difference for you now is probably a numbers thing with going to two full-time police officers. And the reason I say that is, unlike the Sheriff's Department, I don't have anybody close by. So if there is a call for service requiring two officers to respond, I need to make sure I at least have, for officer safety reasons, officers to back each other and that's why we're saying to both communities, both Solvang and Buellton, We would want to officers in each city with a supervisor and a lieutenant covering and managing your police services for both your communities.

So long poke has gone through a tremendous number of technology upgrades, I mentioned our cat RMS we're working through our digital encrypted radio system which should be going live by the end of the year. And for those that are aware of it, we did last week launch our drone as first responder in Lompoc. So all of our 911 calls and some of the other higher priority calls are now having a drone fly on each one of those. And we've already seen a huge success with that and calls that we normally wouldn't find suspects on, we are actually finding them on now. So my role as chief is to try and move this department forward and modernize it to what we have available to us today. And I think we're making huge movements in that direction. And the only way that we could do what we're talking about today is because of some of those technological changes that we made.

You have a decision to make. I have absolute respect for all the gentlemen behind me here, they've done a great job for your city and they'll continue to do a great job for your city. We were asked to give a proposal and we're giving it and we're letting you as a council decide which direction you choose to go so if you have any questions i'm available to you

I just want

to clarify just the numbers. You said that you would want to have two full-time police officers here in Buellton, correct? Two full-time police officers also in Solvang so it's separate and then there will be a supervisor and a lieutenant that we would share between Solvang and Buellton.

Correct.

Okay I just want to make sure I understood the numbers thank you

Any other questions before we call him up later when we figure out what we want to ask him at this time? Okay. I guess you may want to take the front row at this point, but yeah, we'll get you up there. Thank you very much. And thank you very much Lieutenant Henderson.

Well, good evening everybody. Like the Chief I was expecting to take your questions. I don't necessarily have any prepared remarks tonight but what I will say is the Sheriff's Department has been partners with the City of Buellton since its inception 34 years ago and we are proud members of this community. We are proud partners with the city. I've enjoyed my time here working with you as the City Council, with your wonderful City Manager and absolutely you as stewards of the community, stewards of the taxpayers money have a I would say I'm biased because I think you absolutely are.

We're excited to be here. And when we look at the value proposition put forward by increasing the number of staff that you have in your community, I would say you already have that. When it comes to the members of the Sheriff's Department that work here in the Valley, whether it be from Lake Kachuma to Surf Beach to Los Alamos there are sheriff's deputies available 24 hours a day without fail to respond to the needs of the citizens of Buellton. While you the one thing I would like to get in front of and it's the only thing I've really had a problem with throughout this entire kind of narrative that's going around is the idea that Absolutely false. Not only do you get one deputy sheriff 24 hours a day, which actually equates to four deputies on the front end and back end of the week days and nights, you get the entire package that comes with the Sheriff's Office.

You are buying into the network that is the Sheriff's Office whether it be our forensics unit, our SWAT team, our detective bureau, our You are essentially contracting our services and whether it's the one deputy working late at night when there's not a lot of calls for service or in the middle of the day on a busy weekend, you have the entire suite of services the Sheriff's Department has at its fingertips. Just today as I was leaving my office to come over to this meeting, call that led to a bit of a perhaps mental health emergency that was going on at the same time. And responding to that call was not only our Buellton deputy, but our sheriff sergeant and our crisis intervention team from elsewhere in the county that came to support that need.