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iHow this transcript is madeUnGovr transcribes the official recording with automated speech-to-text, separates speakers by voice, and matches voices to the seated roster. Names and attributions are AI estimates and may contain errors.Verify any quote yourself: click anywhere in the transcript and the official video jumps to that exact moment, so you can check any quote against the recording.0:01 – 0:0715 turns
Hello all and welcome to the Carpinteria City Council meeting. Today is Monday, March 23rd 2026 and it is 530 and I will officially call this meeting to order roll call please.
Roll call, called by City Clerk
Show transcript
Next item is the closed session report
Thank you Mayor Alarcon, Council Members. We have no reportable action this evening.
Moving on to agenda modifications, we do have one modification and that'll be moving item 16 and 17 to the public hearing as opposed to administrative matters. Just making sure we're all in consensus. Great, and we will now move on to introductions proclamations and presentations. We have a handful of proclamations today So that's always exciting That's a great way to start our meetings so we'll start with item number two which is a proclamation designating April 2026 as DMV donate life month in the city of Carpinteria I'd like to open up public comment and we do have one speaker slip Rogelio Delgado welcome
April is the month of organ donation. Currently, there are not enough donations. Each person can save eight lives. Do we know someone who has received a transplant? We know about someone who has died due to lack of a transplant. You, who are listening to me, you can register En el departamento de vehículos con alguna organización, habla con tu médico. En los últimos meses he de personas locales que han tenido un trasplante o que necesitan un hígado. Una persona ha vivido 28 años después de su cirugía También sé de personas que tienen cirrosis y que no han hecho nada porque tienen miedo a contraer alguna enfermedad después de la cirugía. Al contrario, si no hacen nada al respecto pueden desarrollar cáncer de hígado o también sus riñones se pueden dañar.
Yo este 6 de abril cumplo tres años de mi trasplante completo de hígado debido a hígado graso Cada seis meses tengo una resonancia magnética para checar el cáncer. Es una rehabilitación larga, pero es la oportunidad de vivir una segunda vida con la familia. Favor de registrarse para las donaciones de órganos. Gracias. April is National Donate Life Month. Currently organ donations are not enough Each person can save eight lives. We all know of someone who has received a transplant and someone who has passed away because of not receiving a transplant, you who are listening might need a transplant in the near future or your family. You can register at the DMV, talk to organ organizations and you can talk to your doctor. The last few months I know of locals who have received liver transplants, people who are in need of a liver.
Someone has lived 28 years after his transplant. I know someone who has cirrhosis I who are waiting for what? A liver and a kidney transplant. On April 6th, it will be my third year after my complete liver transplant due to fatty liver. I have liver cancer. Every six months I have an MRI to check for cancer. It's a long recovery but this is a second life to enjoy life itself. And family please register for organ donations. Thank you.
Thank you for your comments and thank you for sharing that personal story with the audience and the council. I do not have any other speaker slips, do we have anyone via Zoom?
Mayor, we have no raised hands on Zoom.
I will close public comment and bring it back to the Council for a motion.
I'll move to adopt the proclamation designating April 2026 as DMV Donate Life Month in the City of Carpinteria.
We have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, motion passes and we will read the proclamation and we'll begin with Councilmember Mayer
Whereas organ, eye, tissue, marrow and blood donations are life-giving acts recognized worldwide as expressions of compassion to those in need. And
whereas more than 103,000 individuals nationwide including more than 23,000 in California are currently on the National Organ Transplant Waiting List and on average 17 people die each day while waiting.
Whereas the need for donated organs is especially urgent in Hispanic, Latino and African-American communities. And
whereas a single individual's donation of the heart lungs liver kidneys pancreas and small intestine can save up to eight lives. And
whereas donation of tissue can save and heal the lives more than 75 others.
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Whereas organ donors saved more than 46,000 lives last year and
whereas any person can register to be an organ eye and tissue donor regardless of age or medical conditions and
whereas being a registered donor does not impact the quality of life-saving medical care a person receives in an emergency and
Whereas California residents can sign up with the Donate Life California donor registry online at any time by visiting www.donatelifecalifornia.org or for Spanish speakers, www.donavidacalifornia .org and
Whereas California residents can sign up to be an organ, eye and tissue donor when applying for or renewing their driver's license or identification card at the California Department of Motor Vehicles. And?
Whereas California residents interested in saving lives through kidney donation may visit www.livingdonationcalifornia.org
Now therefore be it resolved that in recognition of National Donate Life Month, The month of April 2026 is hereby proclaimed DMV Donate Life Month in the City of Carpinteria, and in doing so we encourage all Californians to check yes online or when applying for or renewing their driver's license or identification card at the DMV. And we are so happy to present this proclamation to One Legacy and Mr. Steve Ferns. You are welcome to step up to the podium and share a few words before we take a photo.
I brought some friends and I changed my name to Scott but it's close to Steve, but it's no big deal.
My apologies. I got the last name
right. Mr. Burns is what I should have said. I've known Wade for a long time and he probably changed it when you guys weren't looking. Trying to bring a little humor into this, actually. I've had my kidney transplant for almost 11 years. About 20 years ago it turned out that I was having problems with my kidney. It turned out that I'm one of 250,000 people who are allergic to Aleve which causes kidney failure but nobody knew about that so it took them about five years to figure it out and finally got resolved But by the time that happened, it was already too much kidney damage. And so I ended up getting a new kidney.
I just wanted to thank you guys all for doing it. A couple of quick comments. There's about 100,000 people nationwide looking for organ donations. State of California, it's 19,900. In 15, a week ago, County of Santa Barbara 188 people are on the waiting list. And that was last week so think people get on the list and people die. So we don't really know the exact numbers at any given time and they do not give out the numbers on a local city basis because it's just they don't think it's appropriate with that being said I'm going to introduce Priscilla
Thank you. I'm Priscilla Marcus and I received a liver transplant 18 years ago, and I consider this my bonus life. I had a slowly progressive liver disease called sclerosing cholangitis and knew that I would eventually need a liver transplant. And when it finally...I was on the waiting list at UCLA for about three-and-a-half years and then my body started crashing in the liver and all the other organs were affected as well but since then Enjoyed my grandson who's three, a granddaughter who's 13. My son graduated from UCSB and got his master's degree and life is good. And I'm very, very grateful to my unknown donor who said yes to organ donation.
Thank you for your proclamation.
Thank you. And before our photo, I'd like to just give an opportunity to fellow council members to share a few words if you have any?
Actually, sure I would love to. I'm very happy that you guys are here today to accept this organ donation is something that I know it can be scary for people to think about when they're renewing their driver's license to get the little pink dot on it But but it's something that everybody I know should actively seek out to do So thank you for being here and just giving the stories to show why this is such an important thing that everybody should consider doing
I'd like to quickly say, I'd like to thank Scott. Because of Scott, I was given the awareness of what it's like for donors of tissue and items in Oregon. So thank you very much for the awareness of that one. Appreciate it very much.
We'd love to take a photo with you in the front.
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Please. All right. One, two, three. Okay look at my nose.
Thank you.
We will now
move on to item number three which is a proclamation designating the week of April 13th through the 20th, 2026 as International Dark Sky Week in the City of Carpinteria. I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?
Mayor, we have no raised hands.
I will close public comment and bring it back to the Council for a motion.
I'll move to adopt the proclamation of the City Council designating the week of April 13th through April 20th, 2026 as International Dark Sky Week. Second.
We have a first and multiple seconds. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none motion passes and we will read the proclamation. We will start with council member Mayer
Whereas the natural beauty of Carpinteria, including a star-filled night sky is valued by residents and visitors alike. And standing beneath a starry night sky inspires feelings of wonder and awe fostering a growing interest in science and nature especially among Carpinteria's youth.
Whereas light pollution not only impacts the ability to see stars, but has well-documented economic and environmental consequences that significantly impact ecosystems and human health including in Carpinteria.
Whereas Carpinteria's natural areas are impacted by light pollution which disrupts nocturnal wildlife and degrades ecosystem health, particularly in sensitive local habitats such as the Carpinteria salt marsh, Carpinteria bluffs, local creeks and nearby foothills.
Whereas light pollution results in roughly $3 billion per year of wasted energy in the United States and contributes to unnecessary energy consumption and diminished energy security, and?
Whereas reducing light pollution can be simple as directing a light outdoor lighting down where it's needed. And using it only when needed and necessary.
Whereas Dark Sky International, a globally recognized authority on light pollution, sponsors International Dark Sky Week to raise awareness of the effects of light pollution, provides educational resources and practical solutions, and promote the enjoyment and protection of dark skies.
Whereas the City's General Plan and Local Coastal Land Use Plan includes policies to ensure that lighting in new development minimizes light pollution and limits impacts to environmentally sensitive habitat areas, and encourages the establishment of a Night Sky Ordinance to provide standards for reducing direct and ambient light pollution.
Now therefore, the City Council of the City of Carpinteria does hereby proclaim the week of April 13th through 20th, 2026 as International Dark Sky Week in the City of Carpinteria and urges residents to learn about lighting that protects the night sky to implement practices and improvements that will reduce light pollution and to look up and experience the wonder of the star-filled night. And we will be presenting this proclamation to the Carpinteria Valley Association, and welcome Mike Wondolowski... ...and friends!
Thank you, Council. I'm Mike Wangelowski with Carpinteria Valley Association and I'm here to thank you for this proclamation on behalf of a countywide coalition of like-minded organizations that are actually quite diverse in their mission but who all recognize the value of dark sky and taking action to protect it. Thanks to the advocacy of these groups Santa Barbara County and six of the eight cities in the county are issuing proclamations or resolutions recognizing International Dark Sky Week this year Carpinteria was a leader in this effort when it first issued a proclamation for this week in 2023.
Now, as they should, the other parts of the county are following your lead. We want to thank the city for its ongoing recognition of the value of a dark sky benefit not only allows us to experience seeing the Milky Way and the constellations but also advantageous for the health of ecosystems both natural and agricultural as well as for human health As I said before, light pollution is the one kind of pollution that's unique in that once the lights are pointed down it is immediately no more pollution.
And that is a significant impact or significant result. We look forward to working with the city to establish a night sky ordinance to better protect our dark skies. As the proclamation recognizes, our existing general plan includes a policy to establish just such an ordinance. A policy that's been in place since the general plan was passed 23 years ago but not acted on.
The draft general plan update has a similar even slightly better policy wording and we look forward to the city acting quickly on that once the new plan is in place. Santa Barbara County updated its outdoor lighting ordinances last year Just last month, the Bulton City Council unanimously approved its Dark Sky Ordinance. So we hope the city will maintain its leadership position on this topic and act quickly moving forward with its ordinance.
Again as I've said before to you in previous years it's completely feasible that when we walk out of the council chambers on a moonless night we would see the Milky Way spilling across the sky or in fact from anywhere in Carpinteria even near developed areas that's what good lighting allows us to do So we joined the city in urging residents to learn about lighting that protects the sky, to implement practices and improvements that reduce light pollution. And once in a while to step outside look up and experience the wonder of the star-filled night. So on behalf of CVA and our partner organizations who also value dark skies thank you so much.
Thank you and any comments from fellow council members? Seeing none we'd love to take a photo with you.
0:20 – 0:2521 turns
Two
cameras again. Hold tight. Here's the first one. Excellent,
more.
Fantastic.
Thank you.
We will now
move on to item number four, which is a proclamation designating the month of April 2026 as Carpinteria Beautiful Month in the City of Carpinteria. I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?
Mayor, we have no Zoom speakers.
I will close public comment and bring it back to the Council for a motion.
Go for it. I move to adopt the proclamation designating the month of April 2026 as Carpinteria Beautiful Month in the City of Carpinteria.
We have a first and second. All those in favor?
Aye.
Any opposed? None, the motion passes and we will begin reading the proclamation with Councilmember Mayer.
Whereas the month of April is recognized nationwide as Keep America Beautiful Month and
whereas since 1992 the month of April has additionally been proclaimed as Carpinteria Beautiful Month and celebrated by the downtown display of Carpinteria beautiful banners and
Whereas on Tuesday, April 22nd the 56th anniversary of Earth Day with this year's theme Our Power Our Planet will be celebrated through harnessing collective grassroots action to defend environmental protections advance a clean sustainable economy and ensure long-term climate stability empowering communities to take action and
Whereas on Friday, March 27th in preparation for the April celebration, Carpinteria Beautiful volunteers and the City of Carpinteria will cooperate in a citywide litter and creek cleanup.
Whereas throughout the month of April, Carpinteria beautiful volunteers will continue their year-round efforts to remove graffiti and refill dog waste bag dispensers. And the adopt a spotter and trash mob will redouble their already considerable efforts in keeping Carpinteria litter free
Now therefore, the City Council of the City of Carpinteria hereby designates April 2026 as Carpinteria Beautiful Month and urges all residents to share in the observance of this month by making a personal commitment to enhance the beauty of their own properties and neighborhoods for the benefit and enjoyment of all. And we will be presenting this proclamation to members of the Carpinteria Beautiful. Do we have anyone in the audience today?
Welcome.
Good evening, everybody. I moved to Carpinteria in 2001 when I got married. I think in 2002 or 2003, I joined Carpinteria Beautiful and it's been an honor working with them and being president of this organization. This organization actually bodies and defines grassroots It's a small, dedicated group of people over the years who've decided to take on things that a lot of people won't want to touch. Graffiti abatement, trash and so forth. We also have a lot of other programs but this group is something we can be really proud of in this community. I don't know of many other communities that have this. There are some.
Through our efforts, we spread it to Ojai, Isla Vista and Ventura, how they're doing. They're doing pretty good but it's been a fantastic organization. It is a fantastic community and the mission is really simple keeping Carpinteria clean green and beautiful and as doing that part of the green aspect is that I'm going to let Clyde here our treasurer just come to the microphone and give you a challenge.
Thank you Brian yes as we have for many years in the past again we want to make a donation to the city With the challenge for the city to match it, this year's donation is $2,000 for the purchase and planting of new trees throughout Carpinteria. And again we want this to be an honest challenge. We want you to match the funds and get us a bunch of trees. Thank you.
0:25 – 0:3014 turns
Yeah, I think all I have to add to that is we will have on this coming Friday about 40 of our what we call our adoptive spotters. People who spend quite a bit of time keeping things clean and neat in their adopted areas and that is our way of doing community cleanup this year. We were scheduled for Saturday Another event got in the way, so I'm sure many of you will be watching that one. But hopefully we'll have our city all cleaned up for you by then. So thank you for your support. Thank you. And
then... I want to just really fast talk about us working with the City. Well as mentioned on 27th we'll be out there. Big Green will be coming out a couple days earlier. We're doing this quarterly with the City. June will be Creek cleanup. We'll have people in the creeks. Doing the pathways and so forth. So we're really working with the city has been fantastic Again, knowing other people live in other towns I don't know of any other Council any other city that really works with its citizens on such a level on such a grassroots level So it's really appreciated and you all deserve a hand for that cooperation. So thank you very much
Thank you. And I'd like to just say how much I appreciate your organization for such a small group of dedicated individuals and how much work you all do. Um, I'm really grateful for it and I know the rest of the community is as well.
I just want to thank you all for everything that you do. I know you're small but mighty. I do want to give special shout out to Brian Moots just because you've been such an amazing steward for uh the environment here in Carp. You're so good about getting out into the community and really Talking about what you do what you all do and why it's important So thank you for always making that extra effort to connect with with us with city staff and with the community
And I've shot at shout out to Donna Jordan who founded the organization and came up with a concept semi semi mostly semi
I would just like to add something that really separates Carpinteria from almost anywhere else is just that spirit of all of us together do something and to make it a better place. And, I think what you do is really lead by example and you show people that it can be something as simple as just keeping your neighborhood beautiful. So thank you for leading by example.
And I would like to say, Donna, thank you for all your hard work. I see Arthur all the time. I feel really guilty when I walk by and I'm not carrying somebody else's trash. It hurts quite a bit. What I would like to suggest though if you wouldn't mind is maybe taking a look at extending out the invitation to the younger people. I'd like to see them getting more involved in community pride.
As a matter of fact, we have a member Robert Stokes and we've already um we have several programs in the works working with teachers uh working with students working with schools. If you look the Carpinteria Middle School is one the courtyard beautification project was spearheaded by one of our members Robert Stokes and we do have plans to continue on for all grade levels so but as you know you know once it when the plans first made how they come to fruition could take some time But they are in the making and you'll see a result soon.
And I'd love to take on that challenge, so I'll look to city staff to see if we can do that $2,000 match.
Yes, Mayor. So the city has currently an $8000 budget for planting trees so we've already 400% match on that already budgeted I do you know No one will ever say we're not fully transparent because I'll also admit that zero dollars of that has been spent this fiscal year. And so the challenge could be to identify those locations, to plant these trees and to use the money along with it with the donation and get that work going.
I think that's a great plan forward.
Note taken
With that we'd love to take a photo with you all
All right, we are
0:30 – 0:3925 turns
Thank you.
And just as a thought for everyone that's listening, it'd be nice to acknowledge the work that Jerry Campopiano did for Carpinteria Beautiful as she has recently passed away. Her spirit will live on with the work you do. So thank you.
Thank
you.
Item number five is a proclamation celebrating the 67th anniversary of the Carpinteria Community Awards Banquet. I do not have any speaker slips, do we have anyone via Zoom?
We have no zoom speakers.
I will close public comment and I'll bring it back to the council for a motion.
I move to adopt the proclamation celebrating the 67th anniversary of the Carpinteria Community Awards Banquet
We have a first and second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes, and we will begin reading the proclamation with Councilmember Mayer.
Whereas the first Carpinteria Community Awards Banquet was held in 1958 and was called the Man of the Year event, and after several different names over the years it is now known as the Annual Carpinteria Community Awards Banquet. And...
Whereas this annual event was previously hosted by the Carpinteria Valley Chamber of Commerce and is now hosted by the Carpinteria Community Association a non-profit organization formed specifically to continue honoring the spirit of Carpinteria. And
Whereas this event has been held in various locations including The Palms, the Carpinteria High School Cafeteria, the Memorial Building, the Montecito Country Club, the Carpinteria Boys and Girls Club, The Miramar and even in a tent at the Carpinteria State Beach. This year it will be held at our local Girls Inc of Carpinteria facility and...
Whereas the 67th annual event will showcase the Carpentria Valley Museum of History and the rich history our museum displays and commemorates and
Whereas this event provides an opportunity for our many local service organizations and others to publicly honor their valued volunteers with merit awards, and...
Whereas a local business is selected to receive the Outstanding Community Business Award. And two local businesses will also be spotlighted, and....
Whereas two teachers from our local Carpinteria schools are chosen to receive an award as Educator of the Year, one each from the elementary and secondary schools, and
Whereas following a rigorous selection process, three high school students are chosen as finalists for the Junior Carpinterian of the Year Award with one selected as the Junior Carpinterian of the Year and with each of them receiving a generous college scholarship with funds donated by community members and.
Whereas the culmination of the evening is the announcement of the Carpinterian of the Year, a distinguished honor given to the individual or individuals for their outstanding accomplishments and contributions to the Carpinteria Valley community.
Now therefore the City Council of the City of Carpinteria congratulates the Carpinteria Community Awards Banquet on its 67th anniversary and commends the Carpinteria Community Association for its commitment to honor the spirit of Carpinteria. And with that I'd love to invite, I see Karen Graff, and the team!
So good evening, thank you bear and council members for the designation and the proclamation. I'm going to introduce the team we have Clyde who you know he was just up here by Freeman Marianne Coulson Donald Amir. We have Curtis Lopez, Beth Cox, Bob Birkenmeyer, myself Karen Graff and not here tonight is Lori Bowles who's new on our team and Gary Dobbins which I thought he'd pop in here but he's not here alas.
You know, you might wonder what is the Carpinteria Community Association and we have all been members from the get-go. And for us it was so important to keep the legacy of this event going that we created this organization so we could keep it in the spirit that it was intended and keep it in Carpinteria by Carpinterians for Carpenterians. So we are very proud of it and as you can see 67 years And we show up and we just put this event on, and 300 plus people come to our event every year. It is probably the best celebratory party every year. So proud of it!
And as you mentioned in our proclamation, the theme this year as we're honoring or showcasing the museum is Honoring The Past and Celebrating The Present. And we really wanted to take a moment to celebrate what's been going on at the museum with Jamie and all the good work she's doing there to freshen up our history. We've got such a legacy and such a rich history here.
Also, we mentioned about who gets honored You're right, we give merit awards out to all the different organizations. We honor three young people out of our high school and one of them gets the designation of Junior Carpenter of the Year. And then we have the highlight and the crescendo of the night is the reveal of the Carpenterian of the Year. I also wanted to, I think we discussed that we are honoring three different businesses. And for your ears as the first to know but it is going to go into the paper so if the papers here but it's not. We're so excited to honor as our Carpinteria business community partner and showcasing them is the carpenter lumber company. And Jason and all the good works that he does with Maryland in our community.
And then the two other smaller businesses, but vital to our community that we are honoring is Carpinteria Nails. That's Ken and Fawn Haw. And they just do so much behind the scenes. And I know you know that, but we are really proud to acknowledge that. And then the other is Delgado's and what better rich history do we have than Delgado's because they have been around for a very very long time? So these are the three businesses that we are going to showcase that evening.
Let's see. Details, details, details! So the event is on April 18th at Girls Inc. It starts at 5 o'clock. We are honored that Island Brew will be our signature beer and we'll have catered by Rincon Beach Catering. It's a wonderful night and I know you've all been there and we expect to see all of you again It's just a great party. So with that, we thank you. Does anybody want to say anything else?
I'm just going to do one shout out to the Coast Review, to Michael Van Stry who about three weeks ago did a wonderful spread and Donna who has got the most history of our event was able to contribute a lot about the back story about the event so if you haven't had a chance to read that issue go online and find it but it's a great spread to talk about the event itself and we're just so proud.
That's what I have. Anybody? Yeah, okay. All right come on Bob!
I'm going to look at the TV camera and say, look at the board members up here. We're a bunch of old geezers. It's about time to get some young folks stand up and join us so if you have any interest in helping us put on this party this year or in years future please consider joining our committee. You know that hurts.
I should say speak for yourself. Anyway thank you again for the proclamation we are excited about the event next month so thank you
And I'd like to just say thank you all. I know that this event has changed hands in the past and I appreciate you all keeping this tradition moving forward. Um, I know firsthand my niece was a former junior Carpinterian and those scholarships are so important to the youth in our community and every year I'm more amazed by how amazing those finalists as high school finalists are. So thank you all for all that hard work that you
do.
And I will look to my colleagues if anyone would like to share a few words. Seeing none, I will invite you all to take a photo.
0:39 – 0:4624 turns
Okay, here we go.
Squeeze in a little bit.
Excellent. OK, we have one more phone. Our smiles. Happy perfect. Thanks again. Of course.
I look forward to it.
Our final proclamation of the evening is a proclamation designating April 2026 as Carpinteria Business Month in the City of Carpinteria. I do not have any speaker slips, do we have anyone via
Zoom?
I will close public comment and bring it back to the council for a motion.
I move to adopt the proclamation designating April 2026 as Carpinteria Business Month in the City of Carpinteria.
Second.
We have
a first and second, all those in favor?
Aye.
Any opposed? Motion passes and we will begin reading the proclamation with Councilmember Mayer.
Whereas the City of Carpinteria supports the success of its local business community and acknowledges their role in generating local tax revenue to support municipal services that enhance the quality of life for Carpinteria residents, and...
Whereas local businesses are a vital pillar of the community providing essential products and services and contributing to non-profit and volunteer initiatives through the dedicated efforts of business leaders and employees, and
Whereas local businesses create significant private sector employment opportunities, ensuring the strength and competitiveness of the local workforce. And
whereas the City of Carpinteria values business community feedback in developing ordinances and policies ensures business inclusion in city outreach and provides aid to local businesses as needed.
Whereas since 1912, the Chamber of Commerce has represented local businesses' interests helping to build a strong local economy and a positive quality of life. And...
Whereas the Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce collaborates with the City of Carpinteria to support local businesses and align business community needs with city goals
Now therefore, be it resolved that the City of Carpinteria hereby designates April as Carpinteria Business Month and encourages all residents to celebrate and support our local businesses. And we would like to present this proclamation to Rachel Murphy who is a representative of the Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce. Welcome!
Good evening, thank you for having me. Mayor Larkin and council members my name is Rachel Murphy and I am a public policy coordinator with the Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce. I'm excited to be here tonight to accept this proclamation and introduce myself as a new member of the chamber I work closely with the rest of the Chamber's staff on our efforts in business advocacy, economic support and community partnerships.
The Chamber proudly represents businesses from Goleta to Carpinteria. We are proud to represent the economic interests of our region while also supporting the unique business communities across the three cities. Here in Carpinteria, we are lucky to have such a vibrant business community. We have large employers working to produce cancer diagnostics. We have well-loved family restaurants that have served this community for years. We have lawyers, retailers and service providers all of whom are run by the very people that we call our neighbors.
All of these businesses and more are truly the backbone of the Carpinteria community. The Chamber is proud to accept this proclamation declaring April 2026 as Carpinteria Business Month on behalf of the City's business community. We appreciate the city's formal recognition of the key role businesses play here in Carpinteria. We are proud of our work in partnership with the City of Carpinteria to support Carpinteria businesses, and we look forward to continuing to grow that support hand-in-hand with the city.
We are thankful for the leadership of both the council and your staff to ensure that local businesses can flourish and have the support that they need. To the Carpinteria community, we would like to say this isn't business month without your support This April, we encourage the Carpinteria locals to show some extra love and support to the community's businesses. Stop into your regular shops, visit a local establishment that you've been meaning to check out, invite your friends and family to join you at your favorite local restaurant, and take some time to learn more about the amazing large employers developing world-changing technologies in your very own backyard.
Thank you again to the city, the mayor and the council for this proclamation and for your support to the local business community.
Thank You Rachel for those words and I appreciate your call-to-action. I think that's definitely something that we will all be partaking in. Any additional comments?
Thank you so much for your words. And I, you know, I think about especially in a small town like Carpinteria business community is part of a very flourishing ecosystem. They're the people that are donating to your nonprofits. These are the people who are employing your neighbors. So really keeping our local businesses thriving is a way to keep our community thriving.
Thank you. We invite you to take a photo with us
0:46 – 1:013 turns
Thank you so much.
We will now move on to public information reports and announcements, and we will hear from our First District Supervisor's Office. Welcome Daisy!
Good evening. Let me fix that. Good evening, Mayor Ollerkorn and Council. Nice to see you. Hello, Steph. Okay, lots of updates to share. So for housing in unincorporated Carpinteria there are no applications for Van Wingerden 1 and 2 so we're not going to talk about those spots. Baylor, let's talk about that. So the last joint meeting was February 16th, and that was focused on the ingress-egress concerns on the city side as well as the emergency access pointed out by Carp Summerlin Fire District. So since that meeting I assume the applicant has been addressing some of that feedback.
Carp Summerlin Fire Marshal Mike Lamonaco told me that he specifically gave them Some requirements for an evacuation study that they're going to do and also discuss some constraints around the pandanus alley. CARP City Public Works talked about with them, so you might want to ask them. But in that meeting on the 16th or excuse me on February 16th there were a lot of concerns about width of the road and parking with the park and of course the alleyway itself So I'm gonna defer it as city public works on what they discussed with them but I assume that's what the applicant has been working on since that meeting, and we are having a new joint meeting on March 26th. So this Thursday with teams from the city, from Carp Summerlin Fire, from the county and the applicant.
And I believe the applicant is also planning to meet with the Casitas Village HOA board members that same day. And as of now, the Builders Remedy application is still open and hopefully we'll get some clarity on that on Thursday. Any questions? Okay. Cannabis updates. So we had a board meeting on March 10th and there were eight applicants that were seeking extensions for their odor abatement plans and zero extensions were granted to the operators. So, what that means is there was a compliance deadline of March 18th where all operators in the valley had to have carbon-based scrubbers installed.
Planning and development is in the process of issuing notices of violations to those operators that are out of compliance. CEO's office of the county can revoke business licenses for the operators out of compliance. That decision is appealable by the applicants or by the operators and that doesn't go to the Board of Supervisors, that would go to a state administrative court.
I believe there's The hearing has to happen within 60 days. So people can still report odor complaints through the county website, planning and development through the enforcement tab. That's what's happening on the cannabis front. Okay. Budget hearings are coming up for the county. The week for hearings is April 13th, 15th and 17th, excuse me yes April 13th, 15th and 17th and this is to hear proposals for the county's 26-27 fiscal year budget as the city is also facing this there are huge budget cuts coming down the pike for California specifically The HR 1 or the big beautiful bill cut a lot of funding at the federal and state levels.
Every local jurisdiction is going to have to face budget cuts. So the Board of Supervisors' role is to maintain as many services as possible, but Supervisor Lee wants to stress how important it's going to be to work together, the cities and the county, to really maintain that... To make sure that the most vital services are being retained. So my call-to-action to you all The public is to try and tune into those hearings and listen to what is being proposed because every county department is proposing their budget, and it will reflect those service cuts. So the hearings are April 13th through 17th. Then there's two months until the actual hearing adoption in June. So in those two months we would love to hear from community members about what is essential for the people of Carpinteria.
We want to hear from you. Okay. Some County Public Works updates, I know this is in Summerland but I think it affects a lot of folks in Carpinteria. The Via Real closure at Padaro Lane makes it really difficult for folks who are traveling on Via Real to get to Summerland that closure has been for a long time, a lot longer than it was supposed to be. There's been some issues with the contractor that's been doing the work but we have been assured that the completion should be happening in June so for anybody that's been following along I believe that was supposed to be finished last August so it has really dragged on and it's a huge inconvenience to a lot of people so hopefully that gets wrapped up by June like we've been told The other thing that's happening public works wise is the Santa Claus Lane phase two is starting.
That's going to be the railroad overpass construction. And when I say overpass, it's not like a bridge over it. It's like a flattening out across it So the construction has been open to bids That's what's happening right now and it'll be a few months until they are about a month perhaps until they pick the bidder Hopefully if they get something in the right budget and then after that Construction will begin a few months after that, but Public Works is trying to work with the business owners on Padaro to make sure it's not a huge impact to them.
The camps, the beach goers, so that is kicking off. Phase 2 is kicking off. Also along the lines of Public Works, they are having their road maintenance annual plan meeting. This is March 31st it's six o'clock it's on zoom there is Spanish translation available and this meeting is for community members to weigh in on the roads in unincorporated Santa Barbara County that need attention and need help. So, definitely let us know what needs attention. It's a great time to be heard. And if you can't make that meeting, you can always provide feedback to Public Works Roads at COSB.org Or you can always just email our office and we can connect you.
More things that are coming out, the community hazard awareness map has been released by the Office of Emergency Management and so it's a public resource designed to help everyone understand what hazards they face in their specific address So you can search your address, you can search different areas and see if you're in a flooding zone, if you're in a tsunami zone, if you are in a high fire zone.
It's a really interesting resource the Community Hazard Awareness Map. that you can find through the County Office of Emergency Management. Another update from one of the recent board meetings is the adoption of a sidewalk vending ordinance and a six-month pilot outreach program, so This is a response to the illegal food vending that we've seen popping up in places along highways and in the county specifically, mostly along highways. So this is a program designed to help vendors get a seller's permit, a business license and a county health permit. And vending is limited to paved sidewalks and pedestrian paths so really trying to keep this off of highways.
The pilot program is the outreach portion of this, so it's April through October and it's establishing a coordinated outreach between Environmental Health Services, Public Works and the Sheriff's Office and it's to help these vendors get these these permits that they need. I also want to be really clear that this outreach team will clearly identify themselves as county staff, and they will not collect or share vendors' citizenship status during this health permitting inspection and pilot program.
Okay, my last update is actually not on the agenda but I got an email from Mayor Alarcon today and I think it's worth sharing. There has been...I can tell, I'm sure other people can, but there's been more mosquitoes lately so I wanted to give you an update that we have this cool little thing called the Mosquito Vector Management District and they are a special district so they operate independently of I'm going Like, varmint basically. So mosquitoes, rats, ticks...
all the unpleasant stuff. So their general manager is Brian Cabrera. He's offered to connect with county staff about getting some of this information on the CARP website so I'll give you the update he provided. So he said Southern California is experiencing unusually early and intense mosquito activity this year due to warmer temperatures and heavy January through February rainfall. So mosquito activity usually begins in May, but we're starting to see it in February.
A key concern is the spread of the non-native ankle biter mosquito that was recently found in a backyard in Santa Barbara on the west side. And so they're monitoring the ankle biters and in Carpinteria and the Summerland area, the most known breeding grounds are at the Greenwell Preserve in Summerland and this salt marsh here. May through October mostly so and there's also local creeks that stagnate in warm weather. So We're lucky there's a lot of flowing water if anybody's a hiker There's a lot of water that still flowing but there are pools of standing stagnating water, so The mona excuse me the mosquito and vector management district is responding to complaints and they are treating breeding sites Under the California Health and Safety Code, they have that authority.
So what residents can do is they can report mosquito problems on their website MVMdistrict.org a phone number 805-969-5050 They're also asking residents to eliminate standing water in containers, birdbaths, toys, drains, tires. Anything that is sitting there with water in it and there's no drain? Dump it out! Scrub bird baths and pet dishes weekly. Use EPA-registered repellents if you're sensitive to getting bit.
oil of lemon and eucalyptus, picardin. Wear long sleeves and pants in mosquito prone areas make sure your windows and doors or screens are intact and you can stay informed by subscribing to their website The itching post, which I think is very cute. So definitely subscribe to the itching post. I think it's quarterly if not monthly and if you do see any signs of daytime biting that is the ankle biter mosquito so definitely report that immediately And I also suggested Brian Cabrera, the general manager. Perhaps he'd want to come and give you all an update when it's peak mosquito season.
That's all
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I've got. Thank you for those updates and the follow-up on the Mosquito email, I appreciate that. Totally! I have a quick question in terms of... it may not actually be quick. You mentioned the budget and if the county is looking at 23 million dollars in budget cuts? Correct?
Yes, I believe it's 60 over the next five years. And the question really becomes like strategy. How is the board going to tackle this? Are they going to try and do a lot of intense cuts? at the beginning and really make this year the difficult year or do small cuts incrementally over the next four or five years. But yes, I believe $23 million is
this year's projected. And so some things for example that may affect the city is for example like library funding that we receive from the county Yes, my other question is in related to the sheriff's budget I know that was like 20 million dollars in overtime and the Board of Supervisors Is now auditing timesheets. Do they audit for example? Our contract is separate from the county and is just with It's like the city of Carpinteria's contract. Just do they also audit those or do they just audit their dollars spent in the county and not other contracts?
I don't know. That's a good question. I would assume they do not audit the contracts, but does staff know?
Mayor, I'm also not aware however we have a fixed contract so if they were required to do overtime that's already calculated in our cost for our budget. There is and i forget what the term is but for each staff person there's like an extra and it's for when they're being covered and various things when they go on vacation But to my knowledge, if there's overtime outside of us requesting it specifically for Avocado Festival or something like that maybe related to the e-bike enforcement we don't get charged for any additional overtime.
I appreciate that clarification thank you those are my questions
One quick question, Daisy if you wouldn't mind. Item 4 of Public Works it said that via Real at Padero you estimated to be the end of June in our notes it says it was estimated to be completed at the end of May is that just a mistake or is that a change or a modification?
I wrote that in there because that is what we were told verbally and then we were told recently best just to say June
Okay. That's what I thought, just wanted to confirm that.
The same contractor that's working on that Villarreal section is also the same contractor working on Wallace Avenue, which is what most people know as the Summerland on-ramp. That has been plagued with some unforeseen flooding issues so when you have a contractor working on both they kind of tend to respond to the emergency situation and As you know, we had a lot of rain. That's why we have so many mosquitoes So that they've been kind of tackling both projects at the same time Okay
any additional questions? Thank you for your report And I have a question for staff, just in terms of the county's hearings on their budget. Is there anything that we are doing as a city? Like will we have staff in attendance or how can we also stay up to date with maybe potential cuts that would affect the city?
Yes, Mayor. Good question. So we are aware of the cuts potentially related to the library and understand that the county is considering three different percentage scenarios for cuts. We receive I believe it's $150,000 from the county for our libraries so I think in Perhaps a worst-case scenario of like a 10% reduction. It could be about $15,000 in worst case so we're keeping an eye on that and then staff also will be monitoring Any news and updates more generally from the county budget process?
Is that money from the county is that is that a grant or is that pass through from residents on their tax bills
1:06 – 1:129 turns
Councilmember Clark, through the mayor. So my understanding is that it's a per capita amount that we receive but that the county gets to set so they can increase or decrease that per capita amount that's at the discretion of the board.
Seeing no other questions,
we will move on to item number eight which is the City Manager's Report.
As always, I encourage everyone to read the full City Manager's Report. We don't always cover every item in detail. There are helpful links there and these are just meant as brief general updates and if the Council were to have any item that wanted to go into more depth on happy to agendize that for a future meeting. I will just start for handing this over to Assistant City Manager Ryan Kentz to give us some employee updates, just speak to something that's not on the city manager's report that people may have heard of the Casitas Plaza Shopping Center was evacuated earlier because there was an explosion in the UPS store.
They had some assumptions on what it could have been, but not wanting to make any assumptions they did send in the bomb squad which is one helpful thing of having that contract with the sheriff and their ability to do that At the end of their investigation, discovered that it was a 20 pound fire extinguisher. Was what caused the explosion? There were no injuries but just happy with how the sheriff took that matter very seriously and ensured that we were safe but that was the result of that.
I don't know much more than that but if you have any questions, I'm happy to pass those along to our chief and get back to you. If there are none, I'll just turn it over to Ryan Kintz to give us some city employee updates.
Thank you Mr. Ramirez, Mayor, Council Members. So just a brief update on current employee and training items. So for recruitments the City currently has six active recruitments underway. The accounting specialist or accounting technician recruitment is currently pending screening of applications The library technician recruitment closes on March 29th. We have the lifeguard program coordinator recruitment that closes on March 25th, and the beach lifeguard and pool lifeguard recruitments both close on April 30th.
The maintenance worker one recruitment closed on March 22nd. Additional information on all those jobs is available on our website. And just to provide clarity, these are no new positions. We only add new positions when approved by the City Council and these are just replacing positions that have or either retiring or moving on to other positions. I also wanted to highlight some recent professional development by the Parks, Recreation and Community Services Department. Tori Cutbirth, Jenna Jenkins and Kaylin Pina they all attended the California Parks & Recreation Society Conference in Long Beach from March 11th through March 13th The conference provided educational sessions and networking opportunities focused on current practices, emerging trends and professional development in parks and recreation.
And then in addition the PRCS director Jeanette Gantt she did attend the National Recreation and Parks Association Director School from March 1st through March 5th This was the first year of the two-year Director's Academy program, which focuses on strategic planning, data informed decision making, organizational leadership and management of parks and recreation agencies. The program also provided an opportunity to engage with Parks and Recreation Directors from agencies across The country and I do want to circle back to our recruitments. I want to let the council know that we're actually getting a lot of applications for these positions, the maintenance worker one position. I just checked this morning We have 40 applicants which is an all-time record for that position So definitely a lot of activity and interest for people to work for the city and that concludes my remarks
I just have one quick follow-up question to something you said about the number of city employees. That has been, I think there's a misconception about that number and you had mentioned that new positions can only be formed when Council makes the decision to do that. Over the last say decade, do we have a rough sense of how stable or steady has that number of city employees been?
I can tell you the last five years, because that's in my mind. So starting in 2020 we had 40 positions and since then we've added three so in five years we've added three positions.
All right thank you I appreciate that and I appreciate you also preferencing the announcements of the positions by reiterating that these are not new positions Thank you.
Yes and if I, Vice Mayor Solorzano, if I could add we spoke on that I think last week and I realized that I missed one important fact to add is that one of those positions was fully funded by special funding for that position so you know if you don't take that one into account it didn't involve any additional city money it's only two positions over the last five years And one of those also is related to our ability to respond to our emergency operations plan and communications related to our transparency goals, and was also a very important one.
Thank you so much.
1:12 – 1:1713 turns
And I have a quick question in terms of, I'm happy to see that our Parks and Rec programs or department is attending professional development. I know that was an important piece to staff development. Out of curiosity do you know if there's any key takeaways of things that our director could begin to implement with the department?
I'll let our city manager Michael Ramirez ask that go ahead
Yes, Mayor. So I talked to Jeanette about it briefly. She's not here this evening but happy to add that as a summary to our city manager's report. I know that she was one of just a handful of people from California and was one of just a few with the smaller agencies in attendance so there were a number of ideas and things going around from much larger cities with different programs however i do know that she took away some information that you could apply Yeah, apply here and I'll have her add that to our city manager's report next meeting.
And then although it's not in your report, um, I did hear that JG's opened up junior guards. I heard week one filled up fairly quickly just curious about week or session two if you all can provide an update?
Yeah we can definitely track that and provide it in the CM report moving forward as we move towards finalizing those recruitments
It doesn't need to be moved. I mean an update would be nice at the next meeting.
Absolutely, we'll do that
And with that I'd like to turn it over to our Community Development Director Nick Bob Roth to give us some updates on community development related items
Thank you, Michael. Good evening Mayor Alarcon and Councilmembers. We've got just a couple items in here for you this evening. First up I wanted to share that the Klintner Mixed Use Project at 4745 Carpinteria Avenue is nearing project completion and we expect it will receive its final sign-offs either later this week or early next. The project includes 24 rental apartment units including three income restricted affordable units A six-room hotel and a ground floor commercial tenant space that's intended for future restaurant or cafe use. So possibly as soon as this week, you may see residents starting to move into the apartments. The hotel use might be trailing by a couple weeks depending on where things are at and I think the restaurant will trail a little bit farther behind as they still need to secure a tenant and do the interior build out of some of those facilities but it's coming along and we're excited to see that project wrapping up.
I also wanted to just remind your council and anyone watching from home that the project applicant team for the 5885 Carpinteria Avenue residential project, this is next door at the Teatime property will be hosting their community open house event on Thursday April 9th. From 6pm to 8pm at the Carpinteria Community Church, 1111 Valencena Road. The event is open to the public and it's intended to be an opportunity for interested persons to learn more about the proposed project, meet the project applicant team, and also an opportunity for the public to provide input back to the applicant team on what they might like to see there in terms of a revised project.
There is a website that's up for the project now that has some graphics and some initial preliminary information. The URL for that is www.thefarmcarpinteria.com, and folks can also subscribe on that website for email updates about the project. Lastly, I just wanted to share what we have coming up on a couple of our next meeting agendas for both the Architecture Review Board and the Planning Commission.
So this Thursday March 26th ARB will be taking a look at a proposed residential remodel and addition project over in the Conchaloma neighborhood at 5538 Cantolino Drive. The agenda and staff report are up for that on our city website. And then on April 6th, the Planning Commission will be holding a hearing as well to conduct continued review of the proposed Verizon Wireless communications facility located at 912 Linden Avenue.
We've been in contact with Verizon Wireless we expect that they're going to be asking the commission for an additional continuance time to continue in their negotiations and due diligence with the county about relocating this facility to another location. So I don't expect there's gonna be a lot of actual business conducted at this hearing other than just Chevron making that request for continuance, to give them more time to search that out.
And that concludes my City Manager's Report updates for you unless you have any questions for me?
Real quick Nick, you said Chevron?
I did not mention Chevron tonight, but I can...
No, no. You said restudying the Chevron.
Oh, I'm sorry. Restudied the Verizon wireless antenna location. Might have Chevron on my mind, but...
1:17 – 1:2313 turns
Thank you for clarifying.
And just a couple more items for the council. So one is, and for the community is we were going to have our CIP update scheduled for next Monday March 30th here in Council Chamber at 530 p.m. We'll be going through a similar exercise to what we just did with the budget but specifically for CIP and that will be led by Our Public Works Director, John Alasson with support from team General Government and also our Administrative Services Department. So looking forward to that we'll have an additional meeting on our CIP on the second meeting of April along with our mid-year and we just got done with with mid cycle but well or sorry we just got done with mid year and we'll be doing mid cycle already in our second meeting in April and so at that point in time we'll be looking at Other projects that have come up like the Tomal Interpretive Play Area and how those fit into our projects moving forward.
So we'll be doing that at that time, but next meeting we'll just be discussing our current projects and updates and any adjustments to funding or moving of fiscal years. And lastly, just touching on one of the other parks and rec items for the community garden. They're going to host a seed ball making workshop on Wednesday April 1st at 5 p.m. This will be led by our Parks Recreation and Community Services Program Director Tori Cutberg Participants will learn how to create California native seed balls which can be tossed into gardens to promote local biodiversity and support pollinator habitats.
With that, that concludes my city manager report happy to answer any additional questions.
We have questions?
I don't have a question, but I do handily enough know the answer to the junior lifeguard question. If I may make that update. Both sessions of junior lifeguards entirely sold out with the exception of the B group which is 12 and 13 and there are five spaces left there.
Thank you
for that. The aquatics program has added this after school After Junior Lifeguard program, so this is a new pilot program that Lexi Pursun has put in and it is 50% sold out. So that's a really cool program. So
there you go. Thank you for the update. Sure. And I do have one follow-up question. I wasn't sure if staff or council were able to determine if council members were able to attend the community outreach event held by... what did they call themselves? 5885 Carpinteria, the farm project. Are we able to attend that?
You know I think we have a determination on that and i'm just going to wait for Jenna to return and we'll add that in later but also was just reminded I just wanted to give a special shout out to council member mayor for being the keynote speaker at the carpentry children's project breakfast I still asking and don't know whether there's a recording of that, but it was very inspiring and would definitely be viral within our community if it was available. And so just want to say that was really great and I was definitely inspired as a city manager here.
Thank you. Thank you for being there.
We will now move on to public comment on matters not on the agenda. I do not have any speaker slips.
Mayor, I'm sorry we do have public comment for item number eight the city manager's report.
I do not have a speaker slip oh perfect thank you. Rogelio Delgado welcome
Thank you. Once again, it's about budget concerns. Number one, the current inflation. We can all feel it. Number two, the rising city expenditures on landscape services Number three, the sheriff's rising costs taking 40% of the city's budget. Number four, the big beautiful bill. The impact of that bill in our city basically after the midterm elections, Everything's going to happen on state and federal programs, grants.
Number five, I wonder about city personnel. Will hours be reduced? Maybe layoffs? Number six, what about the steps that the city steps are being considered in moving forward and trying to avoid, like Santa Barbara for example. I think that we should all, both the government and the people should work together on this for a healthy budget. Thank you
1:23 – 1:2912 turns
Thank you for your comments. I do not have any other speaker slips, do we have anyone via Zoom?
I'm here we have no zoom speakers.
I will close public comment yes
Yes, Mayor. So it was correct in my initial thought but so as one of the exemptions to the Brown Act is for ceremonial events so this would be covered under there however there are still always ways that a Brown Act exemption could still become a Brown Act violation so I would encourage the council to sit separately and of course not discuss any city business at that event however as a ceremonial event it would fall under that exemption
I think was your question about the Bluffs project meeting? It's about the farm. Yeah, she was asking about the farm project presentation.
I also wanted that response. Two for one! I can restate my question. Is if council can attend the Farm Project open house, if we can all be in attendance if we choose to? Or would that be a Brown Act violation because of the contents of what the farm project is doing?
Mayor Alarcon, that is a great question. If I can, I'd appreciate some time to think that over. We're still having communications with the Applicants' Legal Council to understand what they are proposing in terms of a format for the open house and so I think as we get more information there, we can provide better guidance to you all So I will be in touch. I don't want to provide incorrect guidance, so appreciate your question and we'll definitely be on in touch on that.
I would like say that in the past though we have not been able to go to those if it's a public forum
Mayor, one of the items I'll add is I imagine that would be difficult and especially past history it sounds like something we've avoided. One of the things that Jenna's talking about in terms of the format and some questions I recall us trying to clarify was I think it's scheduled from six to eight correct? And they have, did I get that time right? It's at 6-8 I think Yeah, I know they're going to start off with or at least proposed right now some sort of an intro. At the beginning however it's not necessarily crucial. I remember one of the clarifying questions i asked is does somebody have to be there at exactly six o'clock? Or what if they have some conflict and they're able to show up at 6 30 or 7?
And they assured me that there would be somebody there at the front to welcome and again they're not going to get the first opening If we may not attend, how do we get information about
what happened, how do we get information about what the public has been told? For example I've heard that they're they do have a proposal but they already have on the table that they're going to reduce the number of units and they're gonna move stuff around and are they gonna roll that out. And I mean I just don't want to be caught with all these citizens asking me questions when they probably know more than I do if they've attended the thing
Councilmember Clark, through the mayor. So I'd like to think that you all will be able to if not we'll definitely have somebody there to be able to gather that information and report back. One of the things that I think us as staff have been speaking to them about and I'd like also any folks listening that plan to attend to also engage in these types of conversations with them is regarding trade-offs So we know that they're at least initial their plan is to have like a sort of a stations thing and you can go around to these different stations and receive information. But I think it's very important that the community engage them about those trade offs as they talk about, you know A farm or reduced units or more affordable units offsite.
There is of course those who are going to want to voice opposition to the project as a whole and understand people's right to go ahead and do that However, it will also be very productive for folks to give them feedback on what they would like to see when they're weighing A versus B. I know that at the staff level that's what we are going to be asking them about in terms of the feedback that they get from the community. So encourage folks to engage in those types of conversations.
And council members, if I can add some additional thoughts in response to Council Member Clark's question. I think your question is a good one and I also think that if there is clarity that's needed at this point These are great questions to be asking the applicant at this meeting, right? They are the ones with the most information at this point. And so if there are questions about what is being proposed, please let members of the community know, advise them to show up to the open house with those questions.
1:29 – 1:3617 turns
What I would like to say on those points specific, in the past also instead of us attending we would have staff go take notes things like that. One of the main reasons that we at that time made the decision was a factor that if in fact they were open to suggestions and willing to change profile of the projects that they're presenting or proposing forward, that council if we were to engage in any kind of discussion may potentially affect the outcomes of those things without legally being a group.
So that was one of the reasons why we couldn't go just as potential.
Okay Did we close we officially closed public
comment Close public comment for item number eight and now we've got the general public comment next
excellent. Thank you. I just wanted sure Okay, we will move on to public comment on matters not in the agenda do we have any speaker slips No speaker slips do we have anyone via zoom?
We have no raised hands mayor.
I will close public comments Yes, that has not happened in quite some time. We will move on to the consent calendar and I'd like to open up public comment on the consent calendar. I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?
Once again, no Zoom speakers.
I will close public comment and bring it back to the council for a motion.
I move to approve the minutes of the regular meeting held March 9, 2026 and the special joint meeting held March 16, 2026. To receive and file the warrant register for the period of March 2 through March 13, 2016. Pursuant to the Carpinteria Municipal Code Section 2.08.150F, to receive and file the report on contracts executed by the City Manager for the period of February 3rd through March 2nd, 2026 To adopt resolution number 6440 as read by title only directing the city manager to prepare a report for the consideration of continuing street lighting district number one for the fiscal year 2026-2027.
6441 as read by title only, ordering the preparation of a report describing the financial status of the district and recommending assessments for fiscal year 26-27 for Carpinteria Lighting, Landscaping and Right-Of-Way Improvements District No. 3 Adopt Resolution No. 6442 as read by title only, ordering a report by the Downtown Tee Business Advisory Board for the purpose of continuing assessments for the Carpinteria Parking and Business Improvement Area Assessment District No. 4 for FY 26-27.
and to adopt Resolution No. 6443 as read by title only, ordering the preparation of a report describing the Winter Protection Berm Program and associated assessment, and continue the Winter Protection Berm Assessment District No. 5 for FY 26-27.
We have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes, and thank you Councilmember Mayer for reading all of those. That was a lot.
I do have a question on that if you wouldn't mind real quick this is for staff. On the proclamation we gave to the chamber itself, I noticed that we didn't have anybody from the downtown T business advisory were they invited to the event
Council Member Nomura, no it was just the chamber but for next year's proclamation we can certainly invite members.
I would encourage that only because it seemed pretty evident that they were not invited or included. Thank you
We will now move on to, we will have no items under administrative matters due to the agenda modification and we will move on to the public hearing where we will listen to items number 16 and 17. We'll start with 16 which is public hearing to declare the results of the property owner protest ballot proceeding for the formation of Carpinteria Landscape Maintenance District Number 2025-1 and the levy of assessments commencing fiscal year 2026-2027.
And we will now continue the March 9th, 2026 public hearing regarding the proposed Landscape Maintenance District number 2025-1 for the purpose of declaring the results of the tabulation and if no majority protest exists considering formation of the Carpinteria Landscape Maintenance District number 2025- 1 and levy of assessments for fiscal year 2026-2027. Following the close of the public testimony portion of the public hearing on March 9th, 2026 City Council announced the close of the period for submitting ballots and directed the tabulation.
of ballots to occur in public view to determine whether a majority protest exists. Before we proceed to announce the results of the protest ballot tabulation, we would like to invite any remaining public testimony, anyone wishing to speak on the proposed formation of the district or the assessments should present a speaker card to the city clerk. So I'll be opening up public comment on this item. I do not have any speaker slips and do we have anyone via Zoom?
There we have no zoom speakers.
I will close public comment and will the city clerk please announce the results of the protest ballot tabulation and indicate whether a majority protest exists?
Thank you, Mayor. The results of the property owner protest ballot proceeding indicate that a majority protest exists. This means that ballots submitted in opposition to the proposed assessment represent a majority of the weighted assessment ballots returned. Therefore, pursuant to Article 13d of the California Constitution and the applicable provisions of the Government Code, the proposed assessment shall not be imposed.
1:36 – 1:4311 turns
I'd like to open it up to Council for any questions that you might
have. Sure, yeah. I have a couple of questions. I think going forward it's really important for voters to know and understand what it means that this was rejected. This was a fairly minimal increase to an assessment that hadn't been increased since the 1990s. And I know that just like for folks who work or who have any sort of income themselves If wages hadn't increased since the 90s and you were still trying to keep up with payments in 2026, that would pose a significant problem. So I wanted to ask what can residents expect to see as a result of this assessment being rejected?
Yes, thank you vice mayor. Yeah I mean it's a big hit to the city for sure um so since since the assessment is not going to be updated uh this city will definitely continue to rely on subsidies from the general fund measure A and other discretionary sources going forward just like we have been for the past 30 years. So but we do project that those costs to continue to increase just like they have i mean we are seeing inflation continuing to go up So it's going to be tough because the City Council is going to have to prioritize some of that funding. So as the council knows, you know those two assessments mainly or we can just talk about landscape for now but just landscape was going to bring in about a million additional funding for the city and again just to remind the council that was just to cover the costs of providing those services of the assessment district and that's it just costs revenue matching So, you know the specific impacts will depend on future City Council decisions.
But we know for sure that you're going to have to reprioritize funding away from other programs and services. We've talked about a lot how in fiscal year 28 we are going to be facing some major fiscal challenges especially if we don't proceed with some additional revenue generation some long-standing ongoing revenue generation not something that's just one year needs to be ongoing But you know in terms of specific to the assessment district there, you know Conceivably the council could direct us to reduce the frequency of landscape maintenance throughout the city We could we might have to delay tree trimming cycles Slowing response times just because we're limited staffing for tree damage related to tree damage And then the big one really is, you know, the programs and services.
One of the main ones we take from...one of the funds we take from is Measure A. And that's primarily for, you know, our CIP projects in streets and roads. And so we're going to have to continue to take from there. So that means there's less funding to do those types of services.
So it will be important for the public to understand that if there is less street maintenance going on, then that's one of the very natural consequences of having voted against this assessment. Is that
right? 100%. Yeah and again these will be decisions that your council will have to make in the future as we move forward with grappling with this lack of funding.
And some of the comments that I've seen in the community or heard have been, their perception was that these increased assessments were meant to try to tax the city's way out of budgetary concerns. Can you speak to that a little bit as to whether it was that? Absolutely. Yeah because my understanding of what the assessments were meant to do is not that and so can you just from your perspective
No, we conducted a very transparent process. We conducted an engineering report assessment and what that showed was we are providing... taking from the general fund and other funds including Measure A like I mentioned to subsidize the services for the assessment district for landscape so all we were doing as part of this process that was implemented by the City Council in the direction of the City Council to maintain fiscal sustainability for the city is to match what the costs are to provide those services. So we weren't trying to tax our way out of anything, we were simply just trying to ensure that the revenue that's coming in matches what it costs to provide those services within the assessment district."
And Vice Mayor Solorzano, through the mayor if I can add something there. Your question brought up a great point so something that's very specific to a special benefit assessment is that the funds that would be obtained through that special benefit assessment can only be used for very special purposes in this case these special benefits that residents are receiving from this assessment and so they're really limited to providing those services to the residents. They can't be used to supplement or augment other parts of the city's budget.
Right. No, I appreciate that and I also just want to say I appreciate the people who voted in favor of the assessments. It's really important going forward for residents to understand what the budgetary challenges we're gonna be facing are and this was one vehicle to do that that was a very reasonable amount, a very small amount so I wanna thank staff for all the work that you did on trying to push this forward.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Actually, this is a common comment for staff to take a look at. Realizing that this measure did fail and that we are going to be short on funds for landscape maintenance ongoing maintenance I'd like to suggest we take a look at the new incoming landscape projects that we have coming in under Public Works Evaluate those and be a little bit more specific on minimizing maintenance. In other words, we're having trouble with street trees right now. There are ways to mediate or moderate the amount of damage done by root systems, by trees themselves, maybe even the tree selection.
Also, we are no longer using turf as part of the parkway strips. We are going to plants. My concern is that, for example, the landscape plan and project that came through on the walkway adjacent to the creek project That one in my opinion was over planted, over landscape. We should have taken a look more at minimizing planting and maximizing more hardscape for ease of maintenance and for minimal water use and consumption.
1:43 – 1:538 turns
Mayor, if I could. So Council Member Nomura point taken on that we'll definitely be revisiting that over the coming weeks one of the things that the city will have to look at as well related to trees is as you mentioned we had tree selections an important thing and several years ago when these trees were planted there wasn't the forethought for the damage that it would do to our sidewalks in our streets and so to this point the city has been able maintain a strategy of preserving those trees at all costs, even if it meant refixing those sidewalks and those streets over and over again. The city's going to lose its ability to continue to refix those sidewalks and is going to have to take a different strategy of replanting and putting in the appropriate trees that won't cause that ongoing cost.
You know, however, you know it's going to take many years for those those trees to mature and that's just one example of some of the things that are happening. Wanting to make some other comments from Vice Mayor Solosano that she brought up that I think are important, Things that I've heard recently is about the city being subject to the market conditions that are facing all of us. And the interesting thing with us as a city is we only face half of the market condition, so we face the increase in expenses however whereas gas and groceries And every other service around us is able to increase their costs at their own discretion to match the cost of their new expenses. The city has to ask permission to increase those rates, and that's what this assessment district process was.
So we are subject to them but only on half and unable to do what other folks do. Comments I've heard around belt tightening, and I mentioned in previous meetings that we are definitely doing that already. The issue is because of the trajectories in the example that you gave about if wages didn't increase from the 90s, you can imagine what that kind of belt tightening would be in the early 2000s, the 2010s, all the way to where we're at now. At first it might be cutting your gym membership. A few years later you're cutting your health care And then it starts to get progressively worse because you can't belt tighten your way out of those types of trajectories where your expenses are just going up at that rate and your revenues aren't. The only way to resolve this issue would be a combination of looking at ways to be more efficient with our funds, to definitely tighten where we can while we're in this moment but the ultimate solution has to be increasing revenues Any additional
questions?
Real quick, there is one item I did fail to mention. Some of the municipalities that have had issues and challenges with street trees specific most of them ended up being the, I would say more watered areas along the coastline They actually put in place a 25 and 30 years recycle or replanting of trees themselves. So after 25 to 30 year cycle of that tree, it is then replanted in specific neighborhoods. If you stagger that throughout, you won't have a full community that has to be reforested all with young immature plants but at least this way you could cycle through the community.
Council Member Nomura, point taken as well and coincidentally I spent this weekend and had a chance to visit our past city manager Dave Derflinger. And we can't for whatever reason can't get away from talking about work even when we're not there and we spoke about that exact idea And the issue and the reason why there, I think we have to get exactly to where you're saying but why there's going to be some early pain points is that, and we've heard Dave say this last year at State of the City, is that all of our pavement and tree planting happened between the 60s and 70s. And it's all deteriorating at the same time or the trees are all hitting that point of where that damage is happening at the same time and creating a little bit of an inability to do the staggering that we do, we will need to change too.
So I think what we're looking at is maybe a major overhaul that's going to be noticeable for folks with us looking to have some sort of system like you mentioned in the years moving forward.
And i'd like to just say I appreciate your explanation or your Just what you're sharing in terms of the belt tightening, because I hear that often and feel pressure in terms of like yes we need to spend less but the reality is that we are really status quo in a lot of what the city is doing and is managing things or departments with small budgets. And like you all said earlier We've had three new positions in the last five years and so How can we?
especially just after the update from the county in terms of their building a strategy and their hearings like How can the council have more in-depth look on, I mean this assessment district is just on trees right? But it's clear that trees need to be addressed. Sidewalks need to be addressed because they're safety hazards at least in my opinion. Streets need to be a priority that's my opinion as well so I think my question is how can we...I'm feeling this pressure to really like deep dive into The budget on some of these these items and I want to know how we can best do that in a way That's yes transparent, but also give the council an opportunity to really ask these hard-hitting questions because I Think we are doing what we can with the budget that we have.
I don't think we're spending more than what we need to but there's still that pressure of Spending less or not allocating as many dollars to certain things. So open-ended question, but I'd like to hear what
Yeah, Mayor. That's a great question and one of the things that we're going to be addressing in our finance committee meetings moving forward and then looking to make a part of that second meeting in April as we look at you know our CIP is one of the big deals here I know a lot of times we get a lot more participation at our operations part of the budget meeting but our CIP is equal to or greater than that and has a larger impact on the city and so we're going to be looking at all of that and coming to the council with solutions.
that there's a number of different concepts out there that we'll be able to explore. The city hasn't borrowed any monies since 1989, and I think I was having conversations related to the pool and the parking lot and a number of things. But as things increase, the city will have to look at creative ways to save money. So with our last pavement project, we know that the original engineer's estimate came somewhere in the $3 million range And by the time we had a chance to pave it, it was $6.5 million. So would the city have been better off borrowing or using different funds to get it done at the $3 million price so that we didn't have to pay the 6.5 million? But that's also difficult.
thing for people when we haven't borrowed in so long and there's a certain amount of pride that comes with us not having to do that. However, we're looking at Goleta and those who just put out bonds for millions of dollars to fix all of their streets because they realize if they wait till they have the money saved oftentimes by the time you get the money saved it doesn't cover the cost of the work anymore. So it's going to be creative options like that that will be bringing to the council for revenue generation Borrowing a number of different things and then the council will have a chance to vet staff's analysis and then make decisions on that moving forward.
One quick follow-up comment is I think that it's really important for us to do the deep dive into the budget and to understand that, and I also think it's really important for residents to understand though that stopping new revenue sources is going to mean cutting spending to things that they value a lot. So when people give us comments like the city needs to spend less just stop spending That's going to inevitably be on some programs that are important to them too individually because everybody you know it It's hard that I know it's really easy Rather, it's easy to think that things should be cut as long as they're not the things that are important to you or that you prioritize their need and I would just encourage residents to try to think about The fact that the city is it.
It's in the business of providing services to the residents and it has to be a partnership in order to move forward because Everything we pay for now, whether it's groceries or gas is so much more than it was 30 years ago and the same It's the same with the cost that the city comes across when we're trying to provide services to the public So I just I hope that there can be a balance of really like looking into the budget But also understanding that the bottom line is we do need more revenue sources because prices are going up everywhere no matter what
Point taken Vice Mayor Solorzano that there's a number of you know, there's the idea of unfunded state mandates that people have heard for years. The city is subject to those as well We have things that we can't cut without you know With that negatively impacted the city ability to receive funding For other things from the state and so those things have to be kept up and I don't think You know, that's something we'll have to work on as staff to communicate that to the public about the things that we have to do. Things related to trees and sidewalks you can let those go and save money but then when you have trip and fall incidents and claims it can cost the city more money in the long run so there's going to be places where we have options and there's going to be places where We don't, but it comes down to then those discretionary things that the council has the opportunity to decide on every year related to programs that we support in the community and various things that are going to be those items that we're going to be considering if we continue on this trajectory.
1:53 – 1:5910 turns
Any additional questions? No additional questions I'll ask for a motion from the Council
I'll move that the City Council direct the city clerk to declare the results of the property owner protest ballot proceeding for the formation of the Carpinteria Landscape Maintenance District number 2025-1, approve resolution number 6446 closing the public hearing certifying the results of the property owner protest ballot proceeding and since a majority protest exists abandoning the proceedings for the formation of the Carpinteria Landscape Maintenance District number 2025-1 and levy of assessments for FY 2026-27.
We have a first and a second roll call vote please.
We will move on to item number 17, which is public hearing to declare the results of the property owner protest ballot proceeding for the formation of Carpinteria Coastal Burma Assessment District and the levy of assessments commencing fiscal year 2026-2027. So we now continue the March 9th, 2026 public hearing regarding the proposed Carpinteria Coastal Berm Assessment District for the purpose of declaring the results of the tabulation and if no majority protest exists considering formation of the Coastal Berm Assessment District and levy of assessments for fiscal year.
2026-2027. Following the close of the public testimony portion of the public hearing on March 9th, 2026 City Council announced the close of the period for submitting ballots and directed the tabulation of ballots to occur in public view to determine whether majority protest exists. Before we proceed to announce the results of the protest ballot tabulation, we would like to invite any remaining public testimony. Anyone wishing to speak on the proposed formation of the district where the assessments should present a speaker card to the city clerk and that what this means is opening public comment I do not have any speaker slips Mayor, we have no one on Zoom. Okay, no one on Zoom. We will close public comment and I will ask will the City Clerk please announce the results of the protest ballot tabulation and indicate whether majority protest exists?
Thank you mayor. The results of the property owner protest ballot proceeding indicate that a majority protest exists this means that ballots submitted in opposition to the proposed assessment represent a majority of the weighted assessment Thank you. I'd like to bring it to the council and open up any questions or comments.
Sure. So given the fact that the current assessment income from the berm is not enough to sustain it, is it possible to opt to keep the berm up year-round and just pay for putting it up and not taking it down and putting it up? Would that be an option?
That's a really good question and you know staff did explore that. The city's berm program is governed by permits issued by multiple regulatory agencies including California Coastal Commission, Department of Fish & Wildlife, Regional Water Quality Board and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers So those permits really specifically require that the berm be constructed and removed within a defined seasonal timeline.
So leaving the berm in place year-round would not be consistent with those existing permits, so we'd actually have to... Oh, and then if we do that without getting new permits, we would expose the city to regulatory violations and fines and stuff. So any change to year-round berm would require a new or amended permits to do that, including environmental review, biological monitoring requirements and approval from those multiple agencies that I mentioned.
That process would be extremely complex, very time consuming, expensive, and it might not even guarantee that it would be approved. So it's not the best option but if that's the direction of the council, it is something we can definitely explore.
Well, I think given that basically the assessments are not paying for the maintenance of the berm. Are there any other cost savings that we can apply to the berm? And I don't know if the answer might be that there isn't but I just given that the property owners opted to not increase their rates you know to actually sustain the berm Are there any ways that we can tinker with the dimensions of it or the height, or anything like that?
Yeah. Thanks Vice Mayor. Short answer, unfortunately no. The berm unlike the Landscape Maintenance District really has those strict permitting requirements that we have to maintain and manage So like I said, the seasonal construction and removal requirements that are under the regulatory permits, environmental monitoring and reporting emergency response during storm events, labor equipment and material costs. Those are the main cost drivers and there's not much flexibility to those. So unfortunately besides potentially leaving the berm up year round, there's really no other cost saving measures with the berm that we can institute.
Thank you.
1:59 – 2:0813 turns
Ryan, I do have a question or something we may want to look into. I know the Channel Counties Division of League of California Cities they're going through a lot of initiatives right now because of the loss of erosion of beaches so they're losing sand in itself. We on the other hand are just the opposite because you're a north-facing beach I bring this up because there is potential that funding is going to start coming more to the Channel Cities areas, and that would be in the way of re-sanding beaches. If this were the case we may be able to fit that into some of the upcoming grants as a potential, something you may want to just look into.
Councilmember Nomura noted a south-facing beach and you know as we look at various things that we have in our CIP, the dune management system and those types of things. Those are going to some more permanent solutions that we're going to look at. And I'm sure you know, that's gonna have its pros and cons as folks that are there on the shore of have enjoyed various clear views of the berm going up and coming down is we have to look at more permanent solutions. Those are things that I think those property owners will be taking into account thinking about
Real quick, one of the challenges I see is the closest one. That is Ventura-Port Wainimi where they're losing substantial amounts of sand on the beaches themselves. One of the solutions that was posed forward is that they try and figure out some way to retain the sands that are north of them being us. So that may in fact assist us as far as trying to fund it and having the beach sand actually stored here in Carpinteria.
Any additional questions or thoughts? I think just to sum it up, I think it just puts us in a difficult situation having that this is the assessment district didn't pass or in the way that we had hoped for. And so just encourage staff to take a really close look in terms of how our costs expenses with the berm. The berm itself was probably something I don't know if there's certain requirements to do the entire beach or maybe we've done the entire beach just because in the past, but reexamining or analyzing how we've done that. How we've laid it out to see if there are any cost savings.
I would like to bring up one point. Sorry, this is very specific to the actual measure itself that failed and that was the reason for this was because of the sea level rising factor and the more vulnerable properties in areas we have along the beach. I would highly recommend that we start tracking to see what in fact results we are getting from the sea level rise to see if in fact we are becoming vulnerable quicker than later At least this way, having a tracking of that one to current times would give us justification potentially to readdress this. Take a look at it and do a restudy.
Appreciate that comment councilmember Nomura because I think there is some pretty Strong evidence just in the last it wasn't last year. I think it was a year before when the water did breach the berm at ash Right and it went over and it went into the neighborhoods And I thought that maybe that might have been something that that property owners in that Beach neighborhood Might might have remembered because that was pretty shocking It really And so to your point exactly, I think that we are seeing the impacts of that sea level rise much sooner than people anticipated. But I guess it wasn't enough to have people want to pay a little bit more to sustain the berm.
I actually have a question. How, well one the estimated cost of the city to do this these assessment ballots what was the cost that we spent and then two for this in particular you know after that the last comment would it be beneficial for us to redo this assessment in the future how easy would it be like would we have to spend the same amount of money that we did this last round And this one was what 44 in support and 56 in opposition in terms of percentage wise
Yeah, mayor those are really good questions. So in terms of the cost That's something we'll have to follow up with you I can I can definitely dig into the budget and get those numbers Of course The city attorney office helped a lot and those numbers will be a little harder to quantify because they'll have to look at their invoices And then sorry, what was your second question?
Oh, if we could... would it be a cost savings if we decided to do this
again for the
berm?
Yes. So you know we've talked about this and with staff and also our consultants. The Prop 218 process is really hard. It's very challenging. Number one there's a lot of strict legal rules we have to follow. It can be confusing to the property owners Number two, it is a property owner process not a voter process so you tend to get differing different voter numbers than you would if it was in a regular election that doesn't just have property owners.
And then three it is very time-consuming and extended and it does cost money. It's expensive You know, I think the LMD and the staff has discussed this I think the landscape one is likely one we should abandon and and look at other ways to Bring in revenue for the city to cover those costs the berm I think does and Michael and I have discussed this I think it does present some opportunity because the ballot was so close.
The ballot count was close, roughly 11 ballots give or take. So that's close. It was a close one. So I think there is some potential there again. The berm only brings in 20,000 right now it would bring in 100 if to cover the cost. Again not a substantial amount of money. We would have to weigh the return on investment and the cost to do it again Versus the ongoing and then as Michael mentioned there's other plans in the works like the dune management plan That could potentially resolve the issue going forward So I think it's something that staff can definitely explore if the council wants us to do it again But I do think and Michael can expand on this.
I Do think we should start looking at other avenues to bring in revenue for the city
Mayor, I'll just add that it's $100,000 plus. We'll get that exact number for you but that was one of the reasons I think I'd explained in past meetings why that escalator was built in there that would allow the council to increase it because the cost of just going through this process a hundred two hundred thousand dollars when you have to do all the various legal items that are with it would just eat up you know a lot of that money if we were doing this at you know Every single year every few years, and so I think Ryan said it correctly. We'll be maybe looking at the winter berm versus the landscape You know he heard comments about you know the community not necessarily supporting it and because of the reasons that Ryan mentioned about this being a property owner vote, right?
And that's one of the tough things about this as the assessments didn't pass and you look to reduce services for people who live in town. Not all of those people who live in town had the opportunity to vote. I heard from, you know, a number of people were very in support of what we were doing but if they rented or again didn't own a property um you know on the shoreline to even weigh in on the um on the winter berm they didn't have an opportunity to vote either because they weren't in the district or because they weren't property owners and it's tough because the impact will affect folks that that live here.
And there are other items that we're looking at similar situations with where we'll have the council will have to consider our parks maintenance tax, the landscape maintenance district covered everything outside of the parks in the cities right away At some point in time, we're going to have to look at all the maintenance the city has done in the parks and consider whether it's worth going through that process. It's different than the 218 process but it's also a very difficult one that requires super majority of 67 percent but we're in a very similar position and depending on you know the feedback that we receive about this moving forward will be whether the council and you know staff want to consider looking at that you know in the years ahead
2:08 – 2:095 turns
And then I'll just add one more thing, thank you Michael. We do have the revenue analysis study that was conducted by HDL as per the City Council's direction and we are bringing that to the council at the next meeting April 13th and we will be analyzing that study with the council on asking for direction to proceed with some sort of revenue measure based on the council's direction.
Thank you. Now we'll bring it back to the council for a motion
I'll move that the City Council direct the city clerk to declare the results of the property owner protest ballot proceeding for the formation of the Carpinteria Coastal Berm Assessment District. Approve resolution number 6447, closing the public hearing certifying the results of the property owner protest ballot proceeding and since a majority protest exists abandoning the proceedings for the formation of the Carpinteria Coastal Berm Assessment District and levy of assessments for FY 2026-27. Second
We have a first and second roll call vote please
And I'll now ask for a 10 minute recess. We'll be back
2:25 – 2:362 turns
Today is March 23rd, 2026. And we will resume our council meeting with item number 18 which is the City's 2025 General Plan Annual Progress Report to the Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation LCI and the California Department of Housing and Community Development HCD.
Thank you, Mayor and Councilmembers. My name is Megan Mussoff and I will be giving a brief overview of the General Plan Annual Progress Report. Of course this is a much longer report and so for brevity I will try to just be hitting the highlights this evening. A little bit of background on why we do this report every year. This is a required annual report on the city's general plan pursuant to government code 65400. We submit this report annually to the governor's office of land use and climate innovation as well as housing and community development each year And this report is separate from but related to the housing element annual progress report, which your council approved at the most recent City Council meeting before this. The purpose of this report is really just to provide both the state of California as well as the public with information and updates on what the city has been doing to implement the goals and policies of the general plan.
This document has five main sections, an introduction, a review of development activities and projects, and a program review. This is mostly planning and building-related items. The main section of the report is the general plan elements and implementation which is where we review the progress under each element that's been made throughout the year. The fourth section is if there have been any amendments to the general plan slash coastal land use plan and the zoning code during the reporting year.
And finally, a section called goals priorities and objectives. And here's where we're trying to show the ties between the city's current strategic plan and our general plan. So to begin some of the highlights from 2025, in that year the city issued 330 total building permits and 12 certificates of occupancy for residential units. And this is an increase in the total number of building permits from the prior year.
Our architectural review board reviewed 22 separate projects throughout the year and our planning commission held eight meetings in 2025. At these meetings they approved six development plans, three conditional use permits and certified one environmental impact report which was for the Chevron oil and gas processing plant decommissioning. And a couple of highlights from your council's actions last year. In 2025, the City Council moved to form a standing public engagement committee. Your council adopted citywide goals and values for our two-year strategic plan The council adopted the California Coastal Commission modifications in order for us to implement our Housing Element Program 1, and this program created the new residential mixed-use zone and our objective design standards.
The council approved a memorandum of agreement with Santa Barbara County's Office of Emergency Management for some disaster preparedness tools so the REDI SBC alerts and the Genesis emergency zone mapping system Your council heard an appeal of the Chevron decommissioning project and voted to uphold the Planning Commission's decision to approve the project. Your council designated $10,000 for nonprofits supporting our immigrant community in Carpinteria.
And we celebrated the city's 60th anniversary in 2025 which was exciting and along with that we also held a State of the City event. So now I'll move into just reviewing a couple of the highlights from each of the elements of the general plan. Again, these are just highlights there are many more programs and actions noted in the complete report. Our land use element has strong overlap with our 2025 housing element Implementation. And again, I just covered the housing element annual progress report at our last meeting but I think the key item here is that in 2025 we implemented program one which created enough zoned capacity in the city to accommodate arena allocation which is very important.
Additionally, staff created the proposed housing project section on our city website to provide the public with information on applications for housing projects which propose 25 or more units in the interest of public information and transparency. For our community design element in 2025, the objective design standards took effect. These design standards apply in the new residential mixed use zone as well as for any projects that are wanting to use streamlined permitting review under state law.
And these objective design standards provide a minimum level of required detail and design for projects to adhere with so that when the Architectural Review Board and Planning Commission don't have the authority to review them as ministerial projects. The circulation element is all about how people move in and through the city. The Planning Commission approved the Franklin Creek Trail improvement in July, and the Architectural Review Board gave their final approval in October.
This project will provide an accessible pathway connecting 7th Street to Carpinteria Avenue. And also, the construction contract was granted in summer 2025 for the Linden Avenue Improvements Project between Carpinteria Avenue and Sawyer Avenue. The main construction on this is mainly complete and this project provides upgrades to bicycle pedestrian and stormwater infrastructure on this key road in the city.
And for our Open Space Recreation and Conservation element, in February of 2025 the Land Trust of Santa Barbara County announced that they had acquired approximately two-and-a-half acres at the far east end of Carpinteria now known as the Rincon Gateway. And no formal agreement has been formed between the land trust and the city. However, this acquisition by the land trust does open possibilities for these parcels to potentially expand the Rincon Bluffs Preserve.
Over at Monte Vista Park, the off-leash dog park pilot program continued for its second year to allow Parks Recreation and Community Services to assemble an application to form a permanent dog park at the same location at Monte Vista Park. This was actually a pretty big year for our citywide safety efforts. CERT, the Community Emergency Response Team trainings resumed in 2025 after a fairly long hiatus. The CERT training wrapped up in July and resulted in a new cohort of residents with disaster response training.
City staff also participated in EOC, Emergency Operations Center Shelter preparation trainings in the event that the city has to open up an emergency shelter. And FEMA approved our new flood insurance rate maps for the city, which will become effective in June of this year and these are the maps that show in the city where our special flood hazard areas are.
For our noise element, the city continues to require entertainment licenses for businesses that host live music. And these licenses have conditions attached to them that help to mitigate noise, for example certain hours of the day or number of days per week that live entertainment is allowed. Moving along to our public facilities and services element, the Living Shoreline project made progress in 2025. The consultant for the environmental review and engineering design services was selected for this project, and they began work on early planning and technical studies for the Living Shoreline. This project will use nature-based techniques to provide onshore...to protect onshore properties and infrastructure from flooding and sea level rise.
And over at the pool, consultants and the city conducted a facilities needs assessment in April 2025 and identified about $1.2 million in necessary repairs. Staff have pursued multiple grant opportunities to fund this project and a request for proposals for project design was released in November. Parks, Recreation & Community Services has reviewed the three responses to this RFP and is currently in contract negotiations with The Top Pick.
And the last thing that I'll touch on is our current general plan update that we are undergoing. While this report is based on the city's current 2003 general plan, we do continue to make progress towards our new general plan. A few weeks ago, an updated draft of this document was uploaded to the project website. And this is accessible through the Hot Topics. So if you go to the city's main webpage and just scroll all the way down to the bottom, you'll see this grid of hot topics. And the Coastal Land Use Plan slash General Plan update is available here at the center bottom.
This updated draft that we uploaded shows some strikeout underline with comments explaining some of the larger changes that have been made since the last draft was released. The next step for our general plan update is environmental review, which will begin with a notice of preparation and a public scoping meeting for the draft programmatic environmental impact report. And as always, members of the public can sign up for our general plan update newsletter to receive project updates as they come.
So that brings me to the end of my staff presentation. Staff's recommendation is for your council to accept this report and direct the community development department director to submit this report to LCI and HCD. I want to thank my colleagues in the other city departments for contributing Questions from Council?
2:36 – 2:4220 turns
Sure, just two quick questions. First of all I thought the report was really a great resource document to just show what's been accomplished over the past year in the community design element it was helpful to be reminded of some of those design guidelines that we have in place for some neighborhoods in the city. I think it's for Conchaloma, The Beach neighborhood and then single-family neighborhoods north of Highway 101. Are there plans to continue doing that in the other neighborhoods within the city in the future?
Thank you, Vice Mayor. That's a good question. We do have the intention of continuing to develop design guidelines as well as potentially more objective design standards like we did for the residential mixed-use district I believe this effort is in our strategic plan. It may be more of an on-deck item. Nick can correct me if I'm wrong, just due to staff capacity, staff workloads, other competing priorities but it is the Community Development Department's intention to continue to write these design guidelines and standards.
Thanks Megan, just to add on to that Vice Mayor. So right now in the current general plan it does call for eventually developing additional design guidelines for these other neighborhood districts in the city and to Megan's point I think going forward our emphasis is going to be to move away from these more subjective guidelines and instead really focus in particularly for residential areas or areas that can accommodate residential development moving towards objective standards So I think it'll still get us to the same end point, but it may take a slightly different form.
That makes sense thank you and then my just my other question is in the circulation element one of the projects mentioned was that Linden Avenue improvements project which just seemed to wrap up um I think if the work looks really good some community questions I've received about that are why that project was taken on instead of maybe other capital projects. And so I just wanted to confirm what was the funding source for that Linden Avenue Improvements Project?
I'll invite our Public Works Director, Jonna Lawson to come up and answer that question.
Through the Mayor, Vice-Mayor, Solar Snow Council members, good evening. So the source of the funding for the Linden Avenue Improvements Project between Carpinteria Avenue and the Linden Avenue Overcrossing is it's called the Circulation Improvements Fund and that is measure a money that was allocated or appropriate to the City of Carpinteria due to the Caltrans Highway 101 project So they are discretionary for a restricted fund specifically for pedestrian bicycle improvements, which this particular project is.
Right. So I think some of the confusion was maybe not understanding that that wouldn't be the same bucket of money that we would use for, say like the general pavement rehabilitation project or other things like that. I just want to kind of call out that there was a specific funding source that was for this Linden Avenue project. That's funding that could not have been used for unrelated projects.
That's correct. I appreciate you being educated on that. There are misconceptions about that But the circulation improvement is specifically for pedestrian and bicycle improvements. Unfortunately not for pavement.
Right, thank you very much.
Do we have any additional questions from Council?
Actually, I do real quick. John, hate to bring you back up here again but the question same project that's why it was going to ask you about with that project being almost done when we say that is there any I would say improvements to the side where the asphalt has not been yet worked on? Is it going to be slurred or anything like that or just remain the way it is?
Through the Mayor, Council Member Nomura. Coincidentally the Public Works Department staff, the construction management staff and the contractor Toro Enterprises are going through the construction accounting of the project and this is not a promise but we're gonna look at particular the funds that would be reamed because right now What it seems like there may be additional funding from the project budget to do so. And I already reached out to the president of Toro Enterprises to see what we could, they could do for us with the remaining funds. So right now it's a negotiation, so it's not nothing concrete or any type of promise in that way but That is coincidentally we are looking at as Resurfacing the entire street you've as you probably notice.
It's just half the street Yeah, and this has to do with the pavement transition
Right. Yeah.
Okay. Thank you
Okay, seeing no other questions I will open up public comment I do not have any speaker slips Do we have anyone via zoom
mayor? We have no raised hands
I will close public comment and bring it back to the council for any further questions or comments, and of course a motion.
I move to accept the 2025 General Plan Annual Progress Report and to direct the Community Development Director to submit the report to the Governor's Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation and the Department of Housing and Community Development. Second.
We have a first and second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Motion passes. Thank you for your presentation and all your work on that. We will now
move on to item number 19, which is resolution adopting the City Council policy titled Policy on Policies and initiating a legal policy audit.
2:42 – 2:492 turns
Good evening Mayor, Council Members yes thank you so much. I'm really excited to have our Management Analyst Ryan Benson present this item to you tonight. This is just a process of improving our transparency and our efficiency as per the City Council's strategic goal setting sessions guidance that you've provided staff and so i'll turn it over to Ryan Benson now to present this item.
All right, good evening mayor. Good evening members of the council tonight I'm presenting the policy on policies update. Okay let's go. This project began as a directive from Ryan Kintz, the Assistant City Manager to audit the city's existing administrative policies. During the consolidation of policies, the city clerk Brian Barron and I realized that this project was not as simple as updating a few outdated policies and then consolidating all those into a repository.
We realized that the entire system for managing policies needed to have a revision With this in mind, Brian and I designed a new policy framework that's intended to outlast any staffing changes in the future. So we kind of built it to last. Tonight, I'm going to be presenting why the Policy on Policies update was necessary, the new policy framework, and then onto discussing next steps.
So as an overview, Chapter 2 in the Municipal Code, the City Manager maintains operational control for the city. Higher level council and city manager approved policies and then lower-level department procedures define how these operations are conducted. When policies and procedures are up to date, when they're clearly understood and are implemented throughout the organization those policies then help point the city towards council directives as well as keeping the city in a federal and state law compliance.
The original 1968 policy on policies authorized the city manager to issue administrative regulations and established a centralized repository for city policies called the Administrative Manual. And it's still used today, it's in Brian's office. However, the resolution didn't have a framework to manage the life cycle of policies with regards to creating, amending and then removing those policies.
And so because of that there's just this pile up of created policies, amended policies and then outdated policies and it's what we call a policy mound And so because of this policy pile-up, city operations are affected. Confusion sets in. For example some staff might follow one policy that was adopted in 2006 while another staff member might follow a more updated policy.
Understandably this might cause some internal operational friction The more pressing issue, though, is from a risk management and human resources standpoint. So every five years California Joint Powers Insurance Authority, CJPIA, they do an organizational audit of the city. One of the things they check for is if our policies are in compliance to federal and state laws.
When laws are implemented or changed, policies also need to be created or updated as well. So what this new policy framework does is it ensures that staff efficiently integrates those changes from the state or from the federal law or local law From a human resources perspective, policies are important for retaining institutional knowledge amongst the staff.
When a staff member leaves their knowledge and processes might leave with them so our new policy framework helps maintain that institutional knowledge when everybody leaves and transitions on. To develop this new policy framework, the city clerk and I took into consideration how other clerks manage their policies within organizations. So we did that. We also received input from CJPIA, from Tim our risk manager. He gave us the thumbs up he said it looked good so the next few slides highlight some of the major updates First, we created policy templates and instructions for staff.
So we're not just thinking about the policy on policies but how to disseminate that through the organization so instructions. We created criteria for what policies need city manager approval versus what policies need to be presented to council and approved via resolution. So we thought about those details And the framework is also an approval process to ensure higher level policies go through legal checks and align with council and strategic goals. So we have this approval process ensuring that takes place.
The framework also provides the city clerk with a policy numbering system, which is new, to manage amendments and then the removal of policies. So we kind of mitigate against that buildup. And so this last slide is discussing where we go from here. Once the policy framework has been adopted, staff can start working to implement the policy on policies and then we're doing this right now. We're thinking about new policies and then we're having people go through the process. So it's something new but we feel like it's going to be good from a risk mitigation standpoint And then the second step is twofold.
On one hand, staff will continue the audit process of legacy policies. So we're also consolidating all of the departmental policies that maybe didn't make it into that repository so we're doing that putting it all in one place And then we're going to evaluate what needs amendment What are those policies that maybe have been outdated and then bring the plan is to bring that to council?
and I'm pretty sure as a consent item and we can just say hey, this is one needs to be Removed and then do it all in one sweep But the goal is just to have a good foundation set For the city going forward with regards to policy and that's what I had tonight. So
2:49 – 2:5526 turns
Thank you for your presentation. Do we have any
questions
from council?
Sure, so how many policies does the city have? It sounds like since we don't have this policy on policies and it sounds like there may be some all over the place over the years but what roughly number do we have?
I would say a lot. Brian, do you want to say something to that?
I couldn't ascertain a number. Like I said, just a lot. Over 60 years is a lot
Yeah, so like and also like in the at least in the spreadsheet It's like maybe 150 but plus like a lot is we're talking about the ones that are outside of that scope So maybe tens and you know We don't we actually don't know and
I was wondering how long it was gonna take to do this audit of all the policies that are going
back To I guess the city's formation. Yeah Yeah Well, it sounds like it's really good that that's something that you guys are working on. Are there any specific areas of policy that particularly need to be addressed? Because I know that there are policies for everything. So yeah, are there specific genres of policy that are
hard-focused? Yeah, recently we just did the Lost Control Action Plan audit so CGAPI came in I think last year, Ryan is that right? So I'm going to go ahead and get started. Thank you very much. Legal compliance and so I think we're especially with that right Ryan and Michael at the head We're trying to make sure that we're getting into legal compliance So I would say that would be a huge thing that we're working on right now First it's just identifying what we have And then the second thing is making sure that that we write those policies and it goes through this framework We've been trying to write a lot of those CJ PIA policies but at the same time, you know Brian and I we talk and we're like I think we got to think holistically about this system before we implement just one policy So that hence the policy on policies.
That's great And then this repository that you're talking about would that be in the city clerk's office or is that your where with? Where will that live?
Yeah, I'll be on cities server for all employees to access basically be like an Excel spreadsheet with hyperlinked policies.
Great, thank you very much.
Any other questions?
I was going to ask about the timeline just because thinking about going through this feels very daunting to me but do you have a general goal in mind for when you would have this done?
You know, that's a good question. It's definitely going to be ongoing I think there is that element to things so we'll probably do one thing implementing this new system the second thing is just going through the repository that we currently have on our Excel spreadsheet like I said we're looking at maybe 150 policies A lot of that we've already been through Parks for example parks has some policies. So we've we've already transferred that into the new system So right now it's working on a lot of the HR policies A lot of its in the general government realm and so that's what we're going through bit by bit, so it's taking some time So I mean if you I'm even I don't even know exactly the timeline maybe a few weeks to really get at least do those 150 maybe two weeks from now
That's amazing.
I was
like, I thought you were going to say a few years.
Oh no no we could do it yeah and what's good is Ryan and Michael they're really putting that as a priority so you know i think that's really valuable.
I really commend you and think this is a very worthy and worthwhile endeavor
Ryan, I got a quick question for you. When we had to shut down this building because of the black mold and we ended up moving to Villarreal, we put all of those documents in a storage bin. Are you going through those?
Councilmember tomorrow. I think you're referring to all the paper Yes, luckily every time we do The resolutions ordinances we scan them and so everybody refers to the electronic copy rather than the paper copy So
that thing was wall-to-wall. I mean little you could barely walk through that thing You guys did all those huh already? I'm impressed.
No, we haven't touched all of that yet.
That would be a daunting task in itself. Hope you don't find anybody in there.
2:55 – 3:0021 turns
Is there, you know it's mentioned that maybe some policies are not necessary anymore and we get rid of those but might you going through history discover policies that maybe are needed? New policies.
Something that may occur. Yeah, yeah, I think I think we're coming into this with an open mind And there's there's probably some legacy stuff that really smart people have put into place before and the case like thinking about even digging up a Ryan and I, we were digging up the risk management policy. You know lays out a lot of stuff for the risk manager and all of these duties and responsibilities And it gave some framework to the risk program So I think digging up something like that and really relying on The knowledge of those people before I mean that's definitely something we're keeping an open mind about for sure
Council Member Clark, if I can add so one really good example is like a telecommunications policy. Often you'll find those with references to uses of pagers and number of things that telecommunications policy is still a good policy but it's not effective unless we update it with the times and so to your point that would be I think one of those examples
I'd like to just say thank you for spending the time on this project. I mean, it's clearly very timely but I think it'll make an enormous difference in terms of the potential staff confusion that might be currently happening and so this is a foundational project that needs to happen to really set up the city for success moving forward. So thank you for doing that and you gave me a really clear visual of what this policy mound currently looks like.
Can't wait until you guys are on the other end of it Okay, I will open up if there aren't any other questions. I will open up public comment. I do not have any speaker slips Do we have anyone via
zoom?
I will close public comment bring it back to the council for a motion
I'll move to adopt resolution number six four four five approving the City Council policy on policies second
We have a first and second. All those in favor?
Aye.
Any opposed? Motion passes.
Quick question, are you guys gonna have a party when this is done? That is huge! I couldn't imagine taking that on. We will now move on to legislative update
Thank you, Mayor Alarcon. Council members we just have one quick update this evening it's in regards to Assembly Bill 2517 which would is being Proposed to improve the fire hazard severe severity map zone mapping process by requiring the State Fire Marshal to update local responsibility area maps every five years with a preliminary release, public comment period as well as regional workshop. So the bill would also require public access to the data as well as methodology being used which would hopefully increase the transparency behind the creation of those maps and then help local governments and residents better understand the actual fire risk to their areas, including related defensible space and home hardening requirements. So League of California Cities does support this bill and recommends sending a letter of support as well.
Would any council members like to support this in sending a letter?
Yeah, I think that really is applicable to our area.
And then just a
reminder for public comment. Yes.
Okay and we'll open up public comment. I have no speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?
We have no zoom speakers mayor.
I will close public comment and do you need a motion or do you have enough direction there's consensus
I have enough direction. So thank you.
Thank you We will now move on to committee reports inquiries and other matters presented by council members It looks like there are no updates And attendance of council members for future meetings Yes, yes for everyone and it is 829 and we will officially adjourn the City Council meeting. Thank you.