City Council — July 27, 2026

Welcome to this evening's City Council meeting. Today is Monday July 27th, 2026. Now we'll request a roll call please.

Thank you, Mayor Alarcon. We were in closed session to discuss one case under a conference with legal counsel for anticipated litigation and there's no reportable action this evening.

We will now move on to public information reports and announcements and we will hear first from our First District Supervisor's Office. Welcome.

Good evening Council, hello Mayor. Happy summer it's nice to see you all. Okay so I've got a couple updates not too many there's not a ton happening right now the quick update on Baylord is the application they've submitted an application to the county of Santa Barbara that is still They're addressing some feedback as well as the application to the city That they're also waiting on some feedback for Hopefully They'll be passing, the Red Tail team will be passing over their plans and their studies that we can put on the city website. I know people tend to look in those kind of hot topic sections so that was something that Director Bobroff and I were talking about is getting some of those plans on the city website so it's accessible.

And then the city and the county are going to work together on some development impact fee sharing. So it's not something that happens regularly. So we're hammering out this process now, so that's something the city and the county are working on together and the developer really doesn't have anything to do with that. So that is the status of Baylord, the Baylord project at the moment. And I should clarify, the item that the developer will be passing over for publication On the website will be the plan, the project plan, the evacuation study, the traffic study. I believe those are the main things so people will be able to view those. I looked today and I didn't see them on the website but hopefully by the time I'm here next they'll be there.

All righty moving along. There is two operators that are still in the appeals process for their cannabis licenses. The Bossom operator is waiting on the judge's ruling and the G&K and K&G operators have been continued to September. I believe that was because they just ran out of time during the appeals process and so that got pushed to September, so members of the public can still comment on odor reports on the county website.

Moving forward with unincorporated road updates. The county is installing seven new electric vehicle charging stations in unincorporated CARP, so four chargers are going to be at Santa Claus Lane, three are going to be at Ringcombe Park. This project will be completed by January 2029, so it's gonna take a while The Santa Claus Lane will be, that construction will start in the next couple of weeks. Whereas the Rincon Park Chargers will take a little bit longer. Those are in the design phase still.

But those are coming!

public comment on the First District Supervisors report. I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom for this item?

Mayor we do not.

I will officially close public comment and if there aren't any other final comments from Council, we will move on. We will now

President Alarcon, all board members are present and accounted for?

Thank you. In confirmation of legal noticing and procedural requirements at the meeting...

And all legal noticing and procedural requirements of the meeting have been met.

Thank you. And public comment, and this is the time for public comments on matters not otherwise on the agenda but within the subject matter of CPIC. I have no speaker slips do we have anyone via Zoom?

And we have no zoom comment.

I will close public comment.

We

have a first and second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Item number five which is receive and file the CPIC annual report.

I'll go ahead and take this item. The Carpinteria Public Improvement Corporation, also known as CPIC, was established in July 1988 as a public non-profit corporation to provide a funding mechanism for the development of certain capital improvements through a lease purchase arrangement with the City of Carpinteria and the issuance of certificates of participation.

Although there are currently no outstanding bonds or certificates of participation issued by the CPIC, annual board meetings must continue to be held to maintain the active status of CPIC. State law requires the board to consider the CPIC's annual report at a public meeting. This staff report serves as the annual report and the board meeting was properly noticed in accordance with legal requirements in the local newspaper. And that concludes the annual report.

I'm just inspired, we talk about this so infrequently for anyone who might be listening. Can you explain why we meet as the CPIC group even though the certificates of participation were paid seven years ago?

Right, it was formed initially to help pay for the construction of the community pool back in I believe 1989 and it did also help with a few other projects I think El Carol Park maybe a playground or something and some other project back in those days. And so, in order for us to keep it active we just meet once a year just to keep the ball rolling. Great thank you.

I will open up public comment on this item number five. I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

We have no raised hands.

I will close public comment and do I need a motion for this let's see

I'll move to receive and file the CPIC annual report. Second.

We have a first and second, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Motion passes.

Thank You Mayor, Council, community members. As always encourage people we usually don't cover every item in the City Manager's Report so encourage people to read that there's also some helpful links we don't have as much as we usually do but we have some recruitment information in there and some information on some other community things going on and so I'm going to turn it over to our Assistant City Manager Ryan Kentz to give you some updates on employment

Thank you Mr. Ramirez, good evening members of the council. Yeah just a quick update on our recruitments so currently we're recruiting for four full-time positions including the accounting specialist slash accounting technician that position is open for applications until August 9th We're also continuing to recruit for the building official. That position is also available for applications until August 2nd, we have an engineering technician position open that is also open until August 2nd and then a management analyst two or one To be considered for first review applied by August second as well And just to reiterate these are not new positions these are just positions where we've had some staff vacancies recently And it's just a normal part of doing business and we're recruiting for those new positions as people move on to other things.

That's it, if you have any questions.

Great thank you Ryan and now turn it over to our Parks Recreation Community Services Director Jeanette Gant to give us some updates on all things parks and rec.

Good evening Mayor, Vice Mayor and Council. I have just a couple quick updates for you all. The first two are for our Age Well upcoming lecture series. July's lecture series is the City Manager Update by our very own city manager Michael Ramirez that's this Thursday July 30th from 1 to 2 p.m. in the Veterans Hall meeting room Michael will provide an update on the city's current budget challenges, discuss how they may affect local services and programs, and outline potential revenue measures the City Council may consider to help address the city's financial needs. And since we are not meeting early August I'll share with you our upcoming August Saturday excursion.

On Saturday August 8th from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Agewell will host a free guided tour of the Creshman California Island Center Located at 4994 Carpinteria Avenue, guests will explore the natural and cultural history of the California Channel Islands through interactive exhibits and engaging displays. And I apologize, we have two lecture series for August. I want to share the second one on Thursday, August 20th from 1 to 2 p.m in the Veterans Hall meeting room. AGL members will learn from our very own City Outreach Librarian Tara about the many free digital resources available with your library card including e-books, audio books, streaming services, online learning research databases and much more.

And for aquatics, on Friday July 10th we hosted our annual Carp Comp which is our junior lifeguard competition here at the city beach. The event welcomed ten different junior lifeguard agencies from up and down the California coast bringing together more than 2,000 athletes their families and spectators for a full day of athletic competition And just a big shout out to the aquatics staff, to our aquatics coordinator Lexi Persoon for coordinating such a large event. Our junior lifeguard instructors and our beach lifeguards for ensuring participant safety. And we'd also like to extend a thank you to our Carpinteria Summerland Fire Protection District for again partnering with us to provide personnel and personal rescue watercraft to enhance water safety operations during the event.

Those are my updates I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

No questions, thank you.

I thought she left out the best part about the event ending with the cha-cha slide on the beach and so...

I did not take part this year. I was attending a wedding out of the area but I have seen it in the past and it is a really fun way to end the event.

So with that concludes City Manager's report

Excellent. Do are there any council members with questions for the city manager? Okay, no questions I will open up public comment do not have any speaker slips for this specific item Do we have anyone via zoom?

We do mayor we have one zoom speaker Andy Patrick Andy go ahead

Thank you, I just wondered if Someone might be able to comment about the comment that I raised, I guess a couple of weeks ago about the salt marsh and dogs and bikes and motorized bikes in particular. Is there any further thinking on that? Any planning? That's it. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Great. Welcome, Alan Koch.

Good evening everybody. Council, staff, city attorneys and the big crowd we have behind. You have a big meeting ahead of you. I have a quick comment just this is a follow-up on an email that I sent to Michael regarding just the update on the surf liner okay there's been a couple of letters in the Coastal View News letters the editor talking about the benefit of downtown hotel, and we understand that it would be a benefit economic vitality.

And there's a number out there $14 million out there which is very different from the numbers that have been in prior city documents of six seven hundred thousand but they also said in their update that they sent out to their support or database that the surf liner in has been cleared from an EIR point of view. So I'm not sure if they were talking about their hotel on Parking Lot 3 or the City proposed Parking Lot 4.

So, there's a lot of misinformation out there that I would think at some point in time things are being worked on in the sense of the final EIR but we need to put some status reports out there to the community what's going on. That's it.

Thank you. We

have no further raised hands.

Okay, so I will close public comment. I will look to staff to see if there's a potential response in terms of enforcement at the salt marsh in relation to e-bikes and animals and the surf liner

Thank you Mayor, I'll see if Nick wants to help add to that or our City Attorney. But regarding the enforcement on Salt Marsh we definitely heard that the city's a little short staffed right now in code compliance and Managing what we can. I'll see if Nick wants to add any to that, but we hope to be at least back to our level of full force soon and And then I'll let Nick respond to the items about the surf liner specifically

Thank you, Michael. Sure so I guess tackling the Salt Marsh question first our officers do periodically patrol out there as you know most days of the week we only have one officer on duty and they wear many hats and so we're not able to have a dedicated consistent presence at Salt Marsh Park or any of our other open space areas for that matter. But they do try to patrol those areas in their weekly routines and try to have some presence there in the hopes of discouraging, you know, unpermitted or illegal activity like riding bikes through the Salt Marsh or taking dogs through the Salt Marsh. And typically when they do, if the officers do make contact with folks that are engaging in any of those activities.

The approach is typically education first and trying to educate them of the rules and discouraging the behavior and you know trying to make it a positive interaction. And the times when we do result to citations are the folks who just Ignore the officers or continue with the behavior get caught again on a repeat offense And and obviously we're just not out there consistently enough to be you know, issuing citations To repeat offenders regularly but I think it is something that will continue to try to monitor and keep on top of as much as we can and I know earlier this year. We did a Kind of a focused effort on the Carpinteria Bluffs, focused on enforcing the leash laws and having more regular presence out there for a week at the time in signage.

And that might be a good model to replicate at some point in Salt Marsh Park in coordination with the Parks Department. Changing gears over to the Surfliner project, our intention with any of a city manager report items for community development is to provide updates when we have news to share. And so if there isn't an update on a particular project in the City Manager's Report it's because there isn't anything concrete at that moment to share in terms of upcoming public hearings or upcoming deliverables or major milestones that have been met.

So we are currently working with the environmental consultants to finalize the proposed final environmental impact report. And once that work is done, then we will change courses and take on more of an effort in preparing the analysis and staff report for an upcoming Planning Commission hearing. So we haven't selected a date yet for that hearing. We still have quite a bit of work ahead of us before we get there and so as we get closer and feel that we have all the pieces coming together, we'll be better prepared to offer up a date on when we think those hearings will occur.

Thank you.

Mayor, I can also add that while this will be covered in our chief's next report we did start our e-bike enforcement. It won't really necessarily help maybe with the off leash dogs but as we continue that that'll be an area of focus that we have our deputies out focusing on. We gave out six citations in that day and we'll also make sure that they focus on that area as well.

Great, thank you. We will now move on to public comment on matters not on the agenda I do not have any general comment speaker slips do we have anyone via zoom?

I'm here we have no raised hands

So I will close public comment, and we will now move on to the consent calendar. And I will open up public comment. I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

Once again, we have no raised hands.

OK, I will close public comment and ask for a motion.

I move to approve the minutes of the regular meeting held July 13th, 2026 and the special meeting held July 15th, 2026. To receive and file the warrant register for the period of July 6th through July 17th, 2026 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 June 2nd through July 6th, 2026.

To receive and file the quarterly review of the Pension Stabilization Trust. To designate Council Member Nomura as the City of Carpinteria's Voting Delegate and designate Vice Mayor Sol Arsenault as the city's alternate voting delegate for the League of California Cities' 2026 Annual Conference & Expo in Anaheim. To authorize the mayor to sign the closeout agreement and release of claims for the Linden Avenue improvements project with Toro Enterprise Inc. And authorized the city manager to release the construction contract bonds after one year of acceptance of the work by the City of Carpinteria in accordance with the warranty required by construction contract, and to authorize the city manager to execute amendment number three to the agreement with Bengal Engineering Incorporated for consulting services for the Rincon multi-use trail project in an amount not to exceed $122,077.

For a total amended agreement amount to $1,715,597. Second. You have a

first and a second I will request a roll call vote please.

Good evening council Item number 12 is the annual review at the fire protection mitigation fee program The item covers two things for consideration, which are the acceptance of the Carpinteria-Summerland Fire Protection District Annual Report and the adoption of Resolution No. 6488 updating the fee schedule for development. Before I turn it over to Fire Marshal Lamonaco, I'll cover some background and general updates.

So for background, the Mitigation Fee Act authorizes local agencies to impose an impact fee on new development where a documented nexus exists between the development and the facility need. These fees are for the benefit of the fire district and can only be spent on fire protection capital improvements. Government code requires an annual review of the district master facility plan and its cost estimates by both the District Board and the City Council.

The district board approved its annual report on July 9th, 2026. As for the adjustment itself, the municipal code provides that the fees are adjusted each July 1st by the published index for the preceding 12 months of the construction cost index. For this cycle, the adjustment is 3.4% and applied uniformly across all fee categories. So in practice, this per unit fees This graph displays a change from last fiscal year to this current fiscal year for per unit fees. So, a single-family resident increased approximately $97 and a mobile home by $162 and commercial lodging by $75.

For per square foot fees, residential service and office space. These increase approximately 17 cents and industrial by about 1.6 cents. One notable change to the schedule is ADU line in which ADUs under 750 square feet remain exempt and the ADUs at or above 750 square feet are now stated as a proportionate share of the primary dwelling fee rather than a flat per square-foot rate.

As for the fund status, Fund 3633 for Fund Protection Capital Improvements reported $166,000 in fees collected, earned about 10,000 interest and reported 77,000 expenditures. The ending balance is approximately $551,000 although these totals are unaudited and subject to review before final report is complete. The recommendation from staff is to adopt resolution 6488 and accept the district's annual report. With that concludes our report, unless Fire Marshal Omonako would like to share anything?

I'm really just here for the Q&A part if you guys have any questions or clarifications I'm not here to prolong it

Welcome fire marshal any questions from

Council. Yeah, just two quick quick clarifying questions Can you explain who pays these fees? Just so that the public better understands where the funds are coming from

So whoever if you're doing a development, so if you're going to do an addition to your home You'll pay the Basically the percent or the the fee per square foot if you're gonna build a new home you're gonna pay that if you' re building 18 story high-rise you're gonna pay a lot of fees. So it's it's if you're doing work on your home expanding your home or your business

So not for any exist just homes that are already there are not part of

existing stuffs not touched

Okay, great and then also so the report showed an ending balance of about five hundred fifty two thousand What what our possible future projects that might be utilized for?

so we've Outlined a number of projects that are lined up in the next, I think it's three fiscal years. One of those retrofitting Station 61 earthquake retrofitting as well as remodeling it. New fire apparatus so we have couple engines that are getting outdated some money is going into that fund and then we try to keep the CARP funds kind of with Station 61 and not with our Sutherland station So those are kind of the next projects lined up.

Thank you, thank you that's great to know. I

have a question and clarification so the fire department runs it runs separately it's its own special district and so it is within the city's ordinance that we approve this increase. Is that? I just want to look to staff to make sure I said that correctly.

I would defer to Jenna if she knows off the top of her head.

Well, and I think the point I just want to make is that these dollars will come as a pass-through through the city. The city doesn't hold on to any of these dollars they'll go straight to the fire department.

You don't collect these fees at all we collect them directly so in the past the city was collecting them and we tried to basically make it simpler for everybody and we go directly with these people.

Oh great.

So you're not a pass-through at all?

And then my other question for you is because of potential large-scale development in the city how do you, how does the fire department plan for that? Do you coordinate with the city in terms of increased fire services or how does that work or how do you intend to potentially address this.

We take a study so it was in 2024 we reassessed what available property they were and what categories that fit in And based on that, we look at what potential revenues we could collect from development. So as far as coordinating with the city there really isn't it's our own independent study. We look at what's available And then we try to best, you know it's a best guesstimate of hey the station is gonna cost this much to build or an engine is gonna cost this much right now.

A fire engines almost costing a million dollars. So we kind of utilize what's left to develop on and go from there.

Great thank you any other questions from Council? Okay no question I will open up public comment. I do not have any speaker slips on this item. Do we have anyone via zoom?

We have no raised hands Mayor

I will close public comment and bring it back.

Sorry spoke too fast,

okay?

We do have Andy Patrick Andy go ahead

Thank you, um, I just had one quick question because I if I understand it correctly the fee Is adjusted automatically Like every July or something like that by the construction cost index so That has kind of an Underlying vintage. I'm just wondering when was the last like Full Nexus study done and does it reflect the district's current capital plan? Thank you

Thank you for your comment. Do we have any other comments via zoom

that is it mayor?

I will officially close public comment And I will look to our fire marshal if you'd like to respond to that question in terms of the nexus study

Sure, our Nexus study was redone in 2024

And then when will the next one, another update? It's

normally a five to seven year process and then we'll re-evaluate.

Great thank you

okay so I will look to the council for our motion. I move to adopt resolution number 6488 as read by title only.

Second.

We have a first

and

second all those in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Then motion passes thank you.

Thank you.

We will now

Good evening Mayor, I'll take this one. In July of 2025 the City received a letter of request from the Carpinteria Sanitary District for vacating an approximately 1,800 square foot portion of Olive Avenue for proposed protective flood wall and electrical equipment improvements to support the construction and operation of future advanced water purification facility component of the Carpinteria Advanced Purification Project.

The Planning Commission last year found the vacation of that portion of Olive Avenue was in conformance with the general plan and local coastal plan. The Surplus Land Act process and afterwards, the California Department of Housing and Community Development issued its Surplus Land Act findings letter to the city which determined that the portion of Olive Avenue to be vacated qualifies as exempt surplus land.

In June of this year, the council adopted resolution number 6481 Declaring its intention to vacate a portion of Olive Avenue and setting tonight's public hearing on the matter. In conformance with the Streets and Highways Code, a public hearing notice was published two successive weeks prior to tonight's hearing and the Public Works Department posted the public notice in conspicuous areas along the line of that portion of Olive Avenue to be vacated two weeks before tonight's public hearing.

Additionally, the public hearing notice was mailed to all properties within a 500-foot radius of that portion of Olive Avenue to be vacated. Should the Council adopt Resolution No. 6487, the resolution will be recorded with the County Recorder's Office and upon recordation, the vacation will be complete. And that concludes my presentation.

Thank you. Any questions from council? Just one quick question. So this whole process, is this costing the city anything to process this vacation?

It would be staff time I believe.

But nothing

beyond that?

Yeah. Okay thank

you. Seeing no other questions, I will open up public comment on this item. I do not have any speaker slips. Do we have anyone via Zoom?

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 resolution number 6487 as read by title only.

Second.

We have a first and second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Motion passes. We will now

Thank you Mayor Alarcon, council members. It will just take me a minute to get set up here. Okay let's see here. All right, I think we're good there. So this evening as Mayor Alarcon stated the city will or the council be considering resolution number 6489. I think I can start there. To adopt a public artwork policy for the city, the city does not currently have an established process for considering proposals initiated by the public for installing artwork on city-owned or city controlled property And this policy will provide clear guidelines and procedures for the selection, installation, maintenance and potential removal of public artwork on public or on city-owned property.

Just as a note, the policy does not deal with artwork installed on private property even if such artwork is visible from a public right away. This is something that we can revisit in the future if we want to, if the council desires to. Okay. How do I go back now? Can you bring me back?

Oh,

there. Got it. Sorry about that. Sorry. Thank you. I can't move my neck. So the city recognizes that public artwork enriches the community, enlivens public spaces and contributes to residents' quality of life which is one of the reasons the council requested that this policy be drafted. One of the concerns from the City Attorney's Office and from city staff was that moving forward and considering or approving art without a policy guiding that evaluation and approval of public artwork I want to start by saying that this is a very important issue.

Judgment over public artwork or artwork that's proposed to the city and becomes part of the city's public artwork portfolio. So artwork selected under this policy would be considered government speech, meaning that the city would be expressing its own civic message rather than creating a public forum for private expression, which would then if that were to occur would limit the city's ability to regulate the content of such artwork under the First Amendment. So that's one of the most from a legal perspective one of the most important reasons to have a policy in place before starting this process So once again, I think I mentioned this kind of in the introduction but the public artwork policy as proposed would apply to all artwork proposed for installation or display on city property.

City owned or controlled property whether the artwork is commissioned or motivated by the city or whether a community member or local organization proposes the work to the City Council The policy covers both temporary and permanent artwork, and would be administered or is proposed to be administered by the general government department. The policy is also structured to allow at a future time something like an arts committee or an arts commission to be established by the City Council to help the City Council evaluate and approve artwork projects.

So as drafted, this is the process for the city's review of artwork that comes in. There would be a proposal submission, staff review, City Council preliminary review, review by the Architectural Review Board and then a final City Council decision and this is similar to kind of the ad hoc process that the city has gone through previously when, you know, considering different art or public artwork. It just hasn't been formalized into a policy and thus provided the city with any sort of legal defensibility under First Amendment claims.

So I'll just kind of walk through what the policy, and I understand this is all in the staff report. And I assume you've all taken a look at the policy but just for everyone's and everyone following along on TV to kind of understand what the policy does entail. So the first step is proposal submission so a proposal would be submitted to the city clerk The proposal in the policy. There are a list of requirements that are That the proposals should include information that the proposals should include Which are such things as a description of the artwork proposed location where the artwork would be located project costs and and a maintenance plan. Staff would then take this proposal, they would review it to determine whether or not there's sufficient information in the proposal to allow City Council to adequately review the process ‑‑ review the proposal in a sort of City Council preliminary review.