City Council — January 13, 2026

Good evening, happy new year. Welcome to the regular meeting of the Guadalupe City Council and special meeting of successor agency, the Guadalupe Redevelopment Agency Board. May we have roll call please?

Yeah, I'd like to give condolences to Georgia Moreno's family. Georgia was a longtime resident here in Guadalupe for about years. She lived a strong life to 98 years old. I saw that today. She passed away January 6th. So yeah.

Okay.

Thank you, Mayor. I want to acknowledge the families who are grieving and the many residents who are carrying fear and uncertainty. My heart is with those that are experiencing losses.

There's also a gentleman, Luis Moreno is a long-time family, large family in Guadalupe. He passed and then Annette Stewart who I don't know if we talked about her last time last year but she was the first principal at Guadalupe McKenzie School and the Stewart family is a large family here in Guadelupe so she passed. And I also want to give condolences of the family children and friends of Renee And Nicole Good who died January 7th, 2026.

Anything else? All right well

there for quite some time and are committed. And I feel confident saying that about Santa Barbara rape crisis as well, actually they're called standing together to end sexual assault now but Santa Barbara rape crisis same thing goes for them they all we all follow the same rule so to speak. So could we use more counselors in our county? Absolutely! But i think we're doing pretty good with what we have.

Do you have a local office here in Santa Maria or where's

Yes sir, we have our main administrative offices in Lompoc. We've been there since 1974 and our satellite office is in Santa Maria and we've been in the Santa Maria area since the early 80s.

Okay all right well thank you for being here and thank you for carrying the banner for the population that's out there and has identified our county as high on the list of trafficking so Thank you for being

here. Our service area is Guadalupe too, so we're here in the schools and if there's anybody in the audience or anybody here who has a business that you would like for us to come and do a presentation whether it be on human trafficking or sexual assault prevention please just give us a holler.

How do they connect with you?

The best thing to do would be to call the Rape Crisis Center either our Lompoc office or Santa Maria office. I see that you still have brochures in the back, I greatly appreciate that and I'm actually gonna leave some other flyers back there that I'm hoping will be put up around the city hall that have to do with human trafficking prevention and if you want more please let me know and I will drive them out here because it's such a beautiful drive and it gets me out of the office so...

Well thank you Ann, thank you for what you all do. Thank you

so

much.

Mr. Mayor, could I make a quick announcement or quick plug for my Rotary Club? They are hosting a human trafficking awareness forum called the Human Trafficking on the Central Coast on Thursday January 22nd. I'm going to confirm that date from Yes, Thursday January 22nd from 11am to 3pm at the Santa Maria Country Club. The tickets are $35 and include lunch for anyone that's interested it's I've been to it and I'll be there for that. It's a wonderfully education, it's a wonderful event where you learn quite a bit.

What's the time again?

11am-3pm And I can provide more information if you want to email me and ask me for it. Thank you.

All right, any more questions or comments? Okay we'll go to item seven presentation urban forest management plan administrative draft. Mr. Kevin Callahan, Urban Forest Planner, DUDEC. Okay.

Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Kevin Cullinan and I'm an Urban Forest Planner for the environmental consulting company Dudek who was hired to create this urban forest management plan which is the first plan of its kind for the city of Guadalupe. And the purpose of this presentation is really to give an introduction and overview to the key findings goals and recommended actions for the draft Guadalupe urban force management plan before it goes out to public comment, which you should very soon.

And we'll make sure that the city council members have that full public draft after this meeting probably in the next week or so. So, just again to review what I'll be going over tonight is you know what in what is an urban forest management plan. What are the key findings from our analysis of the Guadalupe's urban forest? What are the goals that we've come up with for their urban forest and what are the recommended actions as well as next steps? And then we'll have some time for questions at the end.

Next slide. Okay, so what is an urban forest management plan? And you can actually skip to the next slide. So at its core a UFMP or Urban Forest Management Plan is a guiding document that's designed to help the city manage preserve and grow it's tree canopy both on public and private lands. And we think of it as made up For kind of key components, which include you know the people of course the community elected officials staff. And then we have the policy standards and integration like the general plan and other existing standards. We have urban forest resource itself, which includes, of course, the city's trees, and as well as private trees, and then we have that urban force management program. So how would the staff, how the city are managing the trees themselves.

So in terms of how the UFMP is organized, there's three main parts. And so we have the executive summary which is a nice condensed summary of the main UFMP findings and goals. And I think, you know, we just created a handout. I think that will be great to give both the city staff and to the public to really get the essence of what the UFP is, what we've recommended in short and easy-to-read version And then we have the UFMP main document itself, which is that public facing you know graphically designed documents so it's going to have all the introduction the analyses, the vision, the goals that recommended actions and then a monitoring plan.

And then the last part is the UFMP appendices, which includes a number of different resources. The first of which are more in depth technical analyses based on our urban forest analysis and those are really geared towards city staff And then we have a number of other appendices that are both meant for the public and city staff and that includes things like our board cultural BMPs, as well as the recommended tree species list which I understand Bill Scott has already been handing out so that's great to hear. Next slide.

So why does the city need a UF MP. And one of the big reasons is that, you know there's already goals within the general plan that call for things like more equitable access to trees and green spaces. It calls for you know city beautification through landscaping as well as, you know, the maintenance of clean and healthy air for its residents. And so the UFMP provides alignment with those existing goals and policies, as well as identifying potential urban forestry projects that support other citywide goals.

And then of course a UFMP is very useful for understanding the status of the current urban forest. There's a saying out there you know what gets measured gets managed, and we do think that's very true for the urban forests as well. And then it's also going to identify gaps in areas of improvement in the city's current urban forest management program, and of course create measurable goals and strategies for the urban force over the next, it's actually going to be the next 40 years.

Next slide. Perhaps one of the biggest reasons for, you know creating an urban forest management plan though is because of the benefits that trees provide to the community. Right? Trees are such a crucial infrastructure like living infrastructure that provide things like shade cleaner air, you know mental benefits and of course wildlife habitat and things like that. And so having a plan in place really ensures that the city is best able to manage and grow the current urban forest. Next slide.

Okay, so let's jump into the key findings that we found from the urban forest analysis. So the first one is that Guadalupe's Urban Forest Program does suffer from a lack of dedicated urban forest funding staff and because of that program results has led to somewhat of inconsistent care and unpredictable costs for city managed trees. Next slide. So to jump into that a little bit more Covering the budget here. So there again like I said there's currently no dedicated urban forestry budget, and mostly the urban forest related expenses are funded you know on an as needed basis in a somewhat reactive manner from the public works budget. I will say there is a new landscaping tax that sounds like it will be helpful in.

Adding to the urban forest services like tree maintenance, as it covers other landscaping needs for certain neighborhoods so I think that's going to play a big part in the future budget as well. And then again all that kind of leads to uncertainty of annual allocations which hinders proactive management so we'd like to see you know moving forward more proactive management in the future.

And then in terms of the staffing standpoint. Again, there's no dedicated urban forest staff you know the staff at Guadalupe wear many many hats, they have to cover a lot of different competing priorities. And so, you know the urban forest doesn't get quite enough attention because of that. I will say though that the city has already taken steps towards getting some more dedicated and forestry staff so the main staff member I've been working with Dinera Engineering technician just recently got certified as an arborist which I think is a huge, huge point that should be highlighted for the city because this will bring in house expertise and as well standardization. Next slide please.

So speaking of that standardization, like I said the city didn't really previously have any arboricultural standards that they were using. They do sometimes hire you know consulting arborists to work with contractors and things like that but again having that in-house expertise is really important and so we've helped the city to develop a suite of our cultural best management practices which are included as an appendix and those can be distributed to the public as well And then in terms of tree maintenance and sorry tree management and services which include things like tree planting, watering, you know pruning removals.

There's there's really lack of records there. And so again we one of the main actions is going to be to standardize those work records and a big part of this project which I'll talk about a little bit later is that the city conducted a citywide tree inventory of all public All publicly managed trees and so that can be used in the future to help keep better track of work records, and then that in turn will help to, you know, provide more reliable and predictable costs for the city in the future.

So the second key finding is that we found the city does have declining urban canopy cover right now and so just as a reminder, can it be cover you can think of as looking from a bird's eye view down at the city. It's that area of land right that's covered by tree leaves branches stems. So that's what the canopy cover that we're talking about and so between 2018 and 2022 which were the two years that we looked at.

Yeah, approximately 12 acres of canopy was lost and the vast majority that was on private property which points to the fact that they're going to play a big part in you know future urban canopy growth and maintenance. So next slide. So I know those numbers are a little bit harder to read there but essentially what this map and figure are showing is that the biggest losses came in the Goulart a track in the kind of north east portion of the city there. They lost around, I think 12 acres. Sorry not 12 acres 12%, I believe.

neighborhood actually did show growth and I can talk about that a little bit later as well. Next slide. So currently the city wide canopy cover level sits at 4.2%, which is around 31 acres of canopy cover, and the range of canopy in 2022 which is again was the most recent data that we had ranged from 0.2% in the Pasadena neighborhood, so quite low all the way up to 12% in the Goularte tract as well and I will say that you know I think a lot of new trees were planted in the Pasadena neighborhood with those new developments and so it's not quite capturing the latest information. I do think we'll see a lot more growth in the future even with current conditions just because those younger trees are growing and getting bigger.

Next slide. So, I mentioned this before but the city. The engineering technician did conduct a comprehensive citywide inventory for public trees and logged close to 800 tree sites, which includes 730 living trees essentially about five dead trees and 38 vacant sites that are empty right that are ready to be planted. And so that resulted in roughly a 95% stocking rate which is just you know the percentage of available tree sites that can be planted.

Next slide please. So another big part of this UFMP is the analysis of those public trees. And so what we're seeing here are three different, what we call urban forest sustainability indicators. So the first one there is species diversity. So Guadalupe has 74 unique tree species and you can see that there's kind of five or six species there in yellow that are dominating the inventory which include things like Coast Live Oak, Monterey Cypress, African Fern Pine, things like that.

And what we'd like to see is a little bit more diversity so you technically don't want to have one species representing too much of the inventory because if they get hit by a certain disease or pest That can wipe out a significant portion of the inventory. So again, using our recommended tree species list, having the city start to plant species outside of those tree species but still trying to maximize the available planting space.

And then looking at condition, the city trees really are doing pretty well so the majority of trees are either in fair good or excellent condition showing that the city is doing a pretty good job in taking care of the trees that they do have. But then looking at the age diversity there, the blue and green colors are basically showing you that the majority of the trees are either brand new or young juvenile trees.

And so we'd really like to see a little bit more mature and older trees which will provide more canopy as well right? So it's going to be really important for the city to maintain those younger trees again like a lot of those in the Pasadena neighborhood so they can grow into mature trees that provide more canopy and benefits to the community. Next slide. So then our third key finding is about what we heard from the community. And so we conducted a community survey, I heard from about 67 people there. We tabled at the popular Fiestas Patrias event which got it really popular showing we raffled a tree and that was really popular. So it was great to see how many people were excited about winning a free tree. And then we also had, we hosted two virtual focus groups with different stakeholders as well And so what we heard from the community is that you know they're really enthusiastic about urban forestry, you know they'd like to see more street trees in their neighborhoods.

But there's some lack of resources right available to them. And so the city is going to have to work with the private property owners to really provide resources in order to get more trees on private property. Next slide. So, this slide is just kind of summarizing some of the community survey results we had so again 88% are in favor of having street trees. You know 44% want more shade trees in their neighborhoods. Many people were willing to you know participate Volunteer tree planting event or an education event. There was even another resident arborist, which is great who said he'd be willing to help with education and workshops so I thought that was great as well.

So again just going to be really important to be continuing to do outreach and education to the community because they're going to play such a key role in the growth and maintenance of the urban forest. Next slide. So let's jump into urban forestry goals here, you can go to next slide. So we like to start with a vision statement which you can think of essentially as you know what will Guadalupe's urban forest look like in the future once you know these practices these recommendations have been implemented from the Urban Forest Management Plan and so it reads Guadalupe's urban forest is a thriving vital resource, cared for by the city and its community members that provides scenic beauty and clean air and enhances the quality of life for current and future generations.

So we think that really encapsulates what we're trying to accomplish here. Next slide. So then we have four main goals for the urban forests, and so those include implementing consistent urban forestry practices so we mentioned that with the standards, establishing a dedicated urban forestry budget. And you know having administrative support for that urban forest program.

The big one of course is going to be trying to achieve 10% canopy cover on a citywide basis by 2066. So that's in 40 years, and then the last one is to increase tree planting and improve tree care on private property. And so I'll jump into the specifics here of each one. Perfect. Again, for that first one about implementing consistent urban forestry practices. We have that separate appendix that we've developed which includes all those are our cultural best practices as well as you know if the city can focus on enhancing their work records and tracking they have that tree inventory now, which should help with that. And then what we really would recommend for the cities because there's so honestly so few trees right out public trees.

It should be efficient for the city to, you know work with either consulting arborists or, you know, the engineering technician who just became an arborist to really conduct a city wide inventory again to develop an annual work plan I would say maybe on a five year basis right, it can be very specific will give the city prioritize list. To work from so that they can really, you know focus resources where they most need to go. And so I think having that every five years is going to be probably more cost efficient and better than say, you know developing a grid pruning program or you just, you know try to print every tree five to seven years. We think this is going to be a better approach here.

And then for establishing a dedicated budget and support, you know we think again having the treatment Torrey being able to track those work records which should then be able to allow the city to make better cost estimates for knowing what they'll need in the future. You know exploring resources, we have a whole appendix for that we have no grants that the city could pursue obviously you know there's a disadvantaged community here so I think Some avenues there that the city could explore, as well as you know engaging partners. There's a lot of local groups that are definitely I think have similar goals and I think that should be approached we talked about it in the focus groups that we had.

And then again maintaining ISA certified arborist expertise is going to be important as well and trying to dedicate monthly staff time towards UFMP implementation. Next slide. So number three, they're progressing towards the citywide canopy covered of 10%. So let me break this down here so you know roughly there. I think there needs to be around 1300 trees total planted in the next 40 years to achieve that 10% canopy cover goal.

And it was recently changed from perhaps the slides that you got we originally had 8%, and a 30 year timeline but Cal Fire, who is funding this grant wanted to see a little bit longer timeline, a little bit more ambitious goal so we went up to 10% and so for breakdown of that. We said that the city could. Potentially plant up to 400 trees on public land over 40 years. So that includes filling all the current vacant sites, as well as exploring other areas so one of the sites that we looked at potentially was along flower Avenue. I think there's lots of room potentially to plant some new trees along there, as well as you know looking in other parkways and areas in different neighborhoods of the city.

In combination with private planting so the, you know, private property owners would be Taking on the lion's share of that planting but could be assisted with things like free tree giveaways and finding other resources to help them out. Next slide please. And then in terms of enhancing tree planting on canopy cover, like I was talking about you know again we really want the city to foster urban forest advocacy so through outreach and education again partnering with local entities with similar environmental stewardship goals providing Resources where you can in terms of tree planting and care. There needs to be more education on the, the tree ordinance that the city has is that already assigned some maintenance responsibilities to private property owners.

So, that needs to be educated on more. And then like I said, The ultimate goal would be for those private property owners to plant 960 trees on private property after the 40 years. And then this is kind of a last stretch goal but there's a thing called a tree city USA, which is kind of a recognition for cities that are really trying to take good care of their urban forest. So it involves, you know having a tree board of sorts and having a tree ordinance with the which the city already has. And then a few other things I think the next slide covers that yeah so having the ordinance you guys already have in place.

It's your the cities meant to spend around $2 per capita on tree care for the fiscal year, and then having an annual Arbor Day celebration, along with that tree board A stretch goal but could be something you know maybe in the next five to 10 years that the city could work on to really show that, you know, you guys are taking good care of your urban forest.

And then in terms of next steps, you can actually progress to the next slide there so we're about to release the public drafts and so that will be open for I think approximately 30 days. This grant does end at the end of February though so we do need to wrap things up and So we may have to cut that public comment period a little bit shorter, but we'll try to get as much public comment feedback as we can incorporate that into the final UF MP document. And then we'll come back in late February to the city council for adoption.

When we're talking about planting trees either private or public, is that native trees or does it matter what type of trees?

Yeah so it includes our list which again is included in the appendix. It includes both native trees like oaks again coastal live oaks things like that as well as non-native trees and so something that we really look at for the trees species list Climate adaptation right and so sometimes we have to look to see like what's doing well in hotter cities right now, right? What trees are doing well in hotter cities.

You know if climate does change and you know the city is getting hotter things like that. So we want to make sure you know we have drought tolerant climate adaptable tree species. So that does include both native and non-native tree species.

I have a question for staff. What would this look like enhancing the zone code for tree requirements for development?

You said enhancing the zone code?

Yeah, correct. I think on the presentation is shared that some proactive measures that we can do would be enhancing the zone code for tree requirements.

I didn't speak on that a little bit as well so i think what we were thinking there is, you know sometimes cities already have zoning requirements for tree planting like a certain number of trees per housing development or along the length of roads and streets and things like that Trying to maximize essentially what developers can do to make sure that as many trees are getting planted with new developments as possible.

I think that's kind of what we're thinking there.

One of the things Several years ago, we worked with CAL FIRE in a group. I don't know if you know Ken Knight out of Goleta? His children's trees. He's the tree man from that area and working with the Lions Club, we planted trees on O'Connell Park and also at Tognazzini Park and also at Las Mujeres Park And one of the issues, and I'm glad you bring this up because it's pretty honest in terms of what you found that there's a lack of trees and what had happened after the trees were planted. In fact, Cal Fire actually purchased had money to purchase the trees.

So like on one part of O'Connell Park there was 16 trees planted there. And the issue was, I know that the current public works staff actually took the drip irrigation system out and put some hard piping water in to get that done. The trees are doing better but we lost trees there. And what I'm pointing at is that the city trees in the parks that I know of aren't doing well, the city trees.

And what was happening, and I'm glad the public works to pick that up. They're actually taking care of those trees but some are dead. Yeah. And one of the things when Eddie who is our Parks and Recreation guy when they piped O'Connell Park for hard for the PVC pipe that there was one tree missing and so he didn't have money to plant the other tree. And you look at Central Park, which is Las Mojadas park. Those trees are doing well because they're watered and they're taken care of. And if you don't, if you plant them and don't take care of them it's just not gonna do any good. And I noticed that one of the things you mentioned that there's 540 trees that need to be planted in private property

How did you, how'd it come to that? So yeah and it's even more now with the 10% goal so I think it's more like 900 something trees. Okay um so that was yeah for the 8% goal and so essentially how we calculated that is we take, we factor in existing canopy growth from the city's public trees first so that's you know uh first taken into account which will count towards the overall canopy cover goal And then, yeah it was kind of discussions with city staff to see you know how much they thought they could take on in terms of the current number of vacant sites which there aren't a ton, at least in parks and things like that I think there are quite a bit more vacant sites. In parkways, which again would be private property owner responsibility to maintain even if the city planted them afterwards.

But yeah we would want to encourage really the city being able to provide establishment care right maybe for two to three years for those crucial first years so watering and things like that. But yeah, it was essentially a conversation with city staff to see what they could take on and then inevitably the rest of it needs to happen on private property because that's also where the biggest loss came from.

You know, over 90% of the trees that were lost between 2018 and 2022 were lost from private property.

Then you mentioned Gladi Track area that had trees. I don't recall trees in Gladi Track.

Well, I think it's that kind of wetland complex because there's that big grove of trees there and I think that's accounting for... Willows though. Oh yeah, it's willows but they still if they're over a certain height they get counted as part of the canopy cover because there's pretty tall willows there at least 20 feet

probably so.

Yeah, I would say anything over 15 feet is probably going to get counted towards that.

One of the things, a pet peeve of mine Given the Glendale fire or the fire down there is, the palm trees actually caught on fire and spread, you know, they spread the flames on, you know, the ambers everywhere. And that's what created a lot of the fires. You look at Treasure Park and one of the ways I identified my cousin's house is there was three trees, three palm trees that are probably 100 foot, I don't remember 80 foot. They're tall. But they don't give out oxygen Well, not as much. Yeah, I mean- Not as much. They get very little as opposed to some of the other trees that we've got. Correct. So

yeah. So I actually just wrote an email to Bill about that, about palms because generally we try to stay away from palms for the most part because they're actually not true trees. They're more closely related to grasses and they only provide a fraction of the benefits that trees do.

Right.

And they usually need maintenance like every couple years, you know, trim the fronds and things like that so Yeah and they just don't provide as much shade either as standard trees so we do try to steer people away from that. Now the,

and this is to David into you that you mentioned that our we have an arborist on staff now that how can that stretch over to if a family if a private member of a family didn't know how to take care of a tree or trim it? Now, I'm assuming that the arborist now can actually know how to do that. But where's the link between the private and in the city?

Yeah so i think it's like workshops right community education workshops like learn how to trim a tree properly right or You know, learn how to choose what tree species would be good for your property right things like that. And again yeah there's also a resident you know that I mentioned who is an arborist as well and he was very enthusiastic about helping out with workshops so I think taking advantage of those relationships are going to be super important As well as, you know, if a resident has questions maybe they can just submit that to diner or you know the city and depending on her workload. You don't need to be managed and balanced but the other thing I'll mention is you know this city has somewhat of a relationship with the arborist from Santa Maria, although he may be retiring soon I've heard but your relationships like that can also be taken advantage To get outside support right like I think the city would still like to hire outside consulting arborist for larger projects right more expensive projects.