City Council — January 27, 2026

Good

evening. Welcome to the regular meeting, City of Guadalupe City Council. May we have roll call please?

I'd like to pull the warrants

item which is B. Anybody else? May, can I have a motion to approve everything except B?

I'll make a motion to approve the remaining of the balance.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

Any discussion? All those in favor of the motion say aye. Miss Villegas.

Okay, I have a few and we'll start with Chief. This is on page six of the warrants and it looks like there's, first of all the amount is $13,000 and its marketing website redesign. I guess my question is this a new vendor that you're using? And if so why?

Yes we found because of the Tariffs and so forth. There's a lot of designers that are kind of like out of work, and we've received a lot of complaints from not only internally I mean as far as in the city but outside as far as our website. And we have a lot of links that are not connected. People have a big problem with it so we went out we kind of searched who could assist us They gave a pretty great presentation, everything that we were asking for to kind of make it happen not only on the web design but also on community relation items that we could give to the community and so forth. So I have pretty much an entire package that we can get done. And I was also seeing if If it is what we think it is, I've already notified Mr. Trujillo that maybe this is something we should look citywide too if this kind of comes across at least our expectations so we're the test support.

I have a follow-up question on that one. Is that website going to be attached to our city website?

It'll yes, it'll be the police department fire department integrated in like within that website

within the city website. Okay, thank you.

Any other questions?

Yeah, please. Back back to you chief on page 13 there's a new one year subscription of $3,000 for Gov pilot. And what is, what is that?

That co-compliance? Yes. Patrick helped put that together. Oh definitely. That's a co-compliance software so that we could it makes it easier and faster for us to categorize and issue citations and track everything so that way when we go to our hearing judge we're now in the 21st century

Okay, final question for you chief. I didn't put a post it but um it appears that you purchased a new vehicle for pd 43 43

000 73 or 70 several

several

several new vehicles yes

okay was this part of the your rotation process that you talked about before?

Yes

okay So what happens to, let's say you bought two. So you're rotating two out? What happens to those ones that are rotated out or how are they rotated?

Yeah, usually because of mileage or what's occurring right now we're really spending more money on maintenance and upkeep than what we got for the vehicle so we try to, normally we'll use Craigslist so we'll strip everything down and then we'll try to auction it off that way

Okay,

thanks.

Just a couple more questions this is for Annette. Let's see on page 18 of the warrants there were under J&E cleaning or cleaning service if I read this correctly it appears that there were a number of late invoices do we know why?

I'm not sure why, but in trying to remediate the late fees that have been happening we are actually now having check runs every week so that we can avoid late charges like that whether the invoice didn't get to us or we had to wait for the next council meeting for ratification. We just felt like it's the late fees are piling up so we just need to do be doing it every week. So,

for specific to this the cleaning service one where there are multiple months that are shown on the warrants does that mean that we're now current with them?

I would have to look into that specifically but that's what we're trying to do is just make sure that everybody is up-to-date so that we're not paying late fees anymore and

You've actually answered my next question, so I'm done.

Okay is there a motion to approve item B and their consent?

I'll make a motion to approve item B and their consent calendar. Do

you second?

I'll second.

Any discussion? All those in favor of the motion say aye.

Aye.

All ayes thank you. Next item is management reports interim city administrator Mr. Verheel

Right, good evening mayor council members community members staff. Um, so we'll start out with some things we got going on. We're doing the groundbreaking for last on Friday 3 PM. The contractor, the other parties involved the architects and design team they're all planning on being there as well. Arnulfo's kind of put together a good little flyer and everything, got that out there. So we're expecting good things to come from that.

We got the 303, the courtyard, we got that started. They're doing earthwork right now. And then also at 303, the SCADA system is just about all the kinks worked out of it. So hopefully the next council meeting will be closing that and taking that off the agenda We also have the Amtrak going. We're still processing some middles, like RFI requests for information and things like that.

They have the fancy Portland Loo bathroom has been ordered. That's got like the most lead time for that project besides apparently moving the caboose so as soon as that's moved then we can start breaking ground there Later in the month of February, Enterprise is going to be coming and doing a fleet management kind of presentation with their lease program, how they offload vehicles for us.

The whole gambit of what they can do for us to help our vehicles keep value before it's time for us to get rid of them so we can get rid of our assets when they're actually still an asset Um, let's see. Still coming up in February, we're still planning for Tom to be here for the reconciliation of all the invoices to him and with the city and getting that all kind of squared away.

So with the Royal Theater as of the latest up-to-date information gas companies coming out next week they're going to cut and cap some lines so we can get going with relocating the gas meter We're contacting the neighboring property owners, just for construction equipment moving and lay down yard stuff. And kind of going back over property line issues. The lobby area of the theater has been cleared of all abatements done. They're still working on the interior, well past the lobby portion.

The damage that they're starting to see is more structural so more vertical beams things like that as far as in the lobby and seems to be mostly street facing location on the walls Let's see what else they're going to start doing some exploratory cutting next week. I'm looking for the utilities that are inside the theater, seeing where that stuff is kind of headed and then the marquee is coming down Monday and Tuesday so as long as a permit goes through hopefully it should go through this week we did all the signing on all that so that should be going good Um, and then the other thing with the Royal theater we've been in talks with Tom over the last week. Tom is going to be stepping down as the PM.

As of right now, the city's gonna be absorbing the project to go with our other handful of projects we have going. Um, we are going to push to keep Tom on his capital campaign. Because he has brought money to the project and he is currently looking for operators for the facility. And that's something that we need to get done before we open. So, we're gonna be presenting that next month as well to amend his contract and switch him to strictly capital campaign stuff.

And then the city between public works, the city engineer and the contract management we have on the ground already. We feel that we can take that over so that is my report does anybody have any questions?

Just PM is project manager, so people

correct. Yeah yeah project manager.

Go

ahead. A couple questions and just to clarify you're still reconciling the finances on that correct?

Yeah we had to pull a net figure I'm sorry we had to pull in that away from process for the mid year review understood so

one more question. The marquee is coming down. You mentioned how long will the marquee be down

once the marquee comes down it will I don't really have a we don't know. No, okay

that's

I feel like

no it's just such a big you know thing when you drive a downtown Guadalupe so we shall be prepared for a bit of a change

yeah um yeah at least for the interim maybe we can get the police little flasher thing and we can start doing announcements on that

what happens to are we refurbishing the old marquee or are we putting a new one up

do you know Jeff Yeah, I don't remember. I don't recall off the top of my head either.

Okay because i was gonna say if they're...I feel like what are they going to do with the old one?

I think the goal is to try to refurbish as much as they can. That's what I would know.

They're gonna redo the neon and everything else. Yeah okay cool. And then lift it up because it's too low.

Oh is that too low? Okay all right well thank you so much.

Yes ma'am. Any questions of David Mr. Trujillo? What's that sir? No was there any questions? All right, next item. Item eight is the Director of Public Safety, Chief Cash.

Chief, do you want me to put your presentation up right now?

Not

yet.

Give me about 30 seconds. Thank you Mr. Mayor, Council, staff and our community members. Just two quick items before we have the PowerPoint up. Last month just so on... We had a laundromat theft In itself, it's not huge unless you're the victim. So I was one who took the report and- You're talking clothes, not the laundromat? Yeah, the report,

yes. No, what's theft? Clothes, okay.

Yes. So it's all this young lady's clothing and thank goodness there were cameras there so we put together a Crime Stoppers and sent that out and we had several people call the victim came by seven maybe about eight o'clock last night I was still in the office and so she got to sit and listen To some of those people who called in who identified the suspect.

So, it was in a sense it was nice to kind of have a young lady who was just very distraught and couldn't understand her stuff was stolen and to see the process. And so now we know who the person is and I spent part of my morning driving in Santa Maria trying to locate this guy, but we're working to try to put together a warrant. So that we couldn't finalize this so it's.

And in a sense, it's not a huge issue. But to be able to see that sense of relief from her because she thought it was something personal that she did and to understand and know it's not. It was very satisfying on my end to really be able to help somebody like that. The second one prior we go is we just received Public and well, not a public that is a public announcement per se from the California Attorney General's office and Governor Newsom to all long to all law enforcement. He is letting us know that local and state police have the authority to investigate crimes committed by federal agents. And this is in response to the situation that's occurring in Minneapolis or so.

Just so that you would do understand and you know where what's going on, and this is going out publicly. So I'm sure there might be questions concerning department law enforcements through their cities and so forth. And this is something that we will discuss with the officers as far as how we're gonna handle certain situations.

Chief, quick question. Were you the one that put up the Crimestoppers around town? The photo and then the report I've seen it. No.

Yes ma'am.

Okay. I wasn't sure if it was somebody worried and I just yeah just wanted to make sure.

Trying to earn my money okay um The citizens that spoke today concerning the insurance. We've been working on this for since 2024, Captain Schmidt and I, and this has been an interesting process a lot of learning that really occurred on this but then too I want our community members to know you know I hear their comments but No one comes to my office and talks to me directly of what's happening and what's going on.

I've only had, I got a couple back there. She's my parking enforcement officer. We have been working together because they had a similar issue. And Captain Schmidt reached out to some of the insurance agents and they asked if we could do a letter for them so that They can have some cushion room while we continue to work on that. So, I've written 13 different letters and contacted different agents.

I've only had one agent so far come back and say that they don't accept the letter. So there's a lot of miscommunication that is occurring, and for future reference, I'd let anybody know please come by my office if you really wanna know what's going on. Okay, first of all, I'm gonna really show that people can understand what happened where we're at and what we're looking at for the future concerning this situation.

You can see there, the purpose of the schedule. The ISO outlines the criteria for evaluating fire prevention, fire suppression capabilities in individual communities or fire protection areas. The purpose of such an evaluation is to develop a public protection classification which everyone understands is PPC for property insurance ratings. Okay? The schedule is a property insurance rating tool and it's not intended to analyze all aspects of a comprehensive Comprehensive Public Fire Protection Program.

ISO, the report everyone's referring to collects and evaluates information from communities in United States and others and their structure fire suppression capabilities. The data is analyzed using their fire suppression rating schedule and then a public protection classification grade is assigned to the community. The surveys are conducted whenever it appears that there is a possibility of a PPC change, as such the PPC program provides important up-to-date information about the protection throughout the country. So first of all is the evaluations are done via surveys that are sent to fire departments And I am where the buck stops. If anyone's asking as far as Captain Schmidt and I worked together to do this, and there was already a classification prior to my employment.

So we'll show you how many years in between different evaluations This is the important part too. ISO is not a public agency, so there's no regulations. It is an independent company that serves insurance companies, communities, fire departments, insurance regulators and others by providing information at risk. And I really say that in the sense this is a private company, we don't have any control as far as a local fire department Knowing what their standards are on a regular basis. So if you would, if they were a state agency it's written, it's public we always know what we have to do to stay regulated so like I said before this is an independent company The ISO's expert staff collects information about municipal fire suppression efforts in communities throughout the United States.

Each of those communities, ISO analyzes the relevant data and assigns a grade from one to 10. One is you're outstanding and 10 is you did not meet. And this is the most important part if you look at on that slide, class 10 indicates that the areas fire suppression program did not meet their minimum criteria Okay. Okay, these are the things that they collect information on. They review the emergency communications accounts for 10% of the overall score.

They reviewed apart the fire department, it counts for 50% of the overall score and they reviewed the water supply system which counts for 40% of the overall score. So you can see You get a one, you gotta score about 90 or more. And if you get a 10 it's either a zero which what it comes down to be so you can have anything in between but if you get a 10 they're not going to cover you this one here shows through countrywide, where a lot of the scores came up. You could see there at 10, there's about 1500 okay?

We were prior of four okay we were very low on that scale okay and it'll show later on where our score is now and you see at the very top the last time they did an evaluation was 2017 seven years ago The review, ISO concluded its review of the fire suppression features being provided by Guadalupe and we received a 10. This is the chart and the part that I found out is when I talked to some of the agents no one had this except for me. The agents all they give them is a number My own fire department didn't have it, which I didn't know. I thought my captain did so I get it. So I'm sharing something that really most times it doesn't really come out in the public but it's information that people need to understand. So you see there emergency communications, okay?

Credit available is a 10. We got a 9.2. Our fire department, the top credit you can get is 50 we're at 15.59 Water supply, you can get a 40. We're at 28.96 and for divergence for other community risks so forth, you can get a 5.5, we got a 4.23. Our total score is 49.74 out of 105 and I'm not sure if it's on the slide but on that score, we pretty much... The next slide, I think we went down to a six Which it is there, so it's imperative that you are aware that you're currently and this is I'm sharing now as an email.

That I communicated with the people that are doing the evaluations says that currently survey result in class 10 due to not meeting the minimum response for firefighters. can be three firefighters and one chief officer on the initial alarm to all structure fires. Your point total also results in a retro progression from a class four to a six. The part I want to really kind of get across here, our score was a six.

The way their scoring does is if you do not score in each category And if you miss one category, they don't care about the score. You got a 10. Everyone kind of understand that? So it took me awhile because the first time I called, I asked them well we got a 49 so I'm looking at like in school what's the number to pass and I was told there is no number to pass. It says if you miss one of those things Then I don't care what your score is, you got a 10. And you could see right there what happened is.

You need to have 4 firefighters on each shift since we do not. We did not pass before even took the survey. This is what they told me where we lost our points. Okay deployment analysis okay? We lost about a point because Station 1, which is over at the vets facility. We have no one there so we lost a point. Company personnel okay you can see we got a 2.5 and we dropped from 7.78 that was the hit training 2.82 and we got a, uh, we dropped from a 4.56 so that was about two drops the other one's about five and water supply and I'll explain, I'll explain all this other initially.

We had a 19.8 we dropped, uh we could have had a 28.75 so only those four areas out of everything else were where our deficiencies were but The way they grade, all that doesn't matter because we do not have four. Technically we would have to have 100% hiring for additional fire. So proposed correction methods, Captain Schmidt and I talked about for the station. There's only one point and right now we don't have a staffing to put somebody just sitting over there.

Company personnel, the only way you can get this is hiring and let me finish this in training it's just more of increasing our scheduling of how we do training When you only have two people there and the others are off, it's kind of hard to do group training because then that's a lot of overtime or calling somebody back into work. And for the water supply it's only pretty much about increasing our flow testing cycles so at least uh the last two are internal those things that we can definitely change Okay, and says here this is the email says your plan of improvement should be received no later than November 11 2024. We had been talking with them about how we can get things done.

Captain Schmidt, we found the one of the representatives who did who does a survey they were in the orchid area and we had arranged To have them come here physically so we could work to find a way to kind of get around that. And while Captain Schmidt was on the phone, they were kinda going down well have you done this? Have you done this and when we got to the area of staffing says well we don't have four ago he failed and conversation was over.

So they're saying here, the plan should address the steps that would be taken to ensure the minimum response of four firefighters will be met. You may also address other areas where points were lost. Please be advised that additional points cannot be adjusted unless the minimum response is met. So it doesn't matter what we adjust if we don't meet the minimum response you failed anyhow.

Steps taken to correct deficiencies. So, you know some people kind of ask well what have we been doing since? Okay 2020 I can't see it up there. 2020, the fire. After I was hired, we started off and people talk, well what has changed? When we came in, we had three full-time firefighters. That was it. 2020, I took one police officer position, got rid of it and I sent that funds over to the Fire Department and we were able to increase the department by 100%. We hired three fire engineers 2021 City Council approved the fire battalion chief position that I had been lobbying for and definitely appreciate that. 2023, we instituted a firefighter intern program. What we're trying to do was to find pathways for some of our young people to look at being firefighters and look at long-term method of hopefully getting them within the system to be at least part time firefighters to increase our staffing levels.

2020-23 City Council approved fire impact fees to secure additional funding sources for the Fire Department. So we were also looking at how can we, without hitting the budget, increase our monies especially when we had Pasadena and we were going to increase as far as our population? In 2024, we applied unfortunately didn't get the federal safer grant. That grant would have allowed us to hire three firefighters and not pay money for 3 years so that way we could be able to plan and budget for that it's a very competitive and as my captain stated they usually give it to a department that is like Right close to meeting those minimum standards. Well, we weren't that close and it's a very nationally competitive grant. 2024 City Council approved fire dispatch system to improve safety and protection.

That is what helped our rating there. They knew that we were kind of pushing that issue but that also is one thing increased the budget. 2025, we were tasked with doing a State of the City presentation and in that we outlined our goals as far as developing cross-training of fire and police and looking at increasing training opportunities. So what really changed In 2017 when this was done, we had three full-time fire personnel.

The difference, we had about 16 to 17 PFCs, part time firefighters. The way they grade is they look at timesheets and schedules. So looking at those timesheets and schedules of those PFCs that were here, it's we had four on or that were near or available Right now, we have no part-time firefighters and all we have is a total of six firefighters. What has changed?

You have to look at police and fire departments. Police department as far as personnel change over a lot. They're going to different departments there's injuries there's out so there's always hiring of law enforcement. Fire is they will stay They'll stay 20, 30 years in the fire department. This is a cyclical issue that you don't see on the police side. On the fire side is those firefighters will stay 20-30 years but academies still keep going and with that you have these young people who have the academy training But there's no job openings. That's when we get a lot of applicants for part-time fire. We're the only one who does it in the county, so they need to keep their skills up. So they come to us as part timers waiting to get a full time job.

As that cycle happens, fire, they have huge retirements. When that happens all those part timers, they go get those jobs then Don't have any applicants. We're in that cycle right now, there are firefighter jobs. So why come here and Captain Schmidt and I looked at the pay? I think we came out to almost $3 an hour. Why would you come here to do this when you can get a full time job in Santa Maria?

Recommendations, that has been the change of why We don't have the staffing and that is what the Achilles heel was as far as we were able to do this in 2017, but we can't do it now. So one things that we had looked at, I had visited there's a police department where there's the personnel they call public safety. They're fire and police trained so we looked at cross-training police officers to assist Captain Schmidt drew up a training program and with that we could meet the threshold for ISO.

But we have to look at, let's be realistic if we're gonna have additional training they're gonna want pay for that additional training. Right now we're at top is a 4% specialty pay okay but with that we'd also would have to hire at least three part-time firefighters and we're given approximate cost $36,000 without the equipment so we look at approximate costs $80,000 to $100,000 per year But that is the fastest way that we could look to change the ratings, if they accept it.

That would be one of... That would be the fastest way. The other way, another possibility is hire six part-time firefighters, okay? And we played with those figures and it come about the same thing between 80 to 100,000 a year And we put up there, hire six full-time firefighters. Approximately 116,000 with benefits. You can see they are 696,000 a year. That's why I didn't bring that to council.

That's my budget on steroids for both departments and a citizen brought up who called me says well why don't we just contract to the county? Anything about it, I had looked at that. It was going to be 3 times of what we budget right now for the county to do it and they would only have 1 truck here. So, we looked at other aspects so people understand we've been.

Wrecking our minds out here, what other things can we do? Well there's one thing that we looked at also is with the new dispatching system. The old dispatching system is if there's a fire in Guadalupe they say we send the fire. If it's bigger than what we need we call Santa Maria and they come but that's a delay So, right now at the new radio system is if the fire's in Guadalupe, Guadalupe responds but they also dispatched the nearest fire station to also start responding.

So we thought can we utilize those that are responding with R2 to make the four? The only problem is everyone has to be there on the ground in four minutes Santa Maria cannot get here in four minutes. So we couldn't utilize that type of system to see if we could still kind of lower the cost. We've been working on this for over a year and a half or two, and we've been working and talking with them.

I never reached out or talked to any...I only talked to one agent Agents wanted to call me, I sat last night with Mr. Gonzalez's agent on the phone and she didn't know any of this because at first she was pretty hot and I understand that. She wanted to vent, she wants to represent her clients. Well if I explain, she says, I didn't know that since I've never seen the report all I get is a number now I understand it. It doesn't correct it but now she understands And so, I will definitely take a hit on that as far as people just wanted to know what was going on and that's why I thought to kind of put this together.

We're still going to brainstorm if you go to the next slide and see what I'm talking about pros and cons okay we can do that meet the ISO standards we can improve public safety But it's cost prohibitive. I still have to go through employee unions and thank God, I got Phil because we get beat up and oh, and Sylvia think she's great but yeah, we deal with employee unions. And I've talked to cops about doing it. Some don't wanna do it fire some don't wanna do it so there's negotiations and the cost negatively affects other city programs and departments I think that should be it. So, um, I hope People understand that we have not just been sitting on this, we've been working on this going through this. I've learned an awful lot about this every seven years.