City Council — February 24, 2026

Welcome

to the regular meeting of the Guadalupe City Council, Tuesday February 24th 6pm. May we have roll call please?

Thank you. The next item is, uh, item three is moment of thanks appreciation or condolences. I started with the left side. Is there

Okay, Whitney anything?

I would like to give condolences to the Guzman family. I know that they recently lost their mother as well as to the Rodriguez family who also lost their father. Thank you.

Is that Rodriguez? Okay yeah there's a lot there's quite a few passing uh i have several one is the condolences to the following family Lydia Fierro Veronica Gonzalez, Cherie Dominguez, Keta Cota, Frank Perez and Faye Ujano. So condolences to the family. Okay, our next item we're good to go. Next item is agenda reviews or council member that wishes to change the order of business?

Good. Item five is community participation.

mandate Option B would be four vehicles year one and four vehicles year two. Benefits of both, but our recommendation would be option A for replacing eight vehicles year one. Main reason being is the sooner we start replacing vehicles till they get to the point of their worth a lot of equity so the more vehicles replace year one, the sooner we get to year five sell those vehicles while they're still worth a lot and start really driving down the city costs.

In addition, electric vehicles from manufacturers are starting to be not a priority. So like the Ford Lightning for example was canceled middle of this year in terms of availability so right now we're recommending doing this Chevy Silverado but we won't know what that's going to look like in 2026 for EV trucks So, this is what we did is we compared what you're spending today on your fleet versus what it would look like with an enterprise partnership.

Going through this graph, I can just look at the top section. The top section evaluates your MPG on your current fleet. It looks at how much your vehicle is worth today so current equity and it adds up your total operating expenses to give you a total of what you're spending on your vehicle. So the right side of the screen accounts for depreciation maintenance and fuel to give you a total operating expense of what you're spending today.

Now the bottom section of this screen shows if we were to replace those eight vehicles today with brand new vehicles, what would that cost be compared to what you're doing today? And if you look at the bottom it summarizes all these numbers together. So your total current fleet spend without enterprise is about $30,000. On average, you require about one vehicle a year. So that's about another 40,000. If you're buying a new one, you're selling an older one.

So that's $1,000 back in your budget. So total annual fleet spend is about 78,000 without Enterprise. Now if you were to get eight brand-new vehicles with Enterprise utilizing that open equity lease, the total is... Do you mind reading that number out loud? It's a little tough to see back here. On the new annual fleet spend your one oh here we go 93,000 so annual savings year one I would be about a $14,000 investment except we replacing eight vehicles compared to one vehicle that you're doing today.

Now where this program really makes sense is in 60 months when we sell these vehicles while they're worth a lot of money. you'll really start seeing the cost savings. Right now where the equity of your vehicles is very low, so we have about a $4,000 down payment on all these new vehicles. If we were to do the replacement in five years from now, we would have a down payment about $10,000 per vehicle which would be a cost savings.

So the sooner we can start replacing your vehicles at the Optimal Town, the sooner we can get to a point where we do have a cost savings One more note too, is the city has to transfer over to EV. So another reason there is an investment is we are upgrading to higher cost electric vehicles compared to some of the older gas vehicles that we're using today. And this is just a five-year cash outlay of what the cost would be over five years. So year one, we have about 91,000, year two 88,000 Year 388, year 488 and then year 588. You can actually jump to the next one here as well. Appreciate it. Thank you.

So this is what the cash outlay would be if you just do the four vehicles in year one. So you'd have about a $20,000 savings compared to what you're spending today. If you were to do four vehicles instead of the eight However, we would be replacing less vehicles this year. It would be slower to get to the point where we're replacing majority of your vehicles.

Now you can jump the next one as well. One more time. And so this is what the five-year cash outlay would look like for the four vehicle replacement. So as you can see at the bottom, year one would be less expensive. It'd be about $47,000 and then we jumped to about 94 through 91 years two through five. So it'd be less cost year one but we get to the optimal replacement time slower than option A.

Now, this is a partnership that's different than what you're doing today. So you'd have your own account manager in our office that would go over these analytics with you and your team every year. We are located in Sherman Oaks so our territory goes all the way up to Paso Robles. So we'd be meeting with you consistently as this would be a change but our main goal would be looking at how much are you spending on maintenance? How much are you spending on fuel? And how can we continue to drive down total cost?

And that is it for today. Appreciate your time.

I just have one question. Um, you said there are a lot of numbers but um there was a $4600 down payment was that per vehicle or cumulative?

So that would be for the eight year plan if we were to sell your eight oldest vehicles uh we would have about four thousand dollar down payment on eight of the new ones.

Per vehicle though okay got it thank you

This includes the police department EV vehicles.

So this initial plan, it does not include the PD units but we can still do the police vehicles as well.

Yeah so this came about. Back when I got here, we didn't have any kind of like fleet management plan in place. And then we have a lot of vehicles that are old broken

beyond repair

and In talks with Enterprise here, it's kind of just been a growing system. I think we've been talking probably six months now in total trying to figure out how this would work with police without police if we should just do you know the operation side of the city or whatnot and then with the CARB requirements of the 2035 requirement for municipalities converting to EV where possible This seemed like a good way to get ahead of the curve. And then one thing to also take into account is they resell our vehicles, so we don't have to get on Craigslist or find auctions or anything like that it's all handled in-house with them and that would include additional fleet as well correct if I'm not mistaken? Like if police still wanted to sell vehicles or offload?

Of course but it creates Uh, like the vehicles that get sold create a city pot for future down payments versus. Uh, interdepartmental so that would be the different

more

question.

Does this mean we're going to need more infrastructure for charging electric vehicles?

Good question. That's already in place with the 303 upgrades for the transit, or for the city fleet transit upgrade for like the EV bus and all that stuff.

So we already will have enough. I mean that's going to sufficiently cover that?

Yeah. The thing with things like EV is you don't have to charge every day for the amount of miles that we travel so it would be essentially like a rolling Kind of progress and then the EV chargers that we are putting at other locations like that. We have at the senior center, uh, we could utilize um and then also say like the veterans parking ladder even the transit station if it got overwhelming and we do have chargers out at the wastewater plant already in place

so you don't see potential for any more EV charges than what we already have oh

yes ma'am We're trying to fund those through grants, so we can't guarantee.

No no no I mean I guess my question is don't see the potential for the need for more or I mean there should be more but I'm

just saying. Right yeah so there's already some things in place like with the PD electrification project that already included like level two chargers in the process and I think that was like three chargers or so on the backside of the building for like PD equipment that could also be utilized

I just want to make sure that if we go full electric with our fleet that we have enough chargers without having to spend more money is

oh yeah 100% and it's a, it's a scary jump. Because we do rely so much on grants for things like that especially with our upside down budget so

yeah,

yeah.

What are the next steps?

So essentially we're just trying to see whether or not you think we should proceed with this on any level, whether it's because they can do gas and or diesel also. It's not strictly EV. The EV is just to get a jump on the car requirements so we can still work out a plan to replace with regular fuel. Right, and that would essentially lower our vehicle costs on the front end as well because gas vehicles are cheaper than EVs.

And then you know maybe year five we start to do the conversion to EV to get in that 2035 car brace.

I think it's obvious we need to look at our bottom line right now so right and then go from there so right okay any questions Mr. Samuelson? So we're good. All right, thank you so much presentation. Of course.

Thank you.

Next item 7 is consent calendar and the following items are presented for the City Council approval without discussion as a single agenda item. I do have a request from the public for Item 7D but from the council side is there a request to pull an item?

I'd like to pull B, the warrants.

B? Yes, the warrants. Okay, warrants.

I'd actually like to pull F.

Guadalupe Urban Forest, okay.

And we're pulling D.

Yes. We're pulling so far B, D, F. Christina? Good. Is there a motion to approve the balance without those three items?

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

second. Second, okay good thank you. Any discussion? All those in favor of the motions say aye. Aye. Okay we'll go to item 7b Ms. Villegas.

Okay these are real quick ones Let's see, David on page five of February 26 warrants there. At least it shows public works. There's a $1400 charge for ESRI. What is ESRI? It's on page five towards the bottom. Looks like a subscription

I have to look at the invoices.

Okay, let's see and then on excuse

me. He says it's Kevin says what it is. It's software for something hold on in the chat. Oh okay.

I

don't know

what

that

means. Yeah, it's geographic information systems so it's a mapping software

It's a subscription? It says annual subscription.

Yeah, that's the subscription that the engineering tech uses for all the GIS mapping.

Okay.

Thanks Kevin.

Thank you. And then on... Also to David it says admin passage this is page 15. Rainscape Pasadena landscaping or 8000 what was done at Pasadera

Rainscape is the contractor that is doing the landscaping in Pasadena.

Oh, okay. Let's see... Also David this is on wastewater on page 28 on February 13th warrants There was, let's see it says treatment plant emergency call out for 13,600. Just curious as to the emergency?

That was I talked about that the last council meeting. That's when the pumps that pump the effluent or the influent from the city into the ponds went down and we had used clays to pump the influent into the pond.

That's it. We'll go on through item D and then we'll approve those three items. Ms. Romero, you had a question on that?

Good evening. Yes, I had comments on D the extending the emergency regarding the SCADA system. This emergency started in September and it's now the end of February so it's a little concerning that something so important is still an quote emergency. I also wanted to speak on items F and G would I wait to come up for that later?

Go ahead and speak on it.

Okay, thank you. Just a

second let's see we approve that but go ahead what's your

question? Well on F I realize okay number one love trees I think that it's a great idea but in context and in looking at some of the verbiage in the plan and the executive summary it talks about this is a big step toward a healthier more vibrant more equitable city by planting trees But, you know actually most of us citizens would love to have a functioning downtown where we could actually go buy things that would make our city more vibrant because we'd have sales tax. And we would also be reducing our VMTs which is vehicle miles traveled How many of us have to go to Santa Maria for almost each and everything that we use? So all of the benefit that might be derived from these additional trees are going to be wiped out with the carbon footprint that's created by all of us having to constantly go somewhere else for basic goods and services.

I also wanted to mention or remind you that it seems to me that there aren't any trees planted at Pasadera, and that was a plan that the city reviewed and approved. So that's kind of ironic and sad all at once. And then again this is another grant funded project but what I see as an obligation for maintenance and staffing which costs money on page XI Roman small room in numeral XI Establish a debt number two under visions and goals, establishing a dedicated urban forestry budget and staff.

Also talking about having somebody that has an International Society of Arbiculture ISA certified expertise. Now a lot of these trees are going to be planted on private property is what I understand from the plan so again we have We already have a deficit in the budget, but we continue to take on projects that require care and feeding. And operations is the thing that follows all of these great grant projects. And I don't know that the city has a line item for this in the budget. I don't know what they're proposing to do about it.

I will say that regards to Item G, I am thrilled to death to see Annette Munoz coming back to help out

And I just hope that under Annette's help that we're

able to get things under control And I hope that whatever you guys do with item 16 relative to the Royal Theater Oversight Group, that you do not do a Brown Act-exempt advisory group because that's just going to add to more concern from the citizens that are already concerned about what we deem to be the lack of transparency on that project.

Thank you for your comments. We'll go to item... Let's see. Okay.

Yeah, 7F. I just wanted to

make sure... Do we have the plan in this agenda? Or is it...

Oh, it's just a digital. Okay. Yeah because it's like 300 pages.

Can we have a... Since we have a guest here to speak

on it can we

just have a quick, I don't know, quick overview or...?

Kevin can you...

Oops. Sorry,

thanks for having me. Yeah, I did a presentation last city council meeting but essentially this urban force management plan is a strategic roadmap to help guide the city to better maintain and grow The urban forest, you know within Guadalupe. So taking better care of the trees you know looking for new opportunities for tree planting which I don't think are mutually exclusive with say development further development of the downtown area.

I would also say there are a number of tree plantings in Pasadena they're just young trees that are currently growing which also points to the importance of uh you know the city being able And so, you know, essentially the urban forest plan sets out a vision for the future urban forests over the next 40 years and provides a number of goals as well as recommended actions for how to achieve those goals.

Over the next 40 years, and again the city does have a current I say certified arborist now on staff that they can continue to keep their you know that certification and provide the technical. Guidelines and oversight for contractors that the city works with for tree maintenance. And essentially, you know our 1 of our main recommendations is for the city to continue to go after grants to help with the purchase of new trees and establishing those new trees in neighborhoods that currently don't have a lot of trees.

Um, so the current can't be levels for the city right now are sitting around 4%, which is pretty low. And so we really want to try to maximize the benefits that trees provide and or do that you need to take good care of them and you need to have a plan for growing them. So. That's essentially what this is and I'm happy to answer any other questions specifically about it.

So, Kevin it's just essentially the 300 pages is just what you presented to us at the council meeting that you're here for

correct. Correct so the, the, um. The or the urban force management plan is kind of broken up into 2 different documents. So there's the initial, like it's around 50 pages. That's kind of like the public facing document that has the majority of the analyses, you know, the background, the goals and strategic implementation plan. And then the more numerous page document are the appendices which include some things like a more technical breakdown of budget and staffing analysis of the urban forest resources Um, and then it provides a number of other resources to the community like recommended tree species list our board cultural practice standards that the city can use as well as the community.

As well as engagement results from our community engagement work.

Thank you. I have one more question for David. David, the $170,000 grant that's listed in the report, that's still waiting? Like we still have that available?

We have been doing a reimbursement support already.

OK.

Yeah. Um, due deck and then get the reimbursement for

out of this 100

correct

70. How's our accounting looking on that

grant? It's pretty good.

Good. Great. Look, glad to hear it. Thank you.

Any other questions from Council? Is there a motion to approve B, D and F in the consent calendar?

I'll motion to approve item 7B,7D and 7F on the consent calendar.

And we proved that before, but that's okay. I'll second. Okay any discussion? All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Good next item is a management reports item 8 interim city administrator Mr. Grijalva.

Alright thank you Mr. Mayor council members staff and Community members. So just to give a kind of brief overview what's going on with the Royal Theater right now as far as construction goes, they're still doing the earthwork. They were able to get through all the winter storm that came through last week. They're doing some reconstruction on the front wall, on the street side.

Due to extensive like fire water damage some of the header beam is kind of messed up but an issue that's coming up with that is because it's the damage is so extensive they have to Consult with the historical architect to make sure that any repairs don't violate the historical requirements so that we can maintain that historical prowess on it. They are doing some framing on interior walls, some shoring and bracing Just to enlarge the inside doors, they have to do some cutting and put in some footers and stuff like that.

So they're working on that. There is some issues with the marquee. I think I sent some pictures out there's a lot of extensive damage. So they're going to look at a way to either Essentially redesign it out of modern materials, keeping the same. I guess, like era design with the neon lights and you know the same shape and everything. So we're waiting on to meet with the designers that kind of go over what would be kind of be looking for as far as maintaining as much as possible with the design that was there. Let's see.

Yes ma'am.

Do we know that the price difference between the refurbishment of the old sign versus creating a new one?

No, that's part of what we have to meet about. We need to kind of get a breakdown of kind of what we're looking for LEDs you know whatever the case may be as far as that and then probably go with like some kind of aluminum construction or something powder coated to kind of put up with the salt air you know kind of thing but once we kind of break that down then we can actually get a quote on what the change order would be as far as cost

okay thank you

The park is firing on all cylinders, they're moving very quick over there. They're getting a lot of dirt work done. The 303 Obispo, that project it hit some delays also because of the water because they were doing so much earthwork over there. They are getting ready to start pulling in some electrical stuff. They got some pads set for transformers and stuff like that.

And then starting to move forward on that as well. As a lot of people saw today, they moved the caboose over at the train station. So that's on its way down to Santa Maria Valley Railroad to get all cleaned up and then it's going to head to the Santa Maria Valley Railroad Historical Museum I believe is And then in probably within the next couple of weeks, we'll be breaking ground over there to get that one rocking and rolling. That'll be I think it's about 120 days of construction.

So that'll be going pretty good. They're trying to get in right now to do some painting on the facility by or within the next month so we can piggyback on the permit that Amtrak has so that we don't have to get extra delay anything And then we got awarded, I don't know the mayor's probably gonna speak on this also. The Community Cleanup and Employment Pathway Grant last Friday, Caltrans announced it.

It's a good grant. It kind of focuses on community cleanups, community outreach kinda that whole like community esprit de corps kinda thing you know? Additional funding for two positions as well. So that's something that we'll be able to look at, especially with our current climate with our budget being able to hire more staff better somebody else's pocket is kind of beneficial.

But that's all I have any questions.

Just a quick question could you please tell me the timeline for Las Mujeres

Park. So notwithstanding the water. It should be, that was 145 days or something like that of construction. So there should be done right around the end of school beginning of summer so. Okay

thank you.

I like everything is going to be done kind of at the same time except for the theater about that same timeframe.

Any questions of David?

Could you clarify your last statement on the grant has sufficient funds for two positions?

Correct. So the grant went through, because it's part of the employment pathways, it does fund to parks facilities, streets worker maintenance ones for 12 months. That's what I was looking for, for 12 months. Yeah so it would be two 12 month limited term positions. Got it.

Okay that makes sense.

Yeah, we also received that grant for the Senior Center. Correct. To renovate there's 282,000 or something like that which is to renovate the Senior Center so we need that to happen. Okay thank you David. We'll go to items nine Director of Public Safety Chief Cash

Thank you, Mr Mayor city council staff and our community. There's nothing specific to address. I'll be speaking on item number 14, which is the most important one at this time unless there's questions from Council.

I do. When I first started, I know that we used to get some robust reports from you. I would like to see that even if it's quarterly once a month. I know that you recently got new vehicles and I would find that it's important that we find out in reports or in council meetings versus the warrants so council members doesn't have questions on them. It would be nice to know about big issues or any upcoming training.

I recently read that there was an accident on Main Street and I'm not too sure if it was on the highway, but I wanted to see if you can kind of let me know if there is an accident with a kid on the Main Street in Guadalupe. How are you reporting that to Caltrans?

No, not reporting that to Caltrans. I did the report, I was there. There really wasn't an accident. Facebook and everybody else kind of blew that out of proportion, a young lady is going across the street on her scooter. And she's driving cars already stopped and she's just kind of tipped and went into the front of the bumper, but she was crying and upset it was late.

So we got there the person. When I got there, the person had left. So it was not a hit and run. He got out. He checked with her. She said she was fine. She did not need anything. But the parent later wanted the police there explain to him it's an incident report. It's not a traffic accident.

And to clarify, I know Caltrans shared recently that they weren't getting our reports. If there is something on Guadalupe Street, they shared how important it is for us to document and report in order for them to understand the challenges that students and families are experiencing on that main going forward if there is an accident on that highway. How will you be reporting that? Is it weekly? Is a monthly what does that look like?

No, that's something that'll be on a case-by-case basis. I already have our contacts. Same people came here and did the presentation. I sent them all the other material from last time that we did for the last three years. So we're in contact with all our different agencies to give them information if there's something that we need to share.

Caltran said that we had to submit it on a portal. Is that something that we are going to do?

That was never discussed with me. I usually, we just talk on the phone and we don't release all the information as far as names and so forth but we give them whatever statistics that we have.

Okay, because every city and county does that. It's not an issue for other police departments. And I would like for you to clarify either in the email how will we be reporting this on the portal? Because Caltrans shared that we weren't submitting and I just want to advocate on ensuring that we are reporting these incidents properly to Caltrans. Yes ma'am. Thank you.

Any further questions of Chief? All right, we'll go to item 10 recreation service manager, Mr.

Good evening Mr Mayor and City Council staff and citizens thanks for being here tonight. So for our January edition of parks and rec. We started off with a poetry jam on the 16th, which is was the first one of the year we run it every other month. was really nice because we had people all the way from AG and Shell Beach and Grover. So it's nice to know that it is actually expanding outside of our community, but also with consistent community participation which is really nice at least for me personally just because I know how much of an outlet it serves myself as well as the other consistent community members so for it to be now growing outside of our community consistently.

It's just a wonderful thing to, you know, great outlet and next one is going to be on March 27 over at the Vets Hall at 6pm. Love to see anyone who would like to get out there we have coffee some sweets table. You don't have to recite you could just come hang out. You can recite your own things or your favorite poet encourage it all, or a song The next item, we had a movie night where you have run a monthly movie night. This one was on January 23 as well as what's special about this one sneaky Pico and GV pack were gracious enough to donate free hot dogs.