City Council — May 26, 2026

Okay, thank you. Item 6 is a consent calendar. The following items are presented for approval without discussion as a single agenda item. Is there a council person that wishes to pull an item to discuss outside of the consent calendar? I don't believe we've received any public comment regarding that so is there a motion to approve the consent calendar?

I'll motion to approve the consent calendar

Is there a second?

I'll second.

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

Aye.

All ayes, thank you. Now we'll go to management reports Mr. Trujillo

All right, good evening Mr. Mayor, council members, staff and residents. Okay so what we got going this week we got some stuff with the Royal Theater they were able to get some footers poured on the inside of the facility and they got the okay for the facade for the front wall. They've started demoing that a little bit at a time They still can't really go all the way because we're still waiting for the impression permit for the sidewalk and, and all that through Caltrans.

All of which was submitted last week. So that's just pending now. We are kind of starting to make some relationships with the permit inspectors and the permit writers. It's a slow process kind of befriending them, but they're kind of starting to see what we're going through. So they're kind of starting to come on our side good. They are getting inspected this week on some interior rebar and some rebar on the south pad those pending passing the city inspector then they hope to pour at least the South Pad this week and then They're doing some re, checking some stuff with the architect. They yanked off some plaster on the inside of the building or the bathrooms and it doesn't look like it's gonna fit with the original design. So they're probably gonna have to fur it out a little bit and then throw some drywall but they're just making sure that that's within the cost formula that we have going right now.

And then with the park With Las Mujeres, we got the skate park guys out there. They're getting their construction going. They started doing some paving in the parking area on the I guess it's a 9th Street side right there by the jail they've redone some stuff right there. They had to pull some stuff out and put some stuff back in because of the sidewalks weren't poured with ADA compliance but all that got fixed so they're moving right along.

Their big thing that they had is the Portaloo, which is the outside bathroom that's going in there. That takes some processing time but they're anticipating that to end of June beginning of July so you know it's still falling right into the middle of their construction period so we're not gonna get bogged down at all with that over here at 303 at the courtyard.

All we're really waiting on is the gates. They had to do a redesign because I think the original design had the gate kind of floating instead of on a wheel, like on our track and the distance wasn't taken into account. So now with the distance they're getting one with the wheel put on so they're getting that all back sorted out but even with that they're expecting that hopefully fingers crossed this week And all they're doing is striping, putting some landscaping behind the bus stop right there against the fence. They're gonna replace the fence slats make that all kind of look even the same you know all the way across and then once I've done this done it'll be the first project to 26 complete we're shooting for possibly this week Worst case scenario will be next Friday with trying to get smart.

To come on over, pull into the little bus charging station. Get some stuff for the social media stuff and show that we actually have a fully functioning charging station and fleet charging all that as well. They did run into an issue with the breaker. So, pending how fast that actually comes in it might not actually be working for the picture but it'll be like the next week. That's just way order and the way ordering goes sometimes you get here when you want to sometimes you don't so that's that.

The only other thing we kind of had we've had day and error coming through all this All this grant paperwork, and we're starting to get a bunch of reimbursements going and getting some money coming back to us. We were on a talk last week with the new agency that is doing our grant management. And they brought up that based on our population CDBG might be giving us formula money or might should be giving us formula money Because of our population and we're DAC and all these kinds of things that kind of meet this little criteria.

So they are looking into that, and then we will let you guys know what they come up with. But that is all I have so is there any questions?

I think I mentioned, Vanessa? No go ahead. That the charging station at the senior center, is that going to eliminate that and charging is gonna go That's

correct as soon as I'm charging. Is fully functional at the courtyard at 303, then we can charge our fleet vehicles. So, we will decommissioned the charging station at the senior center and then with hopes that with the earmark funds that we received from Carver Hall's office just replace that with a pay to use charger so that we don't eliminate the ability for people to charge there. We just don't make it free.

So that's the plan.

Yeah, I did. I know that David recently met with me last week in regards to some concerns in regards to not having a recreation manager and I still continue to get those concerns I wanted to see if there you can share a little bit about if there is a plan in place, I know that there's summer recreation coming up. Kids are out on school so you know I just signed up for the Junior Giants as a coach, I want to see what that looks like I know I got an email saying that, um, that little league opens up next week. And so I want to make sure that parents aren't for form what does that look like for them they're going to start making plans.

And then I continue to get questions in regards to the horseshoes. I know that when we have the cleanup at the park there are some funding that went into supporting The park updates. And so, also if you have any updates in regards to that that way I can also share with the horseshoes I think they're just eager to get out there and play and I think anytime we have a space for the community that's really important to keep maintained.

Yeah, so we'll start with the junior giant stuff. The, I guess he's the local commissioner Fernando. He came by today. Uh, I was not in the office, but I intend to call him tomorrow that is not something that we're looking to stop or postpone. But as you know, today being a council day, there's not a lot of room for.

Oh, hey Shirley. She

can't hear

no.

Okay so we're still got some parks offline and we're still working on trying to get 1 system for the whole city hospital board meeting. We discussed as far as some of the new doctors that are coming online and I spoke with. The president, Susan, her last name. She's the president of the Marian hospital board. Thank you, and we're going to arrange for her to come down to Guadalupe to have lunch so we can discuss some other issues because we're looking at trying to put on a health and safety fair at Riverview. I already went down and spoke to someone there in the office, and I have a meeting with one from fire, one from police, so that we can put together what we think are some things they may need And then we'll also include them, and I want to try to bring some health officials from Marion.

So that's the reason we're meeting with the president here in Guadalupe having lunch. Also during the week met with Hancock President. We were in another board meeting and he wants come down to Guadalupe. I want to talk to him concerning some issues about getting some of our kids Uh, to the college and at least bringing some of the resources here in quad. Um, at an early age at our junior high level where it should be starting to kind of get our kids into that thought process a lot sooner than waiting for high school so he is looking forward to that I just got to set a date. So that he can come down and we'll. tour and talk about things here in Guadalupe. I was in a webinar this morning at six on the SAFER grant that is opening back up, and We have Barbara, who is our grant writer.

We have all the information we've applied before. That could be three years that we really don't have to pay for firefighters. That could help us because we just lost our one PCF. He's gone to the wildfires for the summer so we're going to have to look to try to fill. We got two potentials that we hope We can work out something to get them here. We had the Memorial Day event, and I'll leave that to the mayor to talk about as far as... I keep saying Sunday.

That was Monday. Okay. Days kind of flowing after a while. Really good event. It was... And Amelia was there and so forth. So if I'll leave that to you, if you don't mind just give an update.

Okay, perfect.

Attended the police officer memorial, and at the Santa Maria Police Department. Very good event we had all the way from from Lompoc different departments that were there so that was the as far as falling officer Memorial that we had their attended the I'm on the board of the new life canine program so we're in slow talking about How to get service animals to first responders and two veterans. The only thing that really kind of came out they I've never seen the commercial, everyone talks about the commercial have it's me and Debbie in there, and this has been very successful so I let them know if they want to do some more commercials, any commercials we're going to film in Guadalupe. So I says we need to get that put out in front.

Probation department as far as the budget work group, that was going good but they've had some, they're gonna have some deficits and at times that can affect some of our youth that are in that probation system for them to be able to get resources but I'm going to those monthly meetings to make sure that kids that are in our area are getting provided services that they really need.

Last week, I attended the Santa Maria Airport tabletop exercise with TSA Homeland Security we had Santa Maria Uh, FBI and everybody else very good tabletop. It's something that is mandatory on a regular basis and it was great to talk with the staff there we're in our 9th year of the contract That we sign public safety and the airport. And, you know, we've looked at approximately almost about 600 something thousand dollars in that's just revenue that has come our way but talking with our staff here there are some things that we need to clean up so that we make sure that is benefiting us to the best of our abilities if it's going to be a revenue generator Public safety, fire and police were going to be volunteering this Thursday at Boys & Girls Club at the mentoring event.

So they reached out to us to head down there we did this last year in conjunction with some of the Santa Maria people so it's really good when we have all our kids there and they'll be sanctioned off with an officer or a firefighter One police officer and one firefighter, they've been tasked with putting together a kids outreach event. I discussed it this weekend with them and they're really excited so it's more of just getting public safety out into the community and the community to really get to know us on a more kind of, well the last one before the serious note After June 12, I have a meeting in Montecito with donors regarding the Royal Theater and some projects. I talked with David about the opening and what are some of those things kind of looking like They have some kind of ideas that we want to put together.

So I'll be there, they're in the UK right now. I talked with them so they'll be back and will be meeting just to do preliminaries to see what is the possibilities. They're very much into seeing like what they can do here in Guadalupe. And so to kind of bring some of those resources up here I think would be very important I just finished up after this weekend.

Met with pretty much, met with all fire Personnel and met with pretty much all police personnel, sworn and non-sworn. I think it's very important regarding the budget if it's going to affect people then they need to be brought into the loop. I gave them as much information that I had to kind of share and what I was looking for them is for their input If I'm going to ask them to kind of have some of this burden, I think it's important for managers to be able to speak to all their employees and see what their input is. And then formulate something. So after that, I was able to put together a public safety contingency plan for the budgeting.

We kind of mapped out what our critical department needs were and what our deferred department needs are. And then we looked at where revenue can be brought in To be able to maybe to support some things and to hold off on something so it was very positive. And I think the employees, of course no one's happy with it but at least they're having a voice. And that way, at least when things do kind of fall they understand that they're going to fall behind this and we're all going ahead in the same direction. So it's important to get their input and feedback so finally finished that and also gave them the vision of what I see us moving forward to for the next fiscal year and the next two years after that.

As far as some of the things that they are looking for, what I think that we should be doing following from what the goals are that the council gave us a couple years back using that as the template so that way they stay focused on what the mission is and what direction we're going So with that, that's my report. Unless there's any questions.

Any questions

Chief? Thank you chief for the comment in regards to connecting with our community I think that's really important growing up in Guadalupe I didn't have that good relationship and I think that our children deserve that I want to also thank you for reaching out to Dr Walters. I think that's really an important conversation to be had. I've connected with the schools in regards to kind of this issue is how can we ensure our kids are going to higher education?

Some things they shared is that I have toured the Lompoc Valley, the Lompoc Hancock College and the Santa Maria one. I went to the public safety department. It was phenomenal everything they had and I think I even seen some action But seeing how they, this Hancock can expose our community to the different departments I think it's really important. After I worked at the Dune Center for 10 years I thought wow if I would have been exposed to this career earlier I would have been a biologist. So exposing our students that are

too late.

is really important. So if you can just share with Dr. Walters, if there's any way that we can bring that exposure down to our communities, get our parents exposed. Just as the mayor mentioned it's never too late. My partner is going back to Allan Hancock College and I'm really excited to support him. And so if we can expose students early on to what departments there is, the better.

And that, maybe that's some direction I can get from you guys here is they've always offered and got to be very straightforward is, you know it's easy for me to explain to go be a cop be a fireman, I want them to find other jobs. You know, I'm proud of what we do but you know there's other opportunities out there and if we can get them on field trips especially someone who might drive a bus that can volunteer their time to be able to take a group of young people to some of those campuses.

I think that'll be great.

I believe all third graders here in Guadalupe actually do, I don't know if it's called Week of Action or Bow Wow or something along those lines where they go to Hancock and explore. And they're with their teachers but I think it's a little step further than that because they can go expose but what does that conversation looks like with their parents and their parents telling them they can do that?

And that's the key part is getting the parents, because I did a talk there and I got to meet some of the faculty. And so they're kind of plugged in but that's the key component is the parents and some are either working or whatever but if I can find that tie-in so that we have not only the community help pushing our youth but then too when they get home. So we have 24 hour pushing them to the direction that they should go.

We'll work together on that. Thank you.

Did Mr. Walters talk about the continuing use of Senior Center for bridging the high school to college? Because they've rendered that before. Have you been in there, I guess you have. Yes but I did not see how that program worked Well, they actually had teachers come in

and... Oh that was a night school kind of thing.

Yeah exactly so the high school students went to the senior center and that whole room is set up for classroom. And there's no reason why that couldn't be for the younger elementary age kids also. So in the past we had a contract with them to be there.

Well, and I think that that's great. And so if anyone here has any of those please send me like an email so I can have bullets. So I said these are our things. And once I get that date down I'll make sure I sent it around. And that way if someone has opportunity to come And put something like into his ear, the more the merrier.

Well he's supportive of that so there's an actual MOU with us for the city and in Bangkok and a teacher so... That's great! More to follow. Okay

any other questions? Okay thank you Chief.

Now we're going on to item nine, regular business discussion and direction regarding the proposed Guadalupe Harvest Festival at Jack O'Connell Park. Mr. Trujillo?

All right, Mr. Mayor, council members, community and staff. So this kind of came to fruition a couple months ago about trying to bring a festival to the city of Guadalupe A first kind of 1st off for the central coast. Um, a way to kind of bring people to the community that wouldn't normally come to the community. And bring something about that maybe people in the community would be interested in and what.

Austin and slow cow roots has kinda put together here so. The intent is to get some kind of direction on whether or not they should move forward, or they shouldn't. They're working with Good Vibes, a slow cow management company. Like real marketers that do this often, and they want to book real bands. Fans that have headlined areas like the Monterey Festival, Avila, different things like that. So they're in demand. So if we want to have something like this, they need to kind of get their marketing going.

This has a potential to bring 10, 12, 15,000 people here to the community over a weekend. It is a permitted event if it is to go through. Potential earnings for the city would be somewhere between 60 and $100,000 depending on tickets parking various things like that. I'm sure Austin will touch on it here shortly. They are aware that they will have to cover all overhead for any P. D fire, anything like that? Any overtime hours and security they've already gone through all this with chief about what the requirements would be.

And there is some planning going on, some discussions with Bill about whether or not it would be allowed. Would it not be allowed for our municipal code? Our municipal code doesn't really hit on it all too much. So we're following the state code. State code says it's okay. However, there may be other things that kind of get in the way. I think Phillip is doing some research on that.

But that's all I got. Austin is gonna come up, he's got a little PowerPoint and he's gonna give you about 10 minutes and then we will move on.

Let me, normally what should happen needs to happen is actually let people know what we're talking about, because a lot of people don't have our agenda. So I'm going to read what's what's going on. A confirm the city's willingness to move forward with the permitting process for the proposed Guadalupe Green Greens Festival at Jack O'Connell Park and be authorized event organizers to begin marketing and advance ticket sales while permit conditions are finalized. And C, direct staff to continue working with the event organizers to finalize operational requirements, fee structures, public safety measures and regulatory compliance prior to final permit approval or decline to move forward with the proposed festival. So I just want to lay that out so people know what we're talking about.

So Austin, it's yours.

Thank you Mayor. Council Members my name is Austin Canela. I'm the founder of Route One Presents and the managing member of Route One Dispensary our local dispensary here in Guadalupe. I am a Central Coast Native and I've been building businesses here for over two decades working alongside local government and local law enforcement but tonight i want to talk about building something bigger An event that I believe can put Guadalupe on the map and the way that this community deserves. Before I walk you through the presentation, I want to note that we've already completed full draft permit package including site plans operations plan parking plan security plans etc.

All that's on file with city staff, but we didn't come here with just a concept. We tried to come here with a plan. Go to the next slide. I also want to say that we have been working in a vacuum, we've been in close communication with city staff throughout this process and I'm very grateful for the support we received from everyone that we've worked with so far and from the community response that we've seen so far. I think it's clear that Guadalupe is ready for something like this.

So let me introduce the Guadalupe Greens Festival. It's two days, September 19th and 20th at Jack O'Connell Park up to 10,000 people a day an estimated 150 to 250 temporary local jobs as zero net cost of the city and go to the next slide. I'm going to talk about the venue one more slide there. Jack O'Connell Park is approximately 15 acres of flat, open, sensible land with existing infrastructure already in place. There's restrooms, ball courts, a covered barbecue pavilion and it sits naturally set back from most of the dense residential of town and because the proposed parking would sit at Highway 1 and West Main Street Corridor festival traffic would never touch residential streets I've looked at a lot of sites for festivals and this one works.

The boundaries work, the access works and the infrastructure works. It was kind of made for an event like this. You have the next one which is the site plan. This is just a working site plan drawn over the actual park footprint. It kinda gives you a sense of how each zone would relate. There'd be a main stage area, some food areas, a family area, a car show in the parking lot there And then there would be a cannabis village in the north corner, located on the ball field.

What you can see is physically separated from the main stage area if the site allows and that's kind of the close up on the right there shows that up there on the ball ball field. Is that the orange. The orange is actually the other ball for which would be staff parking. So the green with the kind of green diamond shape, that green diamond shape would be the consumption tent. So it would kind of focus consumption inside of a tent. That's actually a tent? Yeah.

It'd be a pull tent essentially. So it have open sides but a covered top. And then there's the cannabis vendors located within there. And then the red block in the top left, that would be where the cannabis sales took place all by Route 1 underneath Route 1's license and a DCC permit which we'll get into here in a second. But this is basically, you know the site plan still being refined and we'd continue to work through this throughout the permit process as public and staff feedback came in as well. So this would be an all ages event if you want to go to the next slide.

We'd have the main stage area, there would be two food zones. A kids area located and fenced in around the existing play structure, a car zone on the parking lot and a holistic village area on the basketball court which would be like massage and acupuncture or another type of holistic vendors. And those would all be open to every generation, except for this cannabis component which would be the only fully contained zone and completely separate from the rest of the event. The food program would prioritize Guadalupe restaurants and five city businesses. The car show is built around the Central Coast Lowrider culture and the event is designed to reflect the community it is in from the food to the music.

Go to the next slide. I'm on the talent. We are in active negotiations with headlining acts like Revolution, Kali Buds and Barrington Levy. We haven't been able to sign any contracts yet but I want to be straight with you. We need to have the city's authorization first before we can move forward with any of that because locking in talent at this level requires us to make some significant capital investments and we can't do that without knowing that the city is with us. That said these aren't cold calls these are established negotiations We're ready to pull the trigger on that. So Revolution is one of the nation's largest reggae acts, they started in Santa Barbara and they have a deeply loyal touring fan base on the West Coast so their audience travels and that matters for Guadalupe because those visitors would also be spending money here Good vibes presents our production partner has produced the Avila Beach Revolution show for the last 10 years, which we would be relocating here so there wouldn't be the revolution show in Avila this year it would be here in Guadalupe.

So it has a 10 year kind of running start at least of this headliner and this, the fan base here on the Central Coast. And other acts like Collie Buds and Barrington Levy would bring international credibility and strong positive messages with strong social media reach that would support our marketing efforts as well. So as David mentioned the names on this lineup would signal to the regional music community that this is a serious production.

The full lineup is being built out, but over 20 regional and local acts would would fill both stages go to the next slide. My production partner Good Vibes Presents is an experienced national festival company. I already mentioned the Avala shows, they've ran those for the last 10 years and they also do festivals like Hollow Hollow Fest and Cali Roots which was just this last weekend in Monterey so they would be replicating that same level of production infrastructure here Handling staging, logistics, vendor operations and day of coordinations.

They would work directly with our team, our harm reduction partners and Guadalupe PD as well. So I'd be bringing the compliance and the cannabis operations as well as the drain, and they would be bringing the production experience but together we are a professional operation with a track record in this exact market. Next slide. Safety and compliance, I know this is important and I want you guys to feel confident that we've been working. We'll continue to work with Chief Cash on this but we feel like we have a strong safety plan. The DCC compliant Cannabis Village would be operated by Route 1 under our existing Guadalupe operator permit and our state retail license so it wouldn't be a new operator asking for trust as we already have a working relationship with the city The village would be fully enclosed with opaque fencing on every side, you would not be able to see into it from the general festival area.

There will be a single staffed entry and a single staffed exit where age would be strictly enforced 21 and over with government issued IDs with no exceptions. There will most likely be a DCC compliance agent from the state on site throughout the event. Cannabis consumption would be limited to the designated cannabis consumption tent in the area within the perimeter of the Cannabis Village, so no cannabis product or signage would be visible from any family area or outside of the Cannabis Area and the village would close 30 minutes before the main stage each day.

We've begun to apply for the event organizer license with the state and the temporary event license would get filed with the DCC, no later than July 21 60 days before the event as required. Next slide. BSIS licensed security guards, there'll be 29 on Saturday, 25 on Sunday. Dedicated officers inside the Cannabis Village at all times. There will be overnight security with exterior coverage on Saturday in full coordination with Chief Cash and the Guadalupe Fire Department and EMS throughout the event.

For medical and harm reduction, we would be either working with the Guardian team out of Santa Barbara or JobMed. Both are professional harm-reduction organizations with proven festival records. Whichever partner we finalize would bring things like Narcan, fentanyl test strips, drink test kits, wellness checkpoints, a sanctuary space and an ambulance on site both days.

The Guardians track team record includes Sultopia in Santa Barbara this year with over 11,000 attendees With zero overdose fatalities. Next slide. Parking, this has been a concern and I want to address it head on. We are proposing that the public parking would be at the Highway 1 and West Main Street Corridor on the Pasadena commercial development lots essentially. We've received initial verbal Okay from the developer who's going to be working with the landowners to get a full authorization, but that is the natural entry point into Guadalupe where all three main travel corridors converge. So attendees would park at the edge of town and take the free shuttle straight to the park to try to avoid festival traffic on residential streets So combined capacity across those lots that's approximately 2800 vehicles, after surface preparation and our Saturday peak parking demand using standard transportation mythology comes out to about 2700 vehicles so we have a little bit of a positive surplus on the busiest day.

There would be a shuttle fleet on Saturday, would be 10 coaches running in a continuous loop with about 1750 riders per hour. And we'd also coordinate with Amtrak specific surf liner stop here in Guadalupe Bay, which will hopefully keep a portion of attendees off the road entirely. But all parking and shuttle costs will be paid for by the event with zero cost to the city.

Next slide. Now the financial picture, what's in it for the city? Go ahead to the next slide. We're proposing some direct revenue to the city. We're projecting approximately somewhere around $60,000-$73,000 that would come from a $4 per ticket per day contribution So $2 per ticket per day would go to a park improvement fund, and $2 per ticket per day would go to the city's general fund.