City Council — August 11, 2026

I'm muted right now. I'm

muted. Larry, you're not muted.

Well, you guys were quick saying something to my wife so whoops. Hey guys good to see y'all.

Good to see you Larry in your motorhome or your travel trailer. I shouldn't say that I want people to find you Welcome to the regular meeting Guadalupe City Council, Tuesday August 11th. Can we have roll call please?

Jean? I would, I'd like to send condolences to Veronica Guca Jimenez. Long-time resident here she was killed on Sunday night in Santa Maria the petition that was hit on battles. She left behind two children and all her family has been here in the community since she was small so condolences to them.

Condolences to the family thank you Jim. Item number four, agenda review. This time the City Council will review the order of business. Is there any council member that wishes to change the order of business? Okay. Item five, community participation. Each person is limited to a discussion of three minutes or as directed by the mayor. Pursuant to the provisions of the Brown Act,

public comment rather

seconds.

You've been inconsistent and uneven handed with how you treat me. I come in right at about three minutes ma'am. I understand that you're finished but you don't treat others that way. Yes,

I treat everybody that way honestly and fair All right, we'll go to consent calendar. The following items are presented for the City Council approval without a discussion as a single agenda item in order to expedite the meeting should a council member wish to pull which discuss or disapprove an item that must be dropped from the blanket motion of approval and considered as a separate item.

Is there a council member that wishes to pull an item under the consent

calendar?

Please.

I wanted to pull item C, the minutes and item E, the purchasing procurement guidelines.

Anybody else? Okay. The balance would be A and D. Is that correct?

And D.

Well there's a individual who wants to speak on that.

Oh sorry.

So AD so is there a motion to approve item A and D

I'll motion to approve items A and D.

I'll second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor of the motion say

aye.

Aye. So we'll go to B, Frances Romero. Let me go to council first. Was there a council did you wish to pull

C?

I should go

first. No.

I want you to go first if you don't mind.

I pulled C and D.

Okay all right Ms. Romero you're on

Well, the warrants are an important part of every meeting. And I do believe that while it might not be standard operating procedure in other cities, I would like to suggest that perhaps the balance remaining in each of these funds being noted at the end of the report you know you see all of these amounts that are coming out of different funds But apparently it's been very difficult for our council to track the use of enterprise funds, as well as general fund funds and I think that as you go. You should have that running balance.

I'd like to read from the 2014 2015 grand jury summary Guadalupe shell game must end. Clearly Guadalupe continues to be a city in trouble caused by over 12 years of repeated financial mismanagement, improper transfers of money from restricted funds to general fund, years of deficit spending, uninquisitive and undertrained City Council members and overworked employees. Many of whom had little training or background for their positions.

We move on to March of 2018 Yet another article where an audit reveals that there was a $684,624 deficit to the city's general fund and $280,000 and $373,333 in debt to the city's lighting assessment fund and water fund. These special and restricted funds are supported by rate payers. That would be people who pay their taxes and pay their water bills. And the ratepayers, sadly are absent from most every meeting you have. They all should be down here demanding accountability for how you spend money.

And then we have the City of Guadalupe Audit Report from Betty Te, the California State Comptroller in October of 2018 regarding yet again misuse of special gas tax street improvement funds. Our audit found that the city understated the fund balance by $62,732 because it charged costs for non-street services to the fund. That is why I think that your financial People here ought to be showing you a running total of what's left in these accounts that you approve warrants for. There has to be a better way for you to track it. And lastly, for the year ending June 30 2021 and single audit report was like your last audited financials A deficiency in internal controls exists when the design or operation of a control does not allow management or employees in the normal course of performing their assigned functions to prevent, or detect, or correct misstatements on a timely basis.

A material weakness is a deficiency or a combination of deficiencies in the internal control such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement will be made over and over again by the city. Thank you.

Okay. Let's see, let me put my hat on as a member of the friends of the quality library at the last meeting we donated a check for 3500 to go towards the rent, whether this year or next year. It was noted that it was not included in the minutes. And it does note that I spoke, and so a couple things. One, I'd like to suggest that it be noted in the minutes tonight that the check was given. It's important to have it recorded for the friends from our records and we would think for the city as well.

The other thing is in talking about the community participation forum, again I see the names. This is from the minutes of the last meeting. I see the names of those who spoke and I think it's important and I strongly suggest that if there's not going to be any narrative on this section of the minutes that at least show the topic that was discussed.

Good point.

Okay, that's it.

Anybody else on C? So did anybody pull D? Nobody here. And then we'll go to E and Mrs. Romero, 6E.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. As I was saying this item about purchasing and procurement guidelines is also extremely important and it builds on the last audit that you had in 2021 that went on to say that a significant deficiency as a deficiency or combination of deficiencies in internal control that is less severe than a material weakness yet important enough to merit attention by those charged with governance We consider the deficiency described in the accompanying schedule of findings and questionable costs as item 2021-01 to be a material weakness. We consider the deficiency described in the accompanying schedule of findings and question cost as items 2021-02, to be significant deficiency. This report states according we do not express an opinion on the effectiveness of the city's internal controls However, you have a long, long, long record.

Basically 24 out of 20 of the last 27 years of misappropriating of funds mismanagement of funds transfers of funds to other accounts where they don't belong rating enterprise funds to keep the city afloat whether it's well intended or not is not the issue. The issue is that it is illegal And this is why when you end up with a need for a wastewater treatment plant upgrade your fund balances won't support it. This is why when you have to have roads fixed, you don't have money in your roads funds at some point Reality has to set in with the day-to-day decisions that you make on behalf of every citizen. The Royal Theater was such a miss, you cost seven employees their jobs.

Think about that all through mismanagement and bad decision making. Thank goodness you had the sense to pump the brakes when you were told we would have no police or fire if we continued. Yet some persisted and asked, well what else could we do? If you balance a checkbook at your house, you should be capable of balancing a checkbook for the city of Guadalupe. The people here work hard They expect their taxes to go to the right place.

And they expect the fees that we pay and we pay a lot of fees to government, we expect them to go to the use they're intended to be at so risking the rude. Time out noise that will come from the mayor's phone. I just want to, I hope I truly hope you'll listen and I hope that more people at home but keyboard warriors will start to wake up and understand that despite their dissatisfaction with the city staying at home and not showing And telling you out loud that this is not acceptable, they're not doing their part either. They're not holding you accountable and we can't wait for elections every two years to change the situation. You folks need to start changing the way that you manage the funds in this city. You need to be more responsible.

Thank you.

Yeah, I had a few questions. Sure. I don't know if these questions are, David or to you or to Eli.

Probably more to me, I wrote it.

Just some clarifications on page five of the guidelines under roles and internal control at a couple questions on that one is it shows the responsibilities of the city clerk? And if this is to be accurate, it changes the role that the city clerk is currently functioning under. So I just wanted to mention that.

Okay. Yeah. Well,

there's another staff member that picks up on the majority of this yeah I just want to highlight that and then under a couple under that is evaluation panel who and what is that mostly who was at

Um, the panel is generally depending on what say like an RFP is out for. It's usually like say for example a public works project is an engineer it has been myself as the Public Works Director and then another like expert in say like whatever the RFP might be for. An outside

individual?

Yeah.

Okay. I had a note here, I don't know why. On number four if you go down under 2.2 conflicts gifts that section number or the fourth bullet point, a vendor that assisted in drafting specs or requirements may be excluded when participation would create an unfair competitive advantage. Could you give me an example of that?

So let's say an architect being on the panel to review architect

It says a vendor got assisted in drafting specs or requirements. So this ties into the panel?

Right, so like say we have like, um, say the Royal Theater right? We have Andrew Goodwin do our design. Andrew Goodwin would be a bad person to have on the panel picking...

So this relates to the panel piece? Okay that's, that's all. Um let's see On the RFPs and IFBs, do we have or if we don't have, will we have standard forms for those who are bidding?

We kind of have. We have

a standard form. Just a general question. If three bids went before council and the council for whatever valid reasons didn't choose any of the three but The project had to go forward. If someone came in after the deadline, one individual, is that bid considered or do you have to go back out for three bids?

We'd have to go back out.

Okay. And under procurement credit cards, 7.2123 the third bullet point prohibited uses of the credit cards I'm assuming include cash advances etc etc alcohol absent lawful written authorization.

So I guess maybe that could apply to something for a holiday party of some sort However, they wouldn't authorize it. It's just...

It's worded wordly. It's worded weirdly sorry. Spoonerism. Okay let's see

that's all thanks David any further questions on item B C or E? But

just for will you make these corrections and then vote on this one again. Or how does,

how does that work with corrections? If there's a

specific correction you can be made as part of the motion. I'm not sure what, I didn't hear any corrections except for maybe the worst

of the

lawful and I realize that the city clerk doesn't do all those functions but because she's an elected official she's technically in charge of those functions so i'm not sure it's inappropriate to identify her as being responsible unless you had a specific Right,

according to this and all I was highlighting is the current city clerk as has duties that don't include what's listed here. That's all I'm sorry I misunderstood

you yeah that's all i was trying to say but it I think it would have to reflect we would have to probably change ordinances or because it's probably like that in the ordinance Um, that's the duties because even if you go on our website. Our old website is still listed all those functions as the clerk has a point of contact, even though the clerk did not handle those actual tasks. So it's probably based off of actual municipal code.

Correct. That's what I was trying to say but I think Councilmember is saying that there's additional duties not listed that should be, or did I say that wrong?

The other way

back the other way oh okay well if you have something specific but I agree with city administrator. Those duties are sort of delegated to the city clerk under state law or local municipal code. I realized that in our city. The elected city clerk doesn't actually do those. That's also the case in many other cities where they have hired staff that perform those duties but there's still the responsibility of the city clerk so I mean, you're technically correct city clerk hasn't come in here and handle public records requests and things like that but that's sort of the city clerks function in the city so I'm not sure what you want us to do.

Now all I was, I don't want to belabor this. I'll make it very quick. All I was trying to say is in Guadalupe, I know other cities that the city clerk has these responsibilities. All i'm saying is that here in Guadeloupe, these responsibilities as listed in this document aren't performed by the city

clerk.

You can say they're delegated to other staff member and that's fine. I was just highlighting that's all

No, you're correct. But I guess the question was do we move forward on this or there's corrections necessary to the purchasing guidelines? The only thing I thought that was a correction other than a comment and what I heard and correct me if I'm wrong, was that awkward wording about the alcohol that I thought if you just remove the word lawful, I think it makes sense.

Does it? Yeah. Okay. She said agree.

But I didn't, I mean if there's another correction that's required.

No.

And these aren't written in stone we can come back and make corrections if things turn up later so... I guess the motion should be approved the purchasing guidelines with that one correction the word lawful deleted from whatever page that was.

Is it good to view? Okay, anyone else on any of these items? Is there a motion to approve B, C and E.

I'll make a motion to approve B,C and E.

Just to clarify that would also include the correction on item E.

Corrections on item E. And I'll second.

Any discussion? All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. All right, we'll go to management reports to the administrator.

All right. Good evening Mr. Mayor, council members, staff and two residents. We appreciate you guys so With the park, with Las Mojadas. This week they're doing the fall test certifications on the playground rubberized ball pad. They're putting in all the DG this week was going to be around the recycled concrete blocks and We'll start seeing that kind of phase in.

They're paving the parking lot next week, the following week they'll stripe it. They've started installing I think most of the gym equipment was installed today. The bocce ball court, they're working this week and into next week. They're going to start putting pavers in this week and next week. The next couple weeks they're gonna start doing The plants and trees and saw it.

So, as people start to walk over the bridge they'll really start to see it kind of come to life now with Amtrak. They've resumed construction, I think middle of last week, all the permits got cleared so that's kind of getting torn out and they're starting to move on that. One thing I kind of want to touch on is the Royal Theater financial aspect. There's been a lot of stuff going around that made it sound like the city was using grant funds to pay for city activities, and that was not the case.

But just to give an overview of where we are with spending and maybe where things have gone as far as the spending goes, To date, we spent 2.8 million dollars on the project. We have about a 625,000 pending invoice that's kind of getting looked over right now but that could take the total to 3.5 which would leave us 1.5 left The big parts of this project have been about 1.6 to construction little over 700 to Any architecture and engineering, that kind of stuff. About 280 grand to grant some project management.

Grant management and project management about 70 grand to legal. And RDA council situations roughly 3637 grand to bring utilities and site services. And about 10 grand for environmental labor compliance. So that's all the prevailing way stuff, things of that nature. So the roughly total is about 2.8 and some change. 83% has been spent towards construction, A&E design, technical work. 10% has gone to management of the project and a little over 6% Legal utility, environmental that kind of stuff.

So yeah, we have 1.5. Well, a little over 1. 5 was it's a. Math guy 1.7 or 8. Remaining I guess because it would be about 3.5 after the invoice so currently. So that's where we're sitting on that project and. It is in the bank. It is not being used to pay electric bills or any other financial obligations that the city has. I don't, I guess we kind of missed the clarification on that maybe it just kind of came out or something a little bit construed.

But the question is not if we were using that to pay our bills, it was whether or not we were using enterprise to pay our bills. Not the same thing, two totally different funds. So we just wanted to throw a little bit of clarity out on that. And then with the public works, the engineering technician, Danara, she recovered Almost 600 grand last month and reimbursable reimbursements for all those various projects. Everybody else is pretty much business as usual, there seems to be a lot of grounds keeping going on a lot of stuff breaking as far sprinklers and a lot of aeration at the fields going on.

And then they've kind of been trying to keep up on East Main a lot better, and then trying to keep West Main a little bit more pedestrian friendly instead of the overgrown plants everywhere. The wastewater plant, the guys over there that make contact with the plant in Morro Bay And they were able to procure a pump for the grit removal system. So they've been getting that going and kind of what that does is kind of helps separates like it, like it is great so essentially everything that's not waste in your sewer system that's coming down.

They kind of make it to where that stuff kind of gets eliminated before it hits the retention ponds so that it helps with the biology and you know helps keep us in code Not properly aerating, so that's all I have. Any questions?

Just a comment. Go ahead, Amelia.

I didn't quite hear what you said. You said Dianera recovers $600,000 without grants or what was that?

Yeah this is from grants.

Oh from grants okay thanks.

Yeah one of the issues with there was late reimbursement requests and when they're late then you don't get them back And I just wanted to mention that we are speaking with CAC and EDA in terms of what's going on. So they're aware of what's happening, we have staff that are on every penny that's going on their project so it's been covered in this handle. In fact shortly we'll be meeting with them again.

I do have a question. What can Council and the community expect moving forward, kind of like reconciliation of the project or just more information? What can we expect looking forward maybe as a standalone agenda item?

So this week, well, I guess we started last week but this week we're kinda putting something together working with the construction manager on the project For the theater and working with the architects AGD. To kind of build a I don't want to say like, a to do list but essentially we have to build out a punch list of items that we need to do in order to make the building not just safe. But the site safe as well so we're looking at.

Seismic retrofitting. We're looking at roofing, site improvements just in general to make it safe. You know things like are we going to fence it? Are we going to put the little short fence like there was there before you know all these kind of various things. You know we have things ordered. You know we have the marquee ordered. We have lift station ordered. All these different When it got complete, and then trying to decide what avenue to take that will fit the budget right because that's gonna be our biggest constraint is not going to be whether or not you know something can or cannot be done. It's going to be do we have the money to do it.

So based on the numbers that we were kind of thrown around today, just estimates we should have enough money to do quite a bit of buttoning up the building. And that's you know that's replacing the storefront to what we had. That's building a new back wall, that's sealing a new back wall, you know? And then trying to figure out how much money we're going to have after.

Retrofit that facility and what we're able to do with the new outbuilding, right? The way it's looking right now is probably just gonna be a demo back down to the pad because weather is going to destroy all that stuff. So, if we can find out a way to squeeze a little bit more money. And maybe wrap and roof that might leave it empty but at least we would have the facility still there.

But it's all going to come down to numbers you know we can play. Kind of play around with, you know, if we do this, can we do that? Um, those kinds of scenarios. But realistically it's going to come down to what the contractor costs will be. And that's going to be the defining factor so. You know, we'll have some kind of, um. I would say, like an efficient punch list kind of set up. Probably before the next council meeting and instead of discussing project progress.

Uh, it'll kind of be these are the things that we kind of laid out already this is estimated cost. You know, the kind of feedback we're getting back from the contractors. 1 thing that we discussed today was maybe trying to. Redo the front facade because if we don't do the front facade, we can't put the new marquee on. New marquees been bought otherwise it just gets stored so we're trying to figure out ways to do that but we don' know how much that's going to cost you know It could be 200 grand, it could be 50 grand. You know, it just depends on how in depth we have to go because just like everything else as soon as we tear into that I assume we're going to find something that we're not expecting and then we're gonna have to retrofit all that to code and then go from there again Uh, so 1 thing we don't want to do is tear into that.

If we can use what we have at least for the meantime yeah. So, um, but we're looking into it, you know, we got the pros on it. You know, we got, you know, Philippine, they've been great to work with as far as construction management. We got as our any and our structural and everything. And then I cut design, you know, I mean, that's who we use for city engineer anyway. So we're getting.

Good thoroughly thought out roadmaps before we proceed. Because I would hate to just jump into this and say, hey, we have a million dollars fix what you can and then get out. And then something could have been more cost effective. And we could have gone further with the work versus stop short of what could have happened right? You know, the contractor could come back in a million and a half might finish the actual theater portion itself.

And then we're left with no site improvements or something like that that we have to try to figure out funding for later in the future which would benefit the city better right? But the way it's going to look right now even if we secure and make safe the actual facility there's probably still not gonna be any foundation inside you know it's all footers and dugout center so there's gonna be some things that just don't get done But if we can at least get it to a safe space, maybe we can get a private investor to come in. If a private investors looking at it and they see that it's retrofitted and things like that you don't get stuck with the far western situation where you just have a building that nobody wants to take over. So if we could at least get it that far then maybe we have hopes of actually moving up forward as a performing arts center

Perfect, thank you. When that list is made available to council can we have some copies as well for the community?

Yeah. I'm

sure you're going to present that to council but I just want to make sure there's enough copies for everyone so they're able to read it. I wish I had those numbers for the Royal Theatre. I wasn't able to write it all down but I'm sure you could share it afterwards. Thank you.

Thank you David. Before we open up to the public are there any questions of David on 7? And ABCD, no questions. Mrs. Romero you had several questions?

No I want to thank David for that fantastic presentation and I really do appreciate having facts. Number one, Facebook has been all a Twitter about a variety of things and I have to the extent that I'm capable of correcting stating that because of what I've heard here about the Royal Theatre and taking it at face value that those funds have not been supplanted for day-to-day operating expenses. So I have been your cheerleader in that regard.

I think it's really important that the city does make wise decisions now and how they button this building up because you accepted taxpayer dollars from across this nation, you've got a local and federal grant and you want your funders to realize Your pause in doing this did not waste their money. I think it's really important that a very responsible button up happened because the Royal Theatre will get done one of these days, but it will be done not on the backs of police and fire and losing staff in the city going defunct.

So I think that you've got a phenomenal team. I work in this space, I am a land use consultant and I have worked in this space for 25 years. I know a thing or two about project management and team management. Planning and building report, and I just want to say that those are great examples of how you have transparency and you show productivity. If only other jurisdictions were moving permits through their process the way that the City of Guadalupe is it would be a lot better place out there. You guys put the County of Santa Barbara to shame when it comes to processing permits So while I'm glad to come up here and tell you what you're doing wrong. I'm also very glad to come up here and say that I see some things that are going well, and so kudos to Mr Apple into the building team, they are doing a very good job.

But again, I hope that when Los Mejeres Park opens, that our young people take better care of it than they did when the Boys and Girls Club opened. And I think there has to be consequences for bad behavior. And if there's a way to get the kids to understand that the city can't afford to constantly be painting over their artwork or whatever it is they end up doing, they've got to take care of things if they want nice things. And if they can't take care of it then they don't have access to nice things. So I'm really hoping that there will be some appreciation for the effort you all have put forward to have a very comprehensive, nice park amenity for the kids to use. Because that's all I've heard from back when I was a recreation commissioner when I first moved here.

There's nothing for the kids to do, nothing for the kids to do. Well they're going to have something due and one of that should be taking care of what you've given them.

That's my egg timer note, not my garage note. Okay.

Mr. Mayor, if I may? Please. I forgot to touch on the last minute address. We are looking at a ribbon cutting on September 4th. I think this should be Labor Day weekend right? Yeah 9-4 at 12 noon so if we could get council's input on what they think about that it's good

we need

to Okay.

I have a question, is that in collaboration with the Parks and Recreation Commission?

That will be all hands on deck.

Perfect awesome thank you.

Just make sure the skateboarders go right through that ribbon.

Hey i'm sure we could arrange that one thing to note when we do do that We will do the ribbon cutting, and then after the ribbon cutting we're gonna put a cyclone fence around the grass area because that's the part we need to keep people off. But the basketball court, the skate park, playground come in all this stuff will be open.

All right any further questions of or comments? We'll go to item eight Director of Public Safety.

I have a quick question. I see Mr. Appel on is he going to present?

Now he was in case you guys pulled item D and the consent calendar.

Okay, just want to make sure you can head out if needed. Oh

yeah, you can. You can leave Larry Thank you

for barbecue. Chief.

Thank you.

Yes, sir. Thank you Mr Mayor Council staff citizens. I already submitted the public director's report. Just highlights, you could see where our citations for the last month that's included so this gives more Transparent as far as where our activity is, as far as in the area of citations on fire department. Let's keep an update right now we have assisted with 32 fire insurance letters that we have sent out when community members have contacted us concerning their insurance companies so still letting everybody know that we're in the favorable aspect of our ISO rating for fire insurance it's just a matter of the insurance companies needing to step up on that.

As far as medical director, I interviewed two and right now they have both declined to assist us so I'll be going back to the Marion Hospital Board and seeing where we could further try to find medical directors that will be able... Excuse me

Chief can you explain that to Council?

Yes.

We don't need a doctor, but we need the- Yeah.

What we usually do with our fire department because they're trained to use certain medicines. We have to work under the license of an official medical doctor for us to be able to purchase certain types of medicines that our fire department can administer in the field. We used to have a doctor with the CDC or CHC, but he retired no longer doing that. So right now I'm currently interviewing and looking for another medical doctor that we could work underneath their license for us to be able to purchase medicines for us to administer on medical calls.