City Council — September 8, 2026

Okay, welcome to the regular meeting Guadalupe City Council Tuesday September 8. May we have roll call please?

Agenda review at this time the City Council will review the order of business to be conducted and receive requests for or make announcements regarding any changes in the order of business

Is there any council member wishes to change order of business? Good. All right, item number five is community participation. So I have quite a few so bear with me if I call you out of order or call you in order. The first one is Judy Wilson for Jeannie Mello.

Good evening. Jeannie Mello reached out to me and asked me to speak on her behalf this evening because she could not attend. She wanted me to let the council and the staff know, especially Chief Cash that she attended the emergency preparedness meeting last Wednesday, September 2nd, and she would like to thank Chief Cash and Jose for their time and presentations. It was both informative and fun. She enjoyed it very much, and she recommended the City Council approve many more of these residents involved programs.

Thank you, Jeannie. The next individual is Frances Romero.

Well, good evening everyone. I wanted to personally thank the mayor for acknowledging the anniversary of 9-11 this week it is a real milestone and sadly only about a dozen of our states nationwide require curriculum that talks about the history of 9 11 so that is something that should be a nationalist issue but of course Congress can't really get out of their way to do anything so it seems Also, you know I won't get an answer tonight. But I am curious at first I want to say congratulations on the opening of Las Mojadas Park. That's quite a milestone, but given the cost of the park and I realized it was grant funded. I'm curious what the operating budget looks like and whether or not we are prepared to start putting money away to ensure that it is maintained at the level that it currently is now on opening day.

So that is a question. And I had one other random item. I didn't write anything down this week it was kind of a weird, weird prep time. Well I do want to say well i'll talk about you later on your report. But anyway, I think that's probably it for now. And again, I think it's really important that we are able to maintain the things that we put into operation and that those funds are protected to do that. Thank you.

Thank you. Next individual Mike Grappling

Okay, I understand we're broadcasting. Okay. Estamos transmitiendo, traduciendo de la última semana. With the halting of the second generously funded Royal Theater project these public comments are an attempt to find a degree of clarity if possible. What roles did the council grant writer and contractors play in the events leading towards stoppage? The council lacking construction knowledge in this particular type of construction, URM retrofit and highly dependent on administrative process spent inordinate funds on initial design. Finally settling on a less ambitious option at rubber stamped inappropriate project supervision and inviolable Contractor bids and practices, two of numerous examples are the purchasing of new seats and the fabrication of a replica marquee prior to retrofitting the building itself.

Meanwhile, the grant writer's lack of cultural community connection as cited previously by members of the council and absence of construction knowledge was evidenced by an attempt to supervise from Sacramento using emails, Zoom meetings and drone footage. This irrationality has resulted in the uncoordinated construction currently visible through the theater's front windows.

Finally, contractors have thrown up their hands quickly citing the city's lack of funds but is that the only factor? Or has the project's distant and viable supervision resulted in it being placed on a low priority, in turn resulting in price gouging gross mistakes and knee-jerk abandonment. What would an overall accounting reveal regarding council mismanagement, grant rider detachment and contractor advantage practice?

At the very least a review of the structural plans would determine what retrofit is still required. Perhaps these in additional public comments can approach clarifying this royal dilemma. Now every project In every project, there occurs doubt. that every project has a period where there's a lapse of confidence. These comments are also proposal for throwing out there, a way to return to working together these three aspects that I mentioned.

Commissioner Harris is proposing or together With Commissioner Harris, we're proposing 30 seconds.

You

got it? Together with Commissioner Harris, we're proposing his second tournament this year. We'll call it the Ball Don't Lie Invitational Tournament. It will be basketball. The teams will be divided. City employees one team, contractors Stewart Souza has said, told me he's interested and residents over 18 and under 18.

Thank you. All right we'll go to, I see anybody else on item five on community participation? So we'll go to item six yes on H upgrade Allan Hancock College presentation by John

Good evening. How you doing, sir? I'm doing well thank you for the invitation from both Council and staff. Kevin Walters sends his greetings he would be here but we're having our board meeting right now about 20 minutes that way so i get the pleasure of coming and saying not being in my board meeting for once which is really nice So thank you for having us.

I'm here, I'm John Hooten, Executive Director of College Advancement but I'm here as a volunteer, as a neighbor, as a friend and co-chair of the Yes on H Committee for a bond measure that's coming up. We know that the city of Guadalupe is also having two tax measures on their ballot and so we wanted to come say just a little bit about what this is going to look like and the need for it here at Hancock College.

Can I just give you a point is that okay. Okay, there we go. A little update on Hancock we have more than 17,000 students of one kind or another at Hancock 40% of all high school graduates in northern Santa Barbara County come to Hancock. That's a, that's a really big number by the way for community colleges. And of course we're still offering more than 200 degrees and certificates there at Hancock, we are continuing to grow our enrollments are finally back up to pre pandemic levels, which is great, pretty significant jump from last year which is, which Right here in Guadalupe, we have 533 students currently enrolled. I checked the numbers this morning in both credit and non-credit degree programs and programs. And that's a 31% increase since 2021.

We continue to offer community education classes here in town. And of course you have an elected representative from Guadalupe, Trustee Enciso who keeps your good interests right at the forefront of Hancock's programming. Perhaps most exciting for me is last year Hancock started offering some after school classes, college credit classes right here at the Senior Center.

We're going to begin offering those at the new school I believe in January and we're exploring offering classes in early childhood education as well as agriculture. So we're excited about those opportunities as well. Of course, we can't go anywhere without talking about our alumni. We have a proud alum, Carolina who graduated just this May. She's going on to four-year school plans to be a lawyer or go to law school but to work on public policy issues and I love the quotations we get from students. I would encourage students to learn about the resources at Hancock and actually use them because they really make a difference and that really sums up what Hancock is here to do. We talk about Hancock as changing the odds in our community But really it's to make a difference in the lives of students.

And when I think of students, I think of you know that the children are my friends or my neighbors or the kids down the street. These are part these members of our community over 90% of our student body is actually local from right here on the Central Coast. So we're actually a true Community College. But what does Hancock do if you don't have a kid? If you don't have a grandkid or sibling working at Hancock, how does Hancock benefit you? Well more than half of the nurses in the area came through Hancock College right. We have a waiting list with a bottleneck of Students trying to get into our nursing programs.

95% of those students are hired here in local hospitals before they may or may not move on somewhere else. So we were kind of that frontline of first responders in terms of our health care providers, and most importantly, we train bilingual and sometimes trilingual nurses, which you all know is absolutely critical in our communities. In addition, public safety training. If you've never been over to the Lompoc campus and seen our police academy or fire academy or EMT we have a top-notch facility over there that was paid for by the previous bond Measure I.

You talk to the folks down there who travel around the state they'll say this is the premier training facility if not in the state if not on the west coast possibly the entire state so We're really happy. We've done surveys on this as well over half of police officers and firefighters the area came through the Hancock program. So that's a little bit of news, you've probably also heard about the bachelor's education that we've secured at Hancock. We tried to offer our own degrees but then we thought you know what a Cal Poly degree would probably be a lot more valuable to students and so We graduated our first cohort just this year of Cal Poly students. This fall we added a business degree with Cal Poly, these are Cal Poly professors. Cal Poly degrees they have to pay Cal Poly tuition I'm sorry to say but that all happens right on the Hancock campus.

The problem is we got to have space for those folks right and for those students. We also have a new degree with Channel Islands, a bachelor's in nursing program for those nurses who want to move up into management and those kind of positions as well. So what does a bond measure do? Show of hands, who's been on the Hancock campus recently? Yeah, it's a pretty good looking spot right? Pretty looking good-looking place. If you talk to somebody 20 years ago they said it's kind of run down. It kind of looks like an old high school. You know the old 1970s and 80s buildings.

And the last bond measure that was successful was in 2006, 20 years ago Measure I. And you'll see a list there of all of the new buildings that provided for over 20 years Everything from industrial technology to fine arts to upgrades to the science building, as well as some of the upgrades that happened as well. Perhaps most impressively over the years we refinance those bonds and save the taxpayers $25 million very proactive in terms of how we how we stewarded those bonds. And so now, that funding is all but gone. And we're looking for how to finance the next 20 years of expansion at Hancock College and that's where Measure H comes in.

As I said you have a lot of great new buildings on campus but we still have original buildings on our campus that were built in the 1960s when we moved over from Santa Maria High School. Some of those are aging. Of course, the classrooms were built for 1970s and 1980s 1990s expectations and education Of course new technologies needed to keep pace but the real, the real focus is on not only upgrading those buildings but providing opportunities for the future. Let's have a picture up here, can anybody identify I'll give you five bucks if you can identify what that is Christina you can't answer this question.

Those are called oil switches. Those are electrical switches that were installed in the 1960s, we actually found that the plans for them about a third of Hancock's electrical infrastructure still goes through those switches. Why haven't we updated them? Well it's about $1 million upgrade on any one year and it'll close down the campus for awhile. We've actually had one of those explode. That sounds like an explosive going off for sure.

And so it's that kind of infrastructure that still exists, that exists outside of our normal operating budget that a bond like this would absolutely help us with. Go to the next. Here's just sort of a list of repairs and upgrades and new construction that will happen. Some highlights that I want to point out first of all is a new university center for all of those bachelor's programs are going to be coming to campus What I didn't say was that our agreement with Cal Poly will include four new bachelor's degrees by 2030. So we'll have four bachelor's degrees from Cal Poly offered exclusively on the Hancock campus and we're expecting that to be two, three hundred students or so. The problem is we're already maxed out with space. A new university center would help us keep those bachelor's degrees local, keep those students from going out of the area and keeping them right here.

Something else I learned just this morning our President Kevin Walters has been talking with, I believe the city or maybe the school district about the possibility of a community center right here in Guadalupe that would have a permanent anchor for Hancock right here in town. That would also be useful for the city as well a multi purpose building that could absolutely be used here. Some other things we would be looking at as a new nursing facility or expanded nursing facility or lab space is too small, and a variety of other buildings that are on the future.

So what are we looking at for Mr H, our request of our neighbors is to authorize 290 million That would be a maximum of $19 per hundred thousand dollars assessed value and property, not market value but assessed value. And that maximum wouldn't be coming for a number of years because that would be at the maximum of the allocations When you take the medium home value of Santa Barbara County at 425, that's roughly $80 a year at the maximum. And of course their Citizens Oversight Committee that ensures all the funding is going to what we say it's going toward all of Hancock's budgets are open to the public Of course our board meetings are open to the public and we have quite a few endorsers from our former citizens over oversight committee across the political spectrum who are endorsing this measure as well.

I believe that's the last one. What I will say is, our endorsement list is growing. We have all the major chambers of commerce on board the city, the mayor of Santa Maria is onboard econ Alliance, a number All the hospital administrators of course are on board. We have four of the five county supervisors and we're working on that fifth, we think we're getting close, but he's a notoriously hard nut to crack but we're getting close. But all that's to say is we do not Come to our neighbors with hat in hand lightly.

We know that Hancock is good stewards of the finances that we have in front of us, of the buildings that we have in front of us but also most importantly, of the students who we invite into our classrooms each and every day We know that we changed the odds, our data shows that. And I think when you look at our community, imagine a day without Hancock, without a place as local that's training our nurses, that's training our policemen, our firefighters, our accountants, our farmers, our welders, our auto shop technicians. You take that away from our community or limit them by old facilities, that has an impact. So that's why we stand tall asking for our community to support this.

We're not asking for the endorsement of this group, of course. But we may be asking for your individual endorsements at some point so thank you very much. Happy to entertain any questions from the dais.

Any questions?

Yes sir, you mentioned a multi-use building would that be in Guadalupe? In Guadalupe yeah. Who is the person, the point of contact for anything in Guadaluable?

My boss mentioned that to me this morning, and I don't remember. Dr. Hendel. Oh yeah, that's right. That's right.

I mean for the building it would be Hendel?

I believe so. That's right.

He's been

working with Dr. Walters.

Yeah, that's right.

I was looking, you mentioned 20 years ago that was there 58 years ago. And it's quite a change if you go in there today and see the, you know, the buildings have one individual request to speak Francis from air.

Well, good evening Mayor Council members staff and members of the public. My name is Francis Romero. I want to start by saying that we are not anti education at our house my husband is currently wrapping up his doctorate degree. He has two master degrees we both have bachelor degrees and we both have the distinction of being law school dropouts. I will say, though that we spent 20 years paying off our student loans for our bachelor and we did start at Community College. We knocked out...I do not understand when people feel that they need to go away for four full years and pay top dollar. You know bottom line you ought to do all of your general ed and get everything knocked out that you can do at community college level first.

However, for 20 years we paid for our student loans. And that meant that we didn't travel like our friends were traveling. We didn't go on international trips. We actually just got our passports last year. So we made sacrifices to get our educations and that's not to say that we weren't eligible for different tuition reimbursements or other scholarships because we were both excellent students But I do have to say that I have neighbors who are retirees that are hesitant and won't even plug in the air filter that APCD provided for free, for fear of what that's going to do to their electric bills. And yes, we're looking at probably $8 a month for yet another bond. But as I pulled out my property tax bill before I came here tonight 15% of my property tax bill is going across seven different bond measures.

All for schools. And most recently, our city ended up paying for sidewalks for our school because somehow they managed to not figure out that they had to put sidewalks in as part of their budget so I guess that's a topic for another time. So anyway when people use things like technology something that changes roughly every two to three years Why should I be funding that over a 20-year bond? There's something called the technology fee, that a lot of cities charge in their planning departments and other departments to keep up with technology. Not everything can be free at community college because that means free to them means someone else is paying for it And while I do agree with the idea of crowdfunding, which is basically what bonds are, there has to be some accountability.

And I am very curious what percentage of the Allan Hancock budget is set aside annually for...I mean if you've known your electricity is 60 years old, your electrical infrastructure, certainly over the last 60 years there must have been some opportunities where you could have gone through and phased electrical improvements. So I, I just want to say that you know with with these asks and while they are very good stewards with what they do.

Again if you're spending 97% of your budget or 95% on salary wages and benefits and funding free stuff for students, I just need to know for myself where your maintenance budget is and what is your plan for capital expenditures. I did work for the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District for quite a couple of years as a grant manager. And at that time our budget had about 5% for capital and maintenance type activities. And that was about 20 years ago maybe things have trended differently and have changed But I think that with the asks, there comes responsibility not for just how you spend the money. But why are you in a position of not having kept up with infrastructure? Thank you.

Thank you any questions of Mr. Hooten? Thank you for the presentation. You're welcome thank you very much. Good information. Right Item 7 is consent calendar. Judy will you read that please?

Thank you. The consent calendar, a through F. The following items are presented for City Council approval without discussion as a single agenda item in order to expedite the meeting should a council member wish to discuss or disprove an item, it must be dropped from the blanket motion of approval and considered as a separate item, a wave the reading in full of all ordinance and resolutions Ordinances on the consent calendar will be adopted by the same vote cast at the first reading unless City Council indicates otherwise.

B, ratify payment of warrants for the period ending August 14th 2026. And August 21 2026. See, approve the minutes of the city council regular meeting of August 25 2026 d adopt on second reading ordinance number 2026 dash 532 amending section 8.8 0.030 A Guadalupe Municipal Code Chapter 8.80, Vacant Commercial Property Registration and Property Maintenance Ordinance regarding the annual registration fee.

F, or excuse me E, adopt resolution number 2026-44 establishing the City of Guadalupe appropriations limit for fiscal year 2026-27. F adopt resolution number 2026 dash 45 approving a statement of the investment policy for the city of Guadalupe, for fiscal year 2026 27 and renewing the delegation of the City Council's investment authority to the city treasurer.

Thank you Judy on the council side is there in the council member that wishes to pull any other items for discussion. I have a request by Ms. Romero before we move on any of the items with Mrs. Romero?

Thank you. As far as items D and E are concerned, I think those are both great things for you all to be doing having to do with vacant buildings that have been a blight in this community. You won't be falling for some of the stories that some of the property owners tell you. I know that some of those stories have been ongoing for the last 12, 14 years. E, adopting a resolution for appropriations limits. That's great to see basic business type things occurring here in the city.

B, ratifying of payments of warrants. From what I was able to see we had almost $1 million of warrants for a one week period Now granted projects made up about $867,000 of that. But again your general fund is in trouble and I hope everybody's actually reading each and every warrant that's paid in the city And if adopting a resolution, approving a statement of investment policy for the city.

I know at one time the city under Mr Peralta leadership had started to establish a rainy day fund or reserve fund funds that are kept I'm assuming at this point that's all gone considering the fact that special and restricted funds have become the go to for financing up until our current city administrator and finance directors trying to straighten the ship out.

But I think we need to be concerned about finding out how much funds are lacking from each of the special and restricted funds. Investment is great, but you have items on the agenda later tonight about doing a wastewater study and there will be upgrades and improvements. And I think that your special fund balances show that you've not been very good stewards over that money. Thank you.

Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar?

I'll make a motion to approve the full consent calendar. Is

there a second?

I'll second.

Is it moved, is there any, there's a second. A motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. All ayes. Consent item seven passes. Next item is management report city administrator Mr David Brio.

Right. Good evening, Mr Mayor Council members city staff and residents visitors tonight. So for The Royal Theater, we are still waiting. We met with the contractor last week. They were supposed to get us their July invoice by the end of last week. We touched base with them again today. They were supposed to get it to us today. Still have not seen it. We have a meeting tomorrow so there will be more to follow on that.

The meeting we had last week, it seemed positive. It didn't seem like they were up in arms. They understood our position and the owner was in on the meeting so it was very cordial. They understood that the rumors going around are just that. So they were still willing to continue with construction. The final invoice for July and then giving us a cost estimate for the punch list moving forward, which potentially may happen tomorrow. So we're looking forward to that.

Obviously the Los Mojeres opened on Friday an amazing showing Based on, you know who was there at the groundbreaking I really didn't expect it to be as well as it was especially at noon. But it was great, you know, it was great seeing the various companies in the community showing up, you had a processing plant showed up give us some skateboards and stuff like that so that's really great.

We still do have the grass areas and barbecue pits blocked off Hopefully sooner than later, the barbecue pits will open up. We're just trying to get that ground compacted good enough to where we're not gonna have to worry about super a lot of erosion, especially if we start to get some rain like is projected so we want to make sure that that's all set up and ready to go before we open that part up. And then the parking lot also had some minor repairs around the trees and stuff like that, that we want to get done before we fully open that to make sure that it's safe for pedestrians walking through Amtrak is still in progress.

All the curbs and stuff are still poured. They're still doing some underground work. It looks closer to the actual Amtrak building, it looks like they're starting to put in some base. So that's good progress right there. And then what else is... I think there was something else but I can't remember.

You know, I noticed that regarding this is that net barriers. They basically plastic it's going to get in that you've probably seen that so it's gonna be hard to keep people out of there because they're gonna want to be on the grass. Yeah,

you know it's You know, we could have done a fence like a chain link. But I mean people were breaking into the chain link to go skate so at least with that fence up it's easy to make repairs. It's you know it's easy to take down and then you know with the basketball court being open Somebody is going to throw an air ball, it's gonna end up in that grass and you have to go fetch it.

It is what it is. We're just...it's more of a deterrent than anything. I

was across the street Saturday and there was literally 50 people out there with kids on the playground, basketball, skateboarders so it was good to see. Any comments about David's report? I

had a quick question in regards to Las Mujeres. I know that we have an ordinance for no smoking, but the waste cans had like a dish for cigarette butts. Is that something that there's no trash cans without that?

Are you talking like on the, on top of the crown?

Correct.

It's just the way they kill them.

Okay.

I mean

it was one o'clock and it was already like halfway filled in. I just feel like it kind of gives a message like smoking is allowed once you start seeing all those cigarette buds um just kind of piled up.

Um I mean there's no way to like I mean, we could bend them or pound out the...

I was just approached by a concerned parent and I totally hear it. I feel that if we have an ordinance maybe when we are buying trash cans, we keep that in mind because it's right in front of the skateboarding. And so as we have youth there and then you know, we see the cigarette butts piling up, I think it just gives a message that smoking is allowed here.

Right, but you could also I guess to play devil's advocate. You could put it as something as the people that are going to break the rules and smoke in a park at least they have somewhere to put the butts versus throwing them on the ground. So I mean it goes both ways. I get what you're saying, but. Do you know too? To try, I don't know that there's anything we

can do. The same thing happens at Ocala Park. The baseball field there was. And I work on the field a little bit, and there was a guy and a lady sitting there in the bleachers on third base side smoking and just throwing the cigarette butts out in the field. Don't smoke. You're not allowed to smoke here if you do, I was going to tell them to eat their cigarette butts but I didn't. But no that's a problem.

I just wouldn't want them to get harassed by police officers if there's a message they're like oh your buds are here. It's either one or the other. When I'm reading the ordinance, it's not allowed and how can chief go in there? And we ask officers to enforce that when there is a place for them to throw them away. I just think when we are looking at design like designing our parks, we keep that in mind.

Okay.

Any questions of David? I don't see any questions. So item nine, Director of Public Safety, Chief Cash.

Thank you Mr. Mayor, Council, staff and our community members. You can see my report there's nothing major significance as far as for police but the only projects are kind of working right now is we're still trying to get the cameras up and going at the new park. There's still some connectivity issues that we're dealing with IT and the vendor, but that is ongoing.

And the bathroom is really outstanding. There are some things that we need to look at. You talk about design. I don't know if anyone's been in that bathroom? You know there's a syringe location in the back and so we're looking at something that maybe we could Not highlight that, but we can kind of deal with that. It might be by law. I don't know specifically.

But yeah, that was pointed out to me by a parent and so I went to go take a look at that and didn't have an explanation for her but I did appreciate the information. Working Talked with the superintendent and a board member from the school and the principal. We currently do not have any sections as far as muni codes dealing with helmets and some of the motorized scooters, so we're looking at that putting together a group to see So that we can kind of stay ahead of this with the helmets and scooters. And we did have citizens who also, Mrs. Romero brought it up about some of those scooters. So I've been looking for the last couple days different cities and what the California vehicle code and muni codes are. So, I'll be putting something together and eventually get it through our legal and to our city administrator so that we can stay on top of that kinda situation.

Other than that, that is my report.

Okay, thank you. Any questions? I had a comment. You know that there's hand dryers for the restroom and there was a father sitting next to the bench there and his daughter was using it as a hairdryer. Hey man! Being used. It's being used.

I have

a comment.

We're not harassing but go on.

I did see the email from the principal from McKinsey, or the new junior high in regards to e-bikes.

Yes.

BC Centro is a nonprofit organization based out of Santa Barbara County. They are actually doing like an e-coalition, I think in regards because it's a big issue, e-bikes up in South County. So it might be they have like a Zoom link that community leaders are going to get on and talk about e-bikes and e-scooters So it might be something that they should reach out to BC Central because they do have a coalition moving forward.

Oh, OK. I appreciate that. Thank you. And I did send over the weekend, I think from Penn State, I'd sent an article to everyone about how they've prohibited those on the campus. So and I spoke with our city attorney who's absolutely correct saying the school can do certain things right now to prohibit some of those things. But we need to do something from the city. So if you can give me that other information after the meeting tonight, I appreciate it.

And I also know that in McKinsey, Mr. Leimbach is hosting a CHP e-bike assembly. Maybe it's... Yes, I think it's this month. Maybe it's something that you... I don't know if somebody can assist or you get some information from CHP so we're having the same message with students. The students are going to hear it. I think it's fifth, sixth graders at McKinsey.

Okay, thank

you. And then I attended Cafecito this morning and it was great to see a local police officer stop by and he kind of said hi to us and then we did some roaming around the school and so it was nice to see their presence in the community this morning.

Great, thank you. We have Frances Romero with request to speak on 9A.

Well good evening. I wanted to, well it sounds like Chief you're going to have another meeting to go to. You're already up to 14 a month so what's another one right? I wanted to kind of talk about the theme in Guadalupe. If anybody's on any of the Facebook sites, there is a lot of angst and complaining about the police department because they're doing their job. There seems to be a real disconnect with what rules mean.

And I have to say as a former park commissioner for the county of Santa Barbara for 10 years and I was a recreation commissioner here in Guadalupe when we first moved here A rule not smoking at a park does not negate an amenity such as a trash can that comes with a spot where a cigarette can go. What happens for that rare person that shows up at the park smoking and they can actually read the sign, and they say oh I shouldn't have that here? They should have somewhere to be able to put it out.

For those who think, I mean if we dumb things down enough for our community and have no expectations you start doing things like oh well what do we do about that? Let's not have a spot for a cigarette butt because that's encouraging it. No people ought to be able to read the sign and follow the rule You know, the fact that our citizens are complaining because Guadalupe is citing people for their dark window tint. Their basketball hoops that are out in the middle of the street, their license plates that aren't affixed to their car and saying that instead Guadalupe PD officers ought to be crossing guards because people drive too fast through school zones Everybody that drives a car presumably has a driver's license and at some point has had to take driver education or a test.

The rules are there for a reason, they're not there for when it's convenient for you, they're not there for when it's inconvenient for you, they are there so that we can have civilized society. That's what rules and laws are for. So I think rather than trying to figure out how to dummy proof different things in this community, we just need to start holding people accountable to follow the rules.

It's really simple. The syringe box, what happens when a diabetic child is at the park and they need to take their insulin? They need to have a place to put the syringe. And for parents that look at that and say well that sends the wrong message perhaps they need better parenting skills. And all I can say is that everybody needs to follow the rules all the time. And that means you folks at the dais, you start out, that's your first job. It means stopping at that stop sign and waiting three seconds.

It means making sure that funding is used properly and that you're not stealing and that you're not doing things that are illegal with the people's monies. I think it's just time to start having expectations because if you keep lowering the bar low enough, then nothing matters. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay we'll go to item 10. Judy will you read that please?

Finance director a preliminary I 2026 fourth quarter and year in financial report as of June 30 at 2026 with the cash position update through August 28, 2026.

Mr Martinez. Thank you, Mr Mayor Good evening Council staff members of the public. This is going to be a preliminary and an audited your, your end results for fiscal year. FY 2526 as was stated in the, in the agenda obviously. I'm going to give you the highlights. I'm happy to answer questions about anything in the memo, I'm sure everybody read it. But just general rundown with respect to what what it says is that the amount that was reported on its face value on the reports Shows a deficit budget deficit of 10,900 that's incorrect I can tell you that there was things on the that are going to be reversed. The year has not closed. It's still open. It'll remain open until we catch up with our audits from 2022 23 all the way to the present.

And so, as such there is some accounting issues that need to get straightened out one of them was you know through the. Through the transition from moms to toddlers, there's growing pains and there will be growing pains. I would say with any transition in my experience it's a 10-year growing pain with adopting a new software. And one of those is getting the software to do what the software needs to do And sometimes when we get grant reimbursements back, the system doesn't accept reimbursements to go into the correct reimbursement account for whatever reason. We've started to straighten those out.

But originally $1.2 million was put into a miscellaneous account. Obviously that's incorrect. That's going to get reversed and put into the correct grant account Now that obviously overstates the deficit, because it shows us as a revenue in the general fund which it obviously is not. So after you reverse that then the budget would be 379,000 will call 379.9 worse than the adopted deficit.