City Council — June 16, 2026

Thank you. I would like to note that the interpreter for this evening is Antonio Bravo. Please raise your hand, Antonio, sitting in the back. Ask him for a listening device if you would like interpretation services. Agendas are now available in Spanish and are provided on white paper in the back of the council chambers. Antes de llamar a la junta a orden me gustaría anotar que contamos con servicios de interpretación para esta junta I'd like to call this meeting to order for the City Council meeting of June 16th, 2026.

Madam Clerk can you please call the roll?

Yes Madam Mayor with respect to items 4a and 4b instructions were provided to the negotiators on behalf of the city and no further information at this time is reportable.

Thank you so we will now present a proclamation honoring Anne McCarty for her years of dedicated service to the community and Council Member Soto will be making that presentation

Thank you, Madam Mayor. I am so delighted to be able to present this proclamation to Anne McCarthy. I have known her for a number of years now and I'm a big fan and admirer of her work, her leadership, and the pivotal role she plays in our community. Whereas the City of Santa Maria recognizes Anne McCarty for more than 30 years of dedicated service, compassionate leadership and commitment to supporting survivors and strengthening our community.

And whereas Anne began her career with the North County Rape Crisis and Child Protection Center in 1994 as a hotline coordinator where she worked alongside volunteers trained advocates and community partners to help build Programs focused on education, prevention and support. And whereas Anne became executive director in 2015 and has provided exceptional leadership in advancing the center's mission, fostering community partnerships and ensuring continued services for individuals and families impacted by sexual assault, child abuse and human trafficking.

And whereas throughout her tenure, Anne has been a dedicated advocate and community leader serving on numerous community initiatives and helping strengthen collaboration throughout Santa Barbara County. And whereas the City of Santa Maria proudly honors Anne McCarty for her years of service, advocacy, and lasting contributions and extends its appreciation for the positive impact she has made in the lives of countless individuals within our community.

Now therefore Alice Patino, Mayor of the City of Santa Maria hereby recognizes and honors Anne McCarty for her outstanding dedication, leadership and service to our community and commend her for the lasting impact she has made through her commitment to advocacy healing and positive change.

And you can have as much time as you'd like.

Y'all pull your britches up because here we go. Actually, I'll keep this short. Mayor Patino, members of the City Council, first and foremost, I want to say thank you. Thank you for this honor and this recognition and just the honor of being here in this room one more time. I thank you for that but what's also very important to me tonight are My family, my workers, my staff.

My family that have come to be here tonight to see this. In 1994 when I started, I never thought I'd be standing here 32 years later. Never in my wildest dreams. But when you find your niche in life, and it brings you great pleasure to do what you do even on your hardest days. That's where you stay. And I'm so happy that I did even on the darkest days and the darkest nights because I know that the work that the North County Rape Crisis Center does in our communities that we serve is critically important. And without us, So many people are unserved.

And I know that all of these wonderful individuals that sit behind me, whether they be at the Rape Crisis Center, at the District Attorney's Office, at the hospital, the nurses that do our exams The educators in the schools, all of them are gonna keep the work going. I didn't start the programs. I just tried as best I could to keep them lifted up and I think that we've done a really good job of doing that and receiving this means the world to me and I appreciate you all for it so thank you.

You know, it doesn't seem like it's been all these years since you took the helm there. You know, we can list all the things you've done and all the things that we've seen that you have done in the community. And that's immense. But it's all the things that we don't do that you don't... We don't know that you've done at all of your staff and things out there that keep you going and motivate you. So we certainly appreciate you and what you've done in our community. And I know you've done a lot in Lompoc too. So it's not just in Santa Maria. It's all over the county. So we thank you.

Next, we will receive a presentation from the Santa Maria Valley Chamber of Commerce highlighting economic development efforts and initiatives for the quarter of October 2025 to 2026.

Good evening Mayor Patino and Council Members. On behalf of the Santa Maria Valley Chamber and Visitors Bureau, thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight. We genuinely value this partnership and the time you invest in staying connected to the work we're doing on behalf of this community. First, Molly Alves our Vice President Operations will be covering membership Major events in workforce development followed by Suzanne Singh, our Vice President of Economic Development and Government Affairs will cover economic development programs and tourism.

I'll close us out at the end but tonight we're presenting a six-month report from October to March. I'm very proud to say it's been a very productive six months Everything you'll see tonight flows from a simple but powerful mission. The mission of fostering a thriving, inclusive and resilient community by leveraging resources, strengthening partnerships and promoting economic vitality.

This mission guides every decision we make. It's grounded in six core values that we focus on everyday People first, accountability to our promises. Respect for every individual. A relentless pursuit of excellence. Genuine collaboration across organizations and unwavering integrity in everything that we do. You'll see all six of those values reflected in the work Molly and Suzanne are about to share.

With that I'd like to turn this over to Molly. Thank you so much.

Good evening Madam Mayor, members of the Council. As Michael mentioned I'm Molly Alves. I serve as Vice President Operations for the San Maria Valley Chamber. Speak a little bit about our membership and events and workforce programs over the last six months. So, membership at the Chamber is looking strong. We continue to get new members. We had 35 new members over this six-month time period. Retention remains very strong, and we actually saw from our quarterly feedback survey, we had the strongest level of feedback, most positive feedback we've received since we implemented that. So definitely trending in the right direction in terms of serving our community and serving our membership.

We have a number of chamber committees that we run. These chamber committees serve as kind of our advisory council, so the chamber they help understand what issues would they see in the community? What direction we may take on those issues? We bring some of their ideas or direction they may want to take back to our board of directors. And we currently have six active committees with over 900, 990 active committee members serving on those committees. Our newest committee is our Santa Maria Valley Young Professionals Steering Committee and that program we just implemented in January and that committee helps us steer the direction of programming we're providing to young professionals in the Santa Maria Valley.

Networking events, as you probably all know we do a lot of networking at the chamber. A lot of networking events. We have our weekly Friday Build Your Business or BYB networking event every week. We host monthly mixers, ribbon cuttings once a month. We do a few of those and also obviously our major events which I'll touch on briefly but yeah over 2300 networking participants over the last six months so a lot of engagement from our community, a lot value and connection made through those events.

And always great to celebrate new businesses and businesses celebrating milestones with our ribbon cuttings. As far as major events, I think this is one of the kind of busiest times for us that March through October time period. If we think back to State of the City, many of you were speaking at that event. It went very well. I think the community enjoyed hearing diverse perspectives from different city leadership at that event. Also held our Freedom Monument Ceremony. We had a tourism celebration with our Tourism Marketing Team Our State of Education event, our State of Vandenberg event out on the Space Force Base.

And we also hosted our Tri-County Chamber Alliance annual meeting. That meeting rotates throughout the tri-county area so Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties and this year was our turn to host that. So it was great to be out at Bien Nacido Winery and kind of share some of our local tourism that we have here in the Santa Maria Valley with our neighbors.

I'm going to move into a little bit of our workforce development, programming and partnerships. So our teacher tours this is a program we continue to run with the Santa Barbara County Education Office. We take career technical education teachers so high school teachers out at the CTE center around two different businesses every month helps them really build relationships with local businesses understanding what they need for hiring opportunities to host internships They've gotten some teacher externships out of these connections they build. So we wrapped up this program for the school year, so held four tours. We visited 13 businesses, had over 80 teachers participate in that. We culminate that program every year doing a countywide kind of event out at the Space Force Base and they got to see the NASA facility out there this year which was pretty cool.

A great program, a great partnership. We continue around workforce development and strengthening those relationships between education and business. Our Santa Maria Valley Young Professionals Group launched in January. We're really excited about this program we're kind of bringing back. We used to have, years ago you may remember before COVID had a young professionals group.

We've heard a need from our community to want to bring that back. Have opportunities for young professionals in the San Maria Valley looking to build their networks, build their leadership development skills, connect more with local leaders. And so we've been hosting monthly meetings for that program. We have a different speaker every month and networking those are free to attend open to the public really targeting people Getting into their careers, so college-age students or people very early in their careers kind of the under 40 range. We're also going to be launching a mentorship program through the Young Professionals Group soon. So looking forward to that I would say our team has done a great job we encourage some of our younger team members to take this program on and take the lead on it and we've been really impressed with the community that they're building through the Young Professionals Group Our next-gen CEO program, this continues to run strong.

This is a program for 6th and 7th grade students where they get to learn how to be their own boss and start their own business. We partner with the Boys & Girls Club on this program. The students go through about a six week program understanding cost modeling How to market a business, how to do proper customer service. What it really takes to be an entrepreneur. At the end of that they get to launch their business and sell their products to the public. It's a lot of fun. Our most recent cohort was over at Kermit McKenzie Intermediate School out in Guadalupe. And we also had a pop-up event in December for our alumni of that program who are still selling their products so that was fun around Christmas time over at the mall they got a chance to sell their products over there.

So we're looking forward to this next year and continuing that partnership with the Boys & Girls Club. Leadership Santa Maria Valley, another great kind of leadership program we run through the chamber. They actually just had their graduation last Friday for this recent class but October through March you'll see the different topic days they had there. They did a really impressive legacy project out in Tanglewood at the junior high out there created a mural. They raised all the money brought in the muralists and actually had extra funds left over from their fundraising efforts that they were able to donate to the local school out there. So great program, we are still accepting a few more applications for this next year's cohort if anyone's interested but that program continues to run strong.

We get a lot of great engagement I know a number of city people go through that every year as well so we appreciate that partnership We partner very closely with the Santa Barbara County Workforce Development Board. We host monthly business tours with them and visited some great local businesses through that program, also continue to partner with them on their Grow Your Business Program which offers some funding for businesses who are looking to provide paid work experience or part-time work or some upskilling services within their business. The workforce development board has Programming where they can connect individuals to those businesses who have those specific needs. WorkSBC is another program that we run with the Workforce Development Board and this is a program that we started to really help create kind of an ecosystem in mapping all of the education and workforce development experiences that are out there in the county, so when you're looking at And so it's kind of a.

Program we're in the thick of it right now, but it's been a great program to convene all these leaders from education and industry and economic development. And how do we gain clarity at a countywide level on all those opportunities? Partners in Education, another partnership we have. Great organization through the county education office. We continue to help with their career coaching and mock interviews. Again building the future generation of leaders in our community, building a strong local talent pipeline for our Santa Maria Valley residents is really important and that's a lot of fun to see those students develop their confidence through those programs and participate in the mock interviews. It's great experience I encourage you all to take part in that if you haven't yet.

And with that, I will hand it over to Suzanne who's going to cover our economic development and tourism. Thank you so much.

Good evening Mayor Patino, City Council members and staff. Happy to be here tonight and happy to go over what we've done in the last six months. So just briefly our advocacy efforts. We have taken on a heavier advocacy role supporting our businesses so this the last six months we supported or opposed 14 business or non-business friendly proposed legislation. And I think for us, that's really helping out the business community. We conducted our Business Advocacy Roundtable Committees and Molly brought up but being a member of the Tri-County Chamber Alliance we were privileged this year to host their annual meeting here in Santa Maria so it was really a neat thing for us to be able to do for them to want to come up and be in our community and see what we have going on.

Our team attended over 120 meetings and events in support of the businesses and the Santa Maria Valley community. We had 11 requests for support in the business, well actually interaction. So we had 11 interactions with Business Attraction in the last six months. That means businesses that are interested in coming into the community or want to start a business. We had eleven of those in the last six months and we provided support and services to 23 businesses that are already here.

Our Hispanic business support efforts are just rocking. I mean, I am so impressed with what we've done in this area of our business community. We've identified the group as the Hispanic Business Alliance. We call it the HBA. And we had our large Posada Mixer in December. We held two Grow Your Business events, that's where the Hispanic businesses can come and learn things that they need to learn to help them in their businesses. We had over 330 attendees at our events for the Hispanic Business Alliance events.

And we outreached and assisted a total of 21 businesses. And our member base is growing, it's 215. On to Visitors Bureau and Tourism. So this is our transient occupancy tax data, our monthly comparison. The monthly data highlights the seasonality of our tourism sector and the immediate impact of local investments. Early 2026 data shows promising growth with February of 2026 being at an all-time well not all time high but very high 218 plus thousand In revenue already outperforming both 2024 and 2025 for the same month.

The steady performance reflects the success of targeted visitor campaigns, and the influx of travelers attracted to the region's unique amenities This next slide is our annual transient occupancy tax, and it highlights the Santa Maria Valley strong recovery from the 2020 pandemic with a record peak in 2022. Recent years have shown a normalization of revenue. The sector remains in a stabilization phase with totals exceeding pre-pandemic levels So that's before 2019. This long-term resilience is supported by ongoing property investments and the recent remodels, which tells the story of our region's enduring appeal as a travel destination despite broader economic headwinds.

The team attended several educational and promoting events these past six months. We learned a lot, gained some fresh ideas to bring back to our community. We connected with interested travelers to come to the area where we really brought a new look and really shined with our new travel show backdrop and materials. We distributed and passed out over 1,400 marketing collateral pieces. We had over 211,000 website visits and 4,000 plus website hotel referrals. We hosted four FAM tours with prominent influencers.

We also successfully pulled off a restaurant month and a craft cocktail contest with 11 restaurant participating and seven cocktail participants. Contest winners were the Homewood Sweets, the Winery & The Range Kitchen and Bar, and then Costa Del Oro. Thank you for your time. I'll give it back to Michael.

Thank you, Suzanne. As you can see, we did not slow down in March. In our next report, you'll hear about our candidate academy, the North County economic forecast and our upcoming Women of Excellence event. The launch of our new Hispanic Business Alliance membership model will soon follow. We just went live with a new website. Our new community calendar is being configured as we speak And we're well on our way for the creation of the Santa Maria Valley Barbecue Association, which we think is going to be a great point of pride for our region.

Suzanne and Molly and the entire chamber staff have put in extraordinary work in this period. Tonight's presentation is a reflection of our commitment to accountability, excellence, and to our community. We are deeply grateful We are deeply grateful for the city's continued partnership and investment in what we do together. This work is most effective when we are aligned in our strategy, and we move forward as collaborative partners.

With that Mayor Patino and council members, we welcome any questions you might have for us tonight.

Any questions from the Council? I do. Ms. Singh, you were talking about the services that you provide to new businesses say people are coming here and they want to start a business and I know that we work together with you on different things but what is some of the services you've provided?

We will introduce them to local brokers and help them find locations they might be interested in. And we will introduce them to those people who can help them through the development phase, we will introduce them to the city and make sure that they are connected to Shannon. So we do a lot of those things for those attraction type businesses. And the other services that we provide to the businesses that are already here might be just how do I renew my license or how do I take care of this code enforcement?

Letter I got so we do a lot of those things

Okay, did you help sort of hold their hand through different processes? Yeah, that's kind of what we do. Yeah Thank you. Uh-huh. Thank you very much for the report a

soda In your question it made me think of something that you all presented which was like your Friday and Yeah, so BYB is Build Your Business. It's our Friday networking event and those take place every Friday at 8 a.m. at The Collective over at Simple Cafe on Skyway

We welcome guests to attend a few times before they join chamber membership, but kind of a leads group opportunity for you know to connect. We have a showcase and yeah

That's great. And then when it comes to individuals who are looking to start their business, do you also point them in the right direction for financing and loans or grants that may be available to them?

Yeah, definitely. I think Suzanne and Evan, our economic development team have a lot of information on all those opportunities. And so if businesses ever have questions on how do I get started, um, if they don't know the answer, we have a lot of resources that we connect them with that we can help them find the answer too. So

You know, it's really interesting the next gen CEO when you see these kids trying to start their own business and they'll make their product and then they go to sell it. And if you haven't been to one of those, you really need to go. So this has been maybe two or three Christmases ago I bought soap and it's so pretty and it comes in different colors. Uh-huh.

So I brought the soap and I took it home and I set it on my counter in the kitchen because I was going to give it to my granddaughters, and I have a big candy jar like this in my kitchen. And my husband is Mr. Neat he doesn't like to see anything sitting around so he throws those two bars of soap into the candy jar. And I'm looking for them but I never thought to ask at that well he probably didn't take him there's so it's soap right?

Well anyway, I had to throw out all the candy that was in there and restocked the candy jar and explained to him that these were bars of soap. But they make them look beautiful so they did look like candy. Anyway thank you so much for the

presentation.

We'll now receive a presentation on this year's fireworks education campaign and enforcement efforts to be presented by Administrative Analyst Jane.

Good evening, Madam Mayor, Council Members, Directors and the Santa Maria community. I am Jane Taye, the City's Administrative Analyst. In this presentation about our fireworks, our 2026 Fireworks Campaign, I will provide information on the city's three-level approach consisting of education, enforcement and entertainment in mitigating illegal firework use leading up to and over the 4th of July weekend.

The city encourages the San Maria community to celebrate our nation's birthday responsibly. We recognize the significant challenges associated with illegal fireworks use and understand the disruptive impacts that loud explosions can have on residents, particularly those who are noise sensitive as well as on pets. Through continued education enforcement and community engagement we hope to encourage safer and more considerate ways to celebrate.

The city continues to allow the sale of safe and sane fireworks, fireworks that start at ground level and do not go up in the sky. This year we have 23 city approved fireworks booths as pictured on the map per City Council's prior direction and the municipal code. The Fire Department sales are allowed between June 28th and July 4th. To promote education in the annual City Fireworks Rules and Guidelines, 15,000 flyers were printed to be distributed. These fliers will be included with every fireworks sale from the 23 city-approved fireworks booths.

Outreach will be conducted via email, phone, and in person visits to various Spanish and English speaking businesses and organizations ranging from the Santa Maria, Bonina, and high school districts the County of Santa Barbara Animal Services and Public Health Department, and local businesses including carnicerias or meat delis, cafes, local animal veterinary clinics and shops.

Also pictured on the map, on the slide above if you'd like to take a look. Other businesses interested in receiving digital flyers may contact me directly and I will gladly provide them via email. We welcome and encourage their participation in sharing this information with the community. Social media posts along with paid ads in English and Spanish will be broadcasted on local radio 30 second public service announcements from our fire chief were provided to KSBY, KYT and Telemundo with a request to air them as a public service message.

We also plan to utilize our city government TV Comcast channel 23 news releases smart bus infotainment screens and posters at city offices to convey the message. Additional tools include free yard signs Which are like this. We have them in both English and Spanish. These will also be available at the City Hall reception window, and pet crates are available from County Animal Services.

Residents may call and leave a message to report illegal fireworks on the City Fireworks Hotline at 9250951 extension 3473 with details about address or location, name or names of persons involved, time and date of the violation. Messages will be monitored by the Police Department. Enforcement will include combating illegal fireworks used through the issuance of a $1,000 fine to violators.

Last year we issued 119 citations and 89% increase from 2024 where we issued 63 citations. The San Maria Police Department will deploy officers from July 2nd through the 4th of July weekend to identify and address illegal fireworks activity. Fire prevention inspectors will partner with police officers to conduct patrols throughout the community. San Maria fire department is once again contracting with a specialized vendor to operate an aircraft equipped with GPS and video technology.

The aircraft will monitor activity throughout the city, and can accurately identify the launch locations of illegal fireworks. This technology allows us to trace incidents to specific properties and property owners can be subject to enforcement action and violations. Residents may also report illegal fireworks through the city website since successful enforcement actions require witness testimony, the online complaint form allows residents to provide their information and indicate their willingness to participate as a witness if necessary.

For entertainment, we have a drone show scheduled at 8.30 PM during downtown Friday at 501 South McClellan on July 3rd. Additionally, a fun and family-friendly event will be hosted by our Recreation and Parks Department on Saturday, July 4th from 12 to 4 p.m., at the Elks Baseball Field behind the Abel Maldonado Community Youth Center, 600 South McClellan Street that will include pie and watermelon eating contests, youth arts and crafts, bounce houses in a foam pit, photo booths, food vendors along with a beer garden.

A concert by Unfinished Business hits the stage from 1.30 to 3.30 p.m. Lastly, free public swim will also be available at the Paul Nelson Aquatic Center. This concludes my presentation. Chief Dendridge, Chief Williams and I are available for any questions. Any questions? Yes, Ms. Flores?

Can you tell me approximately how many firework booth stands we have in the City of Santa Maria only?

Let me go back to that slide. I don't know if there's a way for me to zoom in, but for the City of Santa Maria within our jurisdiction it's 23.

Just 23 fireworks?

23 approved city, yes.

And another question... That number if they call somebody is going to answer it?

Madam Mayor, Council Member Flores. The fireworks hotline that you're referring to is being monitored by the police department and it will be monitored by the police department individuals have been linked to that. So whatever voice must come up it will populate on the individuals within the police departments voicemail.

OK, so I say that because I give out little stickers for when I have town hall meetings and that number was on there. And we had a lot of issues in District 2 last year and so they complained about there was no response. No one was able to answer the phone but yet there was a drone that went over their house and the residents inside the house were not lighting fireworks but the people across the street were. But they gave everybody a ticket

Madam Mayor, Council Member Flores. In answer to that question I know for a fact today I made sure that that extension, I actually checked with our voicemail system to ensure that that extension would go, that voicemails would be forwarded to the appropriate people within the police department so I am sure this time it will be monitored. Okay

all right I appreciate it thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you. I don't know if Council Member Flores' comment was fully addressed though, because it sounds like it was another home that was setting up the fireworks but yet that resident that was sharing what happened also, I'm assuming, was fined?

Yeah he was fined and he called me and told me hey I wasn't lighting fireworks it was my neighbor across the street but because when the drone came over their house They just assumed it was him and they gave him a ticket instead of the person that was really lighting the fireworks. So I did address it with our chief, and he took care of it but you know, it can be hit and miss so we have to be careful even with that.

Madam Mayor, Council Member Flores, Chief Dundridge wants to further explain on that?

And I would appreciate knowing how we could prevent that in the future

Madam Mayor, Council Members, thank you for the question. In regards to the drone and the way that we go about monitoring that, the drone has GPS locations so we look to see and target the actual parcels that the fireworks are coming from. Before we issue citations however, we have a process that goes. The individuals have opportunities to plead their case and we don't just arbitrarily In regards to the hotline.

If you call the hotline, it actually gives you a telephone number to call directly to PD. I gotcha okay so that was my understanding that they gave me some apologies thank you for clarifying it did give you a telephone number to PD but it is being monitored now by PD so Miss Jane said that it's going to be monitored this year in regards to that hotline but as far as our involvement with the citations that are being given We want to deter the use of illegal fireworks.

Illegal fireworks are hazardous and can be very dangerous to our community. There's been instances already in which we have had to respond to members of our community that have injured themselves very significantly due to the use of illegal fireworks already. We want to deter, we want to caution the public just explain the inherent dangers of illegal fireworks and encourage that we celebrate the 250th year of our country in a safe and sane manner.

So we will, anytime that those citations are issued by the aircraft. We will review them scrutinize them to their fullest before we go about finalizing issuance of any citations. That's my promise to you in the community.

Thank you. Yeah, because my name wasn't my neighbor but it was across off of Donovan. He thank God he filmed it and he's a veteran so he called me right away said look at I filmed this we were inside I'm a veteran I don't even want to hear fireworks. He said I have a sign in front of my house but they were blowing up the fire illegal fireworks right in the middle of the street like they do right it's a fire show right behind my house. And so he said that he filmed it.

And then but he was the one that was issued the ticket, not the ones that were lighting the fireworks. So then I referred him to your office and thank God he had that video because he was fined $1,000. Yes

ma'am we

understand. To me is an issue that we have to be careful You know, with who the drone is flying over or saying that they're the ones that are lighting fireworks. You could clearly see in that video that he showed me, they weren't even outside. He was filming from inside his house.

Yes, ma'am. And just know also with the fire investigators and PD, the collaboration that we have monitoring the days previous and the day of July 4th will have our investigators. They'll also have cameras on them to be able to capture exactly what's going on in the situations so

thank

you.

Thank you.

Did you have another question?

I do have questions. You know, I think many residents would agree that Even with the steps that the city has taken to reduce the number of illegal fireworks in our community, it's still a big problem and a dangerous one at that. I know that every night in my neighborhood, I hear three, four fireworks pop off. And so I don't know what the enforcement has looked like thus far since the start of this year and I don't know if there's any updates that you can provide us?

Right now all we can do, we don't have anyone enforcing patrolling the areas right now but what we do encourage the public to do is Be willing to call in, make a report. And unfortunately the challenge is people aren't willing to testify come forth and actually be put on record in regards to their neighbor and it's understandable. Once again those are the challenges we face and every year all we're trying to do is educate a little bit more, educate on the inherent dangers and hope in time there's going to be a cultural change that we have to have here in Santa Maria.

With that and the cultural change or shift, I wonder if even... I mean, I'm curious to know how many neighboring cities allow the sale of sane and safe fireworks. And I wonder if there's any correlation between The sale of sane and safe fireworks, and how that promotes perhaps the usage of illegal fireworks. And so I don't know if anyone on staff is able to speak to that or even what neighboring cities are doing when it comes to selling safe and sane fireworks.

Madam Mayor and Council Member Soto, what other communities are doing right now I'm not familiar with so I can't speak to that. Here we do sell safe and sane. And when you look at the correlation between illegal fireworks and safe and sane, I don't know if we can make that correlation. We have laws on the books right now, statutes that stipulate that illegal fireworks, the ones that go up in the air are not to be used. That hasn't seemed to slow down some members but I will share an anecdotal. Last year when we first used a couple years ago, we first use the drone There was a couple members of our community, Council Member Flores that received actually the $1,000 fines. Three families different sections of our city when they came to pay the fine they said I know what we're doing this year and we're not going to be lighting off fireworks one family at a time is all we could try in time hopefully we do make a cultural shift and just continue the education of our community on the inherent dangers of illegal fireworks

Do we see an increase in service calls during 4th of July or 4th of July weekend or the holiday?

Typically, we do see a uptick in fires. Rubbish fires, grass fires. We've been fortunate here in Santa Maria that we haven't had any big conflagrations of home businesses on fire but anytime illegal fireworks are used that's always a possibility. We monitor and after the 4th of July, I'll have actually statistics of what we do and do a comparison and share that with the council.

Thank you. This is not scientific at all, but when the fireworks booths get set up and they have a certain time and the people that purchase these are told when they can set off the fireworks, I think they just do that because they buy them for their families, for their little kids, and they set them off on the 4th of July. But if you want to say premeditated on the illegal fireworks, they've started how long ago? And they will continue to do that. So we don't have a... Oh I know what I wanted to ask you. On those 119 citations were we able to collect?

Yes ma'am, we were able to collect the majority of those. There was very few that we were able to dismiss and the ones as I stated before, the ones that have been shown that we will dismiss.

Good. I probably shouldn't even ask this question, is our aircraft out now? Available now?

No. We contract Madam Mayor the day of the 4th of July that will be the only time. When is

that again? Just the fourth of July?

On the fourth of July on the day of. But we could always expand. We'll look to see and if there is a desire from council to expand that program two days before leading up to the 4th, that is always a possibility. So

if we get this drone that the PD wants then we can use that to do that like right now, right? And with that drone we can be very specific as to who's doing this also?

Good evening. Christopher Williams, Chief of Police, Madam Mayor and Council that is correct once we establish the drone first responder program one of the parameters that we could set is to respond to those types of calls for service they are if you remember from my presentation they are linked with our computer aided dispatch so the pilot if it met the parameters and that's what we set up it can respond and record the violations that could be used for civil assessments

Thank you. Because what I'm hearing now are worse, I think they're like bombs

that I'm

hearing now.

Yes. I think the fire chief would agree the issues that we have with fireworks going off are not the safe and sane fireworks. They're the ones that are illegal that are being set off.

I hate to put you on the spot and ask this question, but we had a bad accident. What? It's been two weeks ago. Did you want to mention that? You don't have to show pictures.

No Madam Mayor as I shared before the fire department responded to an incident where members of our community were significantly injured due to the use of illegal fireworks. I believe it would be best for me to just leave it at that.

And they were very young.

Yes, ma'am.

And that's such a tragedy. Yeah. Okay. Any other questions? Mr. Patel? No? Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. That's it Ms. Tate? Okay. Yes thank you.

Yes, Madam Mayor. Speakers may provide public comments on any matter within the subject matter jurisdiction of the City Council. Each speaker will be limited to three minutes maximum 15 minutes per public comment period Unless the majority of the council objects, the mayor may provide speakers more or less time to speak. All comments or queries shall be addressed to the council as a body and not to any specific member thereof. Pursuant to Government Code Section 54954282, the Ralph M. Brown Act, no action or discussion by the City Council shall be undertaken on any item not appearing on posted agenda except to briefly provide information, ask for clarification, provide direction to staff, or schedule a matter for future meeting.