City Council — January 12, 2026

See, I'm off already on the new year. There you go. Are you going? We're all set for all that. Welcome everybody. We're gonna start the closed session at 532 and Ms. Clerk would you please read roll call?

thank you.

Thank you. Okay, are there any public communications before we go into closed session? Anything on Zoom? I see none so Madam Clerk would you read that into the record please?

Item 2A, Conference with Labor Negotiators. The Closed Session is authorized by the Government Code Section 54957.6, Agency Representative Randy Murphy, City Manager, Employee Organization All Unrepresented Employees. 2B, Conference with Labor Negotiators. The Closed Session is authorized by the Government Code Section 54957.6 Agency Designated Representative Dave Fleischman, Assistant City Attorney, Employee Organization Teamsters Union Local 986 2C Conference with Legal Counsel Existing Litigation. The closed session is authorized by Government Code Section 54956.91, name of case Edward St. George v. City of Solvang et al., Case No. 25C-B07234.

Back from a closed session and Madam Attorney is there any reportable action?

Good evening Mayor, members of the council. No there's no reportable action coming out of the closed session on conference with labor negotiators for both the represented and unrepresented or for the conference with legal counsel thank you.

Thank you very much we will then be in recess until 630 and we'll start the open session then Good evening everybody and welcome to the Solvang City Council meeting of January 12th, 2026. I'm going to call a meeting to order at 630 and I wish everybody a very happy new year and if you would please silence any phones that you have or other devices so we have no interruptions in that regard.

Roll call please

thank you

and we have the privilege today of having Anne McCarty lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance please stand

Repeat after me

Thank you. Real quick point of housekeeping, today's agenda is has some the order of it is set but the numbers are wrong so discussion items where it says after consent it should be number seven for public Sorry, public hearings and then number eight is discussion items. So I apologize for that but so everybody can follow where we're at. I wanted to make that clear Next I have a proclamation to read This is from the City of Solvang for the Human Trafficking Awareness Month Whereas human trafficking is a form of modern slavery that occurs in every state, including California. Wherein victims are forced to work in various forms of labor exploitation including but not limited to commercial sex acts and other services that are induced through force fraud or coercion.

And whereas due to its isolated and discrete nature, many individuals across the globe are unaware that trafficking exists in their communities. And whereas it is estimated that more than 28 million people around the world are victims of human trafficking And whereas the Santa Barbara County Human Trafficking Task Force has worked diligently to bring awareness to the fact that human trafficking occurs closer to home than one might think. That California ranks number one in a country for reported human trafficking cases, and that Santa Barbara County is home to hundreds of survivors of trafficking and exploitation. And whereas Human Trafficking Awareness Month is an opportunity to recognize the critical role all Santa Barbara County residents play in preventing, reporting and adjudicating those heinous crimes.

Now therefore be it resolved that I, Mayor David Brown along with the City Council of the City of Solvang California do hereby recognize January 2026 as Human Trafficking Awareness Month in our city of Solvang. And that I call this observance to the attention of all our citizens. A witness thereof, I have unto set my hand and cause this official seal the City of Solvang, California to be affixed this 12th day of January 2026. And I have the pleasure of presenting this to Anne McCarthy.

Good evening Mayor Brown and members of the City Council. My name is Anne McCarty and I'm the Executive Director of the North County Rape Crisis and Child Protection Center. Tonight, however, I stand before you as a part of something larger, as a proud member of the Santa Barbara County Human Trafficking Task Force. And with me tonight, I'd like to recognize Byron E. Thomas who's with our Interfaith Collaborative with the task force, and Joyce Howerton who is a Community Outreach Advocate with the Rape Crisis Center.

Our task force is a united front of professionals who refuse to look away. We bring together the District Attorney's Office, every law enforcement agency in this county, Homeland Security and committed community-based organizations all working side by side with one shared purpose to stop human trafficking and to hold accountable those who prey on vulnerability for profit.

Over the past decade, we have made meaningful progress but let me be clear human trafficking is not a distant problem it's not someone else's issue it is happening in our county It is happening in communities like Solvang, and it thrives in silence. That's why this proclamation matters. By recognizing January as Human Trafficking Awareness Month you're doing more than just issuing words on a piece of paper.

You're shining a light where traffickers depend on darkness. You're sending a clear message that this city is watching That the city cares and that there will be no safe haven here for those who exploit and harm others. This proclamation also tells survivors that they are seen, that their suffering matters and that this community stands ready to protect, educate and intervene.

It affirms that Solvang is committed to being a place of safety, accountability and action So on behalf of the entire Santa Barbara County Human Trafficking Task Force, we thank you for your leadership. Your courage and your commitment to safeguard the people of this community. Together we will work until exploitation has no place here. Thank you so much and one final thing I'd like to leave with you. I brought gifts.

Besides that?

I'll pick up my garbage, sorry. No littering. We have these flyers that we've made. I would encourage you to come. I'm gonna leave some here but my goal and my dream is to put these where they can be seen. You have a lot of hotels here. You have a lot of eating establishments and bars with restrooms. They should be where people go Because you never know what one person looking at this, what it could do. It could save one life and that's important. So I'm gonna leave these and I encourage you when you're ready for more, I've got larger sizes, when you're ready for more call me and I'd be happy to take the beautiful drive out to the valley to deliver them so thank you.

Okay, we have no presentations for this evening. So we'll go to public communications Madam clerk could you read that into the record please?

Public communications on non-agenda and consent items at this time You may address the council on items not on the agenda and on consent Time limit is three minutes. We will start with in person public comments first

Okay, first is John Ronoff. Thank you. There you go. Thank You John.

All right I know I got three minutes but I will keep it brief I think I've got it to just over out a minute my introduction here so good evening honorable mayor council members city staff and all in attendance My name is John Rohner and I wanted to introduce myself as the new public affairs manager for SoCalGas I cover Santa Barbara County and San Luis Obispo County. And I like to say my coverage territory is Hearst Castle de Carpinteria, and it's beautiful. It's the best.

All my peers are jealous of my coverage territory. But I recently took on this role after Tim Mahoney retired. I don't know if any worked with Tim Mahoney over the years. He was in the role for about 27, 28 years so very big shoes to fill. He was an institution very well known so now it's my job to meet and greet everybody and be as well known as well. Most importantly I wanted to share that SoCal Gas remains committed to supporting local governments and communities to provide safe reliable and affordable energy delivery today ready for tomorrow. And please don't hesitate to reach out and I look forward to working with each and every one of you thank you. Thank

you. Thank you, they're here. You can pass that out afterwards. Next is Mr. Hank Homburg and after him is Ken Ainsley.

Happy New Year Council. City Manager, Mayor, council members my name's Hank Homburg I live here in Solvang I've written quite a few emails the last couple months, but I just wanted to go publicly and say that I'm asking our City Manager and Council to consider looking into a feasibility study to possibly withdraw from our Santa Barbara County Sheriff's contract.

And maybe start a Valley Police Protection Department. Currently we're paying for one minimum cafeteria plan contract that yields us one deputy and he is often, he or she is often backed up for backing up deputies from the Chumash Casino all the way to Lompoc because Lompoc also has sheriff's deputy contracts part of their area. So a lot of times they're not even in town.

We receive zero speed enforcement very little traffic enforcement as our contract does not specify for a traffic enforcement officer that's extra And the deputy that is patrolling Solvang has to go through a special enforcement class and they're not going to do that. So all we get is the result, infrequent stop sign enforcement. That's it if the deputy is in town.

Rarely do we get proactive policing. I never see anybody on patrol downtown. I never see anybody. Only time I see him is on 246 going back to the station We're going the back way on Maple. We're paying $3.1 million a year for one deputy. Buellton is paying $3,800,000. So I think if we put ourselves together with Buelton City Manager Wolf, I believe his name is Scott Wolf.

And we can collaborate with them to be a force to reckon with with regard to just paying for a feasibility study. That's all I'm asking for is just the study. Maybe it works out maybe it doesn't. I don't know but at least we should be looking at it because the Sheriff's Department contracts only going to go up not come down. Carpinteria Gilead are paying crazy amounts as well, and it's really expensive.

So that gives me a second point I want to talk about. There's been some discussion about funding a new city hall. I want to quash that right now until we do our phase two wastewater treatment plant liability which is supposed to be $20 million. It's probably $30 million now because it's been three or four years since it's been broached That is off the table, people.

I don't know where this is coming from. I don't know who's steering the helm of the ship or the city to say that we need a new City Hall for a city that only has 5,900 people. So I hope we look forward to more infrastructure and you know, we have 25 miles of pavement that needs work. So thank you very much for your time. Appreciate it and I hope you consider it.

Next, Ken. Pronounce that again for me please.

My name is Ainsley Ken

Ainsley. Thank you Ken. Yes. On deck is Mr. Steve Martin

Thank you, Mayor Brown and City Council. I would appreciate the opportunity to talk to you all and to address an issue that to me just suddenly raised giant red flags and this had to do with our meeting at the last session where we talked about the Friedenborg Canyon Road and what to do on that subject. I understand that the council has authorized an increase of this study to include per tap perhaps the traffic patterns on Friedenborg and maybe even five board. And I wanted to make sure that we have as city council members, as opposed to just consultants some very clear thoughts on what all the impact of that would be.

And so I want to address first off let me say that I've lived for five years on Ellis Hall Road at the top of the hill where that big S curve is and I've lived for two years on Chalk Hill. just beyond the cemetery before you get to the Skip Mesa. In both cases, my house is sitting right on the main road and I can watch all the traffic going either way on either of those roads.

In terms of addressing specifically the one-way question, I want to be clear that if we were to do that virtually every person in District 1 and District 2 would have to go to Mission Boulevard to get in and out of the city if they want to go to the grocery store, want to go to the hospital, want to go to Santa Ana's. If we did both Vyborg and Friedenburg. If not they have to go Alice Hall Road and up back backtrack to Vyborg to go down to Alamo-Pentana. To do that they have to go through the very center of the elementary school And at a time, most likely during rush hour when the students are going to or coming back from school.

Right next to there is the church and they often have giveaway programs for their food programs and other events right at that corner. Everyone would have to go through there one way or the other depending upon the direction that we set Friedenburg. So I don't know what problem that would solve. If we're trying to solve the speeding problem, that's not going to help because by making it one way you're telling people that nobody is going to be coming the other way so they can speed up.

And if you're talking about the footpath problem which I think does exist, we've got that problem on both Alosol Road and on Friedenburg Canyon and I think the traffic pattern you'll find at Alosol is much larger because I've been watching them walk back and forth for five years There's 30 to 40 people a week, if not more going up and down that road every day out of the town walking their dog, walking their friends, riding their bicycles. And there is no footpath at the top of that hill and it's narrow.

It's three blind curves so it looks to me like my time is up but I'll be providing a document that I'm gonna send each of you That describes all the details of some implications of either one of those roads being one-way roads. And I want to make sure that gets considered by you as well as by the consultants, so thank you very much.

Thank you Mr. Martin and after him is Mr. Dennis Beebe

Thank you Mayor Brown and members of council. My name is Stephen Martin, I'm a resident here of Solvang. I was pleased to hear recently that Solvang is in line to likely receive a million dollar grant to help us with our sewage treatment plant from the federal government. In these days and times which are turbulent we worry that nothing is certain As they say, the federal government giveth and the federal government can taketh away.

And I mention this worry because sometimes we have to take risks to stand up for principle and stand up for our friends. I personally feel it is time for Solvang to reassure Denmark and reassure the Danes of our lasting friendship and our commitment to stand by them as they have stood by us, very much supporting us always. Solvang is very much the face and voice of Danes in America.

Our friendship with Denmark and Danes is very important to them and I think to us The Danes are concerned, as has been mentioned by the former ambassador and the Danish people in government in recent months that the bond between us is being frayed. I ask the Council to place on the agenda for the earliest of the next meetings Thank you. realize the importance of our community as a bastion of Danishness in America and they've been good friends of ours over the last 150 years.

And we owe it to the Danes to just let them know, hey don't worry, we are your friends. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr Dennis Beebe

Thank you, Mr. Mayor and thank you and the council members for your continued service to our community. It appears that Yulefest was probably the most successful ever especially if your currency is the number of people visitors and the number of automobiles but it appears obvious to me and many of the residents who live here that Yule Fest and other events like it throughout the year is really a two-edged sword.

It's good news, it's our lifeblood in terms of economics but it has negative impacts on the people who live here and I think it ought to be considered. In particular at the top of any issue list that the residents have been asked to contribute are the issues of traffic and the issues of parking. They're, oh I've been here over 30 years and they've never been bumped off the top of the issue list so what are we doing? I mean apparently we throw it over the fence to Caltrans as far as traffic goes because we don't have much power or authority on 246 and that's where all the visitors come from but parking we have more control over And I actually looked at a parking study.

As of next month, it's five years old. We contracted for it. We brought in a consultant. He looked at parking and the consultant did. I'm not sure if it was the best time to look at parking, analyze it because it was in the middle of COVID. So I suspect perhaps some of the consultants recommendations probably didn't really were effective but I looked at the recommendations have you as you prepare for your goals workshop next month, I hope that you will set goals that are specific to address the issue of parking. It's right up there. It must be a number in the top three. I looked at the recommendations of the parking study that you paid for that is five years old. There's five pages of recommendations.

I recommend you reread it. I'm looking at all the recommendations. I don't, I'm not aware that any of them were implemented. So there's been a lot of hand-waving as to how we can solve our parking issue. Oh wow! We could build a parking garage in Lot 4. Wave, wave. It's no good folks. You've got to come up with a plan. You've got to come up with some goals and come up with a plan as to how you're going to address the parking issue because it happens and it spikes and you know when the spikes are going to be so I urge you to come up with some goals Item 4.

Thank you Mr. Mayor and Council, I have several things to announce this being our first meeting of the year and a lot of things going on. I made the announcement at the last meeting, the last couple of meetings, the grant funding process is open. It opened on December 1st and it will close on January 30th, that just being about three weeks away. Be aware please that there are a mandatory meeting required if somebody from the organization has to attend. The first meeting is this Thursday the 15th 3 o'clock in the afternoon to 4.

The next one will be the following Thursday, the 22nd of January from 4 to 5 p.m. Again if you do not have somebody from your organization attend we will not be accepting your application this is an effort to help streamline the process We typically are very eager or willing to give funds to businesses and organizations that service our community, but it's been very difficult.

So we're trying to make it as streamlined as possible so these meetings are mandatory. You don't need to attend both you only need to attend one. Again if you have any questions that if this information is available on our website I also wanted to call attention to this new plaque on the wall over here near the clock. This was generously donated to us by our arborist, West Coast Arborists.

Other items that they've given us in the past are made from trees that they've removed or otherwise, you know, serviced in our community. This one identifies it's done in the shape of Solvang City Limits and it has information about trees and tree cover and the value of the urban forest that we have in our community so I thought it was a very generous gift. Thank them for that and it's something worth checking out. It's very beautiful Mr. Beebe commented on the goal setting session, remind everybody that is on February 7th so it's coming up here in a couple of weeks it will be held at the Kraft House at 10am February 7th that is a Saturday It is the day before the Super Bowl So far the 49ers are still in the mix so hopefully we have something to cheer about that day I also wanted to point out to the community that we are attempting to get an Office of Traffic Safety grant.

There are funds available for speed-related, to help prevent speed related crashes, drunk driving and pedestrian injuries. So we're looking for information input from the public about where you might want to see radar speed signs. There are grants available for that, we have several in the community already but we can have more also flashing stop sign or flashing pedestrian crossing signs so please send an email to PIO it's for Public Information Officer abbreviation PIO at CityofSolvang.com We need those comments by Friday, this Friday January 16th Also wanted to alert the community that there is a new policy will be effective February 1st about Multiple payments.

We are going to not allow multiple payments for water bills if effective February 1st and the policy essentially will be available on our website and it's full payments are required Unless it's authorized by the city manager. And there will be a payment processing fee if the council adopts that in the process as we do the budget this year, which there will be a fee recommended.

So just so that it is available for review, will be available for review at the front counter also on our website As far as upcoming meetings, I mentioned the Council goal setting session on the next agenda on the 26th. It will be a mid-year budget review. There's also going to be discussion about the Mission San Yanez TUP issue that was up a few months ago. There are also several code amendments for various things, prevailing wage and news racks and some other things like that.

On February 23rd we will have our mayor for a day and we will also have a discussion about Our Recreation Master Plan. On March 23rd, we'll have the annual report from our marketing group and on April 13th there will be a discussion about the Solvang Mesa Landscape Lighting District annual assessment so that's a couple of coming attractions and that's all I have for now

Thank you. Any questions of the manager, Mr. Aponte?

Thank you. A couple things. First I'd like to commend you on the monthly letter that you put out. I think that's terrific but you did mention the February 7th date for the meeting on that but did not list the time I have been getting calls saying, when? What time of day is that going to happen? How long is it gonna last? Those types of things. So I was very happy to hear you say that tonight and then it starts at 10 a.m..

Do we have a duration?

We have the room scheduled until 3 p.m. Hopefully won't need all that time but we do have it available until three

okay Thank you.

I had a quick question for you regarding the policy for multiple payments that you mentioned for bills and you said that there would be a charge, is that for making multiple payments or is it an emergent charge?

No it's for making multiple payments. It takes staff 10, 15, sometimes 20 minutes to process a payment. And so our fees are designed we can only recover actual costs. So we're going to have a fee established based on what that cost is and make that recommendation of council as ways to adopt the new fee schedule as part of the budget process.

Thank you. Anything else? Okay

Government Code Section 53232.3d aka AB 1234 and Government Code Section 84308 aka SB 1439 report out. Ex parte communications, council comments requests.

Anybody like to make any comments? A couple

things I have to report and some comments I'd like to make. So first of all, to add on to the goal-setting session this past week, I did meet with the consultant in anticipation of our end of prep and to kind of disclose some of the things that I wanted to see on the agenda with our consultant who we lead in the goal setting session on February 7th So a couple things to add there.

She mentioned that we would have a six-hour session, so that might be a clue on the duration. She's scheduled for six hours therefore I think we all are. Just as commentary or response to public comments my top two you know she asked for priorities They were pretty clear parking and traffic, and then affordability where the things that I suggested were very, very high priorities for us as a city. So that's kind of my ex parte report out on 1, 2, 3, 4 what I had done since we met last.

The other thing I wanted to mention, I did take a personal trip to Copenhagen, Denmark over the holiday break And I took away several things. The city clearly has a lot to learn from what they do, how they build a sustainable environment, handle transportation and with our use of bikes. I mean, they're just some phenomenal things that clearly go on in that city now. We have a deep heritage and a deep history of inheriting so many things from that partner city of ours.

And I would- I just can't imagine a scenario where we aren't deeply acknowledging that friendship, that heritage, the community That brings their culture and their families to Solvang. And these are so many deeply rooted reasons why visitors come to our city, so I would concur with public comment today that we should take some action reinforcing that friendship and that it has been long-term and will remain long term.

with the City of Denmark, and I had just a fantastic experience there. And then finally wanted to make two shout-outs one for the marketing team and the business community in support of Yulefest it was clearly phenomenally successful in the city staff that really went over the top yet again upping the bar every year on what we delivered for Yule Fest and how we performed with all of our visitors. And it does put pressure on the residential community, but some of the things that we did like the traffic guards along Alice Allen and Copenhagen Road were extremely helpful for the north-southbound traffic I know we can always do better and so i'm looking forward to the feedback both from the business community, the chamber and our marketing teams on you know what was the real outcomes and what do we want to improve going into next year.

The second shout out is we did have unprecedented storm yet again more water in the city and uh the staff responded to I think overall the city did really well in, you know, how much damage we incurred and how we responded to that much water. But there were some over-the-top responses for some fallen trees and a lot of water in my district in particular. So I want to thank the city staff, PG&E, and some other folks on private parts of the city that really responded positively and kept everybody safe. So thank you.

Thank you.

That's all I have.

Mr. Infante, I see your hand

up. Thank you Mayor. A couple of comments the agenda packet presentation has changed that's obvious to all of us and for some of us it was just I had couldn't figure it out so I asked for a printed copy There's no page numbers that let me go through this and figure out where I am on this printed copy. And there's a printed copy over there for the people to come in here, they won't be able to figure it out either. I am curious why we did this?

If this is predominantly to allow the council members to read the staff notes and what's gonna happen so we can make a reasonable decision on these things then if we want to do this as a city Why weren't we trained on how to use this? Why wasn't it given to us as an option to even do this in the first place? I do not know that this makes any sense. Anna Marie had just come up here five, just before the closed session and showed me how to use the thing because I was doing what she says a lot of people do. I was hitting the PDF button. I was having to download different files. It wasn't comfortable Easy to use. I'm playing with it a little bit now and it's not bad, but I'm not sure that I care for it that much.

I would have to ask the rest of the council members what they think about it. But the one thing is if we're going to go with this, I'd sure like to see a presentation on what, why and how? I mean, if you're not going to train us and put a video on the website so we can watch it and figure it out ourselves, we need something because I understand HTML and hyperlinks and things of that nature, but I got lost on this. And I had kept some old website information in here so I was going back to an old system depending on which browser I was using.

Just, I confuse easily. In case you can't tell. Okay, so that's my comment we need to do something about that I'd really like to see something that explained to us why we're doing this if we're going to continue this and train us on how to use it properly all right then I noticed on the for upcoming agendas we don't have anything for the February 9th meeting When are we going to address the urban growth boundary?

I mean, it isn't listed on any of the future calendar meetings. I know that we're trying to put together a group of people to help us give us facts but what are we asking them for? How to get rid of it, how to fix it, how to modify it. What is it that we're gonna do with this group of people? And because I didn't read that in the application to sign up for that and when does the first meeting due and when are we as the council going to start getting these recommendations from this group?

And so we have an idea what to do. Question? All right, I'll go on. Out in front of my house last couple days they've been tearing up asphalt and drilling down and pulling out dirt and stuff in the street because they're gonna replace some water valves. Went out and talked to them good bunch guys. In two weeks they said we're gonna shut off water so we can change out some of this stuff. We're gonna notify you.

How are you going to notify us? Are you going to call us? Send us an email. I mean, you've got all that information from me but how about everybody else on my street or the streets around it? They were hitting three or four different major streets including Bybork. They're tearing it up and they got steel plates covering the big holes that they're putting in there. What are you going to do to inform the residents that, hey we're gonna shut the water off and how long is it going to be off? And what do you do in the meantime and can you park in front of your house if these guys got this big machines out there.

They actually were really good because they started doing it on the day that the waste management was picking up trash cans and they moved and took care of everything let them pick it all up So they seem to be handling it pretty well, but are they going to call us and tell us? Who's gonna tell us when you're gonna shut the water off and we have no water. All right that's enough for now thank

you. Anybody else?

Yeah, I just want to thank you about bringing it up because I am playing with the new agenda format. I just realized that I can just preview everything and I don't have to download it all as I just did so.

Thank you. We were doing it wrong.

I

understand.

Some more?

No, I appreciate the effort on going you know just going paperless and there are a lot of things that you can do with it but I think it would be a good idea to have a presentation on how to read the agenda for the public in general. Any

questions? Okay comments or feedback

So the agenda management system was something that was underway when I started. And it's taken some time to get it coordinated, but Anne-Marie has some commentary about that and I think Rafael might have a couple of ideas on how we might have made it easier. So go ahead and start.

The thought process into implementing an agenda management system is that previously we were completely manual, which meant pretty much that if we were paper-based and every time we wanted to submit something to make an alteration even after the agenda was printed was very labor intensive. It was a lot of renumbering and practically doing the agenda over each and every time.

If someone brought presentation materials after the agenda was printed or if someone added public comment, it became very disjointed. So as with the way everything is going these days moving into an environment where we're not dependent on our city computers and our city staff being here this allows this process to continue whether or not there are people present at City Hall, or whether or not our current computers are working. So it's more of an internet-based interface and everything is hyperlinked so someone can go directly to the item that they're interested in learning more about without having to flip through hundreds of pages. Sometimes we've had agendas over 1,000 pages and they just want to get to where they want to go. I will agree that a presentation is probably prudent and was overlooked.

It seemed very intuitive, but my hands have been in this for years constantly making these changes and becoming familiar with it. So I can see that the average user might want a little bit more of a presentation on exactly how to use it. The major problems that we're finding with people being able to use this is not that they're unable to use it, but they bookmarked the old location for how to access the agenda instead of following the links that were provided when we say that we've published it.

So, it's just a matter of updating your hyperlinks or your bookmarks so you can get directly to that agenda page. I'm happy to bring a presentation forward at the next meeting that shows you Modern, sustainable, environmentally stable, and also sustainable Thank you.

Good evening. I'll address the UBEC comments there for the urban growth boundary so it's not in your, it's not in the future agenda simply because we're currently taking applications up to 31st to form a committee this committee is envisioned to have about 12-15 folks and it's actually envisioned to have a series of meetings to discuss and drill down a little bit further what is the urban growth boundary where can we head? What are the pitfalls? What are the positives or the negatives The end product and these meetings will be open to the public and then the end product ultimately sort of report out to the City Council, to then sort of take a decision of where do we go from there.

A six-month solution, it's not a year solution. The reality is it's a very long process that involves not only our city but also LAFCO, our residents. So again getting that information up in sort of a committee format very similar to the GPAC but a little bit more managed this time and then having that report back out to the council And then taking that decision of where do we go from here. So that's why there's not much that's on there, I will create a web page sort of describe that and it'll think of it as four to five mini lectures and then with a substantial amount of input feedback Q&A and pondering, and then take those ponderings and bring it to the next class. And so it is very much going to be built upon itself. So that's why some of the questions were geared towards what is it that you do?

What are some of the organizations you have? What's your availability, et cetera? So we could really again plan out when these meetings will take place because again not only do we need all of our members there to provide those opinions of where they're at especially if our community members that bring different types of viewpoints And again, that's the intent is to provide all these viewpoints and give this council sort of direction of okay Here's the report out.

Which way do you want to go with this?

Okay if I may So when will the first meeting be

so the first meeting is Projected to be March and so again it's it's these are If you've never put together a lecture, they're very time consuming in terms of putting the material together. Getting that material out sort of whatever study material needs to be picking out the dates and then from there going over it to sync topic, topic, topic because again it's one thing to do a presentation of this body which we have a limited amount of time. It's another thing to really my kids say do the research and so that's really what we're trying to do is do the research and give and provide that information so we have a very quality report out to this council, coming back with many voices from different avenues and areas of this town. And then again taking decision from there.

And whatever decisions made whether it's stay put or let's move forward with amending something that then goes into our next step. And so in that next step is gonna take some more time And so ultimately in the end, there is sort of an end game. But that end game does take time and we are Randy and I and Chelsea were very aware of what's going on in terms of our dates and calendar dates where we need to hit. So understand the frustration but at same token it's almost you gotta let us cook a little bit before we get back to you.

Well, I would recommend that everybody on this committee get a copy of the Urban Growth Boundary Initiative. It's really fascinating reading.

Yeah and that's part of the course material so like I said treat it as almost like it's a college lecture where we'll give you a syllabus and course material and we hope you read up

And the 2018 study on the boundaries and sphere of influence. Right, yeah. Those are the two documents that I think are going to be essential for everybody to have some understanding of before they can really have a significant discussion on this.

Very much so and then we have other documents as well that we've passed since then such as our general plan and so those again those are each little pieces of the puzzle that need to be understood. Thank you

And I can address the utility concern. This is the same group that did the water line main replacement in Nyborg, where I live and they were very communicative. They hang door hangers if they have to block the street or close you know no parking in this area kind of thing. They put it up a few days in advance. Jose's been very communicative and has Dispatches as well, so they're tearing the street up now so that the amount of time Obviously they have turned the water off So they can replace the valves because that way they don't have to turn a whole neighborhood off when there's a problem and So this is one of the things about identified. It was part of the contract that was awarded by council I know back in October. I think maybe longer than that now But they've been very good about notifying And I've heard from several of my neighbors that were very appreciative of the amount of communication that this group did, so I often would.

You don't have anything to worry about.