UnGovr Transcript
iHow this transcript is madeUnGovr transcribes the official recording with automated speech-to-text, separates speakers by voice, and matches voices to the seated roster. Names and attributions are AI estimates and may contain errors.Verify any quote yourself: click anywhere in the transcript and the official video jumps to that exact moment, so you can check any quote against the recording.0:06 – 0:2311 turns
Start the meeting.
Well, good evening everybody. Welcome to Solvang City Council meeting for March 23rd 2026. We are beginning at 630 and just for purposes of convenience please make sure your phones are on silent and we'll get started with the roll call please
John is going to lead us in
the Pledge
That's why he's not heart surgery, it's marketing. All right thank you John appreciate it. Okay we have a proclamation this morning or this afternoon. It is to the International Dark Sky Week April 13th to the 20th 2026 Whereas International Dark Sky Week is a global celebration of the night that highlights the beauty and shared heritage of star, field, sky and encourages communities to recognize the value of natural darkness for human health, scientific discovery, cultural traditions and environmental stewardship.
And whereas light pollution defined as the excess or indirect use of artificial light at night diminishes our ability to see the stars, disrupts wildlife and ecosystems, impacts human circulation rhythms and waste energy. And whereas responsible lighting practices include directing light downward Where needed and using illumination only when and where necessary, help prevent the nighttime environment while maintaining public safety and community vitality.
And whereas Solvang's scenic setting in the Sant'Inez Valley framed by open space agricultural lands and rolling hills provide a rare opportunity to experience the wonders of the night sky and underscores the community commitment to preserving its rural character and natural resource. And whereas International Dark Sky Week provides an opportunity for residents, businesses, schools and community organizations to learn about light pollution and consider practical actions to conserve the beauty and integrity of the night sky for future generations.
Now therefore be it resolved that I, Mayor David Brown along with the City Council of the city of Solvang California do hereby proclaim April 13th to 2026 as International Dark Sky Week in the city of Solvang and encourage residents businesses and community partners to promote responsible lighting practices and to take time to look up and appreciate the wonder of the night sky.
In witness thereof, I have set my hand and caused the official seal of the City of Solvang, California to be affixed on this 23rd day of March 2026. Do we have a representative from The Dark Sky here? Wonderful!
Move it. I am Rachel Metz, Assistant Director at the California Nature Art Museum. I have been a resident of Solvang for two and a half years and am part of a county-wide coalition of organizations who worked across all eight cities of Santa Barbara County and with the County Board of Supervisors to get proclamations issued for International Dark Skies Week.
Of the eight cities in our county six have agreed to issue proclamations for International Dark Skies week this year All of the groups in our coalition, including members from CalNAM, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, WeWatch, Astronomy Club of Lompoc and more thank The City of Solvang for recognizing the value and integrity of a naturally dark sky and taking action to protect it.
Dark skies are impacted by light pollution, which is the excessive or misdirected use of artificial light at night. However this is a rare form of pollution in the sense that it is immediately and easily reversible. As soon as the light is pointed down or shielded, the pollution is gone. The benefit is not only to allow us all to experience the beauty and shared heritage of seeing the Milky Way and the constellations but also for the health of wildlife and ecosystems as well as our community.
It is completely feasible to expect that when we step outside on a moonless night anywhere in Solvang, even near developed areas, we should be able to look up and see the Milky Way spilling across the sky. So we join the City of Solvang in urging residents to learn about light pollution and night-sky friendly lighting, to consider practical actions that reduce light pollution and preserve our nighttime environments, and once in awhile to step outside in the evening, look up, and experience the wonder of a star filled sky. Thank you.
Thank you, Rachel. Okay now we have a presentation for our 2025 marketing reports TJA advertising. Mr. City Manager would you like
to? Yeah I'd like to introduce John Sorkin Frye who knows where his right heart is and he's gonna give a presentation on last year's marketing efforts
Good evening Mr. Mayor, council members nice to see you all as Randy mentioned we're going to give you a short but thorough report of our efforts for the last year and let me start with a brief overview of the services so the next slide please This basically are the services that TGA is responsible for, and I think most of you are familiar with this but I thought this would be a good review. So we manage all of the paid advertising which includes media buying and media placement, creation of all the different creative assets that go into the campaigns such as digital, print, video and social media.
And I'd just like to add that we share all of these components with the other two marketing firms that are joins us like when we do a photo shoot which we just did actually this last week and we provide all that footage for them to use for their efforts as well through social media and public relations. We created your website and we continue to maintain it. We also created the dashboard that you're familiar with, and we do both the maintenance on that as well.
Targeted paid social ads, so we are involved in social media when it comes to the paid targeted ads that take place on Facebook and Instagram. And Claudia will tell you a little bit more about that later on in the presentation. Creation and distribution of monthly e-blasts, and this is kind of a joint effort too that we all work together in writing it and we send it out.
and handling all of the Pinterest platform, and efforts with that social media. And Claudia will talk to you about that too from TJA. And crowd roof management and monthly blog curation. So those are the services that we do. And then getting on to like looking at ROI and return on investment. And this is something that we shared with you before but I think it's a good way to look at how we're doing when it comes to bringing back Dollars into the city of Solvang. So looking at a 12-month period we had 102,000 times lodging referrals so and also if you look what they call look to book ratio which is basically how many of those people that Went to our lodging referrals page actually booked a room and 30% is actually pretty conservative amount.
So using that that ratio so we had thirty thousand six hundred and thirty six reservations and And you times that by two because the normal length of stay, average length of stay is two nights. So that gives you over 61,000 rooms at room nights and then again further part of that calculation this mathematical problem. You then take your average daily room rate which is a 225. That gives you total sales lodging sales from the website traffic of over 13 million 786 And then looking as it goes down to TOT and those dollars return back to the general fund, and using the TOT rate of 14%, the return on the TOT raising to the TOT is close to 2 million 1.930. So that gives you a little bit of an idea on the marketing as it relates to the larger referrals Just to let you know, lodging referrals are what we use our campaign for predominantly.
We wanna try to get overnight stays. And that's not to say we don't help promote the restaurants and the businesses but getting people to stay in the hotels also means that they're gonna go to restaurants and they're gonna fulfill themselves here with other things. So paid advertising campaigns, we did a kind of celebrated ad with San Ynez Valley News. We did a Sojourn Digital campaign, which I'll give you a little bit more detail about in a moment.
LA Weekly sponsored e-blasts that was in the fall to promote our events. Visit California Co-op, this was in print and that was done in the wintertime. We also did a USA Today travel guide printhead which also covered winter. And each of these digital campaigns, the targeted households are incomes of 150,000 male and female age 25 plus. And we're predominantly interested in a dry market so basically if you drew a circle around Solvang that would encompass the Northern California all the way down to Southern California and also over into the valley of Fresno and Bakersfield.
So in looking at Sojourn just to kind of explain what this platform is it's the number one travel platform for hotels and destinations They target travelers with our Desari demographics using website visitation, also cell phone use and credit card sales to track and report results in real time. So this is probably one of the most successful campaigns we could do to really look and see what we got from a dollar standpoint. And I'll share that with you. So we spent $25,000 on the campaign that ran from September 8th to November 30th and included native stories, display ads, video, YouTube ads and mobile ads.
We had over 2.4 million impressions. We had almost 3,000 clicks and the click-through rate which is the CTR was 12 cents which is a very low click through rate. The estimated income impact was $94,950 This included lodging sales, restaurants and other local businesses. Campaign also included targeting the local fly market which was predominantly Santa Barbara Airport and then as I mentioned the drive markets.
And all there's some additional metrics that you'll find on the dashboard for all the campaigns that we did. And now I'm gonna turn it over to Claudia she is our social media manager also a marketing manager and she's going to tell you a little bit about the paid social ads that we do. Are you there, Claudia?
I'm here. I just got unmuted. Can everybody hear me? Yep. Okay, perfect. So yeah as John mentioned we handle the paid social side of things so every month we launch and optimize monthly meta ads on Solvang's behalf so basically we start out targeting the Placer AI audiences that have been identified and provided from Candice and then we layer in additional targeting such as Travel planning and income levels, so people who are most likely to want to visit Solvang.
So in terms of our average cost per click we're very very low on those. We had our top performing ad for the year was actually in November which helped us promote Yule Fest but every single ad on Meta that we run always links back to the lodging specials page so every link clicked back is to that Our average ad per year for every month this year drove just under 17,000 link clicks. That continues to be a very valuable tool for us marketing wise.
Moving on to our next slide, we also handle Solvang's Pinterest. So last year we drove just over 50 000 impressions on Pinterest with an active audience of over 27 000 people. Our top posts for the entire year all pertain to things to do Danish days and historical so that kind of aligns people go on Pinterest to plan their trips So we're always keeping that in mind as we create content to help people plan.
Moving on to Crowdrift, next slide please. We continue to utilize Crowddrift to source user-generated content, so that's photos and videos that we can use on both the social media and website for solving. So far we've sourced over 800 pieces of content that are embedded all over the website. There is a localhood story program that actually did get sunset by Um, Crowdrift but we now work directly with Visit California through Crowddrift to embed vertical videos on the Visit California website. So we upload those on a quarterly basis and that's offered by Crowddrift so that's a great tool.
We also use that user-generated content on Pinterest so we're trying to spread Those assets as far as we can because this is definitely investment and we want to use it as much as we can. And moving on, we continue to create and deploy those monthly e-blasts which are then repurposed into blog posts So those e-blasts are sent to our subscriber list that has just under 70,000 people. So it's a huge list we actually have added over 360 new subscribers in the last 30 days alone so we continue to see growth of the list which is great. Our average open rate is 46% which is incredibly high.
It's actually 22 percent is industry standard so we're blowing that out of the water Our top performing e-blast for the year went out in May and that was for What's New content. That reached a 47% open rate, so that was great. And with that I will pass it on to Tom. He will go over some of the website design projects and how we're utilizing AI and some of the website data. So go ahead, Tom.
0:23 – 0:3212 turns
All right thanks everybody! Last year, we added AI SEO software and reporting. I do monthly blog articles so we get the content, we post them up twice monthly. I do calendar updates, happenings updates and specials updates to the site. We've been doing annual event Pages and support, so Yule Fest, Danish Days, Brick and Builds, Harvest and Haunts and Restaurant Wink all have their own pages.
And we keep those updated and promote them when the time comes. We added a happenings post system which works sort of as something other than events. So just kind of things that are ongoing maybe like certain night at a restaurant that's recurring that we don't want to clutter the calendar with. We do featured specials, which are like highlighted specials for the properties and they're in the sidebar on the specials page. So I go in and I scrape all the lodging websites for the recent specials and add them there and they expire and I load them in every month. And then I developed a new dashboard so we developed that and launched it you can see the preview of what the homepage for that looks like over on the side of this slide And then another thing was that we've been involved in all these voting promotions, and so we've been keeping up with getting those in a pop-up and driving those types of votes for those as well.
So next slide please. This slide's for our website stats And so January through December 2025, our conversion rate is 9.54 which we're really proud of and that means that basically one in 10 visitors that go to our site end up on one of the lodging specials pages. And so our sessions last year were just over a million. Our page views were about 1.7. Lodging specials and page views for 200,000 and we had 102 referrals I'm speaking to some of the sessions being down slightly. That's a direct result of AI and the rise of what are called no-click searches.
It's affecting DMOs all across the board, and I'm going to address that in my next slide about AI. We had 9000 walking map downloads CityMap downloads were 4,029. Newsletter signups were 3,075 people joined our email list that goes out for the e-blasts and this is largely driven by a pop up on the homepage and so you know like I mentioned the decline in sessions is driven by the rise of AI-driven search um so it's been reducing traffic generally across the internet for people in the category of low intent research based traffic because simply Now from a user perspective, you go and do a search. You get a summary. You get the information that you need from the summary and you don't actually visit the website any longer. So I'm going to refer to the next slide for strategy on adapting measurement reporting for that.
And my AI SEO strategy and execution slide here so I implemented an advanced AI SEO. We've leveraged a combination of advanced tactics and proven strategies, and we're also using the latest emerging tools to gain foothold in this new Google landscape. We were in early on AI. A lot of our competitors are still trying to figure out what to do, and we're driven really by this news rollout. So we launched a dedicated program Including on the new dashboard, we've got enhanced reporting and insights. And so that includes the new dashboard metrics and comprehensive monthly report detailing insights So some of these metrics are like share a voice, which is our presence in the Google AI mode. It's expressed as a percentage in the dashboard.
Positive sentiment you can tell the qualitative measurement of the emotional tone of our brand mentions so You know how much people are talking about us and what they're saying in terms of is it good or bad? We've got intent distribution. So why users are Searching, so they could be looking to learn or buy or compare. So across these queries we can divide now that traffic into low intent and high intent and which particular types of searches are going to trigger an AI summary.
This all sounds really technical, but basically it amounts to transitioning to this new landscape. So the new landscape means that we're trying to get instead of getting the click, we're trying to become the source that AI chooses the site so for queries where users only see quick factual answers will be listed in those sources. And if they want to delve further into it, they'll find our site which then converts them to more like a warm lead. So anyway besides that we also want to maintain our regular high intent visibility so you know all of the regular SEO rules still apply making quality content and things like that.
That's it for me on this slide. If I can hand back over to John for the research.
John, do you mind if I ask a question? Because if I don't ask it now, I'm going to forget. Absolutely. On that search, so I think what you told us is the reason that our search Our search metrics have declined is because we're getting more targeted results. So, we're getting higher quality clicks versus less intent or less sentiment.
The first item that we had up there for the stats was that... So the conversion lodging referral sessions, that's still a positive and that's what our primary goal is. And what's happened is and I'm sure you've all experienced it if you want to find something, a quick answer to something, a lot of times Google will just deliver that right at the very top before you get to a website. So what we have done, what Tom was discussing is that we have software now that gives us clues on how to be that content for what appears When somebody does search. So it's just actually another thing we've got to monitor and take part in because we want to be the source for the answers so they hear from us.
So the way I get why we're using AI is that it can build in more assessment? to the people we're serving or seeing engage us. But what you're saying is that if our click rate, our conversion rate stays constant but our session numbers go down, our page views go down it's actually good. It's actually an indicator of surgical precision. Is that the way to interpret it?
Yeah, I mean we still want to see our sessions do well but we wanted to give you the explanation that we've got a new world with AI. Of course it's involving not only the website and everything in the world but that we're on top of that as well so we continue to try to build the sessions but we also realize there's another way that people are getting their information and we want to be the content provider for that and that's where the software comes in and some of the things that Tom discussed
And the new dashboard, we need just a reminder because it's been a while. So sorry but I'd like to go look at the new dashboard do we still have logins? We all still have logins for that dashboard
right?
Do we need a new one with a new version? No
you should be able to go directly to that
okay
and in fact you were correct in what you were saying because we've been streamlining the call-to-actions to get people to where they want to be faster so You're right in that, you know if our sessions are up but our page views are down. That means that people are getting where they need to go faster
I Think also on the pages too that we've tried to seek out ones that you know When we go through and correct old information and things we might abandon a page if it's out of date So that is another reason why page views might could be down as well Keeping the thank-you So this is just real quickly, just a sample of some of the creative we've done. A lot more than this but as you can imagine UL Fest is always a big effort for us but in addition to that we do brand solving on its own and we also of course promote Danish days but all the other things that we do with in and around Solvang and creating the overnight stays is all about what to do here and how to enjoy their stay And that concludes our presentation.
Sorry, I blew the Pledge of Allegiance. That's the first time in all my career that I've been asked as a vendor to say the Pledge of Allegiance. I'm really honored. Wish I could have done better.
0:32 – 0:4215 turns
I have a quick question for you before you're dismissed. How are the bookings, how does our site for the city versus the visits SYV site? Are we in competition is there a where do they mold together and where do they because I'm looking at your the other areas as well.
I would say that I would look at it as they're not a competitor but a compliment to what we're doing. But the stats that we presented tonight is the website that Solvang utilizes only.
Thank you.
All right, well thank you very much.
There was one more thing, I'm sorry. No problem. Pretty much if I understand your target is predominantly individuals?
Well, actually no. It's individuals, it's couples, it's families.
What I heard was probably single unit family members or whatever but are we doing anything on behalf of groups or small conferences or anything like that? Is that one of our targets and should it be?
We do some but that is not an area that you know it's very competitive like if you try to go in some of the meeting planner magazines, you're in competition with you know Hawaii and all these other big destinations. But anytime that like when we do blogs and things like that like family reunions those types of things we certainly promote.
Thank you. Any other questions?
Thank you very much. Oh, I just want to add that Candace is great to work with and Randy we have a really good team and our other marketing partners as well so it's all working well thank you.
Next we have Leanna from Islet online here and we can share these slides as you want to go through them Leanna if you want to jump around just let me know
sure hi everyone Okay. Am I missing it? All right, we have our 2025 report to go through with you tonight. Here's a brief overview. We can go on to the next slide. Okay. So starting with an overview of the 2025 social by the numbers, everything is looking phenomenal here across all platforms, which is Facebook, Instagram and TikTok that we manage. We have over 122,000 followers, which is up almost double year over year total content interactions. We have just under 600,000 up 262%.
We shared over 420 pieces of content in 2025, over 11 million views. The breakdown there is about over 5 million on Instagram, 5 million on Facebook and over 1 million on TikTok. New follower growth. Instagram here is leading the pack a total of 41,000 new followers for the year 2025. Up just under 25,000 on Instagram. Up 12,600 on Facebook and up just under 4,000 on TikTok.
Next slide. Okay we have an overview of the annual engagement rate so the City of Solvang's account on Instagram has about a 1.9% average engagement rate for the year Which is far outperforming other local destinations, including the industry standard which is 0.72% for engagement. So Solvang is very engaging when it comes to content on social media. Our top performing content, the top three pieces that performed in 2025 were all user-generated visitor content that we curated. We continue to see that the visitor content and the different perspectives drive a lot of engagement on especially videos.
The top performer had 1.4 million views with just under 100,000 interactions over 26,000 shares And then the next two had just under 500,000 views. One had 15,000 interactions and another had 40,000 interactions and 14,000 shares so very impressive there these top three were of course all YuleFest content we see that the end-of-the-year push for YuleFest definitely captures a lot of attention on social Our key takeaways for 2025 is that video content remains king and is the primary driver of engagement and audience growth.
With the video content, you're able to capture a cold audience and reach new people where static content and photos used to only be pushing it out to your current followers. So our strategy moving into 2026 is to post as much video content as we can and move away from static. The other would be, second best would be doing carousels and graphics. Seasonal experiences, Yule Fest in particular on Danish days always perform well on social. And for the first time fall harvest content was just slightly below Yule Fest So everybody was really loving the fall content and seeing Solvang as a harvest destination.
There's a strong high intent audience, so people aren't just watching the video and scrolling past they're also clicking into the website. We had 96% year over year growth of 20,000 clicks going to the website. People are also viewing the pages and following the account User generated content, as I mentioned is very strong and it's coming from different perspectives. Nine out of the 10 top performing posts in 2025 were all from our curated content.
We are supporting and going out of our way to support the Solvang businesses and resharing the content that they have right now in particular we have an Easter post coming up And we really want to amplify things that are happening in the city at the businesses. And our final takeaway for 2025 is that suites continues to be a theme that is very strong, so we're using that keyword and that opportunity to reach a new audience of people who are looking to travel for suites.
All right, so moving into 2026. We have already launched a new automation system that I'm very excited for. We are utilizing AI to drive people off of organic social and onto the website which is historically very hard to do. So we have that new system with that's rolled out you can see on the last month's worth of posts. We have this thing called a comment trigger Where if somebody comments a key word, we direct them immediately into the website link in their direct messages. So it's a great way to build rapport of our social media audience there and we're also working on building in email subscriptions so we would collect people's followers emails and turn them into email subscribers as well so that we can follow up with them there We are allocating our 2026 creative budget towards splitting our content, capturing fall content and Yule Fest as well.
So we'll have plenty of original video content as well as static images that we can use to continue to promote year after year what's happening in the city And we are going to continue to support the Solvang businesses and showcase what they're doing, the events they're doing, the specials through the repost feature and stories as well. All right? Thank you.
Any questions?
Any questions? Thank you. Randy who's next?
And next we have Anna from Stiletto and Sue from the Visitor Center.
Thank you.
0:42 – 0:522 turns
I don't know that we're going to do slide-by-slide, so you'll just help guide me through this?
So mine is long and wordy because that's what I do, is words. We're not going to go through all of it but I have basically broken down all of these slides into the functions that I handle there is a lot of piggybacking as I've said in the past off of the other team members that I'm working with in varying capacities, so I'll try to explain this very quickly. So the press communications is my first slide and I listed everything so those are all live links anybody wants to read anything what I actually did was not a link to the shared Google Doc of whatever it was that I wrote at any given time it's actually a link to a new site that picked up an exact replica of that press release so you can see that to address what we're talking about with AI.
A lot of what AI is also picking up, as you'll notice if you do the same keyword searches at any given time for anything to do with Solvang or an event in Solvang or something specific it will sometimes spit back different information because it's pulling from recent news so that's another way with press releases and things that we put out there when it gets picked up exactly that's another way we can try attempts to control what AI is now giving to whoever it is that's seeing that on the other end.
So in all, I did about 14 press releases or as I put it marketing copy pieces not all of them all go out as a press release. A lot of times I'll do it like a press release. That's how I write it and then the team will use it and pick it apart for what they need And it won't necessarily be for press purposes. So that's that. Let's skip down to slide number five.
So as John also spoke about, Visit California is huge for us. They are a huge, huge support system in a number of capacities and marketing capacities. And each month we're able to submit up to Visit California to the media or industry section of their site different content story ideas based on things that they're looking for at that given time just based on their editorial calendars and whatever campaigns they have going on and what they're doing So I submit those when we have something. It's not always a perfect fit, so I can't always submit something that has nothing to do with anything we're doing in Solvang. But I submitted last year about 24, so on average two a month of these content ideas and then if you scroll down to the sixth slide and then on six and seven as well, you'll see where I have it says published in bold and that's because those are ideas that then get picked up by Visit California Somewhat editorial capacity, it lives on their media site.
So any writers, any editorial people that are looking for California story ideas go to their site and then they can see all these different roundups whatever the topic might be. So those are things that then get published. They don't all get published, but they all usually get accepted for consideration and then get put out on their site. All right so we're going to... That's content submissions. So then further on down here I also have the fact that I do content submissions to The Medium So California Central Coast is another conglomeration of DMOs along the central coast, so we also do content submissions to them. And then also even more locally to visit Santa Barbara which is mainly just the event calendar postings. We go in and manually post different things for them to Santa Barbara's website.
And then we have local things like San Maria Sun, all of those online event calendars. We also do manual postings to those as well. OK so now we are on to slide 11 which is where I start the what I call the content or media liaison. And I have a number of slides under this category and that just essentially means that I am acting as the traditional media editorial media liaison or concierge for a number of things whatever is needed throughout the year. So if somebody needs photos I send photos if somebody needs an interview and it's not more city related where we'd have Randy do it Then I'm doing an interview. I've been on podcasts, I've been on radio shows usually revolving around our seasonal activities or events.
So I'm either handling sometimes outbound, but this category is mainly inbound requests that we get that have anything to do with my realm which is the editorial and media side traditional media side. So that's kind of just a recap of everything I was doing there throughout the year. We can go down let's skip quite a bit here okay we're gonna skip to slide 19 which is 2025 media visits.
So in 2025, we hosted approximately 25 journalists, writers, editors, influencers or a combo thereof because there is some overlap. We have influencers who are also writers and vice versa who were visiting for either potential future article research or they actually had an article that hit based on their visit within 2025 or social media content, or collaborations. So there's obviously overlap there with what Liana and her team are doing.
And in all of this mainly through Visit California I put the little flags up here we hosted a handful of influencers from some interesting different countries so we've had quite a bit of international Interest still this past year, even though that's waned in some other areas. We still have varying global interest in Solvang. So these are all people that came here. So the little red arrow is pointing to basically what I did was I went back to all of these influencers that I talk about here throughout the year and I looked at their posts, their reels, whatever the content was that they put out there about their visits And I tallied up everything so over the course of 2025 with all these influencers that I talked about here, we had a total of upwards of 5.23 million Instagram followers Basically that's like tallying up all of their follower count, right?
Adding it up. So we had an influencer who had 127,000 and then we had one who had 564,000 followers so those are all other followers as of around March 1st. We had a total of Solvang-related Instagram real views from their content hovering around 1.7 million And in the realm of 241,600 Instagram posts or real likes. People liking their content and about 1,500, 600 comments on each of those combined all of those posts across all of those posts and reels and then 5,500 shares of those posts or reels. And I say all on non-Solvang USA owned channels however that's not technically correct because if it's a collaboration where it's living on Solvang USA And then I just did a few slides recapping some of those larger influencers that we had over 2025, many of which were in collaboration with Visit California.
So if we skip down to slide 23 what I did here I know you've all seen throughout the year all the different media hits that I highlight. So here, I kind of took a step back. I looked at Google Analytics and I tried to sort our referring URLs, the referring sites that are then sending traffic to Solvang USA. And I sorted that by event count. So what event count is it's more engaged than just somebody hitting the site.
Someone hitting the site and then clicking on a link on that page on our site or scrolling. It's a physical engagement of some sort once they've reached our site, and then these are kind of the top URLs that have been referring traffic over 2025 which is of importance to all of us but it's of importance to me because I'm seeing those are the outlets or platforms or what-have-you that are either by own purpose or not being most supportive of sending traffic to our site. So that's where I know moving forward at any given time those are the relationship, those are who we are grateful to and who i need to nurture as far as making sure we still get media coverage of some sort or something mentions on those sites because that's where people are coming from at this point in time or as of last year so then the following slides just kind of show you Like I said on the very first slide after that, it stands to reason, it's all relative, that the external websites that post about Solvang the most or the most amount of times would be the top preferring URLs.
Right? It's just you post about us more, you're obviously going to refer... You have five articles, you're gonna refer more people than somebody who just does one article about us. Makes sense. Skipping down again. These are all samplings from those various top sites. Okay. And then on slide 38 and 39, I'm just giving a big old shout out and thanking all of these different outlets that are here, all these logos you see for posting stories or something about Solvang over this past year. And it's quite a few, and it is varied across the country. It's national, it's regional.
So that's just kind of a snapshot there. We'll move to Visitor Center, but on this if anyone has questions let me know.
0:52 – 1:0620 turns
Do we
have any way of putting metrics behind how much PR we're doing say in comparison to a similar tourist-driven city of our size?
Potentially okay so the reason I don't really do it is that VisitSYB actually keeps a running tally that includes Solvang. So to separate that out, it's hard. Solvang, just the word Solvang like if you did a search in some of these reporting systems that I can use it will spit back. It's really hard. It's very arbitrary, a lot of the data that it does spit back and I actually use three different systems to pull some of the sets that I do report on sometimes on monthly basis and each of those systems will also give you different numbers.
I just look at your logo slide and it's a feel-good slide but I don't know how good
it is. Right, exactly. And I could go in and actually look at all of the articles because those are taken from my previous reports throughout the year and find that exact article so I could do that. That would be easier to target if I went back in and said okay these are specific articles and taking lists of that and then I can give you what one of the platforms or two of the platforms and separate it out actually says about that. That might be
interesting, yeah. And then just look at that consistently over time.
Yeah. I mean again, that is still very arbitrary. It's UVPMs, it's based on what the internet saying their site traffic is. Change is wildly for these outlets and the dollar amounts are extremely questionable as far as editorial publicity value so yeah but we could do that to narrow it down maybe quarterly
I have a question regarding influencers and the content that they make is, a lot of it is remarkable. So I'm wondering how does one pick what influencers? Do you reach out to them? How much should they cost? Do they make reels for free hotel rooms at Evelsky Bird or do they get a
honorary? How do they work? It's always different. It's always different and again I mentioned in the past that a lot of what I'm doing is itinerary building and really tailoring each of these itineraries for the people that do come here. So some of it is inbound, we get a lot of inbound requests so then I take that to Candice and to Liana and her team and I say okay well what do we think of this person? And then we kind of you know quorum on that and decide whether it's somebody we want to move forward with or not Next step would be okay we want to move forward. How much are they going to request? So then you go through negotiations sometimes they don't request, sometimes it's simply our hosted visit on our end so it's an expense on our end sometimes but it's not a contract payment to that person for instance.
Sometimes it has to be a contract payment. And we try to get obviously as low as we can get with that combo with the host because they're getting that as well. So it really varies depending on who it is and then there are people that we do outreach too because we feel that they're going to be a good match for us specifically or for a specific theme, right? Depending on the season or whatever the event is that we're promoting. Yeah so it totally... It's on an individual basis every time.
And then their itinerary is also individualized based Their followers, their audience and what we're trying to get out of their content. All right interesting thank you.
Thank you very
much.
Sue starts on slide four.
And I don't have 40 slides. And also in lieu of time, I won't go through all the slides so I'm sure you've looked at them our numbers are looking super good in the visitor center Before though I go into a little tiny bit of that Elizabeth, I wanted to just mention something as you were asking TJA about visits to the website and how they're down a little bit. And we did discuss that in our TMAC meeting a little and Candice was really good at explaining Kind of that and she I definitely not expert. I'm good with people in the visitor center but we did talk about it and she was saying that Those visits on all websites now have come down with AI because of AI. So it's like, it's not just us. She was explaining how AI... Because we just go chat GBT, what should I do in Solvang?
And then we get a whole bunch of answers and then we don't need to go the website anymore. So she was explaining how TJA which he talked about a little bit is using AI though also to still try and get the website in the AI content so that AI will say, oh go to SolvangUSA.com for more information. And she was explaining like how fast it's moving so I think they've been doing a really good job with moving with that. And the same with Leanna was explaining how they are doing that in social too, with trying to get the social to send people to our website. So as far as what I was hearing from Candice in our TMAC meeting, the last meeting when we discussed it sounded like they're doing a really good job at like moving with what's going on because she was explaining how fast this has gone as we all know right?
Just moved really fast. So I was just thinking about that because we discussed it in TMAC so and also Claudia was talking about the influencers, you know Anna and I were just talking about this today because she also I think you guys kind of base it off of followers too like how many do you look at that too?
We look at how many but biggest doesn't always win.
Right, right. But that's part of it. But then she also was telling me that they'll take so if you don't know how this works like I formulate my report and then I send it to Anna and then she shares it with the rest of the marketing team and then they use even what we say in the visitor center as well Like, we have like the top countries that was it's in my slides there of which ones the highest number of countries that people said they were from. We put the 10 top ones in there and so she might use something like that to look at to say oh okay well we have a lot of people coming from here These weren't hard numbers. There are people telling us, oh we're from here and we write it down so we don't get it from all of which I explained in the slide but it's still good information to know you know okay who's interested in coming here and that sort of helps make those Decisions so sort of good for you to know like that we all are trying to work together and use each other's information to help each other.
To be better for solving and have a very united front on the marketing. Just with that, so I just want to say yeah the numbers for the Visitor Center were awesome. A new record again this year over 105,000 total visitors for the whole year in December we had a new record again over it was a little over 17,000 visitors in the visitor center during December And we know that is driven, as I put in there also by, it's ULA Fest but because we run the Nooster scavenger hunt. And lots of people come in twice because they come in to get their clues and then they come back again to get their prize if they finished it. So we get double visits but that's fantastic, we love doing it.
And also the highest day of the year this year was the Saturday that the Nisr scavenger hunt started. So it actually started the Friday after Thanksgiving but November 29th, Saturday obviously that's when everybody comes but that was the highest day with the Niser scavenger hunt beginning on a Saturday so That scavenger hunt is still bringing a lot of people here. They love it and if you looked in my, it's not in this report December report though showed how we did you know look at did people want to do the QR code or do they like these paper clues and I don't think we had anybody who wanted the QR code hunt for many different reasons which were in there But we're trying to find out what people want through there, and it's a great place to get actual face-to-face feedback from people.
So that's what we try to do. And then so...and that was on the busy stay was 1,162 people which is a lot of people an hour. Normally on a Saturday we get between four to five hundred people in on a regular just average Saturday so that was more than double. So that's pretty awesome and just as a little side note I went, I did visit Santa Barbara's Visitor Center found out that that's about the number they do in their visitor center on Saturday and Sunday as well And they actually have a restroom in the visitor center, so they said that's actually driving the numbers up. So good thing we don't have one in there.
And then I just have a little fun story you can ask me any questions you want If you didn't know, during ULA Fest Bill Maher came into the visitor center and he was a little incognito. He had his hat pulled down but he was very funny and very charming. Came in with a group of either friends or family And he came up to the counter and said, I heard you guys have some nisser hunt going on Danish Christmas elves. He's like can we get the clues for that? And then it was funny they didn't get just down the street and he came back to get help with clues already so that was funny. But he came in and it was actually perfect.
Dean was actually in the visitor center too, and he was sitting on the bench in there playing the accordion kind of looking like Santa so Bill Maher did come up to him and said oh are you Santa? And they had a little interaction, but it was actually pretty awesome to think that Bill Maher was out hunting for Danish Christmas elves in our little Solvang town. So that's pretty fantastic. So that nicer scavenger hunt I think is bringing good things to Solvang. So I won't take too much more of your time, but if you do have any questions about anything I've said or any of my slides, I am happy to answer them.
Mark. Yeah, quick question in your slide you say the top question asked is do you have a map? How many maps do you give out a year?
So I don't know the number of the year. Candace actually takes care of the maps, they're from the chamber, the chamber orders them. I don' have those numbers as far as what they order because we just go and get them and we have like, I put in my reports how many boxes we open and empty but we still have them in the visitor's center on the counter outside in the racks So it might be a question for like maybe Randy or Candace on how many they actually are ordering from the chamber because they go, they don't only come to the visitor center. And we also have like a lot of the businesses will come and just grab some from us as well.
And we don't like there's no way to count exactly how many we try to keep track so can this kind of knows. We have enough maps, right Randy? Yes. Thank you. Yes, you're welcome.
Well I want to thank you very very much Sue and your team. You are true ambassadors for Solvang and all you do everybody that walks through that door comes out happy Yeah, so I don't know what you're telling them but they seem to be really happy when they're there. Thank you for all you do and with regards to Anna thank you because I've had a couple of interviews this past year from a news group from Taiwan I think it was and the news article from
Germany.
Der Spiegel. And Anna was instrumental in getting content to them and photos, and I appreciate that very much. And then this is a general question for your team, marketing team. What future plans do you have from a marketing perspective to leverage the World Cup and the Olympics that are coming in?
1:06 – 1:1816 turns
I mean I could say that I know Visit California is really on top of that. They're really driving that as far as visitation to the state statewide where it trickles down from there. It really depends on how we really fit into that piece of the puzzle. So some of the, actually one of the flags I forgot to put on here was Brazil. So we had a Brazilian couple, they're both writers in their own right that visited in like November and they were here through Visit California because they were here for an editorial road trip in advance of the World Cup so that's coming from the top down and where we fit in, we fit in but otherwise it's like putting a square peg in a round hole. We don't really have something here that directly relates to that As we approach the Olympics, that might be a better fit for some of the things that we're doing.
But that we are keeping up and that's driven by Visit California.
I do know that, I don't know what her plans are exactly but I do know Candice did bring it up in one of our TMAC meetings too and the Olympics and like the 250th you know celebration of Solvang. She's always looking ahead at how we can incorporate some of these things into Solvang somehow so I do know it's on her radar
I'll just add that we're going to take advantage of that amount of people coming in. And one of the ways is to have them extend their trip and either attending the World Cup or the Olympics, and so we'll get our campaigns ahead of time. And then as Anna mentioned, Visit California is a really huge part of this because they have the huge outreach. And if we can do any types of co-ops maybe San Yanez will do something that we could co-op with. But it's really the strategy is that since we don't have games here, is to get them to extend their trip and come up here because they've already made for the Olympics already made the trip to Southern California. We just want to let them know how easy it is to go from there to here.
Thank you everyone thank you very much.
Thank you.
So that's the end of our marketing presentations, we have also a report post-ULIFEST report Candace wrote but I was unfortunately not able to be here so Jenny is here to give a quick summary and answer any questions about her report.
Thank you.
And I'll try and ham and egg what you can't.
Okay, so the 2025 YuleFest post-event report. I'm Jenny McClurg Parks and Recreation Director as Randy said stepping in for Candace Libera So as we all know Yule Fest is a very popular event in Solvang and when you have almost 1 million visitors within a month that come to our town there are positive and negative outcomes And thanks to our marketing partners for bringing all of the visitors.
So first, our economic impact and visitor data. The weather did play a role in our 2025 numbers. We had strong visitation with about 807,000 visitors that does not include international travelers and visitors under the age of 18. So we estimate maybe about a million visitors. It was a 4.9 decrease year over year, and that is due to the weather we had in December and some peak times.
Moving along, the sales tax totaled $224,000. That was a 24% decrease year over year that is largely attributed again to the weather storms between December 22nd and January 3rd. Moving along, we have the Copenhagen Drive closure. So that was between 1st Street and Allosol Road that created a pedestrian-focused environment in the downtown corridor. Those benefits included improved pedestrian safety and circulation, enhanced visitor experience and event atmosphere, additional space for programming and performers Improved traffic flow at the Copenhagen Drive and Alosol Road intersection by eliminating the turning movements to that closure.
Foot traffic from Placer AI indicates that within that closure area about 7.2% year-over-year increase between November 28th and December 21st. Visitor feedback and input from many businesses indicated that the pedestrian environment improved the overall event experience. However, some downtown businesses expressed concern that the closure limited direct access to the storefront parking. So with that staff implemented a 90-minute parking along First Street and then three ADA accessible parking stalls at the corners of Copenhagen and First Street So we'll continue looking at that and working with the businesses evaluating for future street closures.
Moving along parking, during peak visitation periods in December the public parking areas reached capacity. That resulted in increased traffic circulation within downtown streets and parking lots, difficulty locating available parking during high demand periods and increased visitor parking within nearby residential neighborhoods. To help address those challenges staff is working with Old Mission Santianez developing an MOU And we would then use some of the open fields at the mission, currently where like the tree burn is located.
We're also exploring expanded transit options working with the San Jose Valley Transit and RAPDEV, also Clean Air Express with a trip between Solvang and Santa Barbara. Moving along to public restrooms, when you have that many people we had increased attendance and that resulted in long wait times at our existing facilities. Higher demand in the downtown core and an uneven distribution of restroom access across the event footprint.
We will, staff will evaluate improving improvements including additional temporary restrooms at Solvang Park and then they would also be placed at the Mission parking lot. We would improve directional signage to the existing restroom facilities and long-term restroom infrastructure considerations to the downtown core which you'll hear about in our master plan Moving along to traffic management and pedestrian safety. So, we had the crossing guards which was well received and the crossing guards reduced vehicle-pedestrian conflicts and contributed to improved traffic flow at key intersections particularly on the large major programming days Based on these outcomes, staff will continue evaluating the strategic placement and potential expansion of the crossing guard coverage and other traffic management measures.
We are also including in our yearly Caltrans encroachment permit to see if we can get crossing guards on Mission Drive. So looking ahead for 2026 in our planning, we are looking to evaluate restroom capacity and placement. Assessing the pedestrian circulation and event footprint. Reviewing street closure logistics. Evaluating expanded crossing guard coverage at high traffic intersections.
Identifying the additional parking opportunities within and near the downtown core. Exploring expanded transit and shuttle options to reduce vehicle congestion, enhanced parking signage and wayfinding to better direct visitors to available parking areas. And then staff is also exploring opening or I should say closing 2nd Street. It does not impact as many businesses, we'd have to work with the trolley on placement. We you know could open it to food trucks for you know and some days some of the restaurants couldn't handle the amount of people so bringing more availability for food options, more seating, things like that.
So staff will conduct a survey of downtown core businesses to gather feedback regarding the Copenhagen Drive closure and include the potential to adjust or reduce the closure time frame as well as the input on the possible implementation of a second street closure. So in closing, Yulefest remains a significant economic driver for the city. Supports lodging properties, restaurants, retail businesses and generates important TOT.
And with that concludes my report are there any questions?
Thank you
I
got so much feedback
from the crossing
guards because, you know, most of the people that are in my district are South. and get out of town either through Oak or all the way through Alice L Road. So if we were, the feedback that I got was improved skills from the guys who are actually doing the crossing guards. I had one person tell me that the crossing guard said, actually did this to them like you can go now And so maybe just up level their skills and increase their hours would be the feedback. My main question is are we looking at when we think about closing the roads, and we got some feedback that the businesses felt Foot traffic impact because of park, elimination of parking. What can we do to drive more sense of place and activity in the closed road? So if it's open to pedestrian crossing and the cobblestones right there, can we put lit Christmas trees?
Can we put some more seating? Can we put even small Christmas market food stands? That kind of programming that encourages More less foot traffic more, you know sort of presence and they stay longer and enjoy the space Longer and therefore spend so can we look at things like that?
Absolutely And we've actually anticipated in the budget adding some of those seating options and you know Some performance, you know acts stuff like that. That would enhance
Yeah I would just like even to off, because I know we were all sensitized to how much foot traffic Solvang Park got and the surprise expense for this seating. Just to offload that space by putting another center of gravity in town with a bigger Christmas tree or something else that's a visual attraction. The other question I have is the Placer AI. How does that work? How does that give us foot traffic data? How do we know how accurate that 800,000 visitors
1:18 – 1:2319 turns
are?
So we're capturing different IP addresses? Are we capturing unique IP addresses?
No, it's just tracking who is coming and where they are going. You know, they can't by law track international visitors. They also can't ping or track juveniles but it's a software system and a lot of it has to do when you get on and give permissions and whatever and almost always say yes to everything because it's easier so people that do that are showing up in the system If you're not in town more than I think it's 30 minutes, it doesn't count you. I mean there's a lot of guardrails on this but it does not track.
We do know that approximately 1 3rd of...in 2024, 1 3rd of the 5 million visitors were unique visitors so that indicates that people are coming back two or three times But when we talk 5 million visitors, that is not unique visitors. That's people coming here in some cases multiple times.
And no, is there a metric to that one like staying more than 30 minutes?
Yes, they have to be within the geofence of the city for more than 30 minutes. So somebody driving through on 246 unless you're sitting in traffic for 30 minutes isn't going to show up.
That's possible.
That actually, sorry to say, we need to pack a lunch sometimes.
It says here that your foot traffic from the placer indicates activity within the closed area increased 7.2%, but your overall population was down by 20%. On
Copenhagen. The overall visitation for the city was down, but it was increased in that little, yeah.
So
it's kind of a counterintuitive, but again that also shows that having the pedestrian zone and was beneficial to those businesses and a lot of We had a great start to the month, but because of serious weather that dampened the mood and created people not wanting to come here.
The parking aspects of this and the shuttles that you proposed, or the ones that I heard were all public entity type of things. I'd like to also consider private entity shuttles and the like to accommodate this. It was brought to my attention... Security was a little lax. Not not a little, it was very lax as far as presence of police and whatnot It would be really cool if we had during the peak hours a mounted patrol unit I'd like to see something along those lines there were some altercations that I heard of they weren't reported I don't suppose but I did hear of altercations for long lines and things of that nature so
Some of the things we've talked about are possibly a parking, you know monitor in the parking lots. Lots one two three and four and then sheriff is very hard to get. We only had them for our major events this year
This was pretty major for that many people.
Right, for our events not on the you know just a typical day. Okay
I'm gonna echo what the mayor is saying here. I think we have a good dose of reality of what our sheriffs can and can't do when 800,000 guests come in to our tiny town but we and that may mean we have to close the gaps with contracted services because I have a different set of feedback, not altercations but some shoplifting experiences with no response from security or police. So I think we owe our residents and our businesses some heightened security if we can manage it.
And there is a local enforcement agency that we can hire? Usually all a bunch of ex-deputies
Okay, we're going to move on to public comment. Would you read that
into the agenda or into the record please?
1:24 – 1:318 turns
At this time you may address the council on items not on the agenda and on consent. Time limit is three minutes, and we will start with in-person public comments first.
Okay I have Mr. Dennis Beebe followed by Ken Ainslet. Thank You
Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Dennis Beebe, Solvang. I was advised that this would be the occasion to make a comment on Jenny's presentation of YuleFest so...
Good timing!
You know it was an outstanding success. I congratulate marketing and the staff but you know I always have some comments hopefully these are suggestions for 2026 I certainly support the closure of one block of Copenhagen, although I admit I don't have any businesses there. But the traffic cones, orange traffic cones really should be addressed and I suggest that Jenny or Candice think of maybe a project at Solvang School where these traffic cones are decorated so they have a Yule Fest look.
Or maybe replace them with beautiful stanchions which also exist The plan to try to use open areas at the mission is fantastic. You want to peel off as many visitors coming in from the east as you can, and Candace showed a map of potential areas. I suggest you go for all of them, all of the open areas at the mission. For vehicles arriving from the west though, you're taking people through the surface streets to get to one of the two public lots.
What happened to the option of using Solvang School? The multipurpose building on holidays and weekends. There's no signage. I don't know if there was any wayfinding but if you're trying to get people out of the village proper searching for parking that that's an option Let's see, oh when negotiating with Caltrans for trying to get crossing guards at Caltrans I think you ought to include dismantling the demand blinking crosswalk and replace it temporarily of course just for this event with a crossing guard.
Much more efficient than anybody on either curb pushing a button. When New York City has rush hour, they dismantle all the traffic lights and put traffic cops there to do a much better job. Oh, crossing guards, I reflect what I just heard recently. They need, they gotta be disciplined. They're holding these important signs. The ones I saw had stop on both sides, okay?
So far so good, but more than once the signs they don't recognize what power they've got holding these stop signs and if they don't orient them perfectly either to traffic or to pedestrians can be very confusing. They shouldn't scratch their ear with their stop sign because they don't know what they might cause. So I endorse the suggestion that they be disciplined and be well-trained.
That's it, I thought it was a wonderful event and I congratulate
everybody. Thank you, Dennis. Ken, you're next
I guess the subject today is traffic, in part. I'm going to continue with that. A good evening to the members of City Council and to the people of Solvang. Thank you for this time. I want to meet the three-minute limit. I am Ken Ainslie. I currently live on Chalk Hill Road and for five years I lived at the top of Valsalva Road at the S curve. I'm here to address a Freedmoor Canyon proposal to create a multi-purpose trail by making the road one way.
I know you're not at the decision point, but since you've dedicated $30,000 toward this study, I'm assuming you're seriously considering it. I cannot cover everything in three minutes, but I did send to the Council a document on Friday which includes a study that I conducted at Friedenborg Canyon at Chalk Hill during an off-hour period. My count was consistent with the official speeding study that was done at Friedensburg conducted last August. I've also included seven additional issues in that document raised by a one-way solution. And I'd appreciate if you all would take a look at that, if you haven't.
For both studies, bottom line up to 1,000 additional cars a day would be forcibly routed across Allisaw Road and or Mission Drive to get to or from the hospitals, doctors' offices, grocery stores, et cetera on Alamopotato and their homes. As you know, there's only two ways to get from El Nopantado, Vyborg via Friedenburg Canyon or Alasal, or from Mission Drive. It's the only way you're going to get there.
No one should want to make Alasal Road any more a freeway than it already is. The S-curve at the top of the hill has no footpath for at least 50 plus people a day. I know because I was right across the street from it, for their bikes and walks. It's highly dangerous with blind curves, heavy truck traffic and car traffic, and a high rate of speeders already.
But keep in mind that anyone going in either direction would have to go back to their starting point, which would also include traveling on Al-Asal Road if Friedenburg Canyon is one way. Neither should we want more cars to be routed to Mission Drive and all the reasons we just heard about. The school zones, tourists, the buses, shops, commuter centers are all heavily overcrowded and putting a thousand more cars in there isn't going to help us.
My study shows, and you'll read about that, that approximately one half of the current people using Friedenborg Canyon Road are going to and from Chalk Hill at Skip Mesa to Alamo-Pentana and would not have gone anywhere near the school or town to make that trip. If you haven't went away then you have to not do that in one direction and go through the town method. I found it difficult to justify over the 300 Skip Mesa area families, plus all the Friedenburg area people would find the travel significantly difficult when going through town to get to Alamo Pintada.
And I'll just say there's no doubt that we need a walking path. I'm not arguing that. I am just saying putting a one-way road in there is not the answer and we've got to spend our $30,000 finding a better solution.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Are there anyone else who would like to speak? Anybody on Zoom? No. Okay, we will close for public comment and move on to city manager's report please.
1:31 – 1:376 turns
Yes, I have a few things to talk about. First of all we are working with the City of Buelton to re-engage with a summer swim program. Obviously we're still in investigative stages of it but tentatively it looks like for the week at the period between June 15 and July 31st of rec swim and swim lessons up at the pool the high school pool So stay tuned for more information coming forward on that. I want to remind everybody also about the ADA survey, the Freedon Park Canyon Survey is closed as of Friday we'll be bringing that information back at one of the upcoming meetings, probably the second meeting in April.
That would be April 27th based on staff's ability to compile the information and get a staff report submitted. There's also a survey about ADA that closes at the end of April. That information is available on our website and also there is an effort out there about a clean, a valley clean team has been Bill Connell is his name and he wants to coordinate basically cleaning up trash beautifying the community all over the Valley.
They're looking to get at least eight more volunteers and if you have an interest in that reach out to me and I can give you his contact information. And that's all I have for now.
Thank you any questions of our city manager? Okay,
we'll move on to item 5 agenda. Would you read that into the record please?
Government Code Section 53232.3 D aka AB 1234 and government code section 84308 aka SB 1439 report out ex parte communications council comments requests
Thank you very much who would like to start Mark
Thank you. The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy. We had a meeting at Vandenberg, which was a great discussion on what's going to happen and how they're going to grow. That area is going The mayor and Mr. Murphy. Then of course there was the economic summit that most of us made, and we heard a little bit about what's going on in Buellton and what's going on in Solvang.
A great presentation, and we just got the materials that were used to present that sent to us today actually by Olivia. Then I went to the Library Advisory Council. The Library Advisory Council is for the whole entire county and I bring that up for a couple of reasons, one I'm the representative from the city but there is a discussion. Mr. Armas who's the community services director for the county staff told he was a member of the committee told us that the county has a budget issue That probably doesn't surprise anybody a great deal.
What he said was the library, the amount of contribution to the libraries would be reduced by approximately 5%. And everybody in the meeting agreed that we understood and we could deal with that. It was suggested that the board gets a copy of our intent to accept that from them, and it was suggested by First District Supervisor Roy Lee who is also on that committee That we do that as a single letter signed by every one of the five districts that have the libraries. We're in District 4, that's Goleta, Buellton and us in the surrounding areas.
So shortly, this is not for next year because that budget's already been established. It's for the following year. The other part of that I bring that up for is if the county has a problem and they're going to reduce library, Mr. Armas also said there are going to be a significant reduction in the budget for the Sheriff's Department. Just about the time we need to renegotiate a follow-on to the sheriff's contract.
So I suspect we better get prepared to be surprised. Okay, following day I went to the Friends of the Library for the Solvang library. A couple things about that that were rather fascinating to me. Some 2025 specifications 29,578 items were checked out and returned. So if you don't think the library does anything Over 6,000 adult fiction books. 2,500 adult non-fiction books. 1,100 kids' non-fiction books. 11,000 kids' fiction books and then there was park passes, magazines, music codes, hotspots.
And they just got a 3D printer and they're teaching kids how to use a 3-D printer. These are great extensions to the schools for education for the kids and this isn't for the Solvang Library, it includes all the outlying areas. It's not just Solvang residents. That's all. Thank you.
1:37 – 1:4210 turns
Yeah, I have a couple things to report out. I attended also with a number of other council members the economic forum and I'll just say that I thought the content was great and it was great that our sponsors came out in support to make that event happen so pleased with that. I also attended the basin-wide JPA meeting for our water sustainability agency this is across The Eastern Management, Western Management and Central Management agencies at the Buellton Council Chambers don't have really any good information to import. We just did an annual assessment of the water table metrics and so they should be out there on the Eastern Management JPA website if you're interested in seeing March's results.
I also attended a People Helping People fundraiser this past week and I attended for an hour, short available hour in my schedule the RMOC Finance Committee meeting this past week.
I feel like I don't have anything to say. I did also attend the Economic Summit, and after that there was a celebration for Tracy Beard for her retirement and everything she's done for the Chamber of Commerce of Solvang. And I kind of wanted to say thank you to Tracy. She's always been a supporter and a friend, and I wish her the best. So I thought that was a great event.
Thank
you. Yes, I had a chance to meet with candidate for the gubernatorial race Chad Bianco while he was visiting Lombok. I advocated for cities to keep their local control when it comes to planning. Well, I appreciate what he shared about his ideas for addressing our housing situation. And I might be hosting the Denmark's Girl Choir, which is touring with the Danish String Quartet. So we might see them around town. We'll see.
Thank you. Okay, not to belabor everything but I've been at a lot of these meetings too. The State of Vandenberg, the SYV Economic Summit, the North County Sub-Regional Meeting for SCAG, Leadership Mayors and City Managers meeting in Buelton. I was at a Friends of the Library event at the Elber Hoy where they had a guest Author Adam McHugh and his book. Santa Barbara County Association of Governments meeting, Air Pollution Control District meeting.
I welcomed the, we had a group in town. The Chief Appraisers Conference was here in Solvang as the chief appraisers of every county in California was represented about 70 people there. Welcome them to Solvange. Was at the Viking Blood Drive gave a double power red on that And then and challenge some others to do the same. And then I also served dinner with the Los Leos Rotary to the Solvang Senior Center, but really what's really important here is that there's a recognition of one of our own.
International Institute of Municipal Clerks has awarded our clerk with the designation of Master Municipal Clerk, Anna Marie Porter. Congratulations on all that hard work that you've done and helping our city in all your endeavors. So thank you so much and congratulations! That's a nice little award. Okay,
we'll move on to item six. Would you read that into the record please?
Consent is for routine administrative city matters and is approved with one motion These items are discussed only on request of council members Members of the public were afforded an opportunity to speak during the public communications portion of this agenda
Thank You Any concerns about the agenda or any items that anybody wants to delegate further? Or deliberate. I'm sorry, not delegate. Deliberate. Okay if none I'll entertain a motion.
I'll move that we accept the consent agenda as presented.
I'll second it. It's been properly moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda as presented. Roll call please.
Roll-call vote Passed 4–0 moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda as presented. Roll call
Show transcript
1:42 – 1:4818 turns
Motion passes 5-0
Thank you we'll move on to item 7 public hearings would you read that into the record please
Public hearing to introduce for first reading an ordinance updating and replacing references to planning manager with community development director, making conforming changes throughout the Solvang Municipal Code and making a determination of exemption under the California Environmental Quality Act.
Thank you. Staff report please.
Thank you mayor, members of the council. This is a public hearing item only because we're touching title 11 of our zoning code, title 11 of the Solvang Municipal Code but this is really just one more iteration of the staff's effort to clean up our municipal code And the, all the changes that are before you in this ordinance for introduction are to change references to planning manager to the current title of community development director to reflect the city's actual organization. In prior administrations there was a change to not have a director level position in the planning department and instead only have a manager level position and at that time the direction was to update the code for To refer to that title, not having a director level at the planning department especially in a city like Solvang that has so many planning specific needs is kind of unusual and so we've moved back to having a director level position.
are updating the code to reflect that. To avoid having to do this in the future, um, the definition of community development director is being defined so it can include the city manager or the community development directors designee. So there's going to be a little flexibility built in that's currently not there. So really a cleanup ordinance happy to answer any questions you might have and it's a public hearing again just because our code requires any changes Thank you. Any concerns or questions?
If I understand it properly, we're changing the nomenclature of staff or department head.
Yes and you know sometimes where we could we try to handle this kind of thing with just administrative rules to our codifier but because of the way it was in the code it was more than just a find-and-replace and so that's why we had to do it as an ordinance We did a couple other cleanup things like moving the definition of Community Development Director from the Planning Commission section of the code actually into the Zoning Code Definition section because that made more sense, things like that. But so it's a little more than a find and replace but essentially we're just updating the nomenclature.
Thank
you And you also, you may recall around this time last year when we implemented the compensation and classification study for the management level. There was a recommendation of our consultant that the then planning manager occupied by Raphael, the level of his responsibility job descriptions etc., was more suited toward the Community Development Director title, which is why we changed it to begin with.
And then as Chelsea pointed out now there's some cleanup stuff that has to happen in the ordinance.
I have no speaker slips. Is there anybody present that wishes to opine on this
issue? Anybody on Zoom?
Okay, I will then close public hearing and bring it back to our dais for any other discussion or questions or motions.
I'll move to introduce the first reading of ordinance 260393 updating and replacing the references as stated.
I'll second
Thank you. We will be
moving on to item 8A. Go ahead and read that in the record, please.
Presentation and discussion of the Parks and Recreation Master Plan.
Thank you. Staff report please.
1:48 – 1:596 turns
Okay, hello again. Jenny McClurg your Parks and Recreation Director here to talk about the presentation of the draft parks and recreation master plan. So at the February 12th 2024 City Council meeting during discussions regarding potential pickleball court renovations The staff recommended updating the Parks and Rec master plan before moving forward with any major capital improvements. This approach was intended to ensure that the future park projects are guided by a comprehensive, long-range vision for the city's parks and recreation system.
Then in February 2025, the City Council entered into a contract with Melton Design Group to prepare and update the City of Solvang's Parks and Recreation Master Plan. The master plan is intended to revisit and revise the recommendations of the previous master plan to reflect current and future community and funding needs It includes the following. Provide a strategic roadmap for implementing Solvang's long-term recreation vision, identify demographics service levels and recreation trends, develop a comprehensive inventory of parks facilities and programs, highlight improvement needs and priorities, identify future park and facility locations, and recommend funding sources and opportunities. So once completed, the updated Parks and Recreation Master Plan will serve as a guiding document for the City Council in evaluating and prioritizing future park and capital improvement projects.
City staff does suggest forming a committee of two council members and three community members through public outreach to review the draft master plan and provide recommendations to the City Council regarding implementation priorities and funding strategies. So, the recommended action is to provide direction to staff once obviously you see the draft and they present.
To recommend any implemented or implement any suggested changes in the draft or design and then nominate two City Council members to serve on the committee. And then with that I'd like to introduce Melton Design Group we have Greg Melton here and Richard Hunt.
Perfect thank you. Is it on already? Okay. Yes, thank you and what we submitted to you was our first draft of the master plan so there's a lot more to come into it. There's still a ton of background data and additional data that will be in it to really support all our directions. So this one gives you a good direction where we're headed We will be, you know it's interesting that this really flowed with all the other reports that you got today because we're looking at this Parks and Rec master plan as a way to really not only boost the Parks and Rec for the community but also make it more of a tourism and visitor attraction to give those people another thing to do in town to hold them in town. So it'll be It'll be a kind of a well-rounded document that really addresses everything from trails to parks and rec to economic development, etc., etc.
So she read all
the little technical difficulties sorry we're it's showing my home screen for some reason. Don't forget my last name is Murphy. I don't know. You do have the pages in your...
I have it on the thumb drive, but...
The presentation is in your packet.
All right. Do you want to just roll with that? All right. Well, flip to your master plan process. We'll do this the good old way. So in this quick on the master plan process, you know we obviously had kicked off the project. We did a lot of community outreach where we've done surveys. Farmers markets, we went to the senior center. We've been downtown park. We went to several of the festivals and just walked around and talked to people in the parks So there's been a pretty good push so far with that And we're currently in the visioning and development and review section which is three and four Going kind of stay in that three four five section for a while now as you see this original draft And then as we move into the future information The public input, this slide, really hit on questions that really hit on what kind of play you want.
And a lot of the play that came out of this was really the nature-based play, so more adventure play, more natural play than big plastic things. Right, so getting the kids to play that direction. Additionally more inclusive all age play and all capability play. So it's a really kind of a well-rounded response from them that they want it for everybody. So your next slide this one with the pie chart This one was all around open space parks and recreation priorities and trends The yellow box there, it says people wanted shaded areas for seating and picnicking. So obviously the hot weather we need more picnicking in the shade and stuff so our designs reflect that followed by sport court which is pickleball right? And that was tied with children's play.
So Pickleball and Children's Play were kind of in tied for second, what the most requested items were from the community. And then walking paths, bike paths, more health-related things. If you look at the box to the left, the national trends, what do you see first? Health and wellness and social connections. So being at picnics, gatherings, social connections And then the walking and everything so it kind of we really what we got from the community is what we are seeing in our national trends All right So the next slide is the three-tier approach. So we take all that data that we get from them and we put together a three-tier approach to decide what part of the parks or what do we do with this data, this information we got? And step one is sustainable maintenance.
The parks haven't had a lot of maintenance over the years. A lot of budgets have disappeared over the last ten years, and you'll cover that. So that's step one on what do we do to these parks? Step two is we expand the park services. New parks, new park elements. Maybe something is new and exciting out there like the old merry-go-rounds, well those have come back. Those are one of the top placed elements these days so they've got governors on them so you can't go that fast. So you'll see some of those as you join the committee there will be a lot of that looking on and then the visionary projects is our third view. So if there's a project that in this case may be able to attract tourism maybe in Hans Christian Andersen Park we'll actually have Some real Hans Christian Andersen events, right?
And you'll see that here in a minute. But we want to make sure that these three-tier approach kind of covers everything from long term deferred maintenance all the way till what's new and exciting in our park system, right? Turning the page so let's look at a couple of our park spaces. You can go two pages to the Solvang Park plan here. So what you're seeing in that picture.
Is a is a new layout for downtown Solvang Park and it came from some discussions and goals and watching the events being at the events. And if you turn the page one more time, you'll see some pictures of one corner enhanced corner treatment up at the street with some seat walls Well these seat walls are going to run all the way along mission for security, safety keeping if a vehicle was to swerve out of the way and come onto the park and we have a thousand people in the park. We now have some built-in park elements that will prove as a security measure to be safe from any vehicles or things like that. That corner also you can see it's small but you can see that we've relocated the Hans Christian Andersen Sculpture up to the front corner there and it silhouettes by the Christmas tree in the background So they're really kind of a new signage protection that front corner.
There is a good Adjustment, the one below that is our new bandstand And the bandstand Is not really centered right now and it's really small and so we're looking at building a new bandstand centering yet between those wonderful big sycamores that are out there and enlarging some of the dance floor. So we have a lot of ideas, a boardwalk with a garden because I know we got you know the Denmark Tulip Festival so we could chime things in with timing with overseas entry signs coming in from the parking lot more shaded areas and then a fountain which doubles as a water feature So that's Solvang Park, and again a lot of this is maintenance but some of it is some new exciting things.
Your next one is Hans Christian Andersen. So that drawing you see there is pretty small if I had my slide you'd be able to see it but we're gonna get it. We got technology on it.
1:59 – 2:2112 turns
Yeah, I'm going to say is this gonna come back? Because it's really a shame that anybody watching is not able to see this.
Annemarie
is bringing some copies for folks. It is in the agenda packet, so if anyone is online they can view it that way. I just
pulled mine up if you
can... Oh yes thank you!
Why don't you just move forward to the downtown park since that's the rest was more detailed. So the Solvang Park really hits pretty much all three tiers that we want to look at when we put money to rebuild something. You're seeing kind of a new master plan with the bandstand kind of centered more into the park like I said between the sycamores, the larger dance floor. We also in the design you'll see there's a couple side stages for dancers so we really are making this event area pretty special and you know replacing the turf is a hard thing to do every year it's a big budget item so we're going to entertain possibly some options for that And off to the left, you see there's another building between the restroom and the corner building. That would be another restroom we'd be adding to the park to make up for some of the things we heard from Yule Fest, right?
And so we listened and Jenny told us about some of the things we really need to make all these festivals work. So we wanna use Parks and Rec to do that as part of the options. So you can turn the page. So up in the upper left-hand corner is where you saw the Hans Christian statue trot forward into the park so now it's not just back in there and all those other memorials will be relocated appropriately in the park also. A little tulip garden and seasonal flowers, the protected... Yeah daisies. The protected seat walls along Mission and then more shaded seating areas as that was number one You can go to the next slide.
Let's go to the next one. So Hans Christian is broken up into multiple areas, sorry it is far hard for you guys to see also but the upper section by the skate park and the entry so we really want the entrance to read a little bit more Hans Christian Anderson so we would have some more sculpture out there, some at the entry and then an accessible trail down into the park towards Adderdag Bowl. So Adderdag Bowl has kind of been abandoned at this point, we want to bring it back and it'll be brought back more as a use as a picnic area but also a special event area so kind of a multi-use feature there.
And then that little fitness station area that's been there since the beginning of time, we will update that And it's actually working, you know. It works pretty well to this point but there is some failure in some of the timbers there now so we got some safety issues will address and then just more picnicking and you see the grassy green spaces. We don't have a lot of that anywhere in the park. So bringing in some more blanketed areas where people can just throw a blanket and have a picnic amongst the shade is there and then you see that curvy line?
There's a lot of coasters on mountain sides. We have a lot of slope on this part, so if we do instigate some different type of recreation that's monitored and They'll be able to come to this park and really have a day there. The babysitter stays at the park and mom and dad go wine tasting, right? However that spreads out. So the front area let's go to section B.
B is an area that's really not used at all it's our trailhead so currently there's no parking at the trailhead There's a beautiful oak tree kind of right in the middle to the right there And there's no ADA access to the trailhead So now we'll be providing handicap access, a trail system that is a little more accessible. And then the adventure play was real high on our survey so that sloped down to the new parking lot which is currently just a big gravel area. We were looking at a possible zip line that's about 70 feet long coming down the hill and then some on-grade slides Very much like a toboggan ride or an Olympic luge ride. So just a real fun, fast about 50-foot slide so it's pretty exciting and these are really popular today in all the parks.
Go to Area C. In my three tier approach the vision part of it was big right? That's the third section. So what we're seeing is this area currently just has the playground on the corner So this is where we want to bring the storybook land in with Hans Christian Andersen, Thumbelina, The Ugly Duckling. We can do these small playgrounds around a circle where you can walk and actually have A small display of the ugly duckling, and then there'd be several ducks kids can play on. And then maybe this big beautiful swan that has a slide riding down the neck or something right? So integrate play into the Hans Christian Andersen stories and at the same time we're educating. We'll have QR codes that they can just pull up the book right there.
And there's even interpretive panels now that are virtual. So I could just click on interpretive panel and Hans could be telling you the story himself. So it's pretty exciting. Water play was big, so where the playground is now we're looking at getting the little mermaid statue back here but 10 times bigger right? And water and so that would turn into a real great area because there's a lot of area around that back corner that if we laid it out properly we could have a real fun water play zone.
We also rerouted the road on top If you don't notice the parking lot now is the main road and because the road was kind of splitting that area and we are splitting recreation and people crossing. So, that gave us more space up top, which we have a large group picnic area right in the middle there of that great parking. So now groups don't have to be in that one picnic area in the back corner, in the shade right? So we can bring them forward and have multiple picnic. And we also have other play there so this one is really exciting but the biggest part is the upper right corner where the visitor mobile home, the host, park host lives. So we're thinking of turning that now this is where Visionary comes into play. So open up your minds, so You know we have the wonderful Theater venue here But we are thinking this could be an outdoor little theater and village to where you'd have the theater much like you would see in Odessa right all candy cane unique sculpture thing And with a little spectator area and then just little booths where you can sell Legos you can sell trinkets So it could become much more of a tourist attraction.
And if the Danish orchestra who is in town now, the choir, they could be singing here off times with the other places, right? And it can be a ticketed event or it could be free. You guys can do that any way you want but it would just be kind of a village where Hans Christian Andersen grew up so there'd be little facades of that strip where his yellow house is and Just a lot of ideas to really get the Danish population, which is our highest population right there. Thank you. Area D is our pickleball zone.
So with this we're going to have six permanent pickleball courts two permanent tennis courts with additional pickleball striping if people do want to use temporary nets. But we will be reusing the existing courts, and then where are the new courts that were built a few years back. We'll be using one of those for a practice court with the rebound wall. So you could be practicing their reestablishing some parking back there.
And some sitting and gathering areas. So when they're having a pickleball tournament or group gathering of 10, 12 players at a time or 25 players at a time there's room for people to sit and again accessibility needed to be handled there also so there you go. Owl South Commons we're really looking that keeping it real garden Chumash Garden and walking paths pretty simple as an open space Sunny fields, you know there's There's just some cleanup to do here. A dog park was mentioned, someone wanted an enclosed dog park there so we show it by the tennis court, I mean the volleyball courts with another little picnic area and then the purple in the center that's bringing some more art into the park. And then mainly it's just looking at the field layout and just saying hey, I think we can lay this, we can do some different layouts to maximize younger youth play One thing we didn't show was the new school.
Solvang School, we just picked up that property there which will help the field space because it's a full multi-use field with soccer and baseball, full size soccer so that could really target some of the adult play on that field. We will be looking at the bike and pedestrian trail plan to really connect both sides of towns in all the parks With decorative access, enough we can move from there.
And now I turn it over to the funding
guy.
Yeah! How are we gonna pay for it?
He puts the fun in funding.
He gets to have all the fun, yeah. It's not fun, it's not fun. Hopefully the, sorry I gotta get this open. Hopefully the Corvette guys, the Corvette owners are gonna wait for us for dinner right? You guys have a group of Corvette owners in town I guess, yeah.
We do.
Did you? Are they causing any trouble? I hope they're not causing... Yes, I'm Richard Hunt I'm actually not with Melton, part of Melton but subbing for Melton. I'm with Peloton Research plus Economics also out of Chico. Yeah, I just want to talk a little bit quickly. I know we're running out of time but I just want to talk about the process we went through just to try and understand where Parks and Rec funding already comes from, and maybe try and figure out how we can find other ways to fund existing projects. And then maintenance, and then some new projects, hopefully visionary projects.
So we started off by kind of reviewing the current funding sources and development budgets, and then we analyzed the department revenues and expenses over the past 15 years just to get an idea what the trends have been. We identified the City's primary revenue sources, which is probably no surprise after listening to the meeting here tonight. The TOT makes up about 45% of the City's general fund revenue sources. We also have about 15.3% in sales tax and then 12.3 percent in property tax.
Our property tax is only $1.5 million a year, which was kind of surprising to me when I saw that number in there. That's a relatively low number for this area. But the TOT tax, which Randy has talked about numerous times is grown from 2.5 million to 7.3 million just since 2011, which is pretty extraordinary almost three time growth in your TOT. I know some of that is the increase in percentage but it's still amazing just shows you how much The tourism has increased here.
Out of that entire revenue funding source, we only have 1.2%, which is grant revenue, which is only $150,000 that we had in that last budget, which hopefully we can work on and get that increased. Parks and Rec basically makes up about 11.8% of the general fund. Tourism marketing is 8% on top of that, so we got about almost 20% even goes to those two. And obviously they contribute quite a bit to the general fund between the sales tax and the TOT.
My understanding from looking back through history is that The parks and rec department used to be about 23% of the general fund back in 2015 to 2019. Public safety, please bear with me on the statistics, public safety about 19.3%, administration 26.5%, public works and engineering 24.5%. So we're, you know, Parks and Rec is not a huge part of the general fund but obviously is a very I think that in those the tourism and marketing to downtown is obviously a huge component of what drives the revenue for the whole city.
So the property tax as a percentage general fund that was one thing like I said that stuck out to me Solvang's Contribution is only about 14.8% of the property tax contribution. The state average is 29%, so we're less than half. Apostle Robles is 26.2, SLO is 25 and Truckee which we've both worked in is 43% of the property tax contributes to there and they're a tourism destination as well. So they get quite a bit of property tax. And I kept trying to figure out why is this happening?
And I think it has something to do with the legacy ownership of the properties around here. Some of them go back quite a ways, pre-Prop 13. So we have a lot of old valuations on these properties so they're at a lower tax base than like a new area like Rockland and Roseville and all places up north that grow like crazy. So we have a limited, relative to what we do here and what you guys produce. We have a relatively low contribution coming from property tax so we have to figure out other ways to find sources of revenue.
I think we have this, yeah. Do you have my slide up? Yeah okay. So current parks and recreation funding comes from just a couple of sources that's the general fund, TOT, some user fees which get kicked into the pot And that's pretty much about it. So what we want to do is try and identify some expanded opportunities, there was a couple of things that are really easy to do off the bat and well assuming that we do continue to grow as a community in the future going after the impact fees for new development especially single-family homes being built getting an impact park impact fee Probably in a neighborhood of 7,500 to 10,000 per unit would be helpful. Of course we do have to have growth for that to happen so we'd have to talk about what our long-term growth prospects are and I can hardly see that myself.
We had the parcel tax is something we don't have here that we could consider with two thirds vote from the public Pick some amount that works, that's manageable, it's very small. That would create an annual tax base that we could use as revenue source. In this case we were thinking maybe about 200 a parcel which as a percentage of tax bill is very very low but what that does for the Parks and Rec Department would be close to half million six hundred thousand a year that they could use for future projects.
We already have, we don't get hardly any Measure U I guess for parks and rec. That mostly goes to public safety so again we have to find other sources if we have a source like parcel tax which has an annual contribution that we can depend on we can then go after bonds to bond some of these larger projects development impact fees parking fee we've investigated that under you're talking some people some vendors What we're finding is that not everyone goes after revenue with the parking fee. What they try to do is they try to manage the congestion. It's all about how do we keep people from parking for six or seven hours at a time and not turning over the spaces, allowing other people to come in and spend money?
And Truckee is another great example. They actually stopped focusing on the revenue side of the parking fee and said well what's the contribution and sales dollars, and it turned out to be a huge number when you turn over spaces. So they're really pro now into this parking fee program. I've mentioned to Randy before, I think maybe do as a pilot project and pick a specific area where you could do this and see if it works before you go commit like Paso Robles did to an entire downtown-wide program that kind of backfired a little bit.
So just manage it, the implementation. Sponsorships, concessions and I think those are things you probably already have to some extent at your events. We talked about regional and structural solutions. There's been talk in the past about a valley-wide district One of the benefits of that is you guys on an income basis don't qualify for a lot of programs because of the high median here.
If you bring in some of these unincorporated areas and smaller communities, you can go after more of that type of funding and maybe expand revenue sources. Yeah regional recreation like the pool for example yeah something like that but you know still you'd have probably it would be centered centered here but it would be valley-wide because we don't qualify for a lot of the grants that come out.
There is a percentage set aside for moderate and higher income communities like this, there is always a percentage but the majority goes to the lower income communities. I'll skip over the grants since that is a big funding source we want to go after. We have that on the next slide? Oh, no. We don't have this? Yeah we do, yeah there it is. So we went after like six tranches that we're going to focus on.
Pickleball, trail expansion rehab, play equipment structures, Danish Heritage public art project, bandstand plaza green and the parking lot expansion. We divided those up and then we're trying to figure out what the cost is exactly on those or as close as we can get right And then we're targeting specific grants that we know are already out there. I found 52 sources already that we wanna go after, we just missed the window on one in March that would have been a... I think would have been perfect for Hans Christian Andersen and that was the National Endowment of the Arts for implementing this public art project. So we will not have that this year but next year it becomes eligible, we become eligible for that again So there's all of these different sources.
We have 52 in total that I think we're analyzing, and we're prioritizing each one. And then we've gone out already and done a three-year calendar like what can we go after when? What's the deadline? When are you going to get the letter of interest then? And what's our potential for getting that based on our criteria and our... Kind
2:21 – 2:2621 turns
of a percent of success.
Yeah.
To really determine which we should go after. So this budgeting and this funding part of our project here will really guide Jenny, guide you guys to what to go after. Not just say here's a lot of great ideas but here is where you can go after and get it. And there are different consulting firms also that can aid us in grant writing and they do all kinds of opportunities so I think looking at all the ideas on how to fund this is the super important part
Well, I'm carving out a niche too. Like we've said, we know we're not gonna go after like the low, you know, we can't qualify on income so why even focus on that? Let's focus on what we do have. Well this Danish heritage thing, the architecture in this town, everything about this place is its own thing. It's so unique. Why not cater all of our funding towards that and go after those programs? And there's a lot we could go after for that.
So yeah, we're looking forward to
Thank you. Yeah, I wanted to make a point that of those 52 grant options that you're referring to we hire California consultants and you're aware that I assume yes can work with them or whatever for right that endeavor Mr. Alfonte, do you have a comment?
This is stunning! I like your designs. I think it's amazing actually, a lot of them. I love the park, Central Park. Randy has got a big version of that in his office and it's just a wonderful thing to look at. So I presume that's the one you're calling Bandstand and Plaza Green for $400,000-$800,000 you can do that park Yeah. Yeah, so I'm having some problems with some of these estimates. They just don't seem that you can do what you're proposing for that amount of money.
So that's where we're at with this. We're not caught up.
Yeah, we were focused on what are the six criteria and how will we go about doing it? And then those numbers, we knew those numbers weren't real yet because we haven't gotten any of the real official estimates back yet but when you look at this, you say well that's going after 72% grant funding. Well, we're not gonna be able to do that. I wish we could. How wonderful would that be? But if we get a third of that, I would be in heaven.
It's government math.
Okay, I think I want to open it up to public comment.
On the numbers just since we're on that topic can when you refine them can you add these are all capital costs? Can you add the maintenance costs because when you think about for example adding all that green would you call it blanket space in HCA we're gonna have to water it we're gonna have to mow it we' re gonna have to trim going from where we are today to the vision you've laid out just for the single park, the maintenance burden will increase and we should include those in our projections when we try to
prioritize.
And that may not exclusively come from you it's got to come from our teams too in terms of what our internal contributions and costs would be. Because my reaction was if it was five and a half million, like let's go. This looks great.
But even to go a step further Liz, some of the things you described it seems to me should have adult supervision in some areas, should be park representation in some areas. You're talking about additional staff not just for the cleanup and stuff that was mentioned but just Handling the daily process. So these numbers, yeah.
Well you have to look at the proposal of okay are we gonna do something visionary or do we wanna do something that's just in the park maintained by the people if you don't have to do a supervised event? Right?
Maybe. Or
is that money already paid $20 to do three times down that coaster and allows us to then have an income. So we like to look at our parts as revenue generators, not just oh it's paid by the tax base and go. You know it's like where can we generate funding on that? And if we're getting all these people coming from all those places that was shown in the earlier documents then they're used to paying for these type of events.
That's true
so if we go to that level it's a jump right But it's an attraction also, and it brings another entity to the community that's just not shopping downtown for what they say, candies? Chasing the candies. The sweets. Sweets. Thank you. So it is not standard Parks & Rec where your current staff would be able to handle that. No. I
thank
you. And we have that as part of our three tiers that identifies I want to open it to public comment.
2:27 – 2:335 turns
Good evening, I'm Ian Jacobson. I am speaking tonight as president of the Solvang Community Development Alliance. My address is 618 Alisal Road but I'm also speaking in part as a citizen of Solvang. As you may remember that the Solvange Community Development Alliance is for promoting projects and services that drive economic growth, that promote community resilience, that build social cohesion and it enhance our quality of life here in the valley.
Now one of the things that we have done is this city has been given a commitment of up to $25,000 for installing a new dance floor in Solvang Park. But that's matching so that means that $25 thousand has to be raised in order to be able to get to secure that 25 thousand and the Solvang Community Development Alliance has that as its current project of trying to raise that So I have some brochures here, some pages here if you're at all interested in that.
Now a couple of comments about the gazebo and the dance floor. I do a fair amount of travel throughout the world and I meet all sorts of people and they say, well where are you from? And I say, well I'm from Central Coastal California. Oh, where's that? Oh, I said, well I'm from Solvang. Oh Solvang! Oh yes we've been to Solvang what a great place. We really love that. And so I say, well you know what do you like about Solvange? Well of course the windmills come up and the Danish pastries come up but the gazebo in Solvang Park has become iconic.
And so, you know they talk about the half-timbered houses and they talk about some of the old, well they talk about the trolley ride and things of that sort. And one of the things then that's pleased me is they've talked about the gazebo Now in what I've seen as the draft plan, the gazebo is not iconic. And so I would like to make sure that whatever is done does not detract from the iconicness of this.
Also, the dance floor which is sort of an expansion of the sidewalk is really smaller than what the concept was for a dance floor So my time is up. I have said my piece. I'm happy to give you copies of this. Thank you and if anyone wants
Okay Just leave them with with our clerk, and she'll distribute accordingly Next we have another speaker Please please share with us your name and
I'm Denise Johns. I am a local here in Solvang. I was wondering if this is a suggestion. I wasn't able to attend all of your effort, your public outreach efforts and I was wondering if it's possible if you place the results of those surveys and the commentary and whatnot online So we can understand the direction that you were looking at as you developed these initial concepts.
I know this is, I think there's six parts in here? Seven that you guys looked at?
Okay,
and so this meeting for six parks wouldn't be give us enough time to really analyze each one. I think that I want to talk about Solvang Park in a second but I thought the Hans Christian Anderson idea of that kind of transformation would be brilliant and I think you mentioned that there would have to be a caretaker I'm here to talk about the I did have a couple things whenever I look at Solvang Park it's an opportunity to really celebrate Danish European the center of town we're so lucky to actually have a central park like that. That's obvious when you come into town. What I've seen happen too in my eye, because I've traveled a bit too, that those types of central parks are a little more cozy, a little less concrete.
We have park benches that kind of don't really relate to a typical Danish or northern European kind of experience where you have beautiful even movable tables that people could use or rent. I am not in love with your new bandstand, and I think that people do come here looking for an iconic Danish architecture whether It's not necessarily a modern Thank you very much.
2:34 – 2:4017 turns
How about on Zoom? Hands raised for that. Okay, we will then close public comment and bring it back to council for discussion in action Is it with regards I had one follow-up here for you What are the options of four naming opportunities for fundraising aspects
Sure, that's definitely up in the air. I'm not what the city policy has for... There you go. So if we do have somebody that wants to claim financially support that situation...
Yeah, the Danish Brotherhood, whatever it is. Okay.
I did mention in our last newsletter those opportunities as well. Okay
Frank Park, okay.
I would ask you folks to look at our current ordinance current code and see that they are compatible with projects like this. I love the idea of making the Hans Christian Andersen park you know more usable more friendly more welcoming There's been talks before where, you know we talk about oh let's bring the Ferry Festival here. Let's bring the Renfrew here there like there's a lot of people that have great ideas and yet this was before any of you were here on staff but we would come up and say oh no we can't do this. You can't have live music. You can't have these. You can't have that so it'd be great if now that we're revising all that um you know I do wonder if the code itself makes our facilities unusable? And I understand that We've got to be considerate of the people that live around there, but you know sometimes those are very limiting.
So it'd be great to make sure that what we do is compatible with what we're allowed to do
or what changes we might need to make.
Yeah for sure.
All right.
I just have some comments and we kind of glossed over the space right next to Solvang School, and it feels like that might be low-hanging fruit to modify quickly and use that space that's in a different location in town or a new open space for kids especially to use. So how we proceed if there is low hanging fruit like maybe Alisal Open Space might be another one?
low impact, low cost simple modifications that make those use cases increased more accessible and instantly usable. It would be great to hear like an order of things that you might recommend as we raise money and go down the path of the master plan right? If it's a five-year plan how do we make small steps into the grand scheme I would also echo that we are going to find certain parts, certain things that we might want to change have a high sentimental attachment to both our community and our visitors like the Solvang Park Pavilion.
I think there's a large sentiment that people, when people come here they want the same experience like something nostalgic that doesn't change very much and doesn't get overly modernized. Slow incremental you know updates refreshes but We've got to be careful about that. The ideas around Hans Christian Anderson Park are phenomenal, I mean they're just like so exciting. I want to go get it done like tomorrow.
The one thing idea toss out there and again one of those things about you're concerned about We had some controversy over repurposing the tennis courts into pickleball courts. Could we, I don't know the feasibility but could we use that asphalt space that's already the skate park? That isn't a use case for a lot of people. Can that be repurposed for pickleball and preserve the tennis because there's still a lot of people who have a high sentiment around tennis and just thought to throw it out there
Also, if your plan included the priority phased. We can't do all this at once but how would we build it one brick at a time so to speak? We have the brick and build coming up by the way. I
think the phasing and costing and all that will be coming back in your next draft and lay it all out and look at the priorities. And so your questions are all perfect and that's coming.
And the school property would be included in that?
Yeah, I think we... Next round. The school property just jumped on board there right Jenny?
It did yeah and we've been meeting with the school just today with a possible joint use and then I did want to just mention that the pickleball courts are kind of staff's first priority because that's kind of what originally brought this master plan here and so we'd like to complete that.
Very good Anybody I'd like to get some, we've given them the changes that we'd like proposed but anybody want to nominate somebody for the master plan committee?
I'll do it.
2:40 – 2:4519 turns
Okay, any objections or additions? Well we have the Arona team has volunteered. Do we need to make a vote for
that? I think a motion would be good so we have a nice minute order to that effect.
I'll move that we nominate Elizabeth and Claudia Arona to serve on the Parks and Recreation Master Plan Committee. Is there a second?
Can I second it?
Okay, it's been moved and seconded to have those individuals nominated as our committee. Roll call please.
Roll-call vote Passed 4–0 moved and seconded to have those individuals nominated as our committee. Roll call
Show transcript
Motion passes 5-0
Thank you. Do you have enough feedback for where you want to go with this? Thank you and thank you very much. Bring back your own technical people, will ya? We didn't do so good. Okay
let's move on to item 8B if you'd read that into the record please.
Award a construction agreement with Cal Portland Construction for the Alamo-Pentado road pavement rehabilitation project
Thank you. Staff report, please.
Hi everyone. Okay so I am back with the Alamo-Pentado Road project and I'm happy to announce that we did receive six bids. We put the project out to bid in late January and had a bid opening February 17th CalPortland was our low bidder and substantially lower than the others. Because of the pricing that we received, it was actually more competitive than what we had bid.
late last year, so we're able to do the Alamo-Pentado Road project as well as the alternate bids 1, 2, 3 and 4 without any budget adjustments for the project. Funding for the project will be coming from gas tax, Measure A, Measure U and general funds And the project itself, while in the alternate areas one through four will be doing dig out repairs and various treatments to prepare for the following year's slurry seal.
Alamo-Pentado Road will be receiving a cold planing five inches down in each one of the travel ways and then a nice two inch cap overlay across the road. And that'll go from Vyborg to the end of the city limits so 06-01-2017 So we're super excited to be able to start implementing our pavement management program, and this will be one of the big hits to that.
The total contract amount for Cal Portland will be $2,912,000. And then I'm asking for a 10% contingency for any construction changes in the field that may be necessary for the project And we had already secured the inspections and construction administration services last fall as well as the, we have everything taken care of for the monument preservation and survey elements in the project.
Does anybody have any questions or feedback about the project?
I had a couple. Monument preservation, I'm not sure what monuments are we preserving.
So anytime you do a road project there's corner markers and things like that and monuments out there related to survey And so you have to go through and make sure that you're tying those out before the construction, and then you're coming back in and replacing anything that's been removed during construction.
Those are like geo-placement markers for...
Yes,
like benchmarks, things like that. Surveys and stuff like
that. Along Alamopentado it goes all the way up to the park Is there a curb on the north end of that or be it west side of that? Because I'm seeing a lot of degradation there from the farming implements and tractors that go across that road for the purposes of farming, harvesting and planting and so forth.
I don't believe there is any curb along the west side. There's nothing planned in
this project for that.
2:45 – 2:5018 turns
We took the lowest bid. It is a yellow flag because we have had conversations about do we get Cap on change orders when we engage the lowest bid. How like for like is the scope and material and other metrics you would use to evaluate? Did we get common scope?
The bids were tabulated and evaluated by PEI. Construction engineers for the project and they didn't see any issues with any of the, you know sometimes you might load one part of the bid and take it out somewhere else. But it was very consistent throughout the bid. They're also a local. You know they didn't bid last time but they're right here I mean you couldn't get any closer than Cal Portland so I think that's part of the reason why they were so competitive
I think everybody knows who they are and have seen their work and driven on it. Is there something we can do? I even just worry about the cost of asphalt changing on us right now. Can we do something to cap our change orders or really just fix bid this cost, even with a 10% contingency?
We are definitely seeing the benefit of bidding this earlier this year now that there has been a significant change in oil prices. Anything related to unit costs and things like that would be governed by the green book and various specifications we have laid out in the project manual itself. Thank you. The actual price of oil or something like that were to go beyond a certain amount, there may be some renegotiations. But I would have to look into that more and that would be outside of our control and that would be something that would be applied to any one of these bidders that we would have reached.
Thank you. We couldn't change it now.
Well, we have to follow based on our Purchasing policy this type of project this the budget that it's at we follow the formal bidding procedures And so that this is how it goes. It's there are specialty bidding rules for certain types of projects that allow you to have a max price set and then they could you know, the constructive the company has to There is no utility construction with this project.
Well, I should say we're replacing the catch basin at the corner there but that's not the utilities you're referring to.
And when does this commence? Like when do we start this project?
So we'll start mid-April.
Okay and so the amount that we have here were kind of locked in with that through the beginning of it happening in April. Yes
yeah June will be done
Yes, 50 days from the beginning of the start. Hopefully sooner than that. We should have great weather so it
shouldn't
be an issue.
Are
they
working through the night as well?
There's no night work on this project.
2:51 – 2:5619 turns
I will open it up to public comment if there is any. Anybody public comments anybody on zoom Okay Easy enough. Let's close public comment And bring it back to the council for action or further questions
I'll move to I'll move toward the construction contract to Cal Portland, including the bid alternatives 1 through 4 for the amount of $2.9 million and authorizing the mayor to execute the contract or the agreement and authorizing the city manager for a 10% contingency for a total of $291,000 contingency. I'll
second.
Okay it's been properly moved and seconded to approve as stated
If I may clarify, um, I know Council Member Elizabeth Rona was using round numbers but is the intention of the motion to approve the exact budget that staff proposed?
$202.912 million and $291,200. Thank you Council Member! And no change. Let's proceed with roll call
Next is item 8C. Introduce for first reading ordinance number 260392, amending various sections of Chapter 3 Street and Sidewalk Obstructions Title 8 Public Ways and Property of the Solvang Municipal Code to regulate queuing in the public right-of-way and update strengthen the city's commercial solicitation regulations and make other clarifying edits.
Thank you staff report please
Thank you Mayor, members of Council. This should be familiar to you this was the ordinance that was brought for introduction at your last meeting but the council had a few edits for staff to make and so we're just bringing it back for introduction. You know I can The staff report is essentially the same as last time, but I want to point out on the second attachment in the red line. If you look at the yellow highlighted language that's the changes that were made to address the council's comments from last time. Other than that, the item is exactly the same as presented and at the last meeting. And again this is to help address regulating Cueing in the public right-of-way on, you know, sidewalks and solicitation from businesses on the public right of way.
So I'm happy to take any questions or go into more detail if you'd like but...
I have a question. If you would walk me through the process, if I'm a restauranteur or I own a sausage garden or whatever case what is my process to get this encroachment permit and cost and what will it accomplish for that company?
So you would simply go to planning and building and apply for a encroachment permit just like you would if you, I don't know needed to do any other than anything else. And it's the same process for our regular encroachment permits on the public right-of-way or any city property and that just now you have to get it if you're going to be having people lining up in the sidewalks here to your
business. How long will it take to get that? Because most of these things are, I need it tomorrow type of thing.
I think the intent... Or can you do
it for the whole year?
Yeah, the intent would not be that every time you think there's gonna be a long line you have to go get an encroachment permit It would be a permit. Yeah, I mean Raphael would have to be administered Bridget but I think the intent would be that you would get a permit for annually and then any it covers will give you operating procedures for how to you know implement that when there is a line not that you need to get a separate permit each time you think there's going to be a busy weekend.
How much is that annual permit?
I don't know exactly so it's not much couple hundred dollars at the most
Thank you. That's all the questions I have. Anybody else? Okay, public comment. Any public comment on this item for... Okay, anybody on Zoom? Oh we're just... I didn't know we were so riveting. Good to know. Okay, we'll bring it, we'll close public comment and bring it back to the council for either further discussion or action
Okay, I just want to make sure. So we're cool to display Halloween decorations for two months?
2:56 – 3:0928 turns
Well that's a policy decision but the way we addressed the one concern that was raised was that under the current code language that we weren't actually changing but was you know shown in the ordinance was that Our code, you know prohibits placement of basically anything on the sidewalk for longer than two hours and so the concern was raised I believe by Mayor Brown that what about you know holiday decorations. And so staff is proposing to accept or allow for temporary seasonal or holiday decorations that may be displayed on the sidewalk for a period not to exceed two months where at least five feet of unobstructed sidewalk remains. So you can't block the path of travel, but that would allow for Halloween or Yule Fest decoration. So that's a policy decision if the council wants to do that or we can amend it again and bring it back.
There's probably 200 or more trees that are delivered to the city for Yule Fest, for them to decorate and put on the sidewalk so a two-hour limit for something temporary like that That's why I brought it up to accommodate for those seasonal displays, holidays of displays. Okay that was the objective okay yeah
I
just find
it interesting that too much I mean I'm all for yeah
thank you well I'll entertain the motion to accept this for first reading
I'll move that we introduce the first reading of ordinance 260392. Go
ahead, I'll second.
Thank you it's been moved and seconded to approve item 8C for first reading roll call please.
Roll-call vote Passed 4–0 moved and seconded to approve item 8C for first reading roll call
Show transcript
Motion passes 5-0
Thank you. Okay, if you would read item 8D into the record.
Discussion regarding use of city marketing material slogans and brands.
Thank you I'm going to recuse myself on this item Once again, for the fact that I own a trademark and potential conflict. So I will leave you in the good hands of our Mayor Pro Tem Ms. Smith to take on
We're gonna
need
it. Thank you Mayor. So staff report Mr. Murphy. Being
delegated, thank you.
He's delegating to me thank you Mayor Pro Tem. This item is brought back in response to direction that we received during council comments last meeting to bring an item back regarding the mayor Solvang passport business and the concerns as explained in the staff report that were Highlighted during council comments and that we staff understood to be the basis for the item was one whether the solving passport business was potentially using city-solving marketing materials, slogans and brands.
And then potential conflicts of interest regarding whether the mayor would have to routinely recuse himself or be biased in future decision making, excuse me, future decisions before the council And so the staff report lays out, you know staff did some investigation in between now and then though it was a quick turnaround. And lays out the information that we were able to gather on both of those buckets for the council's consideration and whether they want to take any action on I think in the comments that brought this item forward that was phrased as a cease and desist type letter.
And so you know staff's not making a recommendation on whether or how to, whether to do that but we brought forward the Information that we thought relevant to for the City Council's consideration of that potential action. And happy to take any questions, I will note that at that same meeting there was a separate item with about copyright and trademark generally and so that is coming back separately where staff is still we're still researching copyright issues and potential for the city to Categorizing what we have as far as assets and then what potential options there are for potentially copywriting or trademarking that. And so this sort of relates to this, but that is going to be coming back as a more broad topic generally.
We didn't, we're not ignoring that but we just wanted, we understood that this was potentially more urgent in the council's mind and wanted to be sensitive with that and bring it back more quickly. But that broader copyright discussion is still forthcoming
so happy to take any questions. Just slightly confused by that because copyright is half the report. So should we talk about it or wait?
Oh, well we can I mean we've so what staff did with respect to this particular item was we looked at what we the materials that we had been provided and could see for the Solvang passport application specifically and tried to identify City marketing materials that we could see and the thing that we did find was of the video That's at the banner top banner of the Solvang USA Website was used in a marketing video that has since been taken down for the solving passport application Staff didn't identify other assets that the city owns that are being used but you know if there are other assets at play We'd certainly like to know And so we were focused on like, okay what can we identify from Solvang passport app that's being used? The broader discussion is like of all the universe of the city's assets.
Like what do we want to do about that? So yes, we can talk about copyright. I'm just...the answers of what like the entire city's portfolio, like what is actually copyrightable, that's what staff's working on still. Yeah, and what enforcement benefit you get from that. That kind of broader discussion for what the city might want to plan to do with its assets as a whole is what we're still working on but it's... We tried to bring forward the piece of like what we understood the Solvang Passport app was using of City material.
Okay I think I get it. I think we'll find out.
Now I realize this is its own realm of law, but my understanding is that any created work by default has copyright in it. Obviously there's some benefits to going and registering it, but any author has inherent rights to ask anybody that is using their property without permission to ask them to stop doing it.
Yes, so with the caveat that this is part of kind of what we're still researching and there just wasn't time to totally turn that around and bring this back. But generally yes when you create a work that is copyrightable that the copyrights attach at creation but unless you go forward and register it with the US Patent and Trademark Office You can't file a federal copyright enforcement action unless and until you've registered it. And the timing of that registration, within a certain amount of time when you create the work there's more protections than if you wait a long time to register it. But that's the detail we're going to bring back.
But currently, the city does not have any registered copyrights or trademarks. We have marketing materials like that video on the Solvang Passport U.S., excuse me, the Solvang USA website that was used by Solvang Passport that was created by TJA our consultant we own it as a city through our contract with them and You see the disclaimer on the website that says copyright. We technically, because we own it there is like copyright associated with that but until we go forward and register that we can't like bring a federal trademark or copyright action. We can definitely tell people to stop using stuff that we own which is what staff did. I mean actually the mayor in this case voluntarily stopped using that video, but that would have been, you know, Randy's next step would be to tell him to take it down.
So yes, to answer part of your question, once you create the work, you can tell people to stop using it. It's just going to court and enforcing that is a lot easier when you have registered the copyright.
So I'm going to play that back, because my understanding is the same as Claudio's. We have inherent copyright. That's why we put it at the bottom of our website. That means that we own the assets. It is our intellectual property and even though someone can right-click on This is Is that correct? Well,
that's a policy call for the City Council. I'm just asking
procedurally is that...
Yes you want to be able to if if the goal would be to bring a federal copyright action to enforce your copyright in civil court then yes you have to register it um there's a lot I think there's a lot of deterrence factor to just putting up that copyright You know, this particular discussion notwithstanding I guess but there is a deterrence factor to putting up that copyright disclaimer which is why you see that routinely even though the next step of registering copyrights often isn't done because it takes costs money and Going to court costs money. I want to
make the point that there is still material on Solvang Passport and the Solvang passport sponsor pages and the application downloads that are still exact copies from what's on Solvang USA There is content that is word for word copy and pasted specifically from our things to do page. So they are not distinct phrases, they are copied and pasted. Who knew that you could right click on a video and make it your own by putting an audio track on it? The question is, if we're spending public purse money to create those assets through a contractor, and in the contractor contract it says any IP created is owned by the city.
Do we care? I mean do we take any action when someone's, especially one of our own right, is copying that and using it for private benefit or commercial purposes? Would maybe be different if there are images on the things to do site that are also replicated in crop form or different focuses, different you know sort of zooms in crops of this the same images. I don't know whether we what is our ownership of those content? If there's a license included or in the middle of that the right for us to use it and present it And I guess I will interject there just to say that.
3:10 – 3:1515 turns
I think that's the question before council. And if we're going to get to deliberation, I would recommend that Mayor Pro Tem ask for public comment before we deliberate. But if you have more questions... But
your report actually says, the report says we don't have a copyright but we do?
I think that's yeah lack of precision on the report part. I think the distinction there is we haven't registered for a copyright And because that's the mechanism with which you have to go to civil court for a
federal copyright. You made the point that we could take the step of registering, but we need to decide what is our policy. And as a board, we're creating that legislation or that policy. So I think we need to decide if what business were in terms of governing public purse versus supporting somebody's private business or implying that we are
I had another question. We just had some amazing presentations earlier from our marketing teams and beautiful pictures. There are pictures of Solvang, there is verbage in there, slogans, everything in that. Do we own that? We are paying them for all this.
Yeah, so yes we own that but at the same time not everything that you create meets the criteria to be copyrightable or have a copyright. And so like you're right that it attaches when you create it if it is something that meets the criteria of copyright but You know, it's got to have originality. It's got to have different criteria and so just because they created it doesn't mean that we could successfully go register a copyright if that makes sense.
Thank you. But I think we can, I mean what I've researched is that we can take content if we have a contract that includes languages as whatever you produce is our IP it's we own those assets. We can actually there's been a couple of other cities that have bundled those assets up that sit on SolvangUSA.com and we can take that bundle and say everything that's there is copyrighted by the city And it's a $35 process, as I understand for that registration and takes a few weeks.
Maybe we do it for three sets of assets but you can bundle them if they're packaged. Is that right?
Again, that's the part that's coming back. Okay. All right,
let me go back to the conflict part. So right now you're on the passport, right?
Is
that a conflict? That she is working with the mayor on a product that's a private business for the mayor and in this discussion in the first place.
She well I mean, I haven't done the analysis but it's not a financial in. It's not a source of income to her because she's not getting paid
or him at that minute this matters. I understand he's doing everything letting everybody do it for free and I was told by a couple of business owners That they were allowed to try this out for free until he was no longer the mayor, and then it was $249 a month. Okay? But in the meantime if we have a council member and a mayor both working together on a product that is a business, is that an issue?
I again, I can analyze the FPPC financial conflicts. We didn't discuss it ahead of time. The first thing that comes to mind is whether it's a source of income or not she's not getting payment from it.
Should she recuse because you have also in our report that if there's any, we should recuse if there is a possibility of bias that might present itself. If she's his client or potential client and he's recused, she's going to have an opinion
3:15 – 3:2218 turns
Okay, first of all it is up to each individual council member to decide whether they have a potential bias or conflict of interest or not because each individual council members are the ones that are going to take the heat, the fines, the public scorn and the potential repercussions from you know, Fair Political Practices Commission. That being said, personally I think it doesn't represent any financial gain to me whatsoever if anything it's costed me an ice cream cone that I have to give out for free because he put a promotion tested. It doesn't drive any financial gain to me whatsoever. Did
you receive anything of value which is representation on his application.
That is available again if it costed me giving away an ice cream cone that somebody was willing to pay for until they saw the QR code on the thing, no they did not drive anything to value.
Okay let's back up then the other issue that we have which is whether we're going to pursue a cease and desist or refrain is it's the business model There is conflict where business decisions that we make as a council are could be influenced by the mayor's thinking because of his business. The business of selling Solvang to the same exact addressable market that we market to and the business of delivering those customers, the same clients we market to, delivering those customers to the businesses he is representing on the app
Again, it is up to each individual council member to decide whether
conflict of
interest.
That's true but then we really need to revisit our ethics code because it's so thin.
So I'm just wondering if we can bring this to public comment and then can we continue this discussion after public comment? Sure. Is there any? Please chime in! No? Okay anyone? All right then.
Let me ask one more question, just a goofy one. He has a business. Does he have a business license? Is that put him in violation of our code because he does not have a business license for his business?
I mean, it's a little bit of a gray area because he's not charging for anything. It's kind of like a pilot program. Yeah,
it's also... Okay wait a minute on his... I'm sorry but you guys omitted that from our report that he is charging $250 per month. It is on the digital website. It is on his application and it's part of the content that you guys provided to us so he is charging Or he will charge. Maybe it's early, I mean that might be good news that we're you know kind of intercepting something before it goes really wrong.
So my understanding and again this is based on representations from the mayor but my understanding is his business model is to charge $250 a month but he has not yet implemented that in part because of the conflicts
analysis. Yeah we won't know that we just know what it says public on the you know internet How would we know? We're not going to ask to check his books. How would we know whether he's charging or not? How would we know whether he's using the MP4 file that he downloaded? Well, how do we know if anybody
is truthful when they filed their Form 700? How do we prove anything? Are we alive? No, but it's true. I mean, we only know what we declare.
Exactly. I agree. So what will we declare? I, it's really the business model. If the mayor was marketing an app for Bakersfield, I genuinely don't have an issue but when he's acting like a digital concierge and we pay Visitor Center to be our concierge and his role is to specify a subset of businesses that he's going to push the same visitors to Solvang to by gamifying our city.
And those businesses, they might be the elite businesses or the businesses that can afford to pay him but those that can't are going to be left omitted And that application by the way is accelerating. It's like carving a very specific path through Solvang when we're trying to promote all businesses, we're marketing to everyone who wants to come to the city and suggesting they go to every business in the city not some and not limiting them. We are not interfering with solving business.
As much as I'd like to agree with you if he's running a business he has the option of limiting it And that's not a conflict as a business. As the mayor, we have a different issue. If he's only gonna represent certain businesses and not all of them, is that a legal problem?
So this, that question gets into the conflict of interest rules and as a you're right. As a business, as a private entity he can do that like just like your restaurant down the street can advertise only for their restaurant and whatever else they want to advertise for and serve to who they want to serve too. As a public official, as the mayor his actions as the mayor versus his private business just like any other business that interaction is governed by the FPPC conflict of interest rules and general like you have to be an impartial decision maker. Um as it as we you guys have seen and we've explained in the staff report The city attorney's office did analyze that on his behalf, just like we would for any other council member that has a financial interest.
Whether that's your house, your business, what have you. So but again it is ultimately up to him to implement that advice. You know we've given him the rules of the road but he's the one that has to implement it because to Council Member Elizabeth Rona's point like We only have the information that he tells us.
3:22 – 3:3218 turns
I'm understanding that the businessman David Brown is going to certain businesses and asking if they want to be included on this app. And that as a businessman is completely acceptable, but I want to know how are our business owners are going to discern between David Brown, the businessman and David Brown, the mayor. And that might put them in a very awkward position that at their approach so they're going to feel obligated and do we even expect them to make that discernment? Like think about that right?
And I always think that if he's including certain businesses then there he's obviously excluding certain businesses. And he's here as mayor to represent every single business And I think this is a real, I mean this is thin ice that we're skating on and this is very difficult. And I don't know how our business owner's gonna be able to say he approached me as a businessman not as the mayor.
Well that is... And would businesses be afraid to, we haven't heard from any business, only heard from one. To come in and speak to us about a concern or decision or why was I left out? Will we really hear from them because they feel like the city leadership is looking the
other way. Well that's an interesting point then are you guys saying that obviously I have, I'm a shareholder on the local trolley which not only does sightseeing but it also promotes certain businesses that pay for it so should I stop the trolley too? Should I Should I close my business, should I sell it, should I not do it? Because now this is a conflict of interest.
Do
you take money for that promotion? Are you taking a fee for that? Yes we do pay... No no from the business to promote them. Yes yes of course yeah
yeah So that could be a potential conflict of interest. I mean,
this is a complicated issue and we're in really great territory. A couple things. Let me just see if I can take it a little higher up. This app in particular because it's addressing the same addressable market we go after where we spend over $1 million a year. We spend millions of dollars going after that same market and representing Solvang. It's as if we're in competition with this particular app And because at the other half of that business model, he's collecting a fee from a subset of businesses. We're also interfering with or even we're taking no position on the fact that one of our own is accelerating our customers through Solvang at a quick rate and a prescribed path, and we're in the business of getting people to come here and stay as long as possible.
We want them to stay three days! We want them to stop in every shop. Are we not promoting every business? I think that if there was a third party building this app, I think we would have had less concern. Right, but at this point if he took the model and sold it or transfer it a thing of value to some third party again we have a city official in his official capacity competing with the way we're spending the public purse.
He said I would we feel the same if he was using material that he created himself and not taking it from our website. Yeah, I think so. The problem is the perception that he is using assets that we paid for with public funds and we he's using it for his personal enterprise. Okay, I can understand how it looks bad and again, it's on him. It's not the council's job to police that but if I can see how that would be an issue in which case we can just ask him to hate for the sake of not looking back and you just use your own assets are not assets that the city paid for. But if they issue is that he is taking on an enterprise on his own Just because he's also the mayor, well you know we all have our own jobs. We all have our own enterprises.
You know, we still have to pay our own bills that go way beyond $600 a month so I don't think the fact that he is making his own app is an issue. As
the mayor. One more point because it's interesting because he put the, he's taken down the things that we've pointed out. He's added the legal disclaimer on his app, which suggests that the city is not endorsing what he's doing. But it says the City of Solvang neither expressly nor implied any approval association or endorsement of the Solvange Passport App and he doesn't say the City of Solvang and the Mayor neither expressly implied approval or association or endorsement. You can't separate the two.
I'm not sure I'm going to go
with that one. But it's vague, it leaves a huge gap.
I think even if this is all legal and there's no issue with it, for me a real issue is ethics. Is that ethically is this the right thing to do? Which leads me to another point about the fact that you know I've looked at our code of conduct, our ethics code for the city council and it looks like It mostly focuses on how we treat each other and how we deal with meetings and everything. I think that we need to add something to this code of ethics, that if there is a potential conflict of interest that it be not only brought to the city staff but it be brought to the City Council And I'm coming from the angle that I felt blindsided by learning about this app. Like, I had no idea. I have a business in Solvang. The mayor's not approached me about being part of the app.
Not that I want to but I just feel that we are held to a high standard here and ethically this doesn't look good and I can't support this because my My constituents in my district and District 3 are a lot of business owners, and they all need to be represented by the mayor. And I don't want and I don't expect them to discern between businessman David Brown and Mayor David Brown. And i don't want to put them in a bad spot. So I think that we do need to do a cease-and-desist on this If Mayor Brown wants to stay mayor for his term and then do this as a businessman when he's no longer in city government, great. Go for it. But I think as long as he's in city government, this is not appropriate.
I think that is for the voters to decide. It is the citizens of Solvang that elected him and it would be citizens of Solvang that will recall him, and they will recall you if they feel that you are not acting appropriately. Yeah, it's up to the public. It's not up to us to police each other.
Well, I'm not sure I'll buy that completely. But the one thing that David has done was he went to the lawyer and asked how to avoid any problems with the FPPC, the Form 700s. And it's my understanding that's where the $249 a month came instead of 250. It puts him just below the total dollars per year that's required for certain reporting. He is not accepting any money right now And it's my understanding from what I've been told by a couple of businessmen that I've talked to that have signed up with him, that he won't take any money until he quits being mayor.
He doesn't quit being mayor till December under the assumption... That
we know
about?
Unless he runs again?
Unless he runs again. But
why not just wait until December to do this? You know
3:32 – 3:3914 turns
I don't know. I don't have a good answer for you except that this gives him the chance to do some testing and see how well this is going to work, to see if he really wants to continue it. I'm not crazy about this. I've got a copy of his app on my phone. Took a look at it. There's some stuff on there that seems unusual. It's not the way I would have done it but I'm retired.
I would like to suggest that we do look into the other half of this discussion, which is suggesting what we do own and don't own and what our rights are and what policy we should have with regard to using marketing items that we paid for. He has attempted to eliminate those so far. I don't like this, but I'm trying to be reasonable about it. But I do think we need to make some decisions. There are other cities around like Carmel or Vegas or Palm Springs that have policies on what you can do with I
just find it really interesting that we're looking at protecting our own content when we pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for people to make content that goes viral and gets re-shared, and you will use creative content made by third parties. If we were in the business of making characters, stories, things that we're going to make toys and merchandise out intellectual property that we exploit such as certain animation studio that I'm not gonna mention. Sure it makes sense to protect those assets because you don't want other people profiting from them. I think if the problem here is that it's problematic that the mayor doing a promotional app while he is mayor. But then I think it's appropriate that he makes it very clear that this is his personal project, not the city's project and also go the extra mile don't use any content that was made with public funds.
But to say that he shouldn't try out a promotional app because he is mayor. Well then again, should I quit the trolley? Should I find another job?
That's not what I'm saying.
Well it's comparable. Yes it is. Why not? I promote Solvang. I get money from certain businesses to get highlighted on our tour. How
long have you been doing that?
I've been doing that since 2007.
And when did you get on City Council?
I got on City Council in 2020.
Okay, so you were doing that prior to even getting on City Council. We now have a mayor who is doing a project as a businessman while he's mayor. He's doing this while he's in that position. There's a big difference there.
Yeah, you can argue that he's not Potentially privately profiting from his official role I Agree with councilmember Infante that we should protect our assets. I take my role as Council member very seriously in that we have we have fiscal responsibilities to oversee and make decisions on how the taxpayer money is spent and if we if we If we have no opinion and we leave it to each other, we have no opinion as a body that there is potential that even just having you sit in on the marketing presentations today and logging into the dashboard and seeing all of the insights that come from our marketing engagements. The hiring of a contractor whom we spend over $800,000 a year with And seeing that insight and figuring out how to apply that to your business, to collect revenue or to create something of value.
I don't know how you don't see that conflict? How is HESAP
hindering all the effort? How is HESAP... I
didn't say anything about effort. What's that? I didn't say anything about effort. Okay but how is that hurting us? I think it's governance over fiscal responsibility. It is a conflict of the way that we are
dictating how public
money gets spent and him getting a private benefit from it. We could argue the same thing for you Claudia because you're sitting here when you can apply that to your business, your retail oriented business which is the same set of customers coming to Solvang. But in his case he's... You're marketing one entity business and he is marketing all of Solvang. I don't see how it's hurting us fiscally that he is starting this pet project.
I think that since, I do want to agree that we should protect and copyright our assets. I want to agree with you that we should cease and desist and potentially refrain because I want something that's enforceable but I think we need to send a message to businesses and to the public that we have deep concerns and until he stops using our content or You know, starts sort of considering that there might be so much room for businesses to be confused about which role he's playing when he's speaking to them and what his motivations are and his biases are. That the cease, desist, and refrain is important for us and I think we can withdraw it. So if there's such a time when we feel we're more protected or we have better ethics policy then we can probably withdraw it or he can I am 100% convinced we should update our ethics policy.
3:39 – 3:4725 turns
I just want to get clarification. So a couple things i'm hearing one is we're this staff is already working on this but the what assets we have that are copyrightable bring that back get direction on whether and how which ones we want to go if any go forward and actually register policy direction on Yeah, that item could also include policy direction on even if we don't register like how we want to interface when we realize if someone's using our material. Yes. That piece is coming.
Okay so...
Hear you on that.
Okay so we are going to copyright every write-up, every picture, every video that we produce just in the case of somebody that we feel is using it inappropriate. We are able to take legal action against again I think that's the weather
to do that is the will be coming at a future agenda item. I don't, but I don't think we're deciding that tonight it's just what i'm hearing from at least two of you which is consistent with the direction we got already at the prior meeting is to bring forward an item to evaluate the city's intellectual property assets and get direction on how The City Council wants to proceed with protecting those
or
not. Okay,
again but I think these are two separate issues and are we mad that he's using content that we paid for? Or are we mad that he is doing an app that promotes certain businesses to begin with? What is this even about?
Both! And they can be two separate issues That's
what I was going to ask for clarification on, but I'm trying to deal with the easier buckets first. The second bucket of direction that I heard was that you'd like to see something come back of amending the City Council Protocols to address when council members have potential new financial interests that might result in conflicts and protocol for keeping the Council and staff apprised of those developments, something like that?
Definitely further than does some am I going to award a contract that serves my interest or that I have an interest in. Those are really We rely deeply on state legislature. We've not created anything of our own. So should nobody start a business while we're serving
on council? Is that what we're saying? I think we figured that out.
Okay, so that's two buckets that are coming back. Council protocols, re-evaluating those...
I don't think it's more complex than that, Claudia. It's not any business. I mean, I said it before, we've had businessmen up taking this role for years and we found ways to get through that. This one is singular.
Okay, then why is this an issue? How is it different than any other
business? Because he's selling to the exact same addressable market that we spend money for and he's specifying, he's separating some businesses a group of businesses from another and taking fees for certain representation. That's his business model Okay,
well he takes fees for brokering. I respect your opinion. Is that also a conflict of interest then? It can be if a particular client comes here and needs resolution by council and he doesn't recuse himself then it's a conflict of interest. Somebody who's advertising comes here and he has to take a decision that particularly affects our client, then I can see how that's a conflict of interest. But I don't see the conflict of interest on just selling advertising alone.
He's not selling advertising. Anyway, I respect your opinion. Well, I didn't know that. I didn't know that. He is
selling advertising. That's a whole of the point app. It's no different from Yelp. You pay to be on the app so that people go check your business out. That is selling advertising. I don't see it in competition with what we do at all. If anything, it complements what we do.
I respect your opinion. You've said it. You're not going to change my mind.
So if I may interject, Madam Attorney, would you go back please and let's cover the two issues and bring in your opinion on both of those? And we will address those individually at another time. So we may say, no he's not causing any problems with his business but we still need to copyright. Not copyright but we need to protect some of our images. Has nothing to do with David anymore.
Right, so I think the two buckets that i was just talking about are just policy decisions for the City Council. They might have been kind of triggered by the Solvang Passport app discussion but I don't see that as directly like... The discussion is going to be beyond just what's going on with Solvang Passport app and that's you know what we want to do with the city intellectual property rights and what if any adjustments we want to make to the city council protocols? We can bring both of those items back I think the third bucket is the one that I would like some clarification on, and that's with respect to whether this council wants to issue a cease-and-desist letter of some kind.
Typically you see those in the context of when somebody is violating a legal right of yours and you tell them stop it before I sue you, and you try to get voluntary compliance because litigation is expensive. Um, that's kind of the lens that I'm thinking about it in just because that's how I've seen a cease and desist letter used. In this case you know to the extent that there are still assets that the Solvang Passport application is using that the city owns um i think you know We could do that.
You know we have to identify them which His pursuit as a private business owner of the business in general. I caution the council to tell him, like we can't tell him to cease and desist doing his own private enterprise. I understand and hear you on the optics of it. You know, staff with Randy has already expressed to him the concern about the difficulty of separating himself as a private citizen and the mayor when he's going and talking to businesses. That is a real concern but I do counsel or caution the council multiple words use of the word council to yeah there's another one I think we do want to be careful about infringing on his rights to engage in commerce and free speech and all of that.
So there is a, you know, there's kind of a barrier we're going to bump up against on that end as well. I'm not trying to diminish any of the concerns expressed but I think that is a reality that You know, there is a limit to what we can tell him not to do. Certainly we can tell him not to use our intellectual property right and our property, the city's property.
Can we ask him to slow things down or stop pursuing this until we have more conversations about
this?
Not using any of our property, but trying to figure out what property is ours and what we want to trademark.
3:47 – 3:5526 turns
I mean we own it, whether we go and register it to Councilmember Elizabeth Rona's point. We own it already so you can tell him to stop using it if he's still using it um and you know we could do that either with a blanket statement or just your or go through and you know if you've identified certain assets that you want to you know show me we can be more specific and say we think you got x y & z from the website take it down You know, maybe he went and took the same picture. I don't know but we can tell him to stop using what we think is ours. He must have a
drone.
Yeah well that drone video clearly was the same one um and he admitted that and took it down voluntarily but you know i think you can certainly...I mean you've expressed the concerns here today. You could express the concern about people not being able to separate him as the mayor in the letter but I think Going farther to tell him to stop doing his business, I caution the council.
That is what we are asking him to do, stop
doing this. I don't think that's what we're asking. We are trying to get some clarification and understand and take ownership of what we think is ours and make sure it is not being used by the businessman David Brown or anybody else.
I thought that was a whole point of the cease and desist. Cease and desist from pursuing this business model.
Yeah, that's the distinction I'm trying to get clarification on because staff is going to go for your direction. In which
case no we don't have any right to tell him hey stop doing this just like you know I'd be flabbergasted if you guys thought because your opinion says that there's a conflict of interest in me pursuing my business that I should do it. You shouldn't do it either. I think I can understand how it looks bad. Differentiate his private business from his role as mayor to make it clear that this app has nothing to do with the city. It's not funded by it, it's not supported or endorsed by it and I think it makes sense to ask him to not use any of our assets because Yeah, we did pay for those.
And if we're thinking about how he is using publicly paid assets for a private enterprise then yes I can see how that doesn't look bad but i'm not in favor of telling each and every council member you need to stop doing this in your private life just because I personally think that it doesn't look good.
That's what
we're saying
Do you think he's in competition with what we fund through our concierge and the visitor center? I don't think he is in competition.
We are not selling passes to the visitor center, we are not selling passes to enter Solvang. information that is free to everybody. If anything, it's one more thing to do in Solvang assuming that the app took track which I can tell you it's not getting the traction that he probably thought. Not
here to
judge it at all. But I don't think it's in competition. It's not booking hotels for us. It''s not driving people away from the visitor center. He's not driving away... How
do we know? I mean how do you know? How do we know? I
don't even know about the Solvang app unless you come across the QR code or somewhere. I don't see how it's driving away business from Solvang. If anything, it would drive business away if he wasn't encouraging people to visit another city, then that would make sense. But I don't see how it's driving business away from Solvang at all.
Driving away from the visitor center because you have two concierge one that we're funding and one that he's building
And there's also concierges that people make themselves, so I don't see how that's a competition. That's not costing anybody any money.
Probably wouldn't have an issue if he was an influencer and telling people where to go, cool places inside Solvang. But he's charging businesses and he's separating businesses into two categories. Those that are interesting and those that are tourist
traps.
How is that taking away from the visitor center? That doesn't make any sense. Because the visitor center promotes every single business and wants you to go to every bit of this town. Every corner.
Okay, it's quarter past ten folks. It's time to go home. Is this too late to even have a drink? So what I think we're asking for once again is do we want to try and take a look at what logos and information that we say we have control over make a policy about it that'll have to come back Then updating our ethics policy, I think. I do not think we have to say anything to David about what he should do with his business.
We may not like it as Claudia said. It is each one of us may not like it per se But as long as it is not causing a conflict. Now the minute somebody starts complaining, that's a whole other issue I think.
Why don't we create a process for complaints that our businesses feel comfortable with because I'm concerned that maybe businesses don't feel that they can come. What format, what forum do they have available to them to raise a concern and know that they'll get an open I would feel more comfortable There's nothing in, we have provided no documentation yet that the mayor was asking for money for this.
So it's not in the record and it needs to be. Hopefully it'll become in the minutes if we don't just leave it to video but it is not in the report which I find concerning. Well,
that's why we have the Fair Political Practices Commission. If we think that a public official is not doing something right and anybody can find a complaint in that it's not up to us there are the institutions that deal with this very sort of thing so why are we spending council time on policing something that there are already tools to police?
I think we actually should be self-governing We leave it to others? We leave it to outside? I mean, I guess
that's... That's what the Fair Political Commission does. So we already have the tools to deal with this sort of thing. You think he's doing something wrong? File a complaint. That's how it works. They do the investigation. They do all the work for you.
3:55 – 3:584 turns
So I've got the direction on the two buckets of research to do, to come back with the council protocols and the copyright trademark issues. Is there any other action that Council wants to take tonight? And I think we should do a motion besides have a drink afterwards. I think that's it for right now. Okay. We will bring those two items back. All right.
Do you want to close the meeting? We're done with item
8D.
I want to make a comment of code modification opportunities for There are businesses in town that have no names and no addresses. If there were to be an emergency of some kind, how would the first responders find it if they have no name or no address? I'd like to see... Now what we have, the thing is there's kind of a catch-22 because we require sign ordinance so The sign or the business name would probably have to be even on a 8.5 by 11 in the window, or some such thing if they don't want to have a sign.
We can't force somebody to have a sign but should we have some sort of identification and maybe that mirrors what the business license says or whatnot? But anyway, that's something I'd like to see added to the agenda for future We're adjourned.