City Council — May 13, 2026

For Wednesday, May 13th 2026 to order if our city clerk would conduct roll call.

Thank you Mayor and thank you City Council members. As you see, the format today is a workshop format. We wanted to have an opportunity to have a conversation with you regarding our strategic plan and so we set up the room a little differently so that we can allow this two-way conversation with our staff. This workshop is our annual City Council Strategic Plan Workshop. On January 28th, staff provided you a half-year progress update and today's agenda report provides you third quarter advancements. The first section of this workshop is intended to provide you a few verbal updates on items that you either had questions on or that you provided feedback on January 28th.

During the second section tonight, we will review the draft proposed fiscal year 2026-27 which you have as an attachment to the agenda report for your consideration in adopting this plan. There were no changes to the goals so the proposed revisions to the objectives are outlined in the agenda report and track changes for clarity and convenience I'd like to acknowledge the great work the staff continues to perform in all aspects of municipal services. This work is reflected in the combined progress report and the work aims to support the City Council's mission, which is to be dedicated to providing effective and efficient municipal services that promote high quality of life, economic vitality, and a safe environment for all.

The existing fiscal year 2025-26 is comprised of 11 goals and 67 objectives. The proposed plan increases to 132 action strategies from the current year's plan of 125. And although some action strategies were completed, seven action strategies have been added. Action strategies which are project programs or tasks are in different stages which include in development Another stage is being active, another stage is ongoing.

Action strategies when continued to be performed consistently or are maintained will be incorporated as normal operating procedures. A good example of this is OpenGov. As you recall, our online permitting platform was an action strategy for about a couple of years as it was in development. It's now fully developed. It's been tested and it's been implemented for over a year. This project has come off the list of action strategies and is now part of our day-to-day operations.

In the agenda report, you will find more detailed information about the progress in the last third quarter. And the attached January 28th report covers the first six months of the current fiscal year. At the meeting on January 28 City Council had some questions regarding our progress so I wanted to take the next several minutes to cover four different value areas However, your input on current performance is open to all value areas. At this time I'd like to call Principal Management Analyst Alonzo Ramirez to provide you an update on grants management as an example of work efforts in maintaining sound and conservative financial practices.

Good afternoon Mayor and City Council The fiscal management goal directs staff to pursue opportunities to diversify city revenues through both public and private funding sources. To support this objective, staff expanded the city's grant writing efforts by utilizing on-call grant writers and grant researchers to increase capacity and identify additional funding opportunities.

Now before reviewing the data on screen I would like to note that while this slide reflects grant activity during fiscal year 2026 it also includes grants that were applied for during fiscal year 2025 but for which award determinations were not announced until this current fiscal year. So essentially this slide includes both fiscal years to provide a more comprehensive overview of the city's grant efforts and outcomes.

As shown on the slide, the city experienced a significant increase in grant activity during the third quarter of this fiscal year as several major notices of funding opportunity became available during the middle of the fiscal year. To date, staff has submitted 13 grant applications totaling approximately $65.2 million. The largest spending applications include the 2026 Highway Bridge Program Grant and the Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development, also known as the BUILD Grant. Both applications seek funding support for the Las Posas bridge replacement project.

In addition, staff submitted $15.2 million in grant applications to Cal OES for the replacement of the city water reservoirs. Cal OES has since included the project in the state's application package submitted to FEMA for review. The total application amount also includes approximately 9.5 million in congressional appropriations, appropriation requests submitted through Congresswoman Brownlee, Senator Adam Schiff and Senator Alex Padilla for which Congresswoman Brownlee has shortlisted the city of Camarillo for a $1 million grant and we just received notice this morning that Senator Adam Schiff has also shortlisted the city of Camarillo for a $2 million grant for the last process bridge.

Currently, 10 of the city's 13 grant fiscal year 2026 applications remain under review while three have been awarded. During this fiscal year, the city has been awarded approximately $8.3 million in grant funding. Similar to the application totals, these figures include grants applied for during fiscal year 2025 that received award determinations in fiscal year 2026.

The largest award received was $4 million from the Surface Transportation Block Grant Program for the Pleasant Valley Bike Lanes Project. Additional major awards includes 2.7 million from the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Program for the Adaptive Traffic Signal Project, and $339,000 from the Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention Program to support homeless initiatives in the city of Camarillo.

The city was unsuccessful in four grant applications, which included two congressional appropriations requests. When appropriate staff meets with agency representatives to gather feedback and identify ways to strengthen future applications and improve competitiveness in subsequent funding cycles. Lastly, staff continues to actively pursue additional funding opportunities. Currently the surface transportation block grant application for the Las Posas Bridge project has been placed on SCAC's funding contingency list.

In addition, the city's application to the HUD continuum of care program is currently on hold due to ongoing federal litigation. However, staff anticipates that program will reopen later this summer and staff will submit an application. Finally, staff is actively developing four additional grant applications that are anticipated to be submitted before the closing of the fiscal year.

This concludes my presentation. Happy to answer any questions. Any questions? Mr. Kildee.

Yeah thanks for the update Alonzo. Some of the grants that were not funded this year And we roll them over. How long do we roll them over and how much extra work is that for staff? In other words, does staff just call and say hey look you know we're still interested in this I'm going to ask you a couple of questions.

and is pending until next fiscal year. The effort that we put towards this current grant application will simply roll over until the next fiscal year, and it'll be the same application. However there are some grants where if we did not receive funding this fiscal year they will require an entirely new application for the next fiscal year And there are other grants, like I mentioned the SDVG fund for the Las Posas Bridge. We did not get the funding this year but we're added to our contingency list for potentially future fiscal years. We don't need to do a new application for that. Our current application simply rolls over into the next fiscal year. So it really varies by project, it varies by agency, it varies by funding availability.

If we get- just one other question- if you don't get funded And we have to apply again, do we get a notice of that? Or does our staff have to kind of follow this and kind of take a proactive approach to this.

Yeah, no great question. We are always informed as to the result of our application. We're always told whether we were funded or whether we are not funded. Typically if we don't- if we're not funded, we're also given the opportunity to meet with agency staff to discuss why our application was not selected and they give us pointers on how we can improve our application for the next cycle but yes a hundred percent of the times where we are provided a response by the agency

Thank you. No other questions, thank you Alonzo.

Thank You Mayor and members of the City Council I'd like to pass on the next item to Mandy Nassar our library director who will bring you information on TVIC civic engagement

Good afternoon City Council members. As you know, the library launched a Teen Civic Engagement Club that encourages youth to discuss issues that concern them and develop future leaders. To accomplish this goal, the library has led 14 civic engagement sessions over the course of the year so teens can learn more about their local government. Library staff invited 10 city staff leaders to speak about their department and role in the city which covered community relations, public works, economic development, community development The teen civic engagement also had the opportunity to meet with Mayor David Tennyson and Library Board President and Councilmember Susan Santangelo, who shared their experience working on city council. Next slide.

A highlight of this year was a visit to city chambers where teens met with city clerk staff. Each teen had the opportunity to practice talking on a microphone about a concern they cared about. The teens turned this opportunity into reality at the City Council meeting on April 22nd, when two teens from the Teen Civic Engagement Club spoke about their teen civic engagement experience during public comment.

That concludes my update I'm happy to address any questions thank you.

Go ahead Vice Mayor

Mandy, thank you very much. Very exciting program. The question that I have is are the students mostly from or which high school are they mostly from? Or is it a combination of both? We

do have representation from every high school but I do have to be honest that most of our teens are coming from Rancho Campana and When Assistant City Manager Carmen Nichols went to us last week as a speaker, we were trying to think of being creative about creating a wider net so that we can market it to all teens because our library is for all teens in Camarillo. And so that's something that we're considering for next year.

Okay. Yeah, no I think that's super important to make sure we're tapping into the different schools in addition to that um i think it's also important to make sure that we're reaching out to maybe youth who typically would not you know see comfort like i didn't come to my first council meeting until after i was married and had kids and so i think it''s so important to introduce folks at an early age so thank you thank you for that welcome

Thank you very much, Mandy.

Thank you Mayor. Public safety and emergency resilience is a core value of the City Council. We invited Chief of Police Commander Eric Tennyson to discuss community engagement and also he'll do a piece on innovative technology used to combat crime. Mr. Tennyson?

Thank you, Carmen. And good afternoon Mayor and Council. One of council's goals has been to strengthen public safety and an objective is increasing community engagement to continue building trust and legitimacy. In the following slides I'll be sharing an overview of the police department's community engagement efforts what we're doing why it matters and how it directly contributes to a safer Camarillo.

Our approach to community engagement is simple and it's built upon a combination of evidence best practices and experience with what works Every single call for service each year, and there are nearly 20,000 in Camarillo along with thousands of proactive contacts is an opportunity for us to build trust through real and respectful interactions. These contacts form the foundation of everything else that we do.

Our strategy is built on these four main principles, each equally important to creating a safe community. None are new and generations of Camarillo Police Department and Ventura County Sheriff's Office teams have been using this very framework to build the support for law enforcement in this city that we benefit from today. All of these principles are designed around building lasting relationships that result in everyone within the community working together to keep us safe.

I think this idea is best summarized by Robert Peel's principles of policing all the way back from 1829. One of his principles was that the police are the public and the public are the police, and the duties of keeping the city safer incumbent upon every one of us who lives here. These slides provide a glimpse into what it looks like putting those four principles into action at the Camarillo Police Department. The first number, I think is astonishing and represents more than two formal events each week outside the hundreds of calls for service we handle each week.

The 125 events you see here represent just the formal events not the thousands of other proactive contacts. I've worked in four of the contract cities and I don't think you'll find another police department who does more in the community than we do. These formal events include things like four public coffee with a cop events at local coffee shops, nine private coffee with a cop events that are K-8 schools where we spend a couple of hours interacting with our youth.

We've held four very successful Cones with Cops events for our kids at Pleasant Valley Park and Rec District parks during the summer. We conducted six bicycle safety presentations, reaching over 1,500 students and teachers. We held meetings with local field workers at two farmworker outreach events. We built a great relationship with the Somos Ranch Apartments hosting a Cones With A Cop event, a Trunk or Treat event, and we even attended Christmas dinner with them at their apartments.

Last year, we participated in educating residents during several disaster preparedness events through the city. We provided scan presentations to the public on 10 different occasions. Throughout our community, we have 64 neighborhood watch programs and we communicate with them monthly and attended many of their meetings throughout the last year. We participated in made crime trend and crime prevention presentations at more than 30 meetings with HOAs, faith groups, and businesses throughout the city.

During the month of March, our staff read to hundreds of elementary students at multiple classrooms across 20 different schools during Read Across America. During our largest event of the year we partnered with PVRPD and 34 other community groups to host the Camarillo Police Department's Trunk or Treat event with more than 4,500 in attendance this year. Speaking of partnering with PVRPD they invite us to take part in each one of their events including every concert in the park, the Easter extravaganza and the Christmas parade One of the most important events they work with us on is the annual Law Enforcement National Night Out, which easily resulted in over 1,000 positive contacts with the public.

We partnered with the Old Town Business Association to host a touch-a-truck event during the Days Long Heritage Festival. We also partnered with the Department of Child Support Services on their truck retreat for the past few years. This year, Project HOPE organized the delivery of more than 50 prepared Thanksgiving meals on Thanksgiving Day for homeless in our community. And we delivered those.

Partnering with the Sheriff's Foundation, we helped around 150 underprivileged children throughout our community get to experience some Christmas magic through the Shop With a Cop program. We design Camarillo PD Christmas cards each year and provide them in person to more than 200 local organizations. We partner with a resident who's a member of the Behavioral Health Advisory Board and Casa Pacifica to bring Christmas joy to the kids at Casa Pacifica over the holiday season.

We work with our local businesses on our Business Watch program, providing monthly crime trend information and presentation assessments of their security protocols. As an example of this, over the course of the last couple of weeks, our Community Resource Unit visited every single bank in the city connected with the management team at the banks that provided information on new bank-related crimes that we've been seeing in the community.

We conducted dozens of CEPTED, or Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design assessments at local businesses and organizations. We educated the public on civilian response to active assailant presentations at more than 15 churches, schools and businesses. Nearly every week we stop by the Boys and Girls Club or the Camarillo Family YMCA to interact with kids, handing out those prized gold junior deputy stickers.

This year I think we handed out nearly 45,000 gold badges to kids throughout our community. We intend ribbon cuttings and grand openings of businesses and other organizations in the city. We host dozens of ride-alongs, two Citizens Academies graduating nearly 50 community members. And we're on boards of directors at local nonprofits and service clubs. We coach and use sports in the community and oftentimes show up in uniform to practice or even to coach games.

One good thing that came out of the COVID pandemic was the request for our deputies to take part in birthday celebrations with a police drive-by. We still get dozens of those requests each year and they've morphed into going from a drive by, to actually stopping in and celebrating with the kids when time permits. We definitely recognize the importance of meeting people where they are, listening to them and giving them the opportunity to share their concerns with us, and working to build more positive relationships that make your goals for a safer community more achievable.

Any engagement framework has to have a solid foundation of transparency, and at the Sheriff's Office I think we excel in this. A quick visit to the Sheriff's website reveals our transparency dashboards offering any member of the public the ability to take a deep dive into crime and traffic data, Racial Identity Profiling Act data, use-of-force data, officer-involved shooting data, and many other datasets. All of our policies are published online.

A minute ago, I mentioned our Citizens Academy. Each year at the Camarillo Police Department we host two 12-week academies where we bring in members of our community and give them tours of the police department, the jails, our dispatch center, the air unit, crime lab and many other areas of the sheriff's office. They received nearly 40 hours of presentations on our operations.

We've had these citizen academies where students came in and they were supporters of law enforcement, and we've had some who weren't supportive of law enforcement. But in almost every single incidence the graduates have walked away feeling informed and impressed with how open we are about our operation. The Camarillo Police Department has now graduated 47 Citizen Academies.

And last for decades, our agency has encouraged community ride-alongs. Assuming a member of the public can pass a quick background check we allow them to spend a few hours of a shift riding side by side with one of our deputy sheriffs. They get to observe unfiltered all that a deputy sees hears and does and they get to see the high level of service and incredible professionalism our deputies display during those tens of thousands of citizen contacts each year.

You'd have to look far and wide to find a profession that is as open and inviting to members of the public as the Sheriff's Office is. As I mentioned earlier, our goal is to build real and meaningful relationships with people throughout the city. Through those efforts we have built and continue to build partnerships with schools, faith-based organization, nonprofits, service clubs, and businesses.

I don't think there's a problem that comes up in this city where we can't pick up a phone make a couple of calls set up a few meetings and work together to achieve positive outcomes I took a little extra time to tell you all this because it's important for you to know that we've taken seriously your objective of increasing community engagement, to continue building trust and legitimacy of law enforcement. Our community engagement efforts are second to none. It doesn't matter who you are, what your background is, how much you make or what part of the city you live in. Camarillo Police Department's deputies will meet you where you are and give you the opportunity to build a real and meaningful relationship to help solve our problems.

That concludes my presentation on this topic and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

Any questions from Council? Mr.

Kildee? Yeah, Eric. I've been up here a while, and I have to say probably in the last 10 years the public engagement has increased exponentially. And if you could pass on to all of your employees that we really appreciate that. And the question is is that we're doing a lot, you know, coffee with a cup. There's all kinds of community engagements that they're doing. Is there anything you can think of we could be doing that we're not doing now and nothing glaring comes out again.

Your department has done so much in the last, you know years here but it doesn't go unnoticed and I get i'm sure all the rest of us in this room have people come up to us and say you know the police department they're very visible and we really appreciate that

You know, one of the things that we do want to improve upon here is that social media aspect of community engagement. Getting real-time information out to the public on incidents that are occurring in the community while they're happening. We have a little work to do in that area and we intend to increase our efforts on that as we move forward.

Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you, Commander.

Mayor, I don't have a question but just a quick comment. Okay. Eric, I also ditto to what Councilmember Kildee said and the one point that I will make is I know when we had this discussion in our public safety committee about community engagement, we talked about coffee with a cop and those were happening yes at schools And also at local Starbucks. And one thing that I mentioned is like, look, my parents don't even go to Starbucks. They don't even know how to order what to order and so one of the suggestions and I think it's been very successful and I'd love to hear from you but was to, as you mentioned, meet the community where they are. And so you have been able to provide these coffee with a cop at local panaderia, at Panaderia Lucero and I've seen so far, I've attended those that have occurred there and I've seen just very positive outcome.

I'm not sure what you experienced as well.

Yeah, I agree with you. We have seen a very positive outcome. We've had a lot of really good interactions at those Coffee With The Cops and we are always looking for new places to host them throughout the community to extend that outreach to everyone in the community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. Commander Tennyson will proceed on his second part of the presentation for public safety but before he does that I just want to remind the council that what is important to us is a strategic plan and one of the items that we carefully look at every year is making sure that we're aligning the budget and our action strategies to what your expectations are. One of those expectations is that we be proactive, and that we're continuing to either look at legislation or proactive methods processes and technologies that will keep us moving forward. And this is one of those areas in which Commander Tennyson has been doing a lot of work in identifying a proactive technological way in which we continue to advance our public safety. Commander Tennyson?

Thank you, Carmen. We're looking at this from the perspective of the goal of providing safe and enriched environment for people in our city and it's one that is obviously incredibly important. In the following slides I'll be providing some introductory information to Council on a program we intend to bring back for Council's consideration in our 26-27 budget.

Our approach for this proposal is rooted in the idea of creating more effective response to crime in our city, ensuring that we continue to work to improve upon the safety. The Drone as a First Responder program is widely becoming one of the more effective tools to advance City public safety priorities. The core vision behind this program is to provide immediate, real-time aerial situational awareness to police and emergency responders before they arrive on scene.

DFR is designed to enhance awareness on every call providing deputies with critical information before they even arrive on scene. In agencies where it's been implemented, it has shown to reduce response time significantly. In most cities using DFR programs the drone is on scene within 70-90 seconds of a call being received in dispatch. This allows pilots to watch from the sky and relay important information to responding deputies.

Armed with that important information as they are driving to the scene, deputies can formulate solid plans that increase deputy and community safety. In many cities this increased information leads to better strategic plans that has resulted in fewer use of force incidents. In some instances partnering an enhanced 9-1-1 system with the DFR can automate deployments resulting in the drone being airborne before our deputies are even dispatched to a call.

Each of these items supports council's goal developing and implementing strategies that more effectively combat crime. As an agency, we've been working our way up to a DFR program for years whether we knew it or not. Over a decade ago, we deployed our first two patrol-led drones stored in the trunk of a patrol vehicle and capable of being launched in the field and monitored by a trained deputy sheriff pilot.

Now, we have upwards of 40 deputies who are trained to meet federal regulations, and we have drones and patrol cars at each one of our patrol stations. They provide a live feed that can be viewed by our real time information center, dispatch, and decision makers during critical incidents. These drones are used after deputies get on scene to directly support operation.

The next phase of our use of drones is to progress toward full DFR capability using a combination of deputies trained as pilots in the field and in our real-time information center to provide our deputies with more information earlier in the call. Our peers at the Thousand Oaks Police Department conducted a series of comparison demos of the top DFR programs last fall and into this spring, and ultimately recognized that the Skydio DFR program stood head and shoulders above its competitors. This drone is US made meeting all federal security and safety requirements. Skydio partners with Axon which is the company we use for body worn cameras, tasers, fleet three in car surveillance systems, and evidence.com which has been securely storing all of our digital evidence for over a decade.

This drone by Skydio has some incredible capabilities with a number of different camera options, a 40-minute flight time and a seven and a half mile range. To put that in perspective Camarillo is about eight and a half miles from the west end to the east end of the city so everything is within reach from a well placed drone this drone is not a hobby drone but rather a purpose built tool that gives us a tremendous amount of visibility to enhance safety Each drone has its own dock that provides a weather resistant home. The dock enables a drone to be airborne within 20 seconds and allows for 24-7 availability. A typical deployment is two docks at each location, enabling the seamless swapping of drones for long term continuous coverage.

The program I briefly detailed aligns perfectly with this council's goal of providing a safe and enriched environment where people can live, work and play. Over the next few weeks we will continue to work on what a DFR program could look like in Camarillo including developing a strong policy that governs use data and privacy finding partners whose buildings provide the perfect location for a Camarillo DFR program And finding partners who can potentially offset our costs, both for equipment and personnel. And obtaining necessary regulatory waivers to fly drones near the airport. I plan to bring all of this back in a comprehensive presentation to this council next month. That concludes my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Questions? Thank you commander

Thank you Mayor. I will move on then to Ms. Wendy Levy, our Human Resources Director to discuss progress on personnel initiatives.

Thank you Carmen and thank you Mayor and Council for the opportunity to share our progress during the past quarter. Over the past quarter, HR has been developing programs and improving processes to help maintain our optimum work environment which will position the city to be an employer of choice. I want to highlight three key employee relations priorities and accomplishments – wellness initiatives, professional development, and personnel process enhancements.

Starting with the wellness initiatives, our focus has been on supporting employee health engagement and overall well-being. We introduced biometric health screenings and hosted health webinars to provide employees with accessible wellness resources and education. We also officially launched our wellness team appropriately titled Be Well which will help promote a stronger culture of wellness across the organization and encourage ongoing employee participation.

Moving on to professional development, we are investing in learning opportunities that help employees grow both personally and professionally. This includes the launch of our Lunch & Learn series which includes a book club designed to provide short practical learning opportunities across the workspace. We also introduced a LinkedIn Learning Pilot Program to expand access to self-paced professional development and skill building resources.

Lastly, under personal process enhancements we focused on improving efficiency, consistency and accessibility within HR operations. We launched a centralized HR SharePoint hub to give employees a one-stop shop location for HR information and resources. We also automated employee evaluation reminders to help improve timeliness and accountability in the review process.

In addition, we continued modernizing job class descriptions to better align with current organizational needs and workforce expectations. Overall, these efforts reflect our continued commitment to employee support, development, and operational improvement throughout the period. This concludes my update, and I'm happy to take any questions.

Questions for Wendy? No?

Thank you. Oh, Mr. Kildee. Again, Wendy, we've come a long ways. With this, I appreciate everything that you're doing. But it's a similar question I had to the commander and I know this is always a work in progress. Is there anything that we could be doing that we're not? And I don't want to put you on the spot because I know it's always a work in progress but From where we were to where we are today, we've made a lot of changes and improvements here. And I'm sure that you'll continue to update us as appropriate time in that. So kind of a question, is there anything that you can see that we need to implement in the future that we either haven't or we're still in discussion with that?

It's a great question Councilmember Kildee, to be honest with you. We are always ideating we want to create an environment where employees are comfortable in the culture wherever they feel included in the culture and so we are always developing programs trainings things of that nature where they are able to grow and thrive and so developing a citywide training plan that will specifically target supervisors, where they can grow in their not only technical skills but in their soft skills. And so that program hopefully we'll get off the ground fairly quickly and then we are also looking at trainings across the city to see where we can really enhance development.

Okay thank you. Thank You Wendy

Thank you, Mayor. This concludes section one of our workshop today. You received a very comprehensive report on January 28th that covered six months and then an additional report summarizing our advancements over the last three months. We spoke about four value areas just now bringing you updates on that verbal update But I open it to you Mayor, members of the City Council to provide if you had any other questions regarding our progress. We want to make sure that we stay aligned with your expectations and so for fiscal year 25-26 in our current progress I opened it up to you mayor for any questions or comments that you'd like to make.

Who would like to go first? Questions for Carmen? Questions? No? Comments?

Comments, I can provide a comment. Go ahead. City Manager Carmen and to the rest of the staff, I think that you have definitely met and exceeded expectations I can tell there was so much work put into just this entire process. Carmen, I know you worked so hard behind the scenes and I'm so appreciative of that. So just super grateful we're here to provide direction but also to receive any feedback from staff as well because you are the experts and we do look up to To move with the operations of the city so just extremely grateful for everything that everyone does here to Improve and make the lives of our residents of Camarillo a better place

Anybody else

mr. Kildee yeah, I'm Carmen and staff and Again, I've been here a while. But we've got some really big capital improvements on the horizon that everybody in this room knows about and I'm encouraging staff along with Those can go out and look for any kind of grant funding or anything other kind of funding that we can use to try to fund these significant projects, but they're very much needed here. I know that the grants and those are having a challenging time right now but I want staff not to be discouraged and the public My fellow colleagues up here, not to be discouraged in this. I've been through this before and a lot of other people have as well It kind of, pardon the pun, but ebbs and flows. And there'll be a time when it does turn around.

But I know the council still is very, very interested in that. And we really want to get these major projects going as quickly as we can because we all know that the longer you wait, the more costly it becomes. So just kind of a little bit of a pep talk here that we understand The sleepless nights and the challenge that we've got, but it's going to be so worth it. So I just encourage you to keep moving forward with this. And that's just one of our goals and objectives. We've got several, but uh, I wanted to bring this up and, uh, and uh, you know, remind everybody there we are going to get where we need to go at some point.

Thank you. Any other comments for Mrs Nichols? Thank you Carmen.

Thank you mayor, thank you council members. For section 2 review of goals and objectives and key values for the section you've been provided a track changes document in redline format and we'll focus on the revisions to the objectives those provisions are mostly made to eliminate redundancy but there are some additions and some other cleanup work as well There were no, there are no recommendations on goals unless you have some recommendations. There are some changes in action strategies and while I won't present slide on the action strategies we are open to questions and comments on current and ongoing action strategies or your input in new action strategies. Essentially everything is open for your input and consideration Goal number one, fiscal management.

Fiscal management is a core City Council priority focused on maintaining sound conservative financial practices that ensure the city's long-term sustainability. This includes diversifying revenue sources improving efficiency through streamlined operations and technology and maintaining the strategic financial plan to guide infrastructure in capital investments. Together these efforts allow the city to responsibly fund major projects reduce financial risk Council.

Keep it up. Go ahead, Mr Tremblay.

Thanks Mayor. Carmen I just want to emphasize the importance that I place on number 326 27 objectives and that's the development and implementation And an update annually on the city's strategic financial plan for planning and financing city infrastructure, including but not limited to facility IT and capital needs. Now we've talked in the past, we certainly have a very robust financial plan relative to the water reclamation plant, but I don't want to forget on a macro overall level, uh, the importance of having that kind of infrastructure or strategic financial plan is something I Okay, lobbied for a couple years ago and we put in here. I would like to at some point in the next few months have a presentation to Council on updating that and what the efforts are on that if the council's agreeable to that.

Thank you Councilmember Tremblay. We have put priority and focus on the water reclamation plant project financial plan as time is of the essence, but certainly an overall city strategic financial plan is in the works and we're happy to bring you updated at our earliest opportunity.

Anything else? Thank you.

So our second goal is community enrichment, which is focused on enhancing the quality of life by creating a safe inclusive and connected community. This goal supports the arts cultural identity community wellness and volunteerism while strengthening partnerships with non-profit organizations that serve our residents. It also emphasizes maintaining safe well cared for neighborhoods through proactive code enforcement and public engagement helping ensure Camarillo remains a welcoming and vibrant place to live So you received an update on our current efforts and productivity. I'm sorry, we added an objective to this item which is item a proposed objective number seven to protect local waterways for public use and by enjoyment by continuing to implement and comply with the requirement of the city's municipal stormwater permits As far as action strategies, we added two action strategies and eliminated what is already implemented in operations.

And that one is the continued expansion of communications including educational topics on observed holidays and other significant dates. Mayor turn it over to you.

Yes sir Mr. City Manager

Thank you, Mayor. We have a member of the community here to speak tonight during public comment if you'd be so inclined. I think this specific goal number two is pertinent to his comments. Mr. Bart Stern is here if you're so inclined to allow him to speak.

I would be so inclined

Good afternoon, Mayor Tennyson and Council and staff. Commander Tennyson. It's a real pleasure for me to speak here in front of all of you. I'm a native Camarillan, lived here for the majority of my life. And for the past 34 years have owned a business based right here in Camarillo. So for those reasons, I volunteered recently to serve on the board of the Pleasant Valley Historical Society I know you're all familiar with the group, and so the reason why I'm here today is to discuss a need for investment in partnership with a historical society from the city. And I'll just give a brief recap. I know I don't have a lot of time.

And in terms of the current status. So for the past five years, PVHS has been working on raising funds and building site improvements and a whole new museum building as you know. The entire project 1.7 million it was originally estimated at 1.3 million. PVHS has raised so far just under 1.1 million there's about 600,000 remaining to finish the project Of that 600,000, 250,000 approximately is related to site improvements involving grading, Asphalt and getting the parking lot open so that the public can access the property and also see The museum and the progress. So I'm here to discuss that portion in request continued investment from this city, so of the 250,000 To open the parking lot, approximately 80,000 is for additional underground utilities.

This is a requirement that came along during the progress of the construction. My understanding is that it's possible that that 80,00 might be optional and might be a consideration for removal from the requirements. The remaining 170,000 is for demolition, surveying, grading and concrete work related to opening the parking lot. So this property, as you know, is not just related to a non-profit. The PVHS leases the land from the city and all of the site work, the improvements to both the land and to the building are the property of the city. They'll revert to the city once the ground lease expires.

And it's also a very strategic I'm going to I'd like Finding a way to help PVHS to get the parking lot open will allow us to hold fundraisers on site in the gardens and to raise the remaining $300,000 that's needed to finish the project. And this PVHS isn't just a place to store old artifacts. It is a museum, but it's also a very important place that the city can use for outreach through community meetings, public education and speakers and outdoor community events.

And most importantly I think is education of our children. My wife and I have had four kids go through Camarillo Public Schools from K-12. feel very connected to this community. And it's important and this is a good conduit for education about our agricultural, cultural and business heritage in the city, water and energy conservation, and especially a record of the people who came here before us and the connection between our children The adults living here now and the people who made us what we are. And this truly is a community I can't help but invoke our city This is a perfect example of the people being the city and a connection between the city government and those people. So I really urge you to consider this additional investment in partnership with Pleasant Valley Historical Society that will allow us to finish the project, and to serve the people in the community including The city council in terms of its goals for community enrichment and to connect to the citizens.

Thank you, Bart. Mr

Tremblay.

Yeah.

Mr Stern thanks. Thanks for coming today and thanks for your presentation. Um, it really resonates with me that this is a city owned property from a community enrichment and engagement standpoint. Uh, what I think I heard you say is there would be the opportunity as well to bring the community in So not only to look at their own roots, but also the potential for meeting.