City Council — April 28, 2026

I call the meeting of April 28, 2026 to order.

Thank you.

Roll call.

council member via senior

That's the cell that we're currently operating in. It is a 91 acres that we have to place trash in a 216 acre site. So a lot of buffer lands around it and things of that nature.

Talk about airspace, what do you mean? What does it mean like how high you can go with the trash? That's exactly right

Mayor. The airspace is the state of California will permit how far and how high you can go up with your waste and they'll generally make it in nature with the hills that are surrounding you so it doesn't stand out right. And so the airspace is the point at which you are at today To the permitted elevation that the state has given you. And so, that's what we have now this if we do more work to compact and more work to maximize our trash as it's coming in and being buried efficiencies in our cover operations. What we're gonna be able to do is we can take that 14 years and presumably make it a 15 or 20 year length just based on the current data that we have not doing anything else. But our board has directed me to instruct our staff to do a feasibility study, to determine if we can expand.

We're currently at that board direction doing that work and that should come back here. We're hopeful by summer it may come back by fall. We are working on that now.

Yes. So kind of a follow-up question, so I noticed you put on there the Chiquita Canyon landfill as well and I sit on one of the water boards for the valley and one of the concerns at that board was that there was I guess leachate that was coming off of that landfill and possibly going into the water table but apparently they've They've taken care of that. Are there similar concerns, or I guess what kind of mitigation have you guys had to do to prevent that kind of thing from happening?

Yeah, that's an excellent question. Leachate is a part of every landfill so if a landfill as things decompose they decompose and create fluids as more rain comes in it increases those fluids those fluids of everything that filters through the trash to the liner is called leachate. So if you're not aware of what that is that's what that is. That leachate for the district it is currently we have a permit approved by the state to truck it to pull it by pump From the bottom of the liner, so we capture it in the liner and then we pull up by a pump. We put it into a water truck that's used only for leachate non-potable water and then we're able to distribute that on the line portions of the cell of trash to keep dust down. So we use it as a dust control measure and we reintroduce it into the landfill.

It actually increases decomposition, it also increases gas when landfill gas methane composition are increased. We then can use that for potential gas to energy project or some other RNG function that we can use that for. And we're looking at those things now. We also though there's so much leachate that is created at Tolland Road Landfill with the latest storms. We've had some big storms That we do have an approved budget by our board to truck out the remaining leachate that we're not able to distribute. And we haul that over to Kettleman, to a hazardous waste site and dispose of it there.

Very welcome.

Thank you. If I could just say a couple of words, thank you. Thank you so much Eric for your presentation really appreciate it and it's so much better than than I trying to explain it to my fellow council members every every couple weeks with the update is on on toll landfills so thank you for this And I just wanted to share with my board that Mr. Zetz has been incredible, he was hired last year and it's a very niche position to be able to have the experience of running a solid waste landfill and so we were really lucky to bring Mr. Zetz on board And he's been great. Staff has been wonderful and particularly didn't really highlight this, but I want to let you know that there's so much work going in to the expansion of time as you can say a lot of data, a lot of research and also even sort of those smaller things that I think we all know about.

There's been deferred maintenance. We're picking up on that. Different tools, and of course working with our Harrison company here. The recycling and the less of those organic waste and the less of the plastics and those that can be recycled, the more time we have in our landfill. So we wanna make sure as council members to remember just to emphasize that as much as we can in our community. And we're hopefully gonna keep with this date on the landfill but Like you said, it's a real serious issue. I'm so glad we're looking at expansion and it will affect our residents. It really will. Right? It's really going to affect Fillmore if we're not able to expand and try to see these years out because we may no longer be council members at that point in time but our families and our communities are here.

So we're working really hard right now to see how much time we can get Thank you so much Eric. Thank you for the time.

Thank thank you again. Thank you

What I will say is...I'm sorry to step in. So during my city manager comments, I've actually spoken with Chief Lalo and he's going to give a short presentation.

All right, awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah that's something I've been following at all and I want to make sure that we're staying on it and I know you're doing a great job on it. Thank you Chief. And then another thing, I attended Earth Day this weekend. It was a good event had a pretty good turnout the weather cooperated didn't rain on us stayed cool our firemen were there city staff was there Boys & Girls Club and other Non-profits were there. It was a good event, so I hope to see it grow next year and have more participation but that's all I have to report on and Give it up to one of my fellow council members That's remember Brody

Yeah the Commission I sit down we're quiet last couple of weeks we did have a very successful porch talk the Wednesday after the last council meeting and Again, we're having porch talk again at my house tomorrow evening for anybody who has an interest in coming and speaking and just talking about And asking questions about what's going on City of Fillmore. You're welcome to join us so And that information is on the social media and if you need additional information like location and phone number You know just feel free to ask me and I'll provide that information to you and then I also wanted to remind everyone that on Thursday, May 21st at 10 a.m., the Peace Officers Memorial Ceremony will be held at the Matera County Government Center and if you've never attended this event before it's It's very touching.

It honors all of the law enforcement officers that have passed away in the county of Ventura, and I've been several times at a fortunate opportunity to work at the government center for several years Councilmember Villasenor? Yes.

All right, thank you. Just a couple of updates. Mr. Zetz did a great presentation on the, I don't want to save my update there on the Ontario Regional Sanitation District. He did a great job. So today actually I attended a training. This is in coordination with speaking something that's on the agenda today regarding Crimson and Pipeline There is an organization, it's sort of a training organization called Paradigm. And today I attended an event called the Coordinated Response Exercise and Chief Corolla was also in attendance along with our firefighter Mr. Cota. So this was really great because it brought together first responders The invitation also went out to elected officials and I'll let you know there's going to be more of these trainings available so I'm going to be in touch actually with VCOG and see if they can spread the word about this and have the invite go out.

And it was really an overview In cases of an emergency, in cases of pipeline bursts, leaks, earthquakes, fires, whatever it may be. Our first responders and are the pipeline operators who in our case, we're talking Crimson's on the agenda and I believe they'll be. We're moving forward. Are they in communication? Are they in communication well, you know is there our OES right our emergency services Is everyone you know basically on the same page about how to get to these you know potential disasters and to mitigate it right away So it was really great You know Thank You chief for being there and for Phil more representing And I think just something that all you know council members elect officials should know You know this could this could happen any time and you know This could happen in our community and are we prepared?

And I'm really glad to say that when the trainer sort of asked multiple questions about, so are you doing this in your county? Are you doing this in your community? Do you have good communication? The answers were all yes, yes, yes. And immediately if there's any kind of issue with a pipeline no matter what may be whether it's crude gas flowing through it, our first responders are absolutely right away So I was very reassuring and it was just great information for me to learn so glad to be there today. And then my second is, I might take a little bit away from Manuel when he does his updates but I just wanted to give a shout out May is right around the corner and it is Mental Health Awareness Month As in the last five years previously, the City of Fillmore and Fillmore Unified School District we are partnering and the Rotary Club.

We're all partnering on a day of health on Saturday May 16th. A day of health, a day of fitness so starting at 730 in the morning, there's going to be the Rotary Club 5K-10K. John, I know you probably was going to make an announcement about this and so there's a lot of information out there about how to sign up or just say it really briefly. You can register at, this is for an individual or for a group, a lot of families do it. They do an honor of someone, a memory of someone also.

The website is runsignup.com And you put Fillmore in the search bar, and then it'll come up. And it's the Rotary Club 5K, 10K run or walk. I registered I will probably be a walker and the 5K and that's all great. Then right after that the Day of Health continues and it is our annual health and wellness resource fair. So this is gonna be on the front lawn of the Fillmore Unified Administrative Building there at 627 Sespe Avenue right there on Sespe And near the corner of A Street and every year it's grown. We started off here in front of City Hall with maybe a handful of vendors, a couple of tables and we had 40 vendors I think last year. And you know we're going to have our public safety there, our sheriffs, our fire department will bring out the safety trailer for the kids Health screenings, vision screenings, diabetes screenings.

All these different community groups, things for senior services. Fillmore Unified will be there with all of the services they provide for students as well as their wellness centers. Ventura County Public Health, Behavioral Health and so many other non-profits just it's a one stop shop and it's one time a year. So I really encourage everyone to be there. And I'm just going to say a couple words in Spanish um I forgot to mention in English we have a petting zoo, a jolly jump for the kids.

food, music, DJ it's going to be a good celebration too.

So this month on the 22nd, I attended the second annual Fair Housing Forum here in Ventura. It was at the museum. It was really nice. I learned a lot. It was hosted by Ventura County Coastal Association. Learned a lot about the history and fair housing here in the county. And there were some workshops there, too. There was about three workshops there. I attended two of them and one of them that I attended was Fair Housing versus Tenant Protection so it's really good on talking about what are some rights for tenants and some laws has changed recently as well. And another one that I attended Um, on the accommodation and disability rights. So we talked a little bit about some of the rights that people that have disabilities and what does that look like?

And something that I found very interesting as well was that It wasn't just the rights for the humans, but also for pets. So like service animals and emotional animals and what does that look like for everyone? And then on the 23rd of this month I attended the Economic Development Collaborative meeting. Not too much to share. The only thing I would like to share is there's going to be an event on Tuesday, May 5th. It's going to be Cinco de Mayo and this is going to be from 10 a.m. to 130 p.m., and it's going to be hosted by the Port of Huaynimi and this is going to be the annual World Trade Month event so spotlight on exports. So there's gonna be great stuff happening on that parade you know a lot of festivities in there so there is an RSVP that you can find on the website but I guess that's it for me

So my report will be very short this time. I will just add a little bit about the Rotary 5K, 10K run happening on May 16th. Last year we had a record year, we had over 300 runners and we're looking to surpass that this year so if you plan on signing up please sign up soon because well, we'll take as many as we can but the earlier you sign up the better. That's it for me. We did not have a meeting this last month for the former Piru Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency. It was canceled and pushed off to May, so that's it for me.

Thank you. Moving on to number eight, Consent Calendar.

Okay,

so moved. I've got a motion. Can I get a second?

I'll second.

Okay. Motion, second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. And now moving on to number nine, new business. Nine a continuation of a public hearing ordinance number 26-994 granting a non-exclusive franchise to Crimson California Pipeline LP to construct erect and maintain operate repair renew and change the size of an abandoned in place and remove certain pipeline for the transmission collection transportation and distribution of oil petroleum gas gasoline and water or other hydrocarbons

Thank you Mayor, I'm presenting this item and it is finally actually ready to go to the Council. After the Council adopted the resolution of intention in March we had planned a couple meetings ago to bring this forward to Council but then Crimson started making some changes to the ordinance and then as we looked into it a few applicable laws had changed so it was good that we Took more time and updated some of the things that Council Member Villaseñor was talking about with the obligations on the franchisee to make sure that the city is protected in case of an emergency, and the protocols for what occurs if something is noticed to be leaking or there's a fire or earthquake or something like that. So those parts of the ordinance were updated to be consistent with new federal laws.

Otherwise, the ordinance is very straightforward. It's similar to the one that the council approved last year also for Crimson that had also expired. The fees are set by state law. A lot of what's in the ordinance is regulated by state law and then a little bit by federal law. So it's a long document, but it's very straightforward on what the rights and obligations are. And per the finance department they're up to date on paying their fees.

If you have any questions please let me know. You're welcome.

Discussion?

Questions?

Well if there's none I'd like to entertain a motion please. At this point I'll open the public hearing And there's no one here. So can we close it? Okay, I'll close this since there's nobody here for the public hearing. I'll now close the public hearing and entertain a motion.

So moved.

Okay, we got a motion. Is there a second? Second. A motion and a second. Do we have to read the ordinance or not?

Just

title of the ordinance.

So I'm going to read the motion here. This ordinance of the City Council of the city of Fillmore, California granting a non-exclusive franchise to Crimson California Pipeline LP to construct, erect, maintain, operate, repair or renew, change the size of and remove certain pipeline for the transmission, collection, transportation and distribution of oil, gas and water for other hydrocarbons.

Thank

you. Moving on to item number 9B. Approval to extend the license agreement with Geisinger Winery for private use of the public right-of-way.

Good evening Mr. Mayor and City Council. The item before you is to consider the approval of a second amendment to extend the existing license agreement with Geiser Winery for the private use of a portion of the public right-of way along Santa Clara Street The agreement allows the winery to maintain rare grape vines that were originally planted on city property in 2017 without prior consent of the City.

To address this situation, the City initially entered into a License Agreement in June of 2017 permitting continued use of the land under defined terms and conditions. including full maintenance responsibility by the property owner. The agreement has been subsequently extended multiple times, most recently through June 14th of 2026 this year. The proposed amendment would extend the agreement for an additional five years from June 15, 2026 through June 14, 2031.

The license area remains limited to a defined section along the fence adjacent to the City Hall. The agreement also includes a provision allowing either party to terminate the arrangement with at least 10 business days written notice. There's no fiscal impact associated with this agreement, and it does not directly align with any specific City Council goals or core values.

Staff is recommending approval of the extension to formalize the continued use of the public right-of-way while maintaining clear terms for the management and oversight. That concludes my report. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you, any questions?

Yeah, has there been any controversy at all during the almost 10 years that this has been in place?

Once. One of the patrons of the winery backed up and hit the fence. And exactly how to handle the insurance became into question. The agreement states that the winery is responsible for all damages So it really should have been us kicking back the claim on city property and kicking it over to the winery to conduct the repairs, collect the responsible parties insurance. And they reported it. It wasn't like they were trying to get away with something but we ended up Taking in the insurance and I don't recall the exact situation or what transpired, but the winery did not want to be a part of it. And they really should have been the one that handled the repair.

But that was the only thing. It was minor, but we know how to deal with it in the future.

Okay so it's clear in the future if that happens again we know who's doing what to whom? They are

responsible. Okay

great. Thank you.

Joe I'm just wondering considering...it seems like such a non-issue is this something that we can handle at the city level as opposed to becoming

an agenda

item?

That's a question for our city attorney.

We have authority for the city manager to accept conveyances to the city, but we don't have the opposite. But we could give her that, the city manager that authority to sign minor property conveyances like this? I would

think so. We would have only had two agenda items to discuss. No, it does seem like such a minor issue that...

Right.

And are there really grapes out there now?

I haven't seen

any. Probably not until the fall, I would think.

Yeah,

I mean usually fall is harvest time for grapes

right? I don't know we've got a lot of grapes in our backyard. Not ready to eat yet but a lot growing in it. Okay thank you

If I could just make one comment. I mean, I think it's...I've seen those grapes out there. I think it's beautiful. I wouldn't be opposed to seeing more of that. I don't know if that would cause legal issues but definitely I think they add something to the character of that area.

Can I entertain a motion in this case?

Okay, I'll move that the City Council approve the extension of the License Agreement with Geisinger Winery for the private use of the public right-of-way.

We got a motion, is there a second? Second. Okay, motion and second all in favor? Aye. Thank you. Motion passes unanimously, thank you.

Thank you Mayor Mendez and City Council good evening good to see you all so pavement Yay, right? So I'll walk you through. You have the full staff report before you. Just ask if you have any questions. So the project recommendation is to adopt the plan specs and cost estimate and authorize us to advertise for construction bids. So where we are right now is we've got it designed. We want to get it out to bid. We need your help to do that, right.

So we this project is kind of doubled in size of our normal project because the 2425 preservation project kind of came down the wire, trying to secure $300,000 of the what we call Chris a non step funds which is the coronavirus response and relief act. They were originally federal funds that was $300,000 that would be very expensive for us to spend because we'd have to go through all the federal documentation and it follows the project all the way through. And it's like, well give you $300,000 but whatever you spend it on it's going to cost you 40% more. You know what I'm like? Well that's not helpful. So we had told VCTC it's not really enough money for Fillmore to engage Can you make it local?

So they did transfer it into local funding. So the good news is that the CRRSA is non-STIP, meaning Non Surface Transportation Program. So we've got $300,000 from that plus $300,000 of local funds to make a $600,000 slurry. But by the time we got that agreement in place, it was the end of the fiscal year and so I just combined it to this fiscal year And then we normally bid it out more like January February but we've been.

Playing with Director Belomo and adding parking lots, and different things, and getting other grants spent. And we've kind of got a lot in the grocery bag tonight so I'll go through it with you one at a step. But basically we're doing a preservation project which is a separate bid from the rehabilitation project. And so the rehabilitation project is going to include like grinding overlay and something I call ARAM, which is the Asphalt Rubber Aggregate Membrane, which is like a chip seal with rubberized sticky stuff.

And then the slurry seal streets that are in better condition, that just need a new emulsion surface. But also some of those streets where I put down the asphalt aggregate membrane, the A-RAM will slurry on top of the chip seal to make what's called a cape seal. So we've got a number of different things going on. But preservation and rehabilitation is the name of the game, so your overlay is your rehabilitation, your slurry seal and cape seal is your preservation. We've also got concrete repairs like upgrading curb ramps to be current ADA accessibility and other ADA upgrades using our DAP tracker and making some progress every time we do paving.

Upgrade for accessibility and then we have variety of streets all over the city and several city parking lots. So here's the map. The green is slurry or Cape. And the red is grinding overlay. And so you'll see basically all of the neighborhoods south of the 126 from east of C Street over to Clearwood on this side of Pole Creek, if I haven't done them recently we're going to do them now and they're either going to be cape or slurry because most of those streets are in pretty good condition.

And then north of the freeway, we've got that first neighborhood which is like Waterford Lane and those streets in there. Those need to be ground and paved. They're pretty far along kind of like Village Square was. And so we're going to bring those up to par. And then on that north side, that is Shields Park parking lot which we're overlaying. And we're going to do a little repair on B Street where it meets the freeway. That's that little tiny red dot in the middle.

Where Sonic is going on Orange Grove Avenue, Sonic is gonna pave that southern part from their alley down to the freeway and I'm gonna pay from the alley north. So all of Orange Grove will be buttoned up when Sonic opens which will be lovely. And then you can see the green parking lots on the parking lot behind the police station and the alley on Main Street. That's that big green box is that parking lot And then the downtown parking lot that's behind central. That's going to be slurry sealed and then our parking lot right here off Santa Clara Street, that's going to be slurry sealed and then as an adult we have on Santa Clara Street were doing a separate project which will be bringing forward next month for Installing a replacement water line in Santa Clara Street, replacing that four or six inch line with a new eight inch line that comes all the way down.

And then this project will have an additive alternative to grind and pave Santa Clara Street Depending on pricing, we're probably going to bid it with the Santa Clara Street waterline replacement as well and then decide which is the better cost. So those will both be out-to-bid kind of at the same time and open right after each other so that's another thing that we're trying to do. Bidding the slurry project separate from the street project leverages more cost effectiveness Paving contractor that would be the prime, just adding 12 to 15% on top of a slurry sub that he's going to hire. And it also keeps the CRRSA non-STIP project in the same scope that I applied for when I went after that money. It was a $600,000 slurry project. So that's the work.

Sure. Going back

too, what's the little red sliver on the east side where all the green is?

It's another pothole repair. Oh, that's the bridge. I didn't mention it. You're right. So the green bridges when you go into Mountain View, there's a couple of potholes in the decorative PCC concrete. We're going to fix those with this project. Good question. Thanks for asking. I missed that one. And there's another little street repair out here on Santa Clara Street. One more question since then. Sure.

The bridge?

So when cars are crossing the 126, Oh, they're using that lane to get around.

Hey Lalo, do you hear that? We can coordinate. Thank you for bringing that up we'll take a look at it. We can see whether or not it could be a stripy but when there's a left turn cue I could see sometimes people get impatient and I don't know if we can structurally but we can talk about that

I don't want to get off topic here, but just on ditto exactly what our mayor said. And I go through that intersection very frequently and there have been some very close calls because people don't want to wait in the left-hand turn lane to go straight across and they're making that right hand, and they're in the right hand turn lane only, but they shoot across.

Thank you.

OK, so project structure. The spec number is 2403 and I split it into A for the rehabilitation project and B for the preservation projects. So like I say they're two separate bids. The one thing I wanted to mention on the rehabilitation which is the overlay in all of the concrete work We're going to have an additive alternate bid for Santa Clara Street, like I mentioned. But also right now the draft that's on your staff report, I only have a schedule A and then the adult. I think I'm going to pull the ADA stalls that are to be built behind the city hall in the parking lot and put them as a separate bid schedule B. And then structure the bid where the base bid for selection of the low bid will be A plus B But on award will reserve the right to award a as the base bid.

And then you could either do A plus B plus adult or just A, or any combination thereof. But the base bid would be the low bidder for bid A plus bid B and then we can decide once we have all the prices on the next conversation we have about this on the consideration of award what we want to actually award. So I'll be making that change And getting it approved by the city attorney before we advertise. We'll be adding a separate bid schedule for the City Hall stalls at which I forgot to mention on the map, but I've got a slide coming so and then the slurry seal is really straightforward It's just all slurry seal But some of the streets being slurry sealed have recently received the ARAM and it will be a cape seal once the slurries put down in other streets are just slurry so The fiscal impact The estimated cost of the whole project is a little over $2.2 million.

We're using that $300,000 in CRRSA. We're also using over $900,000 of our SB1 funding which is lovely that it's eligible for local streets. I love that we have the SB1 funding. It's really helped us catch up on our streets and a little over a million dollars from our VCTC TDA Article 8A funding which is good to get that spent as well. It has been on the books for a minute and then the City Hall stalls We have an old Article III grant from TDA to install some ADA stalls at the City Hall, but we've been going back and forth on exactly how to do it. The way that it was scoped, it was severely underfunded, but they gave us the $34,000 several years ago, and we never built the project, and now they're like give the money back or build the project?