City Council — June 16, 2026

Hi, good evening everyone. Just want to call the meeting to order for the Oxnard City Council for Tuesday June 16th, 2026. Madam Clerk, may we have the roll call and posting of the agenda please?

The agenda for this meeting was posted in the kiosk at City Hall, the Oxford Public Library, the city administrative offices and on the city's website on Thursday June 4th. And the amended agenda on Wednesday June 10th. Thank you.

Thank you. Prior to closed session we will take public comments Mr. Fisher, can you please provide a statement prior to closed session?

Thank You Mayor the City Council will recess to a closed session pursuant to government code section 54956.9 subdivision D1 To confer with its attorneys the matter being discussed is Brodersen versus City of Oxnard

Madam Clerk, do we have any speakers for this item?

Excuse me. Mayor Pro Tem and council members, we do not have any public speakers in person or virtually for closed session. Thank you.

Thank You madam clerk the City Council will now recess to a closed session and at 530 We will begin with an appointment item. Thank you The City Council has just emerged from closed session, and at this time I will ask our city attorney Mr. Fisher for any announcements to make.

Thank you Mayor there are no reports of action out of closed session this evening.

Thank You Mr. Fisher

Pro tem council members Michael wolf director of public works You've heard me talk in the past about our sources of water that we have for our potable water system We have our own groundwater that we produce and we have groundwater that we purchase from United and we have a third regional partner which is kayakus they are state water project State Water Project provider And they're here tonight to talk about their current rates and future rates. So I'll have the general manager come up, introduce herself and go into the presentation.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem, Council Members. Thanks for having us tonight. My name is Christine McCaffrey. I'm the General Manager at Cuyahoga's Municipal Water District. I'll be doing a portion of the presentation here this evening. Also participating in the presentation will be Dan Smith, our Manager of Finance. He's going to do all the parts with a lot of numbers and then I'm also joined by Director Jackie McMillan, Director Thiebaud Robert who are Oxnard's elected representatives on our five-member board Directors so if we could there we go. Thank you.

Go ahead and get started as Michael indicated we're going to talk a little bit about rates. So let's see where does it want me to point to advance. It buzzed a little I don't know if that means something About it being happy or unhappy as a device. Oh OK that seems like a OK there we go get the technical difficulties sorted out here and then we'll go ahead and get started Just tell me when it's OK to go ahead and click.

That sounded like something happening. All right, here we go. So as Michael mentioned, the way the water flows to you from Cayagas in addition to the other sources that you receive from local groundwater and United Water Conservation District is it starts up in the northern Sierra Mountains in the Feather River watershed, flows through Lake Oroville and the delta down the California aqueduct That's all part of the state water project operated by California Department of Water Resources.

They sell that water to the Metropolitan Water District, that's actually the largest wholesaler in the country serving 19 million people. We're at the very northern most part of their service area goes all the way down to the Mexican border serving Ventura, LA, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange and San Diego counties. So there's Cayagas, we're a wholesaler. And then of course you Oxnard are your own retail water provider and you actually serve the residents and businesses of Oxnard.

What's been driving rates are a lot of issues that may be likely very familiar to you from operating your own water system is of course the need to invest in aging infrastructure. At this point Metropolitan System is getting up on 100 years old. Ours is approaching Typically our infrastructure is about 50 to 60 years old at this point. We're being constrained on all of the major imported water supplies, State Water Project has had some really wet years of late there were some very dry years as you may recall.

Additionally, the Colorado River while we don't directly receive water from the Colorado River. A lot of Southern California does within the metropolitan service area and so the challenges there directly affect us to the extent that less water is available on the Colorado River, there's much more pressure on the state water project and the Colorado river is frankly in crisis at this point after an extended dry period All of the Colorado River states fighting over that water right now, trying to come to some sort of agreement because there simply isn't enough water to go around.

Metropolitan is investing in a potable reuse project called Pure Water Southern California and as you know, investing in water infrastructure's an expensive undertaking, as well as investing in operational flexibility that is critical to prevent the issues we had in 21 and 22 When we had to go down to one day a week watering because Metropolitan could not deliver water to us, even though they physically had it in storage. Those investments would prevent what happened five years ago from happening again today so I think they're worthwhile investments but they do cost some money.

And once again, I think these are issues that are likely familiar to you as you operate a water utility is future demands have flattened. In fact, demands have gone down. Caiegas for example used to serve up to 130,000 acre feet a year and this year will probably be at about 75,000. The same amount of infrastructure delivering a lot less water. As well as metropolitans made some changes in how they manage their finances in terms of reserve policies and assumptions about how much water they're going to sell.

And then they're also struggling once again with an issue all of us in water are facing, how much of those charges go on fixed costs? And how much of them go on variable costs on the you know each unit of water purchased by a customer? So I'm going to turn it over to Dan to talk a little bit about the rate components on Metropolitan's portion of the rate.

Good evening, Council Members. So to talk about Metropolitan's rate so there is two components to their rate. There is a variable rate or a volumetric rate and with that there's two portions. There's the untreated water which we cannot get the untreated. We can only get treated water from Metropolitan at this time so we have to pay the treated water surcharge Where they get it to the drinking level that we see and serve the public today.

They also currently are pretty familiar with the two fixed charges they have, which is the readiness to serve charge. And this is kind of the definition that they provide to us as to what that covers. The capital costs of their system capacity that is on standby. That system, that charge is allocated to us based on a 10 year rolling average of our demands. So we come up with a full dollar amount that they need and they figure out how much we get by looking at the average of ten years.

Then they also have a capacity charge, which recovers the cost of the assets that are providing the peak capacity. So during the summertime specifically when everybody peaks off Metropolitan, that's when we take the most water and they base that, they allocate that to us based on the peak day between May 1st and September 30th. We're all on? Yeah, I did. So what Metropolitan adopted for 2027 rates was what they call the 6.2% increase for both 27 and 28 and I state it like that because that's their overall increase that they're looking at which includes both the variable and the fixed rates What we're looking at is the treated water rate is going to decrease by 7% because they're actually creating a new fixed charge, which we're going to talk about on the next slide.

But in order to create that new charged fixed charge, they're actually reducing their variable charge so we're gonna see an increase in the variable but there's an increase to us on the fixed charge side The readiness to serve charge, we're seeing some very high increases in the last five years. This next one is a 23% increase up to 12.2. That's just Caius' portion million dollars that we have to allocate out to our purveyors.

The capacity charges also increasing by 24%, but it's only $3 million in 2027 to us from Metropolitan. Both those charges have been increasing double digits 10 1112% for four to five years, and we can definitely see a big increase in that. But overall, that 6.2% when we take all these into account is only a 4.6% increase in 27 to Cayugas, and we're looking at a six percent in 2028. Those rates have been adopted. That's set. They've adopted these. We know where we're going to be going in the next two years from Metropolitan.

Kind of wrapping up the metropolitan portion of this presentation, I do want to point out that these rates, the initially proposed rates were substantially higher than what was ultimately adopted. And in addition, this new treated water fixed charge is actually a really good thing for Cayagas and for our retailers The way the rate was previously structured, it really for agencies like Cayagas that take treated water all the time we were paying the costs of agencies who took it less frequently and this helps more fairly allocate the costs to the beneficiaries. So this is overall a good thing. It's something Cayagas frankly has been advocating for over a decade and we were finally able to work with our fellow member agencies to make it a reality so a really success story there.

Moving on to the rate drivers for Cayagas, of course the biggest driver is metropolitan rates you know we're buying metropolitan water delivering it to you and our other 18 retailers that 75% is just straight pass-through that's what our our biggest cost is by far but additionally we are also investing in aging infrastructure we have 130 miles of large diameter pipeline ranging from 24 inches to 78 inches as well as pump stations, reservoirs other facilities that are critical to maintain water supply reliability and they need some attention and improvements at this point in their lifespan.

Another big factor is the new model for resilience. This is the Water Resources Implementation Strategy I came to the City Council to speak about about a year ago now Investing in projects that will prevent what happened in 21 and 22, in terms of restrictions from happening should we face similar circumstances again. And then similar financial factors as I spoke about for Metropolitan are as I mentioned our demands have diminished substantially over the last 15 years and while it's a great success story from a conservation standpoint that presents a challenge from a financial standpoint We're also trying to find that right balance of fixed costs and fixed revenue. And then we face all the same increasing external cost pressures that Metropolitan faces, that you face in terms of construction costs and fuel costs which have all increased very substantially and continue to do so.

Turning it back over to Dan for the detail on the rates.

I'll be doing this. I'll be talking for a little while now As we get into this, I'm going to start running through a lot of numbers and if you need to stop me and slow me down please do so. First of all the CAIGAS rate. So we have a portion that is also variable rate that we put on top of Metropolitans and it's based on the acre feet that you purchase. That's how it's getting charged and then like I've talked about the readiness to serve charge which is from Metropolitan. We treat as a pass-through. It just goes straight off onto the purveyors including Oxnard And we divide that right now, we're allocating it on a 10 year rolling average just like we get it from Metropolitan. So we just kind of mirrored their allocation system.

The capacity charge, we also have a capacity charge on top of Metropolitan's. It's a little bit different than what Metropolitan does. Our capacity charges based on the infrastructure that we need in order to meet demands when we don't have water for Metropolitan. So we have several assets out there including Lake Bard, the water treatment plant that is there. The well fill that we have that we store water in all of those assets are used to make sure that we can provide water when we're no longer on met and we allocate the cost of those to the purveyors, including Oxnard so that we recoup the cost of those assets.

We base our peak demand a little bit different. We did break away from Metropolitan on this. We do it on the peak week but it's still through that May 1st through September 30th timeline because that's when we do see our peaking and we can't peak all the way into September. May not so much but definitely into September when it's really the hottest months So overall when we take both metrics... Sir, can we just take a quick question from Councillor

McArdle?

Go ahead.

Thank you. I appreciate the presentation. If Metropolitan cut you off and we would rely on BARD and your ability to pump water, would you have enough water to get it to the end of the line Oxnard? And if you do how long would you have that?

Well it's going to really depend on what time of year but yes we have enough water in Lake BARD and the well fill to make it for an extended period of time. Minimum three months, depending on what we can do out of the well field. Lake Bard 10,500 acre feet that doesn't last us as long but we've got quite a bit of water out in the well field and it's going to be based on how much we can pump. But conservation is probably going to be involved if we're cut off for an extended period of time.

Thank you.

Was that good? I didn't know you were standing behind me sorry. So, the variable rate for 2027. We're proposing the Casitas rate of $2,118 an acre foot which is a 2.9% increase on that variable rate so it's much smaller and has a lot to do with what Metropolitan's done and the way they're reallocating some of their variable costs onto the fixed cost. We have a readiness to serve charge, that $12.2 million. Of course we're going to just allocate it out to the purveyors and the capacity charge is increasing by 16.8% to $8 million. 3 million's METS, 5 million is CAIEGAS and that is again done by the peak week.

I'm gonna kind of show you...we talked about the flattening of the water as well as the big decrease. You can see that in 2021 we were selling almost 95,000 acre-feet of water And then when the drought hit in 23, we were down to 60,000 acre feet which put a lot of financial pressure on us. We were able to do it on our end without doing large increases. We used reserves. We tried to smooth our rates as much as possible to get us through that time period.

As it slowly came up, our big year last year was at 76,000. We budgeted 75 this year and we are on pace to hit that exactly So I'm feeling pretty good about that. And then going forward, we're looking at 73,500 acre feet in water sales from here on out just to keep it conservative if something changes of course we can update that but we don't see it going back to those levels of 95,000 acre feet. Conservation is the way of life in California and so that's something that's gonna be driving what our water sales are going forward So here's the numbers part that I was talking about. You can kind of see Metropolitan's overall decrease of 7.1%. That includes that 28% decrease in the treated water surcharge, however then you can see that our variable rate is going to go up 31%, and I'm pointing this out because this is an important little thing to keep in mind, that really we're moving some of that treated water from Metropolitan's charge into our charge because we still got to collect the money That Metropolitan is now charging us as a fixed charge, which is up to $10 million this year.

So it's significant when we do all of the charges together you can see that overall in 2027 down at the bottom there the combined all-in rate. We're looking at roughly a 5% increase in the overall rate to the purveyors now each purveyor is different including Oxnard so I have I'll get to it. I've actually pulled Oxnard out to kind of give you what we're looking at as far as Oxnard goes. I've done a five-year analysis, I always do a five year long range plan and this is what the tiered rates are looking like so you can see the tiered rates going forward are gonna be minimalist 2.3 up to the 4.5% increases so it's not too bad overall Really the thing is the fixed charges are going up, which is really where some of the costs are. And so the big number that we really want to take away is actually this all-in percentages to kind of see where we're gonna be when we get done.

Now this isn't an average. This is not going to be directly affecting Oxnard. We'll get to Oxnard. It's a little bit how you guys operate your system, what your sales are gonna be affects what your percentage is gonna be. But overall, we're looking at and this is based on MET's 10-year plan as well. So I've taken what their estimates are and put it into this. We're looking at the fives to sixes percent increases over the next five years.

There are some big increases coming on the readiness to serve in capacity charges Metropolitan does do some of these big projects that they are anticipating So looking at the City of Oxnard and I'm saying their estimated rates that we're looking like for 2027. Of course, the 2.9% on the variable rate, that's pretty much done. That's not going to change but when we start getting the readiness to serve this is an estimate right now because it's a 10-year rolling average. This fiscal year hasn't quite ended.

I also did this in April so I didn't have The April or May numbers, Oxnard is selling a lot more water than I anticipated. But based on that we're looking at a 22% increase in the amount that you've been you're going to be paying for the readiness to serve charge and the capacity charge is also going up significantly for Oxnard about 39%. And there's two factors to that one is that the rate is going up because that amount from Metropolitan went up As well as Kyegis, but it also has to do with the Oxnard CFS that happened between the two years. That number is a solid number that is not going to change. That's what's gonna be charged in 27.

You took more water last year at a certain time that caused your CFS for that peak week to increase significantly which is gonna increase the amount that you owe. So overall, the Oxnard all-in rate and I base it on 8000 acre feet. And I did that because the three previous fiscal years you were basically selling or buying from us about 7500 acre feet to close to 8000.

This year you're already at getting probably 10,000 acre feet so you're selling a lot more this year which actually would lower that percentage But based on 8,000 acre feet you're looking at an overall increase of 5.6% which is a little bit higher than the five percent that I had showed you earlier from our overall calculation for the entire district as a whole.

So our next steps for the 2027 water rates we hold our public hearing on July 1st so it's not tomorrow's meeting it's the meeting after that at which time the board will then consider Adopting the 2027 water rates. We are also currently working on a cost of service study to kind of go over this we talked about that treated water charge that Metropolitan now has a fixed charge. So Kyegis is always just passed all of the water fixed charges through to our purveyors, so we're going to come up with an allocation that does that as well.

Talking with all the preparers, including Oxnard staff as to what is the best way to do it. And so we're developing that and putting that into the cost of service study. With that, I'm going to turn it back over to Christine to finish this up.

Wrap it up. Thus ends the very detailed numbers portion of this presentation. Just want to wrap up talking about some of the things that Cayagas is focused on, some of the efforts that money is going towards. We are pursuing an all-of-the-above approach to improving water supply reliability and resilience for our customers. And that includes partnering with Oxnard and others where that makes sense to meet the needs of our region.

We're currently working on a study to optimize brackish groundwater desalting in the Upper Cayugus Creek watershed. That's looking at about six different brackish groundwater desalter proposals that have been considered in that area over the years, Moore Park, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks. And we're working with eight of our retail water providers as well as the Fox Canyon Groundwater Management Agency to do a comprehensive study and determine what makes the most sense from perspective of cost, yield, ability to move the water and all of the various benefits of those projects.

We're putting together a regional exchange program that would allow our purveyors to invest in projects with each other and deliver that water to each other via our system, either by physically delivering water into our system or by doing paper exchanges. Which is going to create a lot of opportunities for local investment and creative partnerships amongst retail providers who are differently positioned in terms of their access to local supplies.

We're working on some groundwater banking. Obviously, you know there's an adjudication going on in this particular basin that makes things a little challenging but that is something we continue to explore as well as looking outside the region for groundwater banking. We continue to advocate for improved access to metropolitan supplies. They have made some significant investments, but they continue to need to make more and we continue to advocate for Cayagas and all of our retail water providers to ensure that we have the same level of reliability and resilience as all the other member agencies do.

And of course, our ongoing support for water use efficiency including the non-functional turf replacement mandates that are coming into place over the next couple of years and the implementation of the conservation as a California way of life framework. So I appreciate your time and attention this evening. I'm happy to take questions as is Dan if the council has any and thank you.

Thank you very much. Are there any questions or comments? Council Member Starr go ahead.

I was curious, does Metropolitan always go through an intermediary to deal with a city or in some cases does it go directly to the city?

When you say deal, oh you mean in terms of are some member agencies individual cities? It varies. Some of the older ones are what happened with Metropolitan is like the city some of the older cities like Pasadena, Burbank, Glendale, Anaheim they're all directly member agencies but as Metropolitan grew they realized it was impractical to have each individual city join as a member agency so the later regions that became part of Metropolitan had to do so through a wholesaler. So here in Ventura County that's us I guess what I'm trying to think through is there seems like there's a lot of intermediaries between the state and ultimately the final customer.

And I'm just trying to better understand the value propositions that are there. Just kind of wondering in my head, why couldn't the state just go directly charge each of the cities for

their... Oh, why couldn't the State Department of Water Resources deliver? What? I think once again it just becomes unmanageable with the number of entities they would have to coordinate with. Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you Council Member Sarnik. Council Member Parlo, go ahead.

Thank you for the presentation. At one of the first slides, you mentioned some of the infrastructure is 50 to 60 years old. We have an issue in the city with some infrastructures 50 years old and we're looking at a life expectancy of 50 years. What's the life expectancy on your infrastructure that's 50 to 60 years old?

Well, it does depend on the infrastructure both what it is and how well it's been maintained and what conditions it's operating in. For our pump stations we've generally found that at 50 years or less they need a pretty significant investment. The electrical systems are outdated, the mechanical parts you know you can't get parts for them anymore. The pipelines we have generally found while from a finance perspective I think we use 50 years for pipelines I'm confident that most of our pipelines have a lot more life left in them. We do proactive inspection to identify areas of concern such as corrosion so we can address those proactively rather than replacing them wholesale, but it does depend on the material of the pipe whether there was a cathodic protection system what kind of conditions you're operating in.

I suspect here you're challenged by shallow groundwater in some locations

Specifically for the City of Oxnard delivering water to the City of Oxnard, cathodic protection for the pipelines? Do you give a report so the city would know what state of condition of cathodic protection is and the life expectancy of the lines. I know it sounds selfish to be asking about Oxnard. That's

a

hat I'm wearing today.

Well, I mean, to be fair you're largely at the end of the pipe so you're affected by the health of pretty much everything upstream of you. We are...I would say that we're in very good shape there. Not some of our pipelines have cathodic protection on them and some of them don't. It really depends on the conditions whether that's warranted or not But we are very proactive in inspecting particularly the larger pipes, the pre-stressed concrete cylinder pipes but we've also... We're now using a technology called it's a pipe ball. I know our manager of engineering is here.

Pipe diver thank you that actually we flow through the pipe and it essentially I'm going to oversimplify even though I'm an engineer. It looks for whether there's any areas of concern so that we can proactively investigate and address those

Is there an ongoing pipe replacement plan in your organization?

At this point, the need for one hasn't been identified. We're doing the pipe diver to inspect everything and if we identify areas of concern, we will but at this point things have generally been in excellent shape.

Thank you very much.

Any other questions or comments? Go ahead Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you, thank you for the presentation to both of you just quick question did I hear you say that some of the pipes are 78 inch diameter because I think the monitors in this room were 70 or 75 inches so that's still not the size of those pipes was massive size there so Thank you for the info on that. Hope folks can think about just a scale of how much water we're talking here and how much is flowing through this entire infrastructure.

Yeah, it means your public works director could walk through them without with plenty of headroom to clearance and he wouldn't have to bend over at all. We actually have one of them on our property that's we've taken out because it needed to be replaced. And so if anyone ever wants to come for a tour of our facility, you can see what a 78 inch pipe is like in real life and walk through it.

Great, thank you. And thank you the scale of Mr. Wolf there was actually what really hit it home for me so thank you.

Madam Clerk are there any public speakers on this item?

I'm sorry mayor and council members there are no requests to speak for the appointment item. Thank you in person or virtually. Thank you

Thank you. If there are no speakers and other comments or questions, thank you very much for your comprehensive presentation. This is only a receiving file and no action is required. Thank you again.

Thank you for the staff and directors that attended. Thank you.

Councilwoman Commissioner Basuah. The agenda for this meeting was posted in the kiosk at City Hall, the Oxnard Public Library, the city administrative offices and on the city's website on Thursday June 4th. And the amended agenda on Wednesday June 10th. I also have an announcement to read Pursuant to Government Code Section 54952.3, each member of the Housing Board of Commissioners present will receive $50 pay for convening this meeting with the exception of Commissioner Starr who has declined to receive compensation. Thank you.

Thank

you Madam Clerk.

Yes, I know that a lot of members of the community respect And loved Lupe Anguiano. She was a retired nun who was all about advocating for our community, social justice, environmental justice, women's rights and so much more. So she retired peacefully after giving her entire life to community. I know that Council Member Starr wanted to make sure that we highlight Lupe Anguiano and I believe Council Member Peralta also wanted to do a moment of silence for another individual but Lupe was quite the gem here in Oxnard and I know touched the lives

She was one of the founding members of the National Women's Political Caucus. Go ahead, Mr. Perrello regarding I think the public works person?

I'd just like to say Ms. Equiano used to attend council meetings religiously, just to give her opinion. A former employee for the Public Works Department in the City of Oxnard, Robert Hearn passed away. He had been involved in several projects but I got to know him from the levee projects at CR3 and In the past few years, he lost a child and he lost his wife. Recently, he just passed away. He's lost his family.

Thank you. And I see that Haley is up here to lead us in our Pledge of Allegiance but... One second, Council Member. I'll let you introduce her here in a second, okay? Council Member Starr, go

ahead. I just want to say that rarely will you meet a person as decent as Lupe Anguiano. I remember first meeting her she Wanted to find out, well what's this guy all about? She wanted to find out for herself what I was like. And she became a big diehard supporter of mine because she actually met me and spent time with me. This is a woman that just builds bridges. She worked for four different presidential administrations, Democrat and Republican.

Like I said, a real decent woman I want to go

ahead and

hand it over to Haley. She's a recent graduate from Frontier High School, who will be leading us in the pledge and then followed by the moment of silence and then sharing a bit about her history here in the city of Oxnard. So thank you so much Haley for joining us tonight

You can put your right hand over your heart and your left hand by the side. Ready, begin.

Thank you, everyone.

Hello Mayor McArthur and City Council members. My name is Haley Villalobos Arias, and my Vice Principal Dr. Monica Robles asked me to come and speak to you all about my personal story and experiences here in Oxnard. I was born in East Palo Alto at Stanford Hospital. And for the first two years of my life, my mother, father, and I rented a room in my uncle's house. Then we moved to Ventura County due to my job, my father's job being in Los Angeles. My father was never a part of my life He worked as a truck driver and was constantly on the road for months at a time.

I never had the father-daughter family lifestyle. When I turned four years old, my mother and I moved out of the house to avoid any more conflicts that usually turned violent. My mother always made sure to give me anything I needed whether it was necessities, love or support. Later on, my mother met a man named Mario Uribe and started a relationship with him.

They both rented a room in my grandfather's house where we lived together. When I was seven years old, my mom had my baby brother. Life was hard at home not having my own personal space. The void that my father left in me was too heavy to carry. Having to watch that my brother had a father that cared for him and not understanding why my dad didn't want to be in my life.

The emotional pain that I experienced during school hours was draining. During my elementary school in Parkview Elementary, I was constantly bullied by my peers. They made fun of me because I wore glasses and was cross-eyed. After elementary school, I joined EO Green Junior High, a much larger school. The bullying continued not as much as Fargue but still happened. The lack of support from teachers saddened me. At this time my mom also had my sister and I was reconnecting with my dad. I found out that I had a younger sister on him and my stepmom's side of the family too.

Balancing the pain of watching my siblings grow up with loving fathers and dealing with schoolwork during COVID time was hard. After a year or so and financial hardship, we were able to move to Somis and transfer there. The school there was different it was a K-8 school and I graduated 8th grade with only about 25 kids. It was a much smaller school and I had a lot of support there too After that, I started attending Adolfo Camarillo High School. That high school was big with many kids. I was failing many classes because I did not understand and was afraid to ask questions. And my teachers would constantly tell me that they were there to focus on the kids who wanted a pass, not the ones who wanted to fail and they never offered me help.

The counselors also had many students they had to check in with, so getting them to call you in for a meeting was really hard. And when they would call me in for a meeting and I would tell them that I didn't get along with the teacher or that the class was too hard, they would tell me there was nothing they can do. All the other classes were full. After three years of attending Adolfo Camarillo High School, I got called into the office and I was told that I had to transfer to Frontier High School because I was constantly absent and failing many classes.

When I got to Frontier High School, I did not know what to expect but then I met many wonderful teachers. They always had time for me, they allowed me to cry, they gave me support, and they always encouraged me to do better. Dr. Robles, the vice principal constantly told me that I was capable of doing well in my academics and always pushed me to not give up.

I am excited to share with you all that I graduated from Frontier High School on June 1st and as the ASB Vice Principal, I spoke during my ceremony to share my experiences at school. I want to personally thank Mark Contreras, Frontier High School principal for his continued support and for inspiring me. Without your support, I don't think I would be here today.

In 2025, I joined a non-profit organization in the city of Oxnard called West Coast Cultural Arts and signed up to the Señoritas Fiestas Patrias pageant where I met a group of young ladies and experienced being part of a cultural pageant. I learned about my personal roots, the traditions and the history of the country where my family comes from. I learned that my accent is my essence in my soul and I am proud of who I am. I am proud to say that I won second place and won a scholarship on September 14th 2025. I was also part of the Escolta and Oxnard Plaza with the Charos Unidas. It was an honor to represent and learn about the country where my ancestors come from After high school, I plan on attending Oxnard College and study to become an ultrasound technician and hopefully work with kids.

I always knew that I wanted to help people and I wanted to work with kids so i think this is my perfect in-between. I want to say thank you again to the mayor and city council members for allowing me to share my story