City Council — February 18, 2026

Help us to see our Lord in the poor and the marginalized and respond with love and kindness. And we remind ourselves that we may never grow weary of doing what is right. Amen.

Thank you, Deacon Al Galin. Council Member Chavez would you lead us in the flag

salute? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United

States

of America and to the republic

for which

it stands

one

nation under God indivisible with

liberty

and justice for all. Madam

Clerk could you please do a roll call?

this evening.

Thank you. Monica Casio our city attorney do you have a closed session report?

Yes I do thank you Mr. Mayor. This evening council recessed in a closed session to discuss item 5a on the special agenda The item is conference of legal counsel existing litigation pursuant to government code section 54956.9 D1 Fred and Elaine Malzacher revocable trust versus the city of Santa Paula. There are no reportable actions taken this evening, thank you Mr. Mayor.

Thank you very much okay we move on next to item five public comment I will have first Marion Krause followed by Liliana Deharo in three minutes each thank you

Good evening, Mr. Mayor and members of the Council. Just a couple of quick things that I wanted to comment on. First of all an item that is on your agenda, the legislative platform. I personally sent it to Santa Clara Valley Together and also to the Hearts Without Borders Committee I wanted to personally thank you for considering these additions to the platform.

Serve the city Properly, so thank you for that. The other item I just want to mention. I think you've probably already received some information about License plate readers. I know the city got license plate cameras a couple of years ago and At least one of those systems the folks system. I think it's called It has their data open And ICE is using it to track people.

Some cities are now taking action to prevent that from happening, and I wanted to urge you to look into that. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We have Liana Deharo followed by Richard Rudman.

Hi everyone, my name is Leanna Deharo. I am a student at Santa Paula High School. I'm here today to discuss my Congress form. This form is about addressing your questions and concerns and sharing my vision and plans for our community. This event will be held at Casa de Mexicana on February 24th. I want to ensure that everyone's voices are heard and that we can work together to create better future to Santa Paula.

Thank you.

You're very welcome, thank you. Next we have Richard Rudman, he's our final speaker but if anybody else would like to speak please turn in a public comment card please.

Yes that's me, Mayor Juarez, Vice Mayor Crosswhite, Council City staff and fellow Santa Paulans. I'm Richard Rudman tonight representing both the Chamber of Commerce and the Aviation Museum of Santa Paula to let you know about saving the dates this month for upcoming events of interest For the Chamber, tomorrow evening at 5 p.m., Thursday February 19th we are partnering with the Ag Museum on Railroad Street for a mixer.

Whether you own a business or not our mixers are fun events where you can meet your neighbors enjoy various beverages and such and learn more about our wonderful ag museum. On Thursday February 26th at 9am please join us at the Glen Tavern Inn for our bi-monthly business roundtable that we host in cooperation with the city. If you don't already know about the roundtables, they're a great opportunity to voice your views on business issues and hear updates from the city leadership on issues that concern us all like public safety, business and more.

Now over to the Aviation Museum. On first Sunday March 1st, The Aviation Museum of Santa Paula is open to the public from 10am until 2pm Admission is free to see classic aircraft, take a shuttle tour of the airport and visit our gift shop. If you have potential pilots age 8-17 in your family, you can sign them up for a free flight to give your young people their first experience in small aircraft.

See you there for lots of fun, for the whole family to sign up for the free flight. Send an email to the letters Y followed by the word Eagles, no space at eaa.org or see us at the Santa Paula Airport on March 1st on First Sunday and register. Thank you.

Thank You Mr. Redman. Okay we

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening Vice Mayor, Council Members and our viewing audience tonight. Nothing makes me more happy than to come to a council meeting for a presentation to honor our young men and women on the Police Department, our law enforcement explorers from Post 2350. This past January on the weekend of January 17 and 18, our explorers along with our advisors made the trip with along with myself to Chandler Arizona to participate and support them in their experience at the Chandler National Tactical Competition.

This is inclusive of about 42 other law enforcement explorer posts from across the country namely from the state of California Nevada Arizona and Colorado and This national tactical competition includes scenario-based assessment and rating of explorers' participation in these individual events. And some of the individual events are crisis negotiations, hostage rescue, down to officer rescue, incident command system planning, critical incidents, high risk vehicle stop, tactical emergency medical support, team tactics, wilderness marksmanship Pistol shoot, SWAT fitness challenge and many other rated events. And so the competition is fierce.

It's two days of intense preparation and participation and also it's team building as the explorers get to go on the trip to have dinner with each other, to plan and have some down time to also enjoy the trip as well. So since I've been here, it's been my philosophy along with our Explorer advisors and our two commanders to help further the exposure and experience of these young men and women to kind of step outside of the box and try and better themselves. And they have not disappointed in this event.

We started going to this event in 2023 where we first placed for a third place for unknown alarm response for our team that went that year In 2025, we also placed first place in the incident command system critical incident exercise and also third place in the officer obstacle course. And I'm very proud this year to report to you that in this year's event in January on Martin Luther King weekend Our explorers were recognized for first place award in the pistol shoot and a second place award as a group for the wilderness marksmanship. And so I'm proud here to honor them along with our staff, and I know our staff I want to express my congratulations to our explorers for another great, fantastic performance. Every year we have gone to Chandler and come back with recognition and achievement.

Moreover, life skills and preparation for future for all of them whether it be law enforcement or any other facet or career. So I would like to thank the council for your ongoing support of our explorers every year that we go to Chandler and every year we seem to do better and better and prepare throughout the year. And I can tell you during the year every Tuesday these explorers meet With their advisors under the mentorship of their advisors and they practice not just, they may go on ride alongs but they're here practicing for these scenarios that could ultimately become reality if they pursued a career as an officer. So I appreciate, applaud them for their preparation, their achievement, and their success in how they perform under some levels of duress at these Chandler tactical competitions.

So tonight, if the explorers could you just stand up in your chairs there. Please stand, the explorers. Tonight all of them, let's give them a round of applause yes? Thank you. Tonight I have Explorer Kevin Navarrete, Francisco Ramos and also Rafael along with them. Our senior explorer who helps supervise along the way and our advisors as well. I have Senior Officer Yvette Solis here and also a volunteer advisor who is a retired Ventura County Sheriff's Deputy Juan Olmos and we have other advisors who spend time throughout the year with them And so I just want to congratulate them, and I'll invite Advisor Juan Olmos up here for a couple of comments if you would like to.

Thank you, Chief. Council members, Mr. Mayor, thank you for inviting us here this evening. I've been involved with the Explorer Program for roughly 14 years And I can say that to the best of

Let's give you and your family a big round of applause. And we're not done yet, did everybody show up the last time as well?

Okay,

well this time you get to be on TV we'd like to join you and take a picture with you and please welcome your family also. All of us.

Sure, this is our one

that hangs in the office. There we go. Go watch yourself on. I'll take one more too.

Great support in your family. That's right.

All right, see you all. Okay, we are back after just giving the male Howard 2025 shining star award. We're on to item 6 C parks and Recreation Department activity report and this presented by

Your time I can do insider information. I'm just kidding mayor vice mayor Council this evening, I'll be reporting on our activities from September through January of this year. I do have quite a bit of information and slides but I will move quickly through them but please stop me if you have questions or We'll have an opportunity at the end. So kicking off of Recreation and Community Services, our classes as you can see gymnastics continues to be popular. We continue to get participation in Taekwondo and archery. And our Taekwondo program in November hosted an event at the community center as well so they actually hosted a tournament which was unique for our participants to get an opportunity to participate Our youth sports continue to thrive.

Mighty Mites, let me start with football and cheer. We had 358 flagged football participants and 134 cheer participants. We've also seen as you're probably aware the last few years they started We have seen the numbers of female participants in flag football also grow in our program. We had a commissioner ask that question and I'm sorry, I'm not prepared with the actual numbers but they've more than tripled as far as participation from girls participating in our flag football program. And we anticipated that because you see the trend at high school so they're starting to see the opportunity continue to participate at higher level.

And in basketball, we have a total of 690 participants. That's up by 70. Last year we were at around 620. So that continues to grow and I'll just mention again historically before we had our partnership with the district. We served about 300 youth a season in basketball so we're more than doubling our participation now. Our youth center continues to offer various program opportunities, offering art classes.

Partnering with Dead Colores to offer art classes and Bright is offering some substance abuse prevention workshops We had an event at the center, Cuts and Slices where we had local barbers provide haircuts and things for kids. And then Amici's Pizzas came out and provided free pizza and things for the kids so it was pretty unique. The picture you're seeing at the top was our holiday event that we actually had at The Odd Fellows. They got to go up they had their holiday party there and then got to see the trains and participate so we thank The Odd Fellows for hosting us And again, those are our numbers. 921 total check-ins and 71 individual youth participants have come through the Youth Center during this period.

City Corps continues to thrive. We just hired eight in the last few months city corps leader trainees, additional city corps leader trainees so we have 12 total currently working. They've worked a total of 2,367 hours And completed 203 projects. There's a few of them, cleaning up downtown in the P-BID and working with our water division. They work with the streets division, do alley cleanups, meal prep and graffiti abatement tree health care.

In a recent P-BID meeting, the P-bid offered support and actually funding I think almost around $25,000 to support more city core hours and supplies and equipment to continue to work downtown on the P bid so they're really seeing value. I had one of the actual P-bid board members Email me to let me know that a business member came in to comment about CityCorps. I wasn't sure where that was going, but the business person actually came in and complimented CityCorps and the improvements that they're seeing downtown. So that was very thoughtful. We're thankful for that and proud of the kids and their commitment and work.

Our adult classes we also offer adult archery. We are changing how we offer archery for adults. It's been typically offered in the morning from 930 to 1030 on Wednesdays, we're moving it to an evening class at 630 to help to get more participation so that will be starting in April. Our Zumba and yoga classes which are typically senior classes but we've made them adult classes so we also not only have We also have. You're seeing your population participating which are adults, but we also have opened it just to adults come during that time and then we have volleyball drop in a teak Park and then we also are pickleball dropping has been like really we actually do it Sports Park, if pickleball goes into the sports park we will probably discontinue the community center and that wasn't very popular with them.

They're really enjoying the community center so we'll have to evaluate that when the time comes. We hosted our Halloween carnival in late October, obviously a little few days before Halloween. Great attendance. We had participation by the high school FFA and the ASB helped us put on our haunted hallways again which is always really popular. I don't go through it. I haven't gone through it personally. I'm not brave enough yet but by the screams that I hear I guess it's popular and everyone enjoys it.

Also like to thank our Optimist Club that comes out and does popcorn, and participates. And we also had some food vendors and activities. It's free for the community, we don't sell tickets or things so the community can just come out and participate. We provide candy for prizes and whatnot. We've had a lot of fun. We participated in the holiday Christmas parade this year. Obviously we have a partnership and friendship with Santa and Mrs. Claus so we help bring them as part of the parade. It's always a big hit. And then that works into our Santa tours where we traveled for 4 days around the city, you know, visiting residents and Santa and Mrs. Claus We participated this year to install in the small business Saturday, we went and set up in front of the clock tower and did some crafts and things for a few hours for you know kids as they're coming by our families that are shopping downtown.

We have a lot of volunteers that come and help us along with the optimist club. And we have some PTSA youth volunteers that come and help us police. Our Police Department is always very helpful and supportive as well. So just kind of takes a community to do this. And again, you can't have sent a pancake breakfast without Santa. with their families. It's really a fun thing to see because you'll see families come up and they're all in matching pajamas or they're dressed to the nines for their breakfast, this is like their annual Christmas photo that they come do it's a tradition and again it's at no cost to them so they get a picture and breakfast and all they need to do is show up and reserve a spot Senior services are currently serving over 175 seniors.

We have various classes, our knitting clubs, Zumba, bone builders, chair yoga all very popular. We continue to offer field trips and movies and luncheons just at our Valentine's Luncheon today. I arrived a little bit late but when I got there half the room was line dancing after they'd had lunch so very vibrant everyone's having a good time. And we typically have over 100 attendees at our lunches We not only did pizza and haircuts for the youth, but we did pizza and cuts for seniors as well. So we had 20 seniors that participated, got a free haircut, and again got pizza served to them in snacks or whatever all at no cost. Very thankful the barbers that come out just donated their time from 949 The Cut. And then I spoke to the owner of Michi's Pizza, and he was just happy to come out and give pizza to the community and be helpful.

Senior nutrition program served a little over 2,000 meals for congregate meals. A little over 3,000 for home delivered meals and then the number we see city funded meals on every other Friday council had approved some funding for senior nutrition so that serves 479 meals. We typically order from a local restaurant not typically we always order from a local restaurant here in Santa Paula and we serve the seniors that meal on every other Friday So total meal service was about 5,774 meals to date from July 1st is a little over 8,000.

I will continue to let you know that we're seeing some challenges with senior nutrition and vc triple A is moving the county's going to stop it's going Staff has been watching this closely, attending some workshops. We'll be coming back to council in the third quarter with some requests in order to kind of help us fill a gap while the state and everyone works out their RFPs but we are confident that we won't see a gap in services but we're going to need a little assistance to make that happen.

The Santa Paula master plan for aging was in front of you. You all adopted it, but we're not just letting us sit on a shelf staff has continued to meet we go through the Recommendations that was in the advisory or the master plan, each recommendation. And we try and connect what is the city doing? So what are we currently doing? Are we meeting that recommendation?

And we have two members of our senior advisory group that are also part of an ad hoc that join us so we have that larger conversation. There's a section on housing. We met with James Mason and he went through the housing section with us so we can see what the city's doing in that category. And we will be bringing that back in May during, as we come to you every May to recognize Older Americans Month. We're also going to come back in May and give you an update on the master plan for aging and where we're at, where we are with certain recommendations maybe where we need some advocacy or some help on certain recommendations but our plan is to come to you at least annually and report back to you on where we are with that master plan.

The staff applied for a Supporting Healthy Aging through Parks and Recreation grant. It's a walk with ease, it's exactly what it sounds like. It's to get seniors out walking and we walk in a group. Currently have five seniors participating. It just started about a week-and-a-half two weeks ago. Our goal is to get 100 seniors in the program They don't all have to walk with us at the same time, but they can walk on their own. There's a book that goes along with it and curriculum.

It was through the NRPA, but we just started it. We've got fancy water bottles we give out when they first participate in a book that they can get. So we're at five. The staff tries to go out in different areas of the community. We're trying to reenact the Rocky movie maybe if you will and maybe people will just join us as we're walking and we'll get more seniors going with this. But it's growing and it's growing slowly even in inclement weather like we had the other day. They showed up, and they were walking in the auditorium. So we're trying to get them out at parks and things, but when they can't, they'll walk in our facility.

Moving on to parks and facilities, we broke it down a little different this time. We broke it down by different facilities and kind of what we've done. At the police department, we remodeled the front of the police department including installation new trees and mulch and irrigation landscaping. We tried to get that done before the police had its grand opening or open house for phase one.

We installed holiday lighting, did some LED retrofit of the outside of the buildings. We did LED retrofit a lot of our buildings but at PD we did the outside because the remodeling will take care of the inside of the lighting. You will see some additional... The landscaping we did was temporary. America in Bloom is actually will be coming in next month and be putting permanent landscaping into the front of the building. They've offered to partner with us So that should be happening in about a month. They hired a landscape architect actually design it and they're going to come in and put in more permanent. We're not going to waste what was there, though we're going to remove the mulch herself in place in other areas. And we're going Completed a new fire and burglar alarm system installation, so it's all new.

Our fire alarm especially was very outdated we were having issues even during rentals of it going off in the middle of Rentals and things so that work is for the most part done a few finishing touches We did LED retrofitting of lighting to reduce energy costs And that's all done as well the entire building has been retrofit with LED lighting The Senior Center installed a new senior center sign. I don't know if you've seen it, we were really struggling because we were getting costs for putting a new sign but it would have just been having the sign and sticking it on the frame. This one was actually removed totally rebuilt done and painted. We had a seal that we'd had made and put out. You can't see it by there but there's two slots where we can put signage in those slots so if there's a luncheon or different things we can actually advertise and it was made by a Santa Paulan Danny Reisman who was metal house craft, metal craft.

He actually designed it and built it for us for about less than what we would have paid just for a sign to slap on it. So it's kind of cool to have it and Danny and I were joking that you know for the next 20 or 30 years he'd be able to point to that he made that sign for the senior center. We're looking at doing a matching one on the other side of the community center once we maybe next fiscal year Community Development completed interior and exterior LED lighting and retrofitting of that building.

City Administration, we did the same thing. We did LED retrofit in this building, interior and exterior. We also remodeled the Finance Director's office Two offices, and we will be starting this week in doing a third office. And that's all being done in-house by people like Martine that we recognize this evening. So we're doing all that work continually painting, flooring everything to remodel these offices.

Oil Museum re-keyed it, as we had new users in the building now. We re-keyed it so that the current two users both have keys that let them access their space in the building and then City has master key that we can access any part of the building we need to in order for maintenance purposes. Boys & Girls Club completed building fumigation and pest control working with them and coordinating that effort with them And then at Parks and Public Spaces, we completed half of grid three for our tree maintenance. So we are on track. This is year three of our three-year plan. We completed half of it, installed new LED lighting at Mills Park, and again did different holiday lighting and things as well.

We will look at the second part of the grid here as we get into spring. It's always a budget, so we're trying to make sure there's not too many storms, not too many emergencies that eat up our budget and then if it's trending well, we'll look at trying to get the second half of Grid 3 done before the end of this fiscal year. Sports Park, we modified the restroom when they built it. It was male-female restrooms and we could not make them single use multi gender or whatever restrooms for all. We had to do some modifications to it. We completed that so now we have four single restrooms that can be used. That makes a big difference for park users. It makes restrooms much more available. We also supported high school cross country event. They had their first ever Home cross-country meet at the sports park.

Ever in the history of Santa Paula High School, they were able to host their first cross country meet and we assisted them with that at the sports park. Cultural arts buildings installed new electrical vehicle charging station you can see a picture of it there. We purchased that vehicle council had approved it with the last budget cycle so we installed electric charging station right there at the community center so we can plug in and charge Citywide operations and storm response. As I mentioned, we had staff out during the holidays all through the holidays started raining right at the wrong time right at Christmas Eve but staff was out Christmas Eve they were out Christmas Day inspecting facilities so I'm very thankful to our dedicated staff for doing that typically when it starts raining We're out every three or four hours inspecting facilities All throughout the night Tree maintenance, we had nine trees we lost.

We planted 14 and we pruned 294. Our Fagan-Barranca master plan, just to report on that. We have held multiple community meetings. We're now at the point where we're going to come back to Council probably in another study session to share with you what we've heard from the community, to share the conceptual design with you, to hopefully kind of share what are the projected costs might be for the project and construction plans and get some feedback from you. At this point, we have no money to go forward with the project but we'd like to have that conversation with you to make sure we're on the right track.

And then the farm workers monument as well. If you haven't noticed or heard, it's in a little disrepair. The stone has worn and there's even some names that are kind of been worn. We have been actively working on repairing that We're having some challenges because we've got to identify proper stone to put in. Sandstone was used for the initial monument, which looks great but at the lifespan of it's 10-15 years even treating it if you even treat it regularly and annual so we're working through that We'll report back to you, but I just wanted to bring it up so that the community and you all know that it's not something that's gone unnoticed. We're hoping to convene there's a community group that was very interested in it and we would like to convene them but I would really like to have some answers or at least a direction for us before I convene that group again And then administration continue to work on various CIP projects.

You can see the list there sports park phase 2 we've begun meeting with Lewis Luminaire to advance the development of phase two will be bringing that to you too at some point. We have the conceptual site plan I think pretty much ironed out a couple things need to be tweaked now they need to get kind of started on construction design and cost so then we can bring that back to you. There might be decisions that need to be made about what amenities we can afford and what we move forward within the park We always produce our rec guide as you know recognized Martine for the Shining Star Award. And we have our dog park ad hoc committee meeting to kind of work through potential locations for dog parks and so we'll be bringing that back to you all too, for an update at some point Worked on our user fee study as you all know updated permit and reservation systems to ensure consistency with the fee study Applied for it was awarded the grant from the channel is bicycle club So it's a small grant but we're going to be able to put six bicycle racks out through throughout the community We get asked about that a lot.

So this was an opportunity for us to put some at the sports park in other areas around the community And then I already mentioned that we were awarded the supporting healthy aging through parks grant from the NRPA And then just some final numbers. I won't read them all off to you, but you can see that our parks are being used the barbecue pavilions are very popular and We're seeing a lot of rentals facility use so That's it I'd be happy to answer any questions if you have any What time is it So I was just had a discussion they're getting their final bid for the screening that we have to put on.

The we have to add additional screening before we can put in the mechanisms to open and close the gates, the keypads and things so are waiting for one more bed. I'm actually going to have a conversation with our WC this week early next It sometimes is becoming challenging to actually secure bids. I think that's a good thing, maybe contractors are very busy but it seems to be hard when you do projects for a city there's a lot of other things that play in prevailing wage and certified payroll and so when contractors are busy sometimes it's hard to get that third bid that we need. But I think that's where we're at now You know, I wish we could tell you like 30 days. We're hoping that we'd at least have the screen installed.

All right thank you Mr. Burns. Oh I'm sorry Vice Mayor has a question for you.

Yeah I had a question on the doors. You were talking about rekeying the oil museum building and i know those are a lot of those are old doors so this may not even be feasible but I was just thinking is it at all possible to do keypads on any of those at some point in the future? I don't want to say

it's it can happen. We haven't considered it for that building because it's just it's easier and less expensive We have a system there to so that each user has their own alarm access and things. So we know who's coming in and out of the building, especially when you have multiple users. So if a door doesn't close, we know the last person in or out those types of things. And then we're not sharing codes but the actual key punch something we could probably do down the line but it's much more expensive than just getting it rekeyed. Okay thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? All right, thank you Director Barnes. Okay that was receiving follow-up Parks and Recreation Department activity report for the period of September 1st 2025 through January 31st 2026.

Mr. Mayor for the record I need to step out for a quick minute.

Okay thank you

Good evening, Mr. Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members. So I'm Dale Goodman, Public Works Director and I will try and keep this as brief as possible. How do I make this go forward? There we go. So there's a quick overview of what I'm going to talk about since those headers or all those lines are headers on different pages we'll just move on. So we have a lot of contracts that we work with in Public Works, 14 professional service agreements for a lot of different things.

Civil engineering, water and wastewater, street maintenance, traffic engineering, solid waste. And it comes to a significant amount of our budget every year for these contracts for services. Which is okay, because we also get a lot of work done with that money. So in FY25-26 the approved budget was $1.68 million. Approximately 1.2 million of that has been encumbered. Another one of our services you've all heard of Athens who is our waste hauler probably more than you'd like to but We're still we're where it needs to be with regard to solid waste. 7,496 tons of solid waste and during this five-month period...