Redding Little League, Redding Rodeo Association and more in this City Council Recap from November 19, 2024.

In this latest City Council recap from Tuesday, November 19, 2024:

• General fund quarterly financial report update
• Redding Little League field use
• Redding Rodeo Association lease update
• and more

Please find additional resources below for more information on these topics.

Council Meeting Agenda>>
Council Meeting Video>>
Read the Transcript Here >>

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Chapters

• 0:35 Item 2A: Presentation by local Redding Neurologist Karen Garnaas, MD, providing information related to health issues associated with the overuse of Nitrous Oxide.
• 26:52 Item 6.1: 6.1--Consider Planned Development Application and Ordinance approving a Rezoning Application by L&S Redding Development, LLC, to add the “PD” Planned Development Zoning Overlay Designation to the previously approved Riverstone Subdivision.
• 34:28 Item 9.10b: Consider the City of Redding General Fund Quarterly Financial Report.
• 52:54 Item 9.6b: Consider Little League Field use fees and negotiation of a Memorandum of Understanding with Little League organizations.
• 1:53:09 Item 9.1a: Consider approval of a Non-Binding Letter of Intent regarding the Redding Rodeo Association Ground Lease negotiations.
• 2:09:12 Item 9.2c: Consider agreement with California Heritage Youth Build Academy
• 2:14:15 Item 9.5b: Consider Redding Electric Utility's Quarterly Financial Report, Industry Activities Update, and Power Content Label.
• 2:27:16 Item 9.5c: Authorize Transfer of Transmission Capacity Entitlement and Assignment of Rights
• 2:35:48 9.14a: Consider Ordinance Amending Redding Municipal Code Title 2 (Administration and Personnel) to Increase City Council Member Compensation.
• 2:51:31 Council Travel Report

Transcript

0:06

I'm Katie. And I'm Steve, and. This is the City of Redding podcast. Welcome to a Redding City Council update for full details on each of the items covered, or to watch the meeting online, visit the City of redding.gov or find the links in the episode Show Notes. For this episode, you can use the chapter shortcuts to jump to any specific topics if needed. For any questions, suggestions or comments, please email podcast at City of Redding. Org. This is the City of Redding City Council meeting from Tuesday, November 19th, 2024. We are going to start with um, item two A, which is a presentation by the local Redding neurologist, Karen Garniss Garniss, MD, providing information related to health issues associated associated with the overuse of nitrous oxide. Thank you very much, Mayor and City Council members. I appreciate the honor, really, of being able to visit with you briefly and just share. Kind of an alarming trend that I see happening in this community. And that's the escalating use of nitrous oxide and its abuse and how it's affecting our young people today. So my name is Doctor Karen Garner. I'm a neurologist. I've practiced for about 30 years, practiced for four years here in Shasta County, and recently have seen some cases that I want to share with you and explain some of the issues we have before us. So one of the first things is, well, what are whippets? Let's see if I can do this. I apologize. Let's see this thing. You got it. Okay. Thank you. Well, whippets are a type of inhalant drug made of nitrous oxide. So nitrous oxide, you may know as laughing gas, or it's used in dental as a dental sedative. It's also used to create reusable whipped cream out of dispensers. But we're finding it's it's for a long time, it's been inhaled recreationally for a very short time of term, high lasting only for a few minutes. And that leads to people starting to use it repetitively. Historically, it's been sold in small little cartridges that would fit inside of a whipped cream dispenser, but now it's marketed in large canisters that are about the size of O2 tanks, going from 1l to 3l in size. And this is really becoming popular. It's really showcased on TikTok and X, and there are companies that are built around this whole nitrous oxide abuse. And so it is really escalating in its frequency. Next slide please. So here's just a picture of it. That is what it used to look like. This little tiny colored canister that would hold eight grams of nitrous oxide. Where now it's in large cans of nitrous oxide, with a one liter being about equivalent to 80 doses. Next slide please. Well, what's the big deal? Well, it ends up that nitrous oxide irreversibly binds to vitamin B12. And vitamin B12 is a very essential vitamin in our nervous system. Without it, our nervous system fails. And it. And so when you use it repeatedly, it basically neutralizes vitamin B12. And you're not able to use any of the vitamin B12 in your body. And that results in brain damage, psychosis, destruction of the spinal cord itself where there and the destruction of the sensory nerves. This results in weakness, numbness, balance issues. It can also damage other parts of your nervous system. If you're doing it consistently, you can also diminish your oxygen levels in the process and people have died from it. In addition, it results obviously in a euphoria and intoxication. It's brief. It's not detectable in the blood. So it can be very popular and it impacts your decision making. This is something that is readily sold in our community through the smoke shops. And it is basically illegal to use it, but it's legal to sell it under the uh, the uh, view of it being used to for culinary purposes. However, these are large, uh, canisters. And if patients or people are going through it continually, they can use up to 240 doses a day. I've had patients that are using liter bottles, 2 or 3 of them a day, and so envision like if this is a drug that's neurotoxic, similar to alcohol, but alcohol has a duration of, you know, intoxication. It would be like consuming a shot of vodka, but instead you're doing 240 shots of vodka, which would be six of the large handles a day. Just kind of as an illustration of the toxic effects of the nervous system. Thank you. Why did I even become interested in this? Well, I'm a neurologist, and in my 30 year career, I had never seen this condition before. I've heard of it, but I had never seen it until just recently. In July I did see one gentleman, which was a much more subtle case, and he had struggled with some substance abuse, was clean, needing to stay clean, but he was using nitrous oxide to treat pain. But he had a progressive sensory neuropathy. That was one thing. But then I actually got a call from one of the residents at the hospital, and she had a case that she wanted to present to me, which involved a young man about a 28 year old gentleman who had been using these whippets, and he was experiencing progressive weakness and numbness of his arms and legs. That was resulted in him being unable to walk. He had been hospitalized, and they thought that it was maybe due to an inflammation of the nervous system, and he was treated for that wasn't getting better. And then finally his B12 level came back undetectable and they went, wait a minute, what in the world is this? And it was discovered that it was actually nitrous oxide. That was the problem. Fast forward in the past eight weeks, I have seen eight cases of this. Each of these individuals are between the age of 22 and 38, and they all have struggled with substance abuse issues. None of them volunteered that this was one of their drugs that they were using, but they were using large amounts of it because of its ready availability in these canisters and using them throughout the day. Each of these patients ended up being hospitalized. They had profound weakness and numbness, inability to walk. They got treated with other medication therapies. They had numerous scans, infusion therapies, and ultimately it was discovered that this was B12 deficiency. In my life, I've never seen undetectable B12 levels, but these people had undetectable B12 levels and their nervous system was really devastated by it. I reached out to colleagues, including Miss Winters. I'm like, help! So I appreciate your willingness to let me speak here, just to try to create awareness and to see what we can do collectively together to address this epidemic and get the news out, because my patients were unaware of the dangers. I mean that everyone knows when you're abusing a substance, there's dangers, but no one would expect that they would be irreversibly damaged and be me seeing them months later with continued weakness, numbness, balance problems. I reached out to colleagues. I have one of my NPS services, our neurology outreach clinic that is in partnership with Rancheria caring for, uh, partnership ensured patients. She thinks she's had about ten cases. I've talked to the neuro hospitalists. They're seeing cases. So I'm kind of the tip of the iceberg. But because I'm the only neurologist around, they've come my direction. So next slide, I just want to give you a little picture because, you know, I've shared with you some of the symptoms and get a little neuroanatomy here. The slide or the picture that's over. Let me see okay. This is a normal spinal cord. That gray line down the center is the normal spinal cord. There's the vertebral body. And here on the other side, this we're just basically slicing through it like a loaf of bread. Okay. So now we go to one of our patients that has had nitrous oxide damage to their nervous system. And we can see that the spinal cord is all hazy and swollen. It should be that nice dark gray. But instead it's this patchy stuff that's going all the way down. It's swollen. And then if you look at the cross section, those those little white things in the back is degeneration of the dorsal column. So there's obvious damage that's happening to the nervous system. Why am I presenting this here. Go ahead. Thank you. Well, we need to figure out a way to increase awareness of the serious dangers to of nitrous oxide in our community. I'm. I reached out to Doctor James Mew, who's here as well. He's the Shasta county public health officer. We are looking at ways to increase public awareness, because these are our citizens that struggle with substance abuse. I don't think fully understand the dangers of this and how excessive use results in in damage. And we also are trying to educate our health care providers, because this is kind of a new epidemic that we're dealing with. And our, our the people in the front lines need to be aware of it so that we can institute treatment, educate patients to stop the behavior, because that's the only way, really to get it better and give them rapid B12 infusions. In addition, we are looking at some other things to provide kind of services on an ongoing basis to help them be successful. But the reason I wanted to bring it forth to you, actually, is I want to see if there might asked, is there are other communities that are experiencing this same epidemic, and there are other regions that have actually created ordinances and laws that are directed to reduce the sale of these large canisters of nitrous oxide. They are sold in, in, within the community, and they are clearly designed to be used for abuse. There is no one that needs three liters of nitrous oxide to make whipped cream on a daily basis. This is not the purpose of that. And so my my ask is to bring it forth to you, for you to be investigating as a community. How can we create a safer community for our for our constituents by addressing this loophole that we have of culinary use? Wink, wink week for this therapy, or for this chemical that is being abused and hurting our constituents. So I do believe that together we can accomplish that. And I just want to bring it forth for your consideration. Any questions? Thank you so much for coming. Yes. Vice mayor. Oh, Doctor Garner, thank you so much for reaching out to me. And I just I really appreciate you taking the time and putting together the slide presentation. I think this is new to our community. So I just want to thank you for that. And I will be bringing back an idea on item 12 later in the meeting about reaching out. I see that Doctor Mu is here from Public Health and I really appreciate appreciate you being here. I. Public health has been really helpful with in the past with our with city in helping to prevent disease in our, in our community. So I really appreciate you being here doctor mu. So I will bring an item back for for future discussion. Thank you. Thank you, Council member Marzano. Thank you. I appreciate your presentation. And it's kind of simple for me. I mean, we recently we we decided on an ordinance to require vape shops to have a license to sell some of their products if they want to sell three liter cans of nitrous oxide. And maybe that license should be$1,000 or more. And I don't know if we can do that legally, but I think we might be able to and that might take the onus off of everybody and make it difficult for those that want to sell it and buy it. Thank you for your presentation. My pleasure. Um, I'm not sure if you're the person to ask this, but what are the other uses of these? Would you call Galaxy Gas? Uh, there really are no other uses. There are no other uses? No, the. Only use is really to, uh. It's being proposed as well. It was originally designed to be a dental anesthetic and then it is used to make whipped cream. But for these specific canisters that you're talking about, they don't have any other use purpose. And they also and they also have created in multiple flavors. And if you look at the Galaxy Gas website, you will see that it's it's kind of very targeted towards young, our youth and our young adults. It's it's and it's just do. You know other places where it's sold other than vape shops? It is also sold online. So you can actually buy it on Amazon I think as well really. But I do think there are there are states that they're making this outlawed and the, the distribution of these large canisters. And I think that there's hope that something like that can happen. Michigan just created a law that outlawed the use of nitrous oxide in this manner. I have a. Question. It's my understanding that in the dental field, they get big steel canisters in the right. But they're medical professionals that are not sitting around. Three liters. They're buying the 500 liter. I have no idea how big they are, but they're huge. I've seen them. They're huge. Yes, but it'd be like, in my mind, of course, there's all sorts of inhalants that are used in anesthesia and things like that, but the regular public does not have access to those medications because they're dangerous. What's the loophole that's allowing the public to just purchase this gas. That it is being sold under culinary purposes? So they they specify, yeah, I'm going to use it. Or there's a sign in those shops that says this is only being used for culinary purposes, right? Is there an age limit? You know, I have no idea. I've never honestly been in one of the smoke shops. But interestingly, one of my patients that has this was working in a smoke shop. And so he shared how there was this whole subculture that was really promoting it through social media, and that it was being used heavily in that manner. So if you can purchase, I don't know what the age limit is to go into a vape shop and do it, but. All I know is patients are being devastated and it's just hard. After I've devoted my career to trying to protect people's nervous systems, to now see in an eight week period of time, eight cases. And I don't know what the future is going to bring in the next two months or more, because these are people that were symptomatic in March and June and July. So if this is for culinary purposes, you would you would expect this to be sold at a grocery store as well. No, it is not. It may be it may be sold at like restaurant supply stores, but they're going to be the small little cartridges that pop into the. They're sold in little boxes about this big. Exactly eight of them. Yes. Right. And that's exactly right. And and the other thing is that in talking to this gentleman, he mentioned, you know, you can buy, let's say, and I'm 20 cartridges for $50, or you can buy a liter for $100. So, so I mean, it makes sense if you don't have a lot of money, you're going to buy the leader. And then on top of it, because the high is only for a matter of minutes. In order to stay high, you have to keep doing it throughout the day. My last patient said that she just tried to get off of it, but she gets so anxious trying to get off of it. So she was going through three liters a day. Yeah, I imagine the Galaxy Gas website doesn't say how much whipped cream you can make with that. Exactly. Purchase no recipes. I went to 7-Eleven, and I bought whipped cream at the 7-Eleven. Went home to put it on the ice cream. Nothing came out. I went back to the store and they said, people are taking it and they're vaping in the store. Oh, wow. With with the what do you have to you don't turn it upside down or something. That's my understanding. Although I've heard that the stuff that's in the, you know, the Reddi whip and things like that may not have nitrous in it. It could be more carbonation, I'm not sure, but I don't think they may be trying to get high because it makes sense. But I have a feeling that or I've heard that that is not the same chemical, because at one point that was one of the concerns. It's like, well, are we going to outlaw whipped cream in the in the city? But that's not the issue. What we're looking for is really a way to outlaw something that's clearly an abuse potential and hurting our community. Smart. Yeah. Thank you so. Much. We appreciate you. Thank you. Okay. We are going to move to public comment. We have three Brenda, Nick Gardner and Ryan. Tonight I stand here in memory of John, Adina, David Couch. The third Andrew Bennett, Shane Dos and Leanne Massingham, and the many homeless individuals who lost their lives due to sweeping clearances and the lack of essential services and shelter. I'm also here to address the No Boundaries program led by Christine Cage, now blamed by Redding City Council. The past Chief of police Bill Schuller and the search team, despite knowing cage was operating without proper licensing licenses that were expired or suspended multiple times. The city still awarded her funds, ignoring warnings from the Shasta Scout, myself and others. This contract, which you signed with her program during the largest homeless sweep at the open space, lacked even the 200 shelter shelter beds they claimed to have ready. I believe this lack of planning, in my opinion, contributed to the lost lives, including my daughter. Now, the city leaders claim to be in shock at the misuse of funds when you knew this was going to happen, despite entering this contract fully aware of the risk. I urge families who have lost loved ones during these sweeps to seek legal action and hold the city accountable for its choices. Shane Dews lost his life in the care of Christine Cage and the city of Redding with zero accountability. My question now is who is the medical director or the liaison for medical care and or medical direction for the people seeking services and suffering withdrawals? How many other people lost their lives and or services due to the lack of accountability for both the city of Redding and Christine Cage of No Boundaries? Sunday was the second anniversary that I lost my autistic daughter to your choices and your decisions to do sweeps. Without the proper services in place, you knew this was going to happen. We came in here multiple times and told you that her certificates were not in order, and you still made the decision to do sweeps. And at the Nippon Open space, you had zero services there to help people that were now suffering a major mental health crisis. You need to do better. And for you to put this on Christine Cage alone, that's wrong. Especially you. Julie. You've been here the longest. And Mr. Marzano, you've been here quite a while. The rest of you I can't say much for it, but the fact that you allowed this to happen and you're going to put this on one person. Shame on you. Thanks, Brenda. Nick Gardner, and then Ryan. Good evening. I wanted to talk about 9.1 14 A in oral upgrade regarding giving the city council a raise. Something that caught my eye is based on Redding's population. The maximum salary the City Council can enact without voter approval is $9,900. I wonder why you wouldn't want to let the taxpayers vote on it. Uh, then these limits increase by the amount equal to inflation from January 1st, 2024, based on the California Consumer Price Index, with a maximum adjustment of 10% per year. That's a pretty good deal there. But the fact is, there's going to be three new city council members here after the first of the year, and they're going to be facing probably a $5 million deficit. I think it would be more appropriate if you waited for them to weigh in on this subject, rather than doing it now. And I wanted to switch subjects here. I want to make sure everybody knows it's Jack Munn's turn to be mayor. I don't want to see him get beat out of it like Mark Marzano did. Or, uh, um, Mike Dacquisto, he's been a solid block of granite up there all, all last couple of years. So make sure you take that into consideration and thank you for not running again. Uh, Julie. Ryan. You're next. Good evening. My grandfather was a very influential person for me growing up. It's kind of funny how the world comes full circle now that I'm raising my grandchildren and children. Actually, my grandfather once told me, go with your gut. Speak from your heart. That's what I'm going to do today. So from my heart, my question for you to ponder why blame Christine Cage for this? Why pass off the accountability that the city has when they knew that her licenses weren't good and all they cared about was having beds for their sweep? From my gut, I believe all that is cared about sometimes is the elite And the so-called quality of living narrative. What about the quality of living for those people? I don't like to see panhandlers. I don't like to see messy homeless encampments. I certainly don't like to see open drug use. I want my children to be able to play in the city, ride their bikes without being harassed by drug abusers or the police for that matter. The point I'm trying to get at. Think about what you're doing next time. Don't just pick a program because it satisfies the immediate need. Every every person in here potentially could be one medical emergency or one missed paycheck away from being homeless themselves. The state of this economy is not good. What happens if they are in that spot, you're going to treat them the same way. Find programs that work. Work with the community leaders. Work with the nonprofits. Work with the people that actually understand how this works. We are living examples. We can tell you all of the issues that are actually out there. Listen to us. Don't just listen to the elites. Thank you. Thanks, Ryan. We will be moving to the consent calendar. The consent calendar contains items considered, routine, and or which have been individually scrutinized by city council members and are anticipated to require no further deliberation. If a member of the public wishes to address an item on the consent Calendar calendar, please fill out a speaker request form. Submit it to the City Clerk before the Consent Calendar is considered. It shall be the prerogative of any Council member before the Consent Calendar is acted upon to one comment on an item two respond to any public comment on an item. Three request the record. Reflect an abstention or nay vote on an item, or remove an item and place it on the regular portion of the agenda for delivery of a staff report and or extended discussion or deliberation. Does anybody wish to remove any item from the consent calendar? I'm going to pull for two Si onto the regular calendar. Anybody else? All right. Um, I'll take a motion. I'll be happy to make a motion to approve the consent calendar. I'll second that motion. We got a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. We will move to public hearing. Item 6.1 is to consider a plan development application ordinance approving a rezoning application for Las Redding Development, LLC to add the PD Plan development zoning overlay designation to the previously approved Riverstone subdivision. Now. Am I going in public? Not yet. All right. Thank you very. Much. Hello, Mrs. Choi? Yes. Thank you very much, mayor. All that. Council members. Good evening. This item before you is for a rezoning and a plan development for a project. A subdivision that was previously approved last year. The location of the subdivision consists of ten and a half acres accessed off of 273 via Wyndham Lane. It's located on the north side of Wyndham Lane. It is zoned Rs three and a half, which is. It's zoned for single family and correspondingly general plan designation for three and a half to six units per acre. A little bit of background. So the Riverstone subdivision was approved in December of 23. A final map processed and recorded in 24 earlier this year. With that right of way, dedication and accepted for public Street was accepted by the city and delineated in blue there with a cul de sac ending. The project now desires to privatize this 20 lot subdivision by installing a gate highlighted in pink. And so with that, what that results in is that our standards is that a public street cannot be gated. It must always be fully accessible by the public. So what that means today is that it requires what we call planned development. And within a planned development, we allow exceptions to one privatize the street, but also an exception to generally Allow these lots to be fronted on a nonpublic street. What that says is that it requires a rezoning, which is an ordinance that is before you. Um, further, the city also has to abandon the public right of way because the final map dedicated the street. Additionally, the HOA was required to maintain the street. So what? The conditions before you basically says that the HOA now is responsible to maintain that. Um, this has gone before planning Commission recommended approval to you. Um, since then, what we've realized is that the condition that was added seven F, as reflected in the memo that was just presented to you before you today, is that we've realized that the infrastructure has already been in place, um, to allow you to maintain and operate the street lights. What that does now is if we revise that condition, we're eliminating seven F as recommended, presented to Planning Commission with the revised condition of eight, where the corners have to be revised and amended to include ongoing payment by the homeowners association for all associated costs. For Raju to maintain and operate all street lights. Interior to the subdivision located outside the public right of way. And Madam Mayor, if I may, that the memo that was just referenced is available at the podium at the back of the room. If any of the public would like to review. One of these back there. In addition to the PD plan that is being proposed, this developer has also developed other subdivisions in the city, namely Salt Creek Heights and Stones Fair and Shastina Ranch. And he is proposing to hold himself to the architectural theme. Likewise in those subdivisions that he's already developed. And these are some examples that he's inserted in the PD plan. Additionally, with this PD plan, we are approving the design of the gated entry. At the top left of that exhibit is the main entry into the private street, with the gate going in and a gate coming out with a nice stonework and a signage, and then project entry fencing. And then on the bottom right is the private gated entry for the two flagged lots that were depicted in the subdivision. With regards to compliance for compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act, the subdivision was approved and adopted with a mitigated negative declaration. Staff has determined that this plan development plan would not have any significant impact to the environment. Therefore, Persica. An addendum to the previously adopted mitigated negative declaration has been prepared for your adoption. So in conclusion, City Council has authority to approve the ordinance for the rezoning which places the PD overlay district on this property. We recommend that the required findings are in evidence and therefore recommend Council adopt the addendum and approve the application subject to the revised condition as presented. I'm available for any questions at this time. Anybody have any questions? Lily I'm going to say it before Council Member Marzano. Great presentation. I really like to give a class. Yes, yes. To the rest of them out there. It's almost like she does this. Would the council like me to read the ordinance title at this time? Sure. An ordinance of the city of Redding adopting an amendment to the city of Redding. Zoning map relating to the rezoning of the Riverstone Subdivision. Previously APN 0048500048. Consisting of 10.5 acres located on property previously addressed as 2980 Wyndham Lane in the city of Redding. Rhs 2023-01709. Do we open it for open this for public comment. Are there is there any public comment? Nothing. Seeing none, we will close the public comment. Okay. Do we have a motion? I'll make the motion to approve. I'll second. We have a first and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none. That passes. Okay. Um, for our regular calendar, I'd like to move, uh, 9.10, which is our finance report first, followed by Little League. If there's any kids here to be able to speak first and then we'll move to the regular calendar. Is everybody okay with that? Yep. So you're bringing the four twos. So we're going to go nine, ten, nine, six and then start from where we left off. Nine two will go after nine one okay. Good evening. So great to see you. Thank you so much for coming to bring. I know you were so excited. I am pretty. Pumped. Moving to the front, so I appreciate it. Um, I kind of wanted to start with a quick reminder that this is a measurement against our budget. So the last time we kind of talked about our budget in a more macro sense was in September, and we talked to council about being about $5 million short revenues, less than expenses for this year. It's about $5.3 million that we're short, which means we're going to utilize cash reserves through this fiscal year and on into the future. If we do not correct that problem to the point where ultimately we will. Excuse me, have no cash and fall that fall below the council policy of 10% and then eventually have no cash if we continue on this trajectory. So as part of our budget development, we'll be working to fix that. But this report is basically measuring against that already existing $5.3 million shortfall. So if I talk about revenues being under projections, you can take that to mean that the problem is getting worse by that amount for the current fiscal year. If fiscal year for the audience's purposes is when to win. Yeah, the fiscal year starts in July of this year and ends in June of next year. So June of 25 will be the end of the fiscal year. So with that I'll get started. Button. So this first graph I like to talk about where is our cash balance? Where where was it, where is it and where is it heading? And so for the end of last year, we project to be right around $13 million. We're still in the process of finalizing our audit. Once we have that audit finalized, we'll bring the adjustment to our cash balance on June 30th 24 to council for approval. Um, on nine 3024. This is kind of an unaudited number, but one that actually ex council member Dacquisto requested that we report on currently on at the end of September, we had about $5.5 million or so in the bank. That's very typical of the general fund to be utilizing our cash reserves through December. And then we collect the bulk of our property tax in January, the first installment, and then in May, the second installment, after all of our citizens pay their property tax to the county, and the county remits it to us the following month. So we are using our cash reserves here. At the beginning of the year, we drop down to about 5 million. I would expect us to drop down on the next report that we give, and then by the end of the year, we expect to go back up to around$8 million. If nothing changes, we will end the year at 7.2%, which would be below the council policy of 10%. This next graph is actually a set of graphs. The graphs on the left are talking about our revenues, and the graphs on the right are talking about our expenses. The lighter blue color is our budget. The darker blue is the actual results through September in this case. So on the left we. As you can see, I always like to tell people on the left you want the dark blue to be greater than the. I actually see that I inverse some numbers there. On the left you want the dark blue to be greater than the light blue, and on the right you want the dark blue to be under the light blue. I actually think I flipped the graph on the right this time by mistake, so I apologize for that. The revenues so far, year to date are $0.4 million under projections. I'll get into those details on the next slide. And expenses are $5.1 million under projections, and I'll get into those in a few slides as to what's driving that. Okay. So discussing revenues, um, starting with the tax revenues, I mean, it's the primary way in which we fund our general fund. Um, sales tax through September is $218,000 under our forecast. The next slide, I'll do a quick reminder to Council of what we adjusted our forecast by in September, because this is actually measuring against a lowered number from our original budget that we adjusted with council in September at the mid-cycle or the mid cycle update. Um, property tax very insignificant at this point in the year. You'll see this on a couple of slides from now it's only a few hundred thousand dollars. As I said in January, that number will jump to be about $15 million total that we expect to receive from the county for our property taxes, based on the presentation that was provided by the county. We expect property taxes to come in over forecast for this year. We're hoping that that will help mitigate any under forecast in sales tax and Tot and cannabis. As you can see here, Tot is slightly under our adjusted forecast, cannabis, slightly under our adjusted forecast 25,030 3000 respectively. Other taxes 170,000 under forecast and then building related fees is 193,000 under forecast. We like to call out building related fees because it's a useful measurement of what's happening out there in our one of our primary economic drivers, in terms of what's going on in our development services department, and how might that translate into future economic activity. So this is under our forecast as well. And then revenue from other governments. I always like to point this one out. Currently it looks like it's above forecast, but this can change at any moment because we basically expect to get grants and even installments, and sometimes you get a bunch of grant revenue and then other times you get none of it, even though you're maybe waiting to receive it. So that number I always like to call out to council, because it can be somewhat tricky to forecast in terms of a one year measurement and then other revenues. That's primarily being driven by, um, as everybody knows, interest rates are higher right now. So that provides the city the opportunity to earn more money on the kind of cash reserves that we have out there throughout the city. So that number is higher than expected as well. This is just a reminder of the adjustments that we made to our revenue projections in September, ultimately resulting in the yellow line there that shows that we've reduced our revenue projections in the net by about $1 million in the first couple of years of the ten year plan, jumping up to nearly $2 million and ending up at $3 million downward. The bulk of that, as you can see there on the graph, is the sales tax forecast. We adjusted it, as you can see there, about 1.5 down in the early years, jumping up to about $2.5 million down. And then as you can see there, over $3 million below our original forecast that we made when we adopted the budget 18 months ago. Um, the point of positive news here is we were able to adjust property tax up. And as we talked about, we expect it to be even greater than than that measurement when we update Council with the next quarterly update. This is a historical three year look at each of our major revenues. Um, unfortunately, the three year we're looking at now removes that fourth year, which was in this case a sales tax significantly above these three bars that you're seeing. So we had a drop when we went into fiscal year, what we call fiscal year 23, which was 2223. And then it has pretty much leveled off. I mean, it dropped a little bit last year a little bit more, and then it's kind of stagnant. This is three years now where we're expecting, you know, the way the ten year plan works. It forecast revenues to kind of steadily increase. And as I said, we saw a drop a significant drop. And now kind of a small drop last year and maybe a slight increase this year on sales tax. Again, we need that revenue to grow. That's what our ten year plan forecasts it to do. And so that's why you're seeing on previous couple slides ago where sales tax was under that bar by about $200,000. Because it is basically lagging behind our projection by being flat or being slower growth than we anticipate. Property tax. As I said, it's a basically a not much of a revenue at this point in the year. It's kind of trending flat, which it usually does through this point of the year. Transient occupancy tax. Again, if you looked at that fourth year, you would see a sizable drop into that fiscal year 23. And as you can see, it's now been flat for three consecutive years. Cannabis it's been also dropping and other taxes is also dropping again. Those last two, they're pretty insignificant when you measure it against these three major revenues of sales tax, property tax and Tot. So then on the expenditure side, um, anything below the line is to the bad. Anything above the lines to the good on the police front. That is actually a carryover issue regarding their Arpa funding. We're in the process of processing carryovers. It was not included in this number that single handedly would put them back to the good side of the budget. Coupled with there was also a timing issue with both police and fire. We paid an expense in September that typically wouldn't be budgeted or paid for until October, and that was to, um, chase.com. So there was an extra bill paid in this quarter that we don't forecast to actually pay. So next quarter you'll see that normalize as we don't make that payment in the second quarter that we actually paid in the first quarter. And then as you can see here, public works development services, community services, general government have all saved money relative to projections. Public works, you might look at it and go, wow, that's a significant savings. I will warn everybody that that's not really general fund savings. It's either we're not spending our gas tax money and or there's grants that are just not being spent at the pace at which we expect. The same is true with community services. And while development services doesn't get a lot of grants, they do have some Arpa money that there is probably moving a little slower through the first three months of the year than we would have forecasted. General government is probably true savings that we can count on being durable savings through this point in the year. And then I think this is my last slide of the presentation. This is the updated ten year plan not to be Eeyore or bring the cloud in the room. But I at this point in our existence, I think it's my job. And so that lighter blue line was when we adopted the budget, it meant our ten year, our 10%, uh, adopted council policy requirement in every year, the ten year plan. Based on the updates that have happened over the past 18 months, we are now sitting on this dark blue line which would show us going bankrupt in 2627. Obviously, we're not going to let that happen. Barry and I are going to we're already working hard to prevent that from happening. But I think it's a good illustration of what I know. Barry and I are saying to everybody far too frequently, like, hey, we have some serious financial decisions to make, and it's about$5 million a year that we need to cut out of our general fund budget and that, you know, that's the conversation that we're going to be having throughout budget and with council as we progress through the spring and winter months. So with that, I'm almost positive that was my last slide. It was I'm available for any questions And I appreciate your time. Vice mayor. Thank you. Um, thank you very much, Mr. Robinette. This is why we do a ten year plan so we can project out. And so kudos to our city for doing that. And I know a lot of cities don't do that. So this helps us make course correction early. So we because we as a city don't do that. We don't operate in the red. We typically have never done that. So we have to make a course correction. I just have a question. I'm wondering to know when will those budgetary decisions and maybe the city manager can answer that. When will those that be coming back to the next council? Is that January? February? Yeah. The plan right now is that we'll do a workshop in January, and that gives us an opportunity to see the next quarter worth of sales tax revenues. So we did have a pretty robust construction season, not necessarily with home building, but we had a lot of commercial building, and we also had a lot of construction in our streets. And Caltrans had a lot of construction in local highways. So hopefully that had a positive impact and we will be able to assess that. And then we'll meet with the council in January, where a lot of difficult discussions will take place. Thank you. Mr. Johnson, would you agree with me that we just need to build more houses? We mean we no more supply. Mr. Robinette, we get more supply. We get more property tax. That is true. Yes. If we get more supply and houses. There's the challenge. Yes, absolutely. It's a challenge. I understood you to report this time. It was great. Thank you so much. Not as good as lilies, but it was very good. All right, we're broke. Got it. Good job. Thank you very much. I have one, I just. Oh, yeah. Go for it. Real quick if you can just summarize, because I get asked a lot about about our budget process, just real quick. If you could summarize maybe in a minute or two, just how do we budget at the city? Do we does everyone start with last year's budget and just add 5%? Do they is it you know. So I will tell you, when I first started here, we. Always had the I mean the same problem. The general fund always has. There's a lack of resources. I mean there's always competing interests for the resources. But we use a lot of people would call a status quo budget. So the city manager at the time would ask everybody to come in with a status quo budget. Um, when Barry became city manager, he made a decision to say, hey, we're not doing status quo budgeting anymore. We're going to do some might call it zero based budgeting. Maybe a more positive spend would be priority based budgeting, but basically requesting the departments to justify every single thing that's in their budget. And the first year, That's a ton of work, you know. And I'm sure the department's probably muttered under their breath multiple times as they worked through, trying to justify every dollar that's in their budget to finance in the city manager. And, you know, getting a lot of questions from my finance staff to help them refine their justification to ensure that it was accurately justifying the information that was included in their budget. I'd say in subsequent years, it gets easier, right? Because once you've done it the first time, you still, you know, don't think of it as status quo, but you know what's in there. So it's easier for you to go in and kind of brush up that justification and provide it to finance and the city manager through the budget process. So on top of requesting departments to provide all that justification, I always like to explain to people that, you know, finance has a staff of accountants who review everything that's being done or requested by the departments, and we're doing our best to work with the departments to make sure that the justification is there and that it makes sense and that it's good information for the city manager, my, me and myself. I review it as well. The city manager reviews it. So there's a lot of different people that are scrutinizing these numbers. I mean, I would say it's for the purpose of providing the best possible service to our community by analyzing our budget requests and ensuring that it's the best use for our community at that time. And so there's a large team of us in the departments and finance and the city manager's office that I think is really working hard to ensure that our budget is truly a reflection of the needs of this city. And we then we try to put that in a consumable format for council. When we talk about budget workshops and things of that nature, obviously we're not going through every line like we did as a team, but we try to bring it to council with those key decision points in mind. Yeah, it seems like a real I was real impressed as I got to learn more about that being council member last five months. And besides the ten year budget, which is not normal for a lot of cities, but I would say this process, the priority based budgeting as well, um, status status quo budgeting. I mean, you you hear a lot of that in, in government. But what I appreciate as we're going into this deficit conversation as a community to understand is that our city is taking a pretty fiscally responsible approach to how we look at budgeting. I know that every director right now is working on that, to work towards that workshop in January and working hard at finding cuts, finding places to to save. I know that everyone's got skin in the game, so I appreciate that. But the hard part about it, the pros of of the of the budgeting process that you have is that we know what's true. We know what's actual. The hard part about it is you don't find as much money under the cushions. Um, so we have to get we have to get really, you know, down and dirty with it and, and get creative and find those means and make those tough decisions. But I just wanted to commend you. Thank you for all your work and all your accountants and the liaisons that are working with the with the various directors. It's a it's a busy season for you guys. So thank you. Can you let the public know where they can find this information online? Because there are a lot of documents and budgets and information that if the public wants to actually look through some of this, it is readily available on the website. So, yeah, absolutely. Um, we don't publish the budget to actual reports. Um, we, we publish our budget on our finance website. We also publish our aquifers on our finance website, act for short, for annual comprehensive financial report. Those are all published on under the Finance Department web page. You'll find those. The aquifer is under our financial reporting and the budget is under the budget tab on our website. So if people want to know sort of how things are allocated or what we say all the time that the number is different every time I hear somebody else say it, but 80%, 82, 90% is police and fire. They can go and look and see exactly Sort of the departments and and how what the budget is for those things? Absolutely. And if they ever have a question, feel free to stop by finance. I'm always willing to answer any questions people have. Vice mayor. I just wanted to thank you. And, um, actually just go ahead and make a motion to accept the quarterly general Fund financial report. Second. We have a first and a second. All those in favor? I okay. All right. We will move to item 9.6 B. To consider the Little League field use fees and negotiation of a memorandum of understanding with the Little League organization. All right. Thank you, Madam Mayor. So I'm going to go through a little bit of background here, but I just wanted to preface this that we are here tonight to have a policy discussion on Little League field usage and make some decisions here on whether we continue past practice or change things up, but it's a good time to kind of call for the question and clear things up and get them on paper. So I'm going to go through a little background. So we have eight fields that the city programs or owns. Um we maintain those. We're doing all the routine mowing, fertilizing, repairs, things like that. Uh, five of those fields have mounds and seven have lighting. The only one that doesn't have lighting is the field at the MLK center. It's not typically used for Little League games, but I think it has in the past. So there are two Redding based, nonprofit little leagues that predominantly use our fields. That's East Redding Little League and West Redding Little League, and that's really who we are going to be talking about tonight. And our our what I would call a special relationship with them. So those leagues are responsible for field prep on the day of the games. They've helped us out over the years with projects and they they do some kind of general upkeep of the facility, but the vast majority of the actual day to day maintenance is done by park staff. And I think they do a great job for the resources that they that we've allocated to that program. So past practice for us has been to not charge those leagues usage fees. They are applied to every user group except for Little League. And they actually used to have an exemption. Well, essentially all nonprofits had an exemption until the 2021 to 2022 schedule of fees, which is where the city publishes its fees for whether it's a service or a reservation or a permit. Those are all listed in that schedule of fees, and council adopts that annually. And I think it was as directed by Council Policy 802. So in that year there, or at least prior to that year, there was a sentence that said local nonprofit leagues are exempt from the use fees. And so that was struck from that fee schedule for that year. And though it was removed, the practice in the office did not change. And I did some digging. And I believe where that came from is there was a discussion with the Community Services Advisory Commission in which they opined that fees should be charged, and I think there was some efforts made to do that, but that was just deleted. And then staff never really implemented that at their level. So as we, uh, I want to use this. There we go. So let's take a look at where they play. So you see the little yellow square up there. And the two right there were actually right next door to us at City Hall. So, um, that's predominantly where West Redding Little League is playing up K1, K2, K3, those are the Kiwanis fields built in the 50s and 60s by the Kiwanis Group. And occasionally there is there is play at. Softball Park, which is right next door to us here. Just a couple pictures of what those look like. Thank you to our in-house photographer. Landon always makes us look good. And that's sort of like our little little league complex up there by Caldwell Park. And we've recently added that T-ball field and East Redding Little League predominantly is playing at Alta mesa, though I have seen some reservations for softball park, and they call that home. And they've got some projects they're wanting to do out there as well, and they have contributed quite a bit over the years. So that would include things like scoreboards, which are much more involved project than than that day to day raking and field prep, and those definitely help us out. The infield reconstruction at K2. So West Redding Little League did that. That actually has improved post rain play. So the field drains a lot better and we're really happy to have that done, because those are the types of areas where park staff cannot kind of take the next, get to the next level to do that sort of stuff. We're mostly mow and blow, occasional repair, pressure washing, things like that. As I said, East Redding wants to take on some bullpens at Alta mesa. That is a big project and the general cleanup. So they do assist us. There's going to be garbage or cleaning that they need to do. So they're really good stewards of those fields. I'm not going to go through this whole list. This is what the city does annually to get the fields going for play. So we rest them over the winter. We don't let any activity occur on them. And then we do all of these things in order to get the fields going for the year, and that's when we open them up for play. So essentially day one, when they're open for play, Little League is on there with practice getting ready for their season. So what we do on a date on a like basically as our practice between parks and recreation, as we do all that annual field maintenance, all of our costs equate to about $81,000 for the year, specifically for those fields. That's utilities, that's, you know, the mowing and fertilizing and all that sort of stuff. That does not include if we have a mainline break, vandalism, if we have something, um, you know, like a real problem with the turf, but that's our basic maintenance costs that we would kind of carry forward every year. Uh, we do when time and budgets permit, if we have additional funds or a good partnership or we're able to work with Little League, we will do some improvement projects, but we're not able to tackle those on a consistent basis. We do also give the Little League groups a priority reservation. So what that means in practice is essentially we get in line behind Little League when it comes to field usage Because we want to keep their program consistent. It is a very big baseball. Youth baseball program. And in order to do that, we need to make sure that they're having the fields at the times that they need to have the fields and not be going back and forth between random game and then back into Little League. So we try to facilitate their schedule, and we also use our staff to input their reservations. And generally the public would it would be first come first serve and they would have to schedule their own reservations. That's a practice that we've inherited. And that's something that we can definitely sort out in an MOU on how and why we do that. We've just continued to do that because that's the system that we've been used to. And then priority reservation also means I will just note that in June, essentially, when we start up our Junior Giants program, that we do not have fields for our programs, and sometimes we have to go use fields at schools while Little League season is finishing up with All stars. It's what we're used to, but it's just something to note when we talk about that priority reservation. So they also get exclusive use of city facilities. And mostly what I'm talking about is the snack shacks. So it's essentially the classic Little League selling candy and stuff like that. That's a huge revenue generator for little leagues, and they get to operate that little kind of informal business out of those buildings. But if you were to rent the field as a regular member of the public, that's not part of that group. You would not have access to that. And so that's also another thing that could be cleaned up in an agreement. They also have storage containers on the properties, which because there's not a lot of storage or buildings and parks, we actually have to supplement that with things like storage containers. And although they aren't attractive, that's what we have. And we let Little League keep those on our property as well. The biggest thing to really, you know, I kind of feel like I'm coming clean on on what we've been doing with Little League, but we waive all the fees for field usage. And so that's really kind of the most important thing that we need to discuss. And if we want to make a decision on that or if we want to continue that practice, we just need to own it and put it on paper and understand that that's, you know, the community we want to live in. So that's the the real big reason that we're bringing this up tonight. So in 2024, we waived $101,000 in what would have otherwise been charged to Little League groups. We charge $47 for two hours to standard reservations and a $12 light fee. So for East Redding Little League, that would have been about $36,000 for their reservations last year and $65,000 for West Redding Little League in 2024. Overall. For all of our baseball fields that we're talking about here, of the pictures and lists that I showed you earlier, we generated $5,458 in 2024, in field usage. And that, I would say $4,000, is because we closed the Redding Sports Park and instantly those fields became like totally reserved. Those groups are used to paying those fees. They needed a place to go, and they called us and started using our field. So we had a great year in that regard because they started instantly using our facilities. But a normal year looks like 2023, where it was $646. So we generally don't make a lot. And I think I put in the staff report, it's something like 0.2% of all facility reservations. Revenue is baseball fields. In a normal year, they're the most used but least revenue generating. And so I figured you'd want to see some comparable cities and understand a few other cities practices. So Anderson, Mount Shasta. Shasta, Lake City, Chico and us who I included on the list. So, Anderson, of all these groups, is the only city that does not actually charge Large little leagues, any money. However little leagues, I'm told, do a great job down there and maintain their facility to a really high level. Otherwise, if you are a regular member of the public outside of that group, it's $75 per day, which is, I would say, a lot lower than our fee because we're doing $47 for two hours. Mount Shasta charges a per person or per player fee of $14. If you're a regular outside of Little League member of the public, it's between 50 and$150 a day. Shasta Lake City doesn't offer a discount, but they have really low field use fees, so they do a $35 per team per season fee. And that doesn't matter whether you're in Little League or not. Any group can go there and pay that same fee, and they have a couple miscellaneous fees they add on top of that. Chico is probably the highest that we looked at for non-profits, which is what Little League groups Uh. Ah. They charge a $20 an hour rate, and otherwise it would be $30 an hour if you're not. If you're like a travel ball team that wasn't a nonprofit, it'd be $30 an hour. They also charge a $37 per hour light fee, which is substantially higher than ours. And then any field prep work triggers an $80 fee. So if you're doing a tournament and you want them to prep the fields between each game, it's $80 a game on top of your field use fee. So any nonprofit gets that deal. It's not specifically targeted at one group or another. And then I broke our fee down into a per hour cost. So it was easy to kind of see how it related to everyone else would be 23, 50 an hour for our fields, and then we have a $12 per session light fee. So that would be like $6 an hour on top of that. Uh, these fields do actually need a lot of work, and we'd love to chip away at some of this stuff. We do not have a dedicated funding source to be able to do a lot of this. So you will have heard a lot of this in our unmet needs conversations over the last year, but a few of these things we are actually going to be able to address. If there's AK1 next to it, we can do a lot of that work, with the exception of the the parking lot. But we got a grant for South City Park and it included a lot of funding for K one, a lot. I think it's like $75,000, but we'll we'll get it stretched out as far as we can. But you know, things like outfield grass replacement, the new bullpens, that's a that's a project that the Little League can tackle. But those are definitely needs that. The community has new infield. So I am happy to report that we did buy an infield groomer, which is the same sort of one that Tiger Field uses. And that's what I heard was all the rage, and everyone wants that. So we're hoping to be able to tackle some additional projects that way with equipment and then, you know, maybe form some sort of partnership to get the materials in there, restroom upgrades. So if you've been to any of these parks, you know, they are in serious need of restroom upgrades. The only one that I can say that we're going to be able to tackle is at K1 with the South City Park project. Otherwise they're all in in pretty sore need of some love new bleachers, backstop netting, dugout roof repairs. I mean, all that stuff ages out and having additional funds to be able to do that, we'd have to essentially request that in budget. We'd have to get that in partnerships, donations or the occasional grant, though maintenance grants are really rare. Although I did have a meeting with the state and I tried to convince them that's the way to go. So we'll see. So we're really kind of stuck with this is a level of service we can provide at at with our resources at this moment. So if we did have an MOU, we could address all the roles and responsibilities for maintenance, that priority reservation system, our processes for that, we could address field usage times and the availability. We could address the use of city owned facilities. So all those ancillary facilities around there, as well as having those storage containers on site, we would capture insurance. So it's very important to have an operator or a partner's insurance on file when they're doing some sort of business or use of your facility. The field use fees and any other policies that we want to explore during that process. And so what I would recommend is that you accept this report and you provide us direction relative to the field usage fees, and you authorize a city manager or his designee to consult with the Community Services Advisory Commission or cSAC to negotiate the MoU for field use, maintenance, reservation practices, and any other policy and authorize me, the Director of Community Services, to execute those MoU with the Little League organizations. And with that, I can take any questions you may have. I think we'll do a public. I think we'll do public comment first. Can I just ask? I just wanted to ask a question. Sure. Um. Thank you. Um, director, I wanted to ask, uh, who else is using the fields besides Little League? Like, what are the other users? Are there other nonprofit users, too? There's travel ball teams that will use the field. Are they nonprofit? Would you? I don't know the specific makeup for for their groups. I don't know how they're incorporated, but there's also tournament operators that will use them. There's a softball league that we've worked to get going. They are actually a nonprofit. So I would say it's probably a mix, but I don't know if travel ball teams are for profits. It seems like mostly a nonprofit venture. Okay. Thank you. Oh, do they pay field. Yeah they pay. I thought you meant, like, the kids get paid. I don't know, we'd all be. We'd all be. Playing. Yes. Yeah. Um, okay, we'll do public comment and then we'll bring you back, uh, Laura Hobbs, Lee lamp, Jeff Hansen, James Wilson. Good afternoon, council members and audience. I'm here speaking for my three sons, whose lives have been greatly enriched by Little League. The experience gives them something to look forward to every spring and every fall. The coaches are all volunteer, the parents are all part of the community, and they run the Little League program from top to bottom, everything from maintenance to working the snack shop. And the coaches do an excellent job of working with the kids, helping them to grow physically and emotionally. Please continue to waive all the field usage fees in this economy. All families are struggling and the kids just want to be able to play ball. They don't need or want all these bells and whistles that was just described to you by the director. My family is one where the finances, if they were to raise the fees for the Little League, it would raise our fees as parents to enroll our three kids, and it might be cost prohibitive for us at that point. This. So I just want to encourage you, please do not raise the fees. Do not impose any new fees. Thank you. Thank you. Lee lamp. Um, thank you. For the opportunity to to discuss this and and throw a few things out. Um, I'd ask you to vote, first off, to waive any fees. Obviously, it's been going on that way for about 25 years, and, um, uh, needlessly, we're, you know, we're probably pretty comfortable with that. It's awful tough when you have to follow the budget guy, and he talks about how much we're hurting here, and I'm going to ask you to give something back. But, um, I would tell you that we welcome an MOU. Um, a couple, 2 or 3 years ago, we actually approached the city, um, wanting to do an MOU, and, um, and we were met with a negative response on that. Um, I would ask that the MoU specifically spell out a waiver of that, of that field fee. And, um, there's a lot of things that can be incorporated into an MOU. We're open to a broad spectrum of of options. What would it look like to turn the fields over to the leagues for, say, five years? Site control, maintenance, etc. might be a good time for us to think outside the box. Um, my counterpart in East Redding who's going to follow me. And I really don't know what he's going to say when he comes up here, but I do know that he'd agree that facing a placing the fee on on usage of the fields would force the leagues to increase registration across the age spectrum, and it would significantly impact families, um, especially those low income families. Uh, as it stands right now, we have a number of families that we provide scholarships for also. Um, and, um, I can't think of a single kid that's been denied the opportunity to play ball as long as I've been affiliated with West Redding little leagues, vastly different from travel ball. Um, every child is guaranteed a roster spot time on the field through the Little League. Mandatory play rules. Both of our leagues price their programs for affordability and strive to deliver a quality experience across the board for ages four through 14. Technically, Little League goes to 16, but we haven't had a senior league for quite some time. West Redding averages about 400 players every spring and 70 players every fall. We understand the budget challenges that the city is facing right now, but in this case, we please ask that you consider the kids and how important youth sports are developing their skills. Ability to pay is a problem there and we want them to have opportunities to grow, stay active and involved. Thank you, thank you. Appreciate it. Lee. Jeff Hansen. Hi. I'm the president of the East Riding Little League. I've got a little bit of a unique perspective because my first job was working for the city, was a supervisor with the rec department, so I was the guy who used to approve those little league ones and was working with cSAC to write those field schedules and everything. So one of the differences on Little League and travel balls Little leagues is 75 year old volunteer run organization. Nobody gets paid. One of the things Travis touched on was insurance. That's only one insurance certificate that the new supervisor has to put into the city system. That that takes work. You know, we're backed, we're insured. Um, if somebody gets hurt, not the city's not just on the hook. Little League is also insured. So that's a huge thing. Another thing that Little League guarantees is that every player who's playing on these Redding fields either lives in the city of Redding or goes to school in the city of Redding. It's really the only community league left in any sports that has strict residential boundaries. I can't grab a player from West Riding because he's good and bring him over to my league. He has to play in restraining, which is really fun. So think of it as a River Bowl. But with nine and ten year olds running around out there on a baseball field, so that 36,000 number that Travis pointed out that he waived, that's almost identical to the registration fees that our league brought in last year. So we get money from registration, business sponsorships, the snack bar and the kids knocking on your door selling candy bars. Those are our only sources of of income. And each year we spend it. Our board works really hard to make sure we're as financially stable as we can be, but also spending the money on the kids now. So a parent now isn't paying for a project. Ten years later, we have a little slush fund to get us started, but we really want to keep it going right now. So just asking to send it back to staff. We work great with staffs. Your parks department works fantastic. I've got gardeners in the head of parks. You know, I call them before we do anything on the field, but we spend between 5 and$8000 a year on city fields and school fields, just keeping them up each year. Last year we spent $5,000 putting a new portable mound so the kids could play at different distances on Alta mesa. We leave that out for when travel ball kids are playing. We don't pull it on and off. If they need chalk, we don't make them bring chalk. We say, you know, here's the code to the Conex box. Use our Chalkers. We really don't try to just hold that field when we're not playing. We want to see that field used the most. We're the ones there at 8 a.m. on Saturday morning. If somebody set up camp in the dugout asking them to leave before the kids get there. Twice this winter, when we weren't going, we had people set up camp in our announcer's booth, and we were the ones who got them out of there. Let our PD know. So really, just having volunteers in those parks is huge. To keep our parks safe and to let kids play all over them. So thank you guys. Thank you. Thanks, Jeff. James Wilson and Stephen Francis. Thank you board. I'm relatively new to West Redding Little League. My sons played two seasons now, and I was an assistant coach last season, and I was shocked at the amount of connections that my son made. My family made just being involved with Little League. We met families we would never have met outside of our normal circle, and these are families from all different strata of economic, you know, affluence and lack of affluence. And so for us, just having that opportunity to meet new families, build new connections like that, it's a it's a great gift. And so it would break my heart just for the kids that I helped coach, just to not see some of them there because they couldn't afford it. I know the scholarships are there, but with increased fees, you know, those scholarships can't go as far. So, Um, just we would really appreciate just this continuation of the existing practice. Um, but. Yeah. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for coming up to speak. Welcome to Redding. All right. Stephen. Francis. Well, I wasn't here to speak about anything, honestly. I was here for another cause. But I actually spent five years on the board of East Redding Little League. And my kids have aged out, and we are in travel ball and fields are. Fields are a big issue. First of all, I'd like to thank you guys for opening up for Bld because it's been it's meant the world to our travel ball. But I can tell you first off that Little League can't afford the fees. I know the budget. I know how much money they had. I'm a painting contractor, small business in town. There's a lot of volunteers, people that have donated when I was in there. But I can tell you, I mean, I replaced the backstops Personally got the wood donated. I'm a painting contractor, painted the snack bars for the city. Uh, and a lot of that money. There's so many children that cannot afford it. And like I said, five years on the board, a lot of our money out of my own pocket. If you're volunteering for Little League or any of the leagues, it's costing you money to do so. So youth sports holds a special spot in my heart because it's keeping these kids off the streets. So I understand business is business and money needs to be made because I am a businessman. But also I personally volunteer and donate all my anything I can to all the high schools and little leagues. So I just ask that you think about it real close, because there's tons of families that will not be able to afford to play. Thank you, thank you. Thanks, Steven. All right. We'll bring it back to the council. Does anybody have any questions or comments for Travis? Jack, you had a comment? Yeah. Go ahead. Mayor Pro ten months. Oh. Thank you. Do we have any? Uh. I know we've talked a little bit about it, but any monetization of how much the East and West leagues actually spend? No. Not specifically. They would have to what they what they provide. I mean, you know, we talked about I know the bullpens are I think you said 50 grand, but. Yeah, we have a. Dollar value that I was told for that we don't I mean, over the number. Over the years, there have been specific projects that have different values attached to them, and that will often be like an MOU that's executed, that says, we're going to do this project here or there. Um, but we don't have a specific, you know, there's an hourly rate you could attribute to volunteerism, and we'd have to sit and do the math with that group to kind of assign what that cost would be. Okay. And I had another question, but Julie answered for me, so. Okay. Vice mayor Winter. Oh, I didn't have any questions. I just had some comments just for discussion points. But if, uh, Councilor Mazzano would like to ask a question, go for it. Well, it's just not. It's not really a question, Travis. It's an observation. I've coached Little League from T-ball all the way up to one year at the collegiate level under Rick Bosetti. It changes lives. And to think that. Kids can't play because they can't afford it is wrong. It's America's pastime. I'm sorry, but, um, I see those kids out there, and we need to keep them off the street. And we do that by putting them in a good environment with people that care about them. That's their coaches and their parents. I followed West Redding Little League All-Star team this year because they're making a movie about it, and if you could see that movie, you would see the impact it has on our community and the future of this community, because a lot of those kids are going to grow up here, and they might move away for a while, but they'll come back. And when they do come back, they make this a better place. So I would be opposed to any fees. I would support a waiver of fees for for Little League and I would recommend the MOU. I think it's long overdue. Madam. Madam mayor, may I just put a little context in this? Yes. I feel like there's a little bit of animosity towards Travis for bringing this up, and I just want to bring it back to some factual information. So in 2020, there was or 2021, there was an adjustment made to the fee schedule. That was in response to the council's direction to the Community Services Department to increase their fees across their facilities to help make up for some budget deficits that we are experiencing at that time. That was never charged. I don't know why, but when Travis took over and he's looking at the overall operations of the Community Services Department, he noted that there's no authority for city staff to waive fees that rests solely with this body. So the question tonight regarding fees is simply put to you, because it's your authority to do so. Neither Travis nor I, you know, have any specific reservations with no fee or charging a fee. It's simply a policy discussion that needs to take place with you, and you give us direction on what that is. And for the record, I think you're doing a great job. All right. There's no animosity here, Travis. You're doing a great job since you've been given the challenge, and you've got your hands tied with this budget. But we've got to find a way to make this happen. And you're right. It rests with us. And I would make the motion that we waive the fees for Little League. Council member Johnson. Thank you. Travis. Can you tell me. So the word subsidy is not a great word when it comes to recreation. Like it isn't a great word for describing how we fund police. But, um, what would you say is the amount that out of your budget that we of of money spent on programing or maintenance or otherwise, that doesn't, that we don't recoup in, in fees? It's about $81,000 what we can calculate. Oh sorry. Sorry I'm talking about your department wide all recreation programs. Oh, for all recreation programs. So we have a fee policy, and I'll have the specific numbers on what we don't recuperate. Very. The $2 million. Okay, so. And then how do how have we decided how we're which programs that we are providing those types of services for and not covering all the fees for, like for, for other programs outside of Little League? It's split between youth and adult programing. So youth program is subsidized by about 10%. And adult programing is essentially the cost recovery rate is about 10% higher in hopes that it offsets. But it doesn't always work that way. There are certain programs that are mandated to be free, like the Junior Giants program. If we want to be a partner with the San Francisco Giants on that baseball program, which is, I'd say, even one step, it's even more inclusive because anyone can play for free and they get a really cool jersey after that program is mandated to be free. And there's also stuff like the NFL flag football. They all come with stipulations by those organizations, and we council elects to fund that through our budget. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I just had a suggestion for tonight. I just wanted to kind of step back a little bit and, and think about this kind of big picture. I actually think we have two issues. We have the MOU that you need to have. And I really thank Mr. Lamp for coming forward and talking about the willingness of Little League to do an MOU and maybe some ideas about helping to reduce the city costs. I think that's great. So I would like to separate out the MOU piece and the fee piece, because I think the fee piece, especially following Mr. Robinett's discussion and the fact that the City Council is going to be doing a workshop in January, you're going to be looking at all, you know, that that was concerning seeing that downward trend in our in our reserves. So the city is going to be doing a workshop, and you're going to be having to look at all of the unmet needs and, and the, the deficit. And I think this discussion should be part of that larger discussion. Pulling it out now just doesn't seem it just it feels like it's out of place. So I would I would recommend that we postpone any discussion of fee increases to that that January workshop budget and that, but that in the meantime, we say tonight we would direct, um, Mr. Meany to work with cSAC to develop an MOU with the Little leagues. And as the Little League folks, thank you so much for coming and for all that you do. And we really want to make Little League work. So perhaps there are some ideas you can come forward with that would help reduce the costs and or some other fundraising that would help reduce the cost. My concern is the sustainability of running, of doing what we're doing because our revenues are flat, but costs continue to rise. And so we just want to make sure that what we do is fair. What we do is sustainable. And so that would be my recommendation is that we just work on the MoU piece and delay fee discussion for a later date. Is that a motion. That would make a motion? I would make a motion that we. Yes, that we just do the MOU tonight and have a few discussion at the budget workshop. You could you could ask if the maker of the first motion would be willing to modify to that effect. That's correct. Yeah, that'd be fine if you want to do that. Okay. So yours would be the second. Okay. I will be the second then if you make that modification. All right. So I well I would prefer that in the MOU discussion. I mean I think it's fine to talk about the value of I guess, cost savings or whatever however deferring those costs. But but they provide a service we're not providing. So Little League is providing kids youth baseball. And so I do think that that has a value to our community. And so I don't and I think if you charge them more as the mother of someone who played Little League, I don't want to sell more candy or pay more fees. I think it's it's a huge time commitment, and it is also expensive because it's not just the fees that you pay to play. You have a glove and a bat and it's just all the things. And so I know that Little League is a part of most children's lives. It's every, you know, you all get to play. It's a lot like soccer. You know everybody, if you join the league, you get to play, which I think is a really important start for children. So I think it it provides something. So I think if we discuss fees in that we have that number, which as they said, is the entire income for their league that would put them out of business completely. So I don't I would be fine to discuss what the value they want to offset that with. If it's more maintenance, if it's can we come up with a plan to prioritize the all those things that need to be fixed, and would they partner with the city on some of those, like they pay half for some of those things or whatever, you know, whatever would they already wanted improves the field, but to just pay a fee to the city? I don't I don't support that. But I do think they want to add value. They already do add value. Um, I don't think that there's money to be made. They're not trying to make money. They're just trying to facilitate a league. So, I mean, I think we should be careful how we talk about what they're paying because they're providing something we don't provide. So we're not providing coaches. We're not you know, we're not providing all those things. So, um, I would be fine to incorporate that into a conversation. But I do think at a minimum, we need to say that, um, we're not going to charge use fees for the facility. Maybe we talk about some cost sharing of improvements or something, and that can be discussed in the MOU. And then maybe that comes back if that's what they agree to through that process. But I don't I don't I don't think that we should be charging them actual use fees for the facility. And I do think if if the travel ball is interested in just used the facility, maybe they talk about a schedule so that we can attract more travel ball so we can make a little bit more income in that regard, because that's a totally different deal. Um, and maybe we haven't done that, but now that they've used it once because Big League Dreams wasn't available, maybe there's something more discussion to be had. Um, but that's. What are you saying? Are you agreeing with them or. I don't I would want to take I would want, I would want to see more discussion off the. I would want to take use fees off the table and make it more of cost sharing for maybe upkeep or like go ahead. So let me add first, Travis, one of the things I would suggest is that what Vice Mayor Winter suggests provides the opportunity for not only the MoU to get developed and identification of who's going to do what in an approximate value, but it also allows the conversation to drift into other nonprofits. There are more entities out there than just Little League. And so if the council tonight just says that only Little League gets that privilege, that's fine. That's your prerogative. But you might want to defer that conversation, as the vice mayor suggests to January. So you can holistically look at that, because the fee waiver was to all nonprofits back prior to the 2020. Have we been charging nonprofits this whole time? Well, I don't we do travel ball. So it's it's really unknown because the travel ball that's a nonprofit technically would fall under that old policy. The council may not want to do that. I'm just simply suggesting that isolating that one discussion tonight may or may not be what the council as a whole would like to do. They'd like to see it more holistically. Well, my concern, the thing. The basis I get that part, my concern is that they have to plan for next year. So if they don't know what their costs are going to be, we. Wouldn't be able to charge them. I mean, if let me maybe make another offering with that determination, you could also add to that motion that for the current fiscal year and the current season that we're planning for, there will be no fees for field usage. And then they're going to discuss and then. You'll be able to make that determination. But we can for future years. I would you're saying that it's you're tying together all non-profits with just little league. They're not all equal. That's correct. But tonight you're not I'm not prepared to discuss the differentiation between the various nonprofits, and I don't think the council is either, because we don't have that information. I think we need to come back. So what I'm suggesting is that you could add to the motion that for this year, you authorized no fee, uh, be in charge to Little League, then that allows you to have that conversation. That's a good idea. That's fine. Then you have a bigger picture discussion in January where you can talk about all fees, because we're not also just talking about nonprofits. You know, we're fields. We also have other facilities we rent. So are we going to say all nonprofits get to rent the other facilities for free, or are we just talking about fields? Well, I'm just talking about Little League. Right. So that's what I'm saying, that maybe that's. What's on the agenda, sir, I understand. Keep it to what it is. Well, I was actually moving on vice Mayor's commentary that I have an opportunity to have a bigger discussion. And I would suggest that if you would like to waive Little League for this year, you can do so as part of your motion. And then that would become effective. And then you can have a bigger conversation in January about the holistic fees. Can you add that? I would like to add to that. Um, look travel ball is different okay. Travel ball as a rule are better players. Their parents are into it because those kids are going to really develop, and they're the ones that the college scouts are looking at. That's where we find them. When we're recruiting for our college baseball teams, we look at the travel ball teams. We look at travel soccer teams. Are you going to add to the motion. And I'm adding that to the motion. Not travel ball. Just that no fees, no. Fees for next. Year. I think you should charge travel ball. At least for the next. Year. Can I just throw. In some thoughts just because there are little League people here? Um thank you. Travis. Your goal right now, what I'm hearing overarching is like there are administrative holes that you're trying to plug, and one of them is just getting an agreement. An agreement like an MOU, just like an Loi letter of intent MOU, memorandum of understanding. It just provides clarity for what everyone is going to be doing and who is doing what and how that partnership looks. So I, I really do appreciate the idea of of waiving the fees for this next year. But then what, you know, the vice mayor was saying, um, is, is that get the MoU completed? My hope would be that we would add kind of a time frame for that. I think February would be great. Um, get the MoU completed. And I think at that time you'll be able to come back with both with the input of both presidents and your and yourself and your staff to say, here's actually what we've agreed to going forward and here's why. And I understand that might have a wider, you know, scope, but you have to look at it apples to apples. And I would hope that we're not going to take the financial woes of our city and bear, bear it on the backs of Little League. That's not what we're talking about. Right. So and I don't hear you saying that, I don't I don't think that's really the goal of this council. So at least that's what I'm not hearing in the posture here. So what I would hope is that we could do what we're asking and but just add a time frame, come back in February, in February, which will, which will pair up really nicely with all the financial conversations. And I know your fee schedule gets updated. What in June is that. Right. So it's it's great timing for all. I think it's going to line up really well. Have Travis come back with a timeline. You can give us a timeline. What do you think? Yeah, I think that February would be adequate to be able to start discussing. I did actually need what Barry was saying. I needed to know what to do for the next season because spring season will start registration soon. The reason I waited until now is because I didn't want to spring it on a league mid-season and say, hey, actually, there's a rules and we need to do that. I will issue two cautionary points, one being that we need to look into prevailing wage issues if we are subsidizing their use of the fields and consulting with the attorney on that. For instance, if they did a project. Right. Yes. Right. Which I don't think we can do anything about that. That would be a state issue. The other one being when we talk about improvements, I will let you know that the budget that we have is the budget that we have. And with the budget issues that we're talking about, I don't see that going up. I see it staying flat or going down. So improvements are most likely out of the equation unless we're finding alternate funding sources. So I didn't want to have a glimmer of hope out there that we're going to suddenly start repaving parking lots. That's going to that's going to be work that we have to do to to hustle to get that money. If I may add just a little bit. Um, I think one of the basic questions here is sort of how you give Director Benny the authority to waive the fees for Little League, since he doesn't have that right now. Um, I hear that it's being incorporated in the current motion. Um, since it's part of the fee schedule, it's possible we might need to bring back a resolution. Um, if we do so, we'll just do it on consent. So please, just don't be surprised if you see it on consent on the next calendar. If we determine no further action is needed. We won't do that. To Director Benny's point on the, um, prevailing wage issue. There may be some advantages in structuring an MOU to sort of limit some of the unintended consequences if we're able to get the right terms and the right drafting in there. So there may be some details to work through that may end up to mutual benefit. Okay, great. Can you reiterate all the points of the motion? Yeah. And I want to add one one little piece here as well. So stacking up. Well, presuming that West Redding or East Redding is not using one of said fields and one of our other little leagues wants to use it, I assume that the fee waiver would apply to them as well because Foothill Little League, Shasta Lake Little League and Anderson Little League have quite a few city residents that participate in their leagues as well. So just clarification that you would you would intend that those leagues also, if the field was available, could rent those fields for free. As long as director Robinette's Group pays. That would be Foothill Italy. But Shasta. Lake and Anderson both. Do they pay now? Yes. What is what? Then I would just say. But I'm. But they shouldn't if they're. If little League because those are city resident kids. I bet you close to 40% of Foothill Little League is probably city residents. Well, it should be. Free. Um if it if what we current. I'm just curious how if it's currently what we practice what what. Makes we're violation of of the policy. So what I'm asking for is if you make. That so you're so Foothill doesn't have their own facilities. Yeah they do, but sometimes they may need to practice. And I'm just saying if the field is available, which it's not going to be available very, very much. Right. But let's say they go further into all stars than does West Redding of the league. And they want to use Alta mesa field. You know, unless we exclude them to we'll charge them. I'm just suggesting that. Because you've been charging them. We have in the past, but they don't use our fields very much because they would get charged. So they find other ways. I'm just suggesting that we have more kids in Little League than just West Redding and East Redding Little Leagues. They participate because, as was stated by geographic boundaries, Columbia School District, which is Mountain View and Columbia, All go to Foothill Little League. By definition, kids on the on the northeast side of town go to Shasta Lake. Who live in the city of Redding, but they play in Shasta Lake. Little League kids in if in Redding. We wanted to go to Shasta Lake. Do we pay to use their fields? I don't know that we have ever gone that. They are exclusive to. Shasta. Dam. So according to the city. So the other cities don't even let us come and play there, let alone they. Don't have kids in Shasta Lake who participate, you know, unless they do inter-league transfers. I'm saying by geographic boundaries, we have many kids who are not allowed to participate in West Redding or East Redding because of geographic boundaries. Right. However, they do live in the city and their parents still pay. Property taxes, and. Kids outside of the city are coming in and using our fields as well. So I don't. And our kids if not. So membership in the Little League is by geographic boundaries unless there's approvals and waivers through the right. We're talking about East and West Little League because if you also you want them to be competitive too so that you're living in that area, you go play in that in that area. Right. And we have a significant number of kids who live in Redding in the city limits and play in Palo Cedro. I understand that, but so I'm. Just suggesting that this year you waive those two. That's all I'm suggesting. Then you can have the full conversation on however you want to move it in January. I'm just suggesting that I think because Little League, I. Think that because, well, I think that because they have been playing this whole time, why would we change that? But they won't come and play because we do charge them. So they. Don't typically use. Our fields. Right? They're using do you want them? Do they go to Anderson. East and West? Redding want the other teams to be using their fields? No, they would have priority. East and West already have priority. I understand. That that's a. Question for Mr.. Lambert. I would ask them that and make that part. I think just having the fees waived for East and West, which is currently what they are. If this council wants to exclude other little leagues from being free, that's your prerogative. I'm just suggesting you make that determination tonight to make sure that we can administer the program properly. I would like I would like to make a motion that we keep it as is to East and West Redding little leagues, because those are the little leagues that are within the city Columbia, Palo Cedro, Foothill. Those are leagues that are outside city. Yes, city residents may go to those leagues, but those leagues are outside city limits. So I would keep it as is. Specifically, how much money do you think is generated? It's got to be $150. Yeah. So we're talking only about $650. For field use fees. Yeah. So this year was. An outlier because of the closure of the sports park. And I think it was about $6,000, 5000 something. People coming from outside to inside. Would you just have a guess. It might be.$47. It's not very high. And that's because predominantly during play season, they are booked by those little leagues. Outside of that, we are the predominant field users and we do not pay ourselves field rental fees when we're running our own programs. Right. Well, I'm trying to figure. Out, I mean, if we give all the other ones. But we then also don't give. But then then our little league has less time in those places because now it's. No, because now it's free. They would take just open. They just said they don't come here because we charge. So it actually but they. Can only come if there's a field available. Yeah. Our kids they can also they can only. Come if there's a field available. I would not want that field to be. Empty. And not being used. That's not it's. There to be used. By the kids whether. They're playing in another league. Made a motion and. Are you sure? I would just one other clarity would be if we do do that. So you get increased use of our fields by other little leagues who aren't using it now because they had to pay a fee. Wouldn't that increase our cost for maintenance? That's going to increase even make our 81,000 higher? It may increase some wear and tear. We wouldn't know until we got through a season where, you know, maybe we had a little extra wear on the turf, but I don't see that being a huge problem because of the priority registration reservation system. There's really limited time available. And so if they want to capitalize on that, that's something that they should be able to come play and and use those fields. And whether you want. To pay for it. I would just call it can I do see. It as kind of apples and pomegranates a little bit because it's, it's like a, you know, we could have an MOU because these are our city, these are our city leagues. We can have an MOU that gets pretty detailed about maintenance and about use, about, you know, other things that they're adding to the fields. If these other little leagues would be willing to do something similar and also add to the field, add materials from time to time, have a deeper partnership with the city. I mean, that could look totally different if it would also equally help Reduce costs, because I think the goal is build clarity into these agreements. That helps us know where we can find reduced costs. Well, or a shared if they want to share with us, if they want to allow us to use their feed fields. And then we sometimes let them use our fields or whatever. But I mean, we don't that doesn't exist right now. You're willing to take that's that's doing something that we're not already doing. I'm willing to take the chance on one season, that foothill comes into this city to play on our fields. Well, they do they just. Once or twice. They don't. They don't much. They they don't much. And I think we could definitely pilot that. I don't think that there's going to be a ton of available times. I don't I don't anticipate a ton of conflict with that. You may be foregoing a little bit of revenue, but we're not really seeing a lot of that use now. So I don't I think it's going to end up being neutral because they're really not reserving our fields now. I agree, and. Most of the priority or the real prime time use is already taken. So we just kind of be an overflow, and I think that would be fine and fair. And we have good relationships with the schools that they use, and it may end up working out. So I wouldn't really be opposed to that. Okay. I'm fine with that. Be opposed. To what? To letting you know their local little leagues. If they're going to schools that are in the city limits, then does. That mean that a resident has to reserve it? Not the coach. We don't have a resident versus a lot of cities do have resident versus nonresident pricing. It's very, very common in parks and recreation. We don't have that. I think all of this is sort of leading us to having a little more, uh, developed policies where we're doing things like nonprofit. For profit, resident, non resident. If you look at other, you know, that's what like Medford would do or San Francisco. So there's definitely a lot of models out there. We've been pretty low key with that stuff and tried to keep it simple. And right now I just kind of need to own that process and understand where we should go. And maybe this is a good way to get there and start having those conversations. Does the coach from Foothill really call you for a field? No, but. Well, one has. And I told. Him he can pay. And then he went to Anderson. So. Yeah. So how many times would you come, Greg? Yes. Lee? Yes. What do you want to say? Hey. If you're going to invite them up, they have to come all. The way up. Yeah, you can invite them up there. If I really wanted you to hear me, I'm sure you can hear me. It's for the. It's for the recording. It's for the recording. So that the people at home can hear all your great ideas. We got someone in Zimbabwe watching right now. We got to make sure they hear it. I've been known to be a little loud in the past. Yeah. Respectfully loud. Thank you. Um, I just I just wanted to mention something to be clear about, um, help you understand the boundaries a little bit more. Okay. Um, little league boundaries are drawn out to help certain leagues and certain families in certain directions, and they're really funny. We have Redding citizens that play in the Shasta Dam Little League because of where they live, not where they go to school. They go to turtle Bay school, but they live off of pioneer. And so they go to the Shasta Dam School, and they're in Redding city limits. So there's a lot of variables that go into those boundaries. And it's important to understand that. I think when you when you look at this, um, secondly, I really appreciate the fact that, um, there's discussion about the fee waiver, um, and, and that you're receptive to an MOU because we're very receptive to an MOU. And I know that East Redding is also okay, but if we can't resolve a fee issue, how can we work on an MOU without knowing how much it's going to cost. If and when you talk about, well, we're not going to pay for the spring, but what about for the fall this year? And and so many different variables come into play there. Okay. I'd just like you to consider that. Um, and somebody said registration was getting ready to start registrations. We've already got about 80 kids registered for, um, for West Redding Little League, and I, I think I had a conversation with Jeff the other day, and he's somewhere close to that. So registrations already started. Started the 1st of November. Lee, do you have an opinion about charging other leagues to come and play on your fields? Um, or should it be free? I can't I personally can't think of a time when other leagues have come and played on on our. Travis would know that better than I would. Okay. Um, I've seen travel ball teams come in practice, and I can just about guarantee that they never called the city and reserved a spot on the field, which means they didn't have to pay. And there's no way for Travis to police that. Absolutely no way for him to police that. And that goes that that falls in line with the resting period also. They're out there playing. It's a city park. Kids are going to go out there and play. So do you have an opinion on us? I wouldn't I wouldn't want to charge any little league. I know how much heart and soul and effort goes in to operating a little league. I know just how much time I dedicate. I'm retired. So for the for the Palace team, the Anderson team, the Shasta Lake. If they want to come play on your fields, if they needed right now they pay $47 for two hours. You want them to pay nothing. If, in my opinion, if they needed to come and use my field and and we weren't using it that day, I don't think you should have to pay. I don't think a little league. There you. Go. Okay. There's my there's my opinion. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Because all those little leagues, every one of those little leagues are putting the same effort into the same their program the same way. East Redding is the same way. West Redding is. So I just want to say that what we're saying up here, this motion, like the reason why we're saying that fees are waived for the spring and, and that the reason I actually think there's value in you sitting at the table doing an MOU, which could create the the reasoning behind maybe the way in which you are charged or not charged and it gives him it gives backup for the whole thing so that we know how we're doing this going forward. So I think this actually opens the door for a much more in-depth, richer discussion in terms that can be put in an MOU that the city attorney can help us with. I I'm not sure how I it's hard it's hard for me to grasp all of that. I'm not a numbers guy. It's okay. Thank you. I'm a baseball coach. We appreciate you. So thanks. Um. And. We got it. We. We're going. To. Those fees. Would cripple our. League. Okay. Thanks, Lee. We appreciate you. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, so we have a motion. Well, what. If it's a. Hot mess? But we've got one. Here's what I have. Is the motion in brief. And if anybody wants to know the details, they can wind back and watch the tape. Uh, the motion I have is that the council will is directing staff to go develop MoUs with, uh, East Redding Little League and West Redding Little League specific to the ongoing use of the fields. They're going to waive the fees for this fiscal year, which is the 2425 fiscal year, and that will be inclusive of all little leagues in our area, and that we will bring back the discussion of overall facility fees, including those of the field and nonprofits, in the January time frame with the budget workshops. I like it. I'll make that motion. I'll second. You already did. I already. Seconded, she. Already seconded it. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good luck. Travis. Thank you. Travis. So we'll go to 9.1 A, which is to consider approval of a non-binding letter of intent regarding the Redding Rodeo Association ground lease negotiations. We'll just make a motion to approve. Would you like me to start it off? Okay. So thank you, honorable mayor. Members of the council. As you know, you appointed an ad hoc committee to work with the Redding Rodeo Association on discussions of a long term lease. As part of that discussion, you also approved a resolution about a month ago, authorizing or agreeing to that long term lease subject to acceptable negotiation of a lease amendment. To that point, we have been working with the Redding Rodeo Association, and by we, I mean the the mayor and council member, Johnson and I, working with Ted Bambino and Baron Browning of the Rodeo Association on several elements that would fall into that lease. First and foremost, of course, we went to the Housing and Community Development for the state of California and put forth the facts as we know them, and they have determined that this lease amendment would be exempt from the Surplus Land Act. And let me rephrase that. It does not apply, meaning we don't even have to declare it as exempt surplus property or surplus property. It just that act does not apply. I have that in writing and I've saved it for perpetuity. So the letter of intent that's before you tonight is really non-binding, because it doesn't have all the necessary elements that a lease amendment would have, but it has the basic parameters that will guide those negotiations. And I'll go through a few of those. And of course, I'll ask the ad hoc committee to comment. And if I miss anything that they think is important, I would encourage them to to mention those. So the lease term would be a 25 year lease with 210 year extensions, but that would come with performance metrics. The performance metrics that have been identified in the letter of intent is that they would secure funding, complete renovation and construction of the announcer's booth and private boxes by the end of year ten. However, we've been assured that they're going to do everything they can to get that done earlier, maybe as short as five years to get that done. The main grandstands, they'll produce a 60% set of engineered construction drawings for the replacement of those grandstands by year ten. And I want to point out that that's actually a significant investment on their part. There's quite a bit that goes into developing up to that point, and that would give us an idea of what that's going to look like and be able to provide any comments and work with them closely on what that final product would be. And then those main grandstands would be complete with construction by the end of the 15th year of the amended lease. The estimated value of those two things is over $1,112 million in today's dollars. There's a requirement that we would work out some community engagements. I think we both recognize the need for there to be more discussion, both with the existing lease holders in that area, but also with the city. So setting up quarterly meetings so there can be ongoing negotiations about whatever needs to be discussed or to simple communication about what's going on. There would be, um, a parking plan that would be developed. So that parking plan would be intended to identify opportunities to have more community use of the facilities in whole. So, in other words, if there's events happening at the convention center, we already have a developed parking plan that under certain conditions would trigger. And so I'll just make this up because we haven't developed it yet. But let's say there's a concert that's not expected to be a huge sell out, but it's an indoor concert. The Rodeo Association would like to do something with their facility, but it doesn't have the adequate parking. They could then trigger this parking. This parking may say, you know what, we're going to actually have people park in a different location. We're going to engage Robert through a charter service and provide people to be able to drive in. Or maybe there's a rental of the McConnell Foundation properties or parking lots for the evening, and they can walk across the bridge into the into the event center. And so there's just, uh, an easy way so that we can make sure that these things can happen without having to negotiate or discuss each and every event that would occur. Um, we also would, um, oh, I already talked about surplus land. So I think, you know, the bottom line is that the intent of this lease agreement was provide long term lease to allow for investment in the property to be a modern rodeo grounds that we can all be proud of, that we would encourage. And the lease amendment would mandate additional usage of the Rodeo Association area under their lease. One of the great ideas I think, that's come out of this is that maybe we incorporate our recreation programs into use of that. We have a junior rodeo camp where in the mornings they go learn about rodeo, and then maybe in the afternoons they go to the aquatic center and spend the afternoon. So incorporating that into our recreation programs, but finding other ways where there can be shared usage. And so I think that it's a really great start. And then if you approve this tonight, our intent would be to get to work on the boundaries, probably on an immediate, because we need to know what the boundaries are going to look like and how does it interlace with the boat ramps and then putting together an entire lease language? My hope would be to get it done in January February time frame. And with that, I'll close. And if the ad hoc members have something that I missed, I encourage you to correct me. Go ahead. I don't think you missed anything. That was great. Um, this was a culmination. I mean, I don't know how many hours it was, but it was it felt like over 30 plus hours. Just various meetings between the ad hoc. And I just want to thank the Rodeo Association and the time that they spent coming to the table for the mayor. The city manager did an incredible job facilitating and keeping us moving forward. And I've never seen I said this before, but I haven't seen government move this fast on on this much discussion. There's it's it's robust. This was also a cleanup operation similar to filling administrative holes with community services. A lease like this deserved a lot more discussion, a lot more time. There was opportunities that got opened up because of it. Um, and partnership that I think is going to strengthen because of the time we spent together. And, and I think that that's not just with us individually, but I think that is with the entity that the two entities that are at play that will outlive, um, you know, the, you know, us that are involved in this process. So I'm just excited. I just want to say I'm very, very excited for our community. Um, not not just that we have a long term lease for the rodeo, but for the community to be able to enjoy those facilities and the improvements that are coming to those facilities. I fully, fully believe in the leadership that the Redding rodeo has. Um, really appreciate the Asphalt Cowboys and what you guys bring to our community culturally, and I look forward to that growing in our community for for rodeos to come. So thank you both to your groups and what you're doing. I'm excited to vote yes on this Loi. Yes. So, um, Ted, I'll have you come up next. Um, but I would say I was very encouraged from we met just about every single week from the time that we put the ad hoc together, and I think it just built over time. But but we asked the hard questions, you know, when we talk about a long term lease and about these performance metrics, you know, the discussion of, you know, when if you're going to have a long term lease to be able to get financing, to be able to really invest in this facility. When are you going to be able to do that? So it was a really this wasn't just, um, it's a huge commitment. I hope you guys understand that because they only pay $50 a year, they have to add all this value. That's a huge commitment for a non profit organization to take on so much responsibility to actually, um, build out this area. And the desire that was communicated constantly is that it's it's something that they want for the community and which has rung true, which I have heard for the last few years in discussing the rodeo grounds. It's everybody wants it to be safe. Everybody wants it to be utilized to its fullest capacity. And they want the community not just to love it for rodeo time, but they want us, everybody to be proud of that area year round. And so there was a lot of consensus, and it was really just working out the details of how do you get there? How do we like a, a having our summer program where you can have kids go down there and actually get to do some kind of a park thing, and that's a great idea. I know we've talked about concerts, but those things have their own issues and these are ideas. But when it comes to actually putting it on paper, I just really appreciate the significance of the investment that you guys are willing to make. And because this is this is a lot this isn't you know, it's it's not just nothing to say that you're going to invest $12 million into that facility. It it is really a huge investment of your time, of your vision for the for that area and just for the city as a whole. So I, I really appreciate that. I appreciate you guys not just saying that you want a lease, but actually really saying that you're going to invest in the community. This is a big deal. You guys don't you don't have full time staff there. That's not really what it's been. So you're committing to something really big. And I really appreciate that because I think as a mom in this area, I want down there to be safe. I want my kids to be able to go down there, go down by the river and be really proud of that facility. And I know you do too. So I really appreciate that. I think that the conversation was constantly building, and I hope that the community at large understands that everybody had the same goal, and that's to see the best rodeo that we can down by the river. So, Ted, if you'd like to come up and talk about the ad hoc. Madam Mayor while he's coming up, I did miss one thing. And that is, we also recognize that we need to have the hard conversation about, um, you know, what if what if Live Nation, which is one of the biggest event planners, what if they showed up? I mean, we don't think this is going to happen, right? But what if they showed up 18 years from now and said, hey, we want to build a $200 million event center for everything. We agreed that we have to have the hard discussion and develop the language that's going to keep everybody safe and whole through that process. And so we're going to work on that language so that everybody can be satisfied. Because not doing so I think is just putting your head in the sand. And we need to make sure we have that conversation and that we line out what that would look like. So we did include that as well. Yeah, very. Well, said Barry. And just, um, I know you guys haven't voted on everything, but. So I'm not going to say my thank yous yet, but I am just going to say my thank yous to staff, to Barry. And his professional leadership in this whole process was quite, um, quite a quite an event for us every week. I enjoyed it, uh, I would recommend to the Little League, you might want to consider an ad hoc first thing you want to first thing you want to do, if you do an ad hoc, is you want to look it up and Google it so you can explain it to your board and to your members what ad hoc means. And then after you do the ad hoc, explain what a letter of intent is after that. Those are the two big challenges that you'll have. But we persevered with that. And I'd also like to thank our Asphalt Cowboys for showing up and everything they do. But most of all, I'd really like to thank the members of the Redding Rodeo Association, the men and women that actually do the work of what we we accomplish down there. To have them put the trust in Barry and Baron and I to meet with you guys to do this big endeavor. It's a huge deal. It is a huge deal. But they put their trust in us. We had a lot of explaining to do, but we got through it. And now as we go through the lease process, there'll be more of a part of it on a day to day basis as we go down that road. So, um, in ending and answering questions, I'd like to just do a shout out to Mark and thank you for your long term continued support and believing in the Redding rodeo from a long time ago till today, and we truly appreciate that. So one more last story. And Josh kind of alluded on it. We've developed relationships that we never thought we had. And I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on this, but Josh came in with the guns a blazin and he went out with a squirt gun. And we became we became friends and we became friends during this ad hoc process. And there's a lot of good things coming down the road that Josh and I have in unison together. And regardless of what his position is with the city or not with the city, good things come out of these events. And I'm proud to say that this was one of them. That's going to be a fun one. So I'll take any questions you guys may have. I'll just make a statement. I you know, I thanked you privately, and I want to thank you and Baron for being willing to take on that when, you know, there was such a negative narrative out there and you guys came forward and listened and, you know, Mr. Blazer over there, you know, and you guys made it, walked it through. And I'm going to vote. Yes. And and I'm looking forward to when the lease actually comes and, and getting you guys down there. And I just want to just personally say, you know, I mean, we've known each other since we were played ball together on the Little League fields. K1, K2, K3 and Tiger Field. Yep. Thank you. Yes, we played them all together. So that's my just to say thank you for being willing to come and listen and and for us to listen to you. Uh, these two. So yeah, I vote yes. Thank you. Jack. Okay. If you're done with me, I'm going to sit down. Thank you very much. The only. Thing I'll say, Lee, is, is, you know, I tried to do this for the. Editor. Ted Lee. It's late. Yes it is. I had a long discussion over Little League, you know. Yeah, I know. Um, I tried to do this for a couple of years, and and, um, so I want to thank Mr. Johnson for coming forward with the idea of the ad hoc committee. I am going to go on record saying I was the one that said it was a waste of time, but I was wrong, and I'm willing to admit that I was wrong. And it does happen. Um, I wish this was a 50 year lease, but I'll settle for 25 and I can't wait for you to to make the improvements that you're going to make. I think it's going to be wonderful for our community. And with that, I'll make the motion to approve. I'll second. All right. We have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? None. All right. Thank you. And. Council member Marzano. If they hold up their end of the bargain, it's a 45 year lease. Yeah. Here we go. All right. Now we're going to do 9.2 C, which is the Chiba consider writing partner agreement with California Heritage Youth Build Academy. And housing manager Nicole Smith will take this one. Okay. It's cold in here. Good evening. Honorable mayor and members of city Council. Earlier in the year, the housing division was approached by the California Heritage Youth Build Academy and asked to partner with them on an application for the CDBG Dr. Workforce Development Grant program. Um, City council allowed us to apply for that grant with them to the State of California, and we were awarded in August of 2024. In order to complete the standard agreement, we need to provide a signed partnership agreement with Chiba to the state of California. And I just wanted to point out that the Workforce Development Grant program is likely one of the last Cdbg-dr grant programs that we can apply for, and that will help to fund the recovery of Shasta County from the devastating effects from the Carr Fire. The state's premise behind providing this grant is to provide a way for communities to be more disaster resilient, by way of developing the workforce to quickly recover from the next disaster. Most participants in this program will need to meet income eligibility requirements, which is 80% at or below median income for our community. The workforce project will, if we look up here at the the budget, the workforce project will prepay Three property leases at different locations. These locations will be called Workforce Training Hubs, and these hubs will provide workforce training and supportive services to those who are seeking improvement of their job skills through training and apprenticeships for types of jobs that include construction, culinary arts, emergency response, health care, education and admin support. These training hubs will also, of course, provide supportive services that will help these participants to sidestep any barriers they have to their success, including a case management, help with substance o help with substance abuse issues and any health care issues they may have. Other partners in this grant for this project are Smart Business Resource Center, Hill Country, and Shasta Builders Exchange. In addition to the three workforce training hubs, a fully loaded mobile unit will bring services to other rural areas of the county. The mobile unit will be hosted by the Smart Business Resource Center. The budget completed was completed many months ago, and I just wanted to point out that, um, the total amount of the grant will not change, but there may be some movement in between line items. Um, one of those items might be for the prepaid lease. Uh, line item up there on the screen. Um, there may be some additional tenant improvements that may need to be made at one of the locations. In conclusion, staff request that City Council authorize the recommendation as written in the staff report, which includes the authorization for the city manager to execute the Chiba Partner An agreement for the workforce development program so we can return that to the state and receive our standard agreement. This concludes my presentation. I'm available if you have any questions. And I believe out in the audience, we have Kathy Taylor, who's the executive director for Kaiba, as well as Dave Forsyth. How many kids or adults do we think we're going to be able to. Train at this. Facility? Well, the application for all three locations indicated it would be 200. Wow. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. And although the we're hoping the original application, the state said that we had until December 2025 to complete the grant, there was some kind of indication that there may be an extension to that. Great. Okay. Anybody have any questions? All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. You want to make a motion on that? Anybody have a first? I'll second. All right. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Uh, moving on to 9.5. Be just to consider the Redding Electric Utilities quarterly financial report, industry activity update, and power content label. Correct. Good evening, Madam Mayor. Members of the. Council. Community members. I should have. Mentioned. I coached in Little. League and everyone was stayed. They all left. I was president, president of Little League. I'm the treasurer of West Redding. I feel like there's some bias here. I see what just happened. Yeah. Foothill I'm sure. Right? Yeah. No wonder you wanted to wave. Now it all makes sense. Now it all makes sense. City CFOs. Foothills. Well, I see what's happening. I see it all right. So I'm pleased to present the first quarter financial report. I was just in front of you a couple of months ago. Not much has changed, but there are some things that we should mention. The first quarter of a fiscal year for the electric department can kind of set the tone for the whole year, at least from a revenue perspective, because the way our rates are designed is they collect a large portion of our revenue through volume, and the summer is the highest volume for energy use, at least here in the city of Redding. So in the first quarter, we had increased revenues above budget due to warmer weather we had. I think we set the record this summer. But what's interesting is that calendar year to date, yes, our energy is up 3%, but if you normalize it for weather, if you take into account that we had a lot of cooling degree days, which is what forecasters use to kind of normalize the usage, we're actually underbudget by about 6.6% or 60 basis points. Um, we did have an increase in miscellaneous income due to MSR strategic reserve distribution. Uh, not to go belabor that whole point, but we are decommissioning a our participation in a coal plant in New Mexico, and the decommissioning costs have come in less than planned. And so we're starting to get distributions from that, uh, you know, green fielding funds. So we expect to get maybe a couple more of those distributions over the next couple of years. Um, decreased power supply costs in the first quarter here. Um, that's primarily due to a really good hydro year. And I'll get into that later when I talk about the power content label. Uh, revenues, net of power supply costs were better than planned, even though we had increased retail revenues compared to last year, about $4 million. Our power supply for the same three months was flat. So it really helps out the ratepayers there. Um, system operation and maintenance savings, overall expenditures are aligned with the budget. Um, but we do have some savings, but that's primarily attributed to timing. We actually expect to have those expenditures later in the year. The kicker at the end is that cash reserves are within the policy, and we had 108 days of cash on hand at the end of the quarter. So where we're at with with our cash. I wanted to put a star, but I didn't put it. And this doesn't really work. And we'll get into it on the next slide. But you can see in the blue bar we're about 40 million was significantly less than last year. We're going to drive down a little bit until about January, February, March. And then we plan on issuing bonds to repair ourselves for some capital. And I think that we're going to end the year on an unrestricted basis for cash right around that $50 million mark. Little industry update. Um, voters in California approved funding for a $10 billion climate bond. Within that is $850 million for what they call is for energy infrastructure. And it sounds nice. What's coming to Redding? What it looks like is nothing. Um, the $850 million is for energy infrastructure, primarily transmission, which will help out California, but it's mostly for the offshore wind and transmission. Um, on the right, the other thing I'll mention on the slide is state regulations. California Air Resources Board was expected to reduce the number of allowances that generators of carbon, like us, who have a power plant will be allotted every year. Uh, they delayed that, I think, primarily because of the contention around lcfs. If everybody saw that in the news about how people expect gas prices to go up, I think, you know, we think that it was they didn't want to handle more than one in a year. We don't think that that's dead. Just a reminder that to us through 2030 and it doesn't go away. It's just going to compact it in less years. The hit to Redding would be about $22 million. Here's the power content label annually. We present this to council. Once you approve it, we mail it out to all of our customers as required by law. We kind of have these three bullets here or three, three arrows. We're 54.4% carbon free. Just a reminder that that large hydro 26.5 is not considered renewable in California, because the size of the generators and the dams impact fish flows, and maybe some other politics in there in 2024 will be better because of the hydro year. This is a good illustration of our dependency on hydro, that we're 54.4% carbon free in 2023, which is actually a pretty poor hydro. Year 2024 will be well over 70% carbon free here in the city of Redding. I'm just looking forward to share this. This is from a few days ago. Not much has changed. I looked today. I'll say this is starting on first base right for the year that almost all reservoirs up here in the north are at or above historical average. And this is before what we have, as I guess, an atmospheric river over the next ten days. I think Shasta is supposed to get over 50in of snow pack, which is great. This is going to start the year really well. So we're looking for another good hydro year in this. What's neat about this is we are entering budget season. And so all this rolling forecast or all of this hydro deliveries will update our rolling 12 month forecast for hydro and our plan for power supply. So we get to incorporate all of this into our next budget and rate plan. Capital outlay last year was 14 million. This year we're expecting to spend about 22 million. And then the following year 25.4 million. This is a little less than planned, but pretty close to the plan that we keep sharing with you on a quarterly basis. And as part of our last five year rate plan to pay for that capital, we do have a debt strategy. Currently, our direct debt is about $14.4 million per year going back to 2023. Council approved a what's called a reimbursement resolution, which actually allows us to spend down our reserves on capital. And then when we issue our bonds, we can reimburse ourselves for all of that. So what you've seen, and I've shown on slides before, is our reserves are going down and we're going to replenish that to my point earlier that we expect a little uptick in reserves by the end of this year, depending on the size of the issuance and the rates. Et cetera. We expect that our annual debt service to increase to about 18.2 million per year. The good news is, after 2030, the power plants paid off. So about $12 million per year of debt will fall off. So for a little bit of time, we'll have higher debt service. But then after 2030 it really falls off. So I do look forward not in this spring, but in the following spring or sorry, the following budget cycle. Presenting the five year plan where we actually get to show that debt paid off. Okay. And then we will dive into that, that strategy and everything closer in early 2026 when we bring forward that bond issuance to fully educate the council and the public of what we're doing and why we're doing it, here's the five year rate plan. This is the exact same one that I showed you two months ago. Our previous one that was part of the budget we had for in 26 through 29. The 2025 4% increase was approved by council. That will go into effect January 1st of 2025, and our latest plan shows that we need to have about 5% to break even. What you'll see is the magic number at the end of the five years is 151. The council's goal for reserves for the electric department is 150. So what we try to do is arrive near that at the end of five years. Every two years we recast it based on financial activity. So in summary, increased customer demand due to extreme heat led to higher retail sales. But we had lower power supply costs, which was great. Our unrestricted reserves meet council's policy. We do plan on drawing down reserves for capital until we issue our bonds or reimburse ourselves. And then the latest projections include an annual rate increase of 5% starting in 2026, with the heavy caveat, which is the second and third line of the final bullet, is that due to sudden shifts in resources, or should the cap and trade hammer hit us, those five percents may grow further. So with that, the recommendation is to accept our report, the Power Content label, so we can send it out to all of our customers and also accept the industry activities. Update. With that, I will take any questions. Council member Marzano. Not a question, an observation. Very good report, but let's go back. Um, I don't know. Was it a month or so ago when you presented to the Redding Chamber of Commerce at Greeters over at IU? Yes, sir. You did a great job. Even people in the audience loved it. You did a great job. Your boss was out of town and he was working. You filled the shoes. And thank you for that. It was a real benefit to the city. I appreciate that, thank you. Councilmember Johnson. Um, thank you so much for the presentation. And and it's great to see how things are going here. The juxtaposition of your report to the general fund report is kind of interesting because we see first line I read in the staff report outperformed budget projections. I'm like, that's interesting. Can you help the public understand a little bit more about how that might have an impact on, let's say, future rate increases? Let's say that that continues because of, uh, of the climate or use or energy use. You guys continue to have more cash than you planned. Can that have an impact on our rates? Does that have an impact on how quickly you can pay down debt or other things? How would you guys change things and say three years if that continues as a trend? That's a great question. So we target 150 days of cash on hand, and if we perform better than planned, it goes into reserves. And if we perform worse than planned, we take it out of reserves. And then every two years when we go to budget, we have our cash reserves at that time, and that sets our launch point. And then we develop our budget and we develop our five year plan, and then we develop the rates to basically balance that, to try to arrive at 150 at the end of the five years. So say we did 5 or $10 million better by the time we're in front of you in April. What we do is when we cast out that rate plan of what we knew we would need to do to get to 150, we could actually lower rates. And maybe it's five, five, four four instead of five, five, five, five, you know, and then that we'd still arrive at around that 150 days of cash on hand. So when we perform better, it goes back into it and sets that launch point. So yes, there's not this immediate relief to ratepayers when we do well. But at the same time, if it's a bad year like it was in 2022, if people recall, there was a ton of surcharges across across California. We used over about $15 million of reserves for power supply. And what we did is we used reserves. What that did do, though, is increase the rates going forward. I wouldn't say that we would use it for additional capital. We're pretty much maxed out on our capital delivery. They're going as hard as we can, and I wouldn't necessarily say that we wouldn't issue more debt right now, because what we're facing is a string of 5% rate increases. That might be six is based on capital, not capital, but cap and trade. And so what we would want to do is try to issue debt for all, every dollar of capital that we can, because we can borrow money at 3%. And so when our customers are having to borrow at seven and 8% to then pay a higher utility bill, it just makes sense for me at least, to leverage our ability for tax financing, especially when we're investing in 30 year assets. Right. And so if you do better in a given year, let's say, you know, this next quarter, you've got more reserves than you plan. You get to 166 days of reserves. Chief Barnard can't go hire three new police officers because your budget is separate from the city budget, right. As a as a utility? Correct. Yes. I think that's just an important thing. Not a lot of people understand how that works within our city. So I appreciate you helping us understand. All right. Are you ready for the next one or do we need to accept it? Make a motion. All right. I'd be happy to make a motion to accept or. Second that motion. The next one is going to be Director Zettel. He gets the fun. Ones. And then. All in favor? Aye, aye. Any opposed? No. All right. This one. Was important. Especially because it had the content label. Yes. Which has to be specifically approved. Very very that content labels everything. Okay. The big dogs here 9.5 C authorized transfer of transmission capacity entitlement and assignment of rights. Good evening, Madam Mayor. Members of the council, I think. Thank you. Assistant Director Bowers. I think he exercised excellent career awareness when it came to the baseball situation. I applaud. That. Um. So this is this is a little esoteric. It's getting late. There's a couple more items, so I'm going to try to do my best to be thorough, but brief. Thank you. So there's there's three things we're going to do. I'm going to give a quick overview of a joint powers agency that Redding is a member of called the Transmission Agency in Northern California. What it is and why it exists. Then I'll talk about the transmission project, the high voltage transmission project that is mostly owned by that joint powers agency. And then I'll talk about Redding's portion of the transmission line that we own, separate from the JPA, and then what we own in the JPA and why we want to move our non JPA owned allocation in, in the simplest terms. So around 19 early 1980s, 15 Northern California publicly owned utilities were getting very frustrated with the fact that we were unable to access Northern Pacific Northwest resources because investor owned utilities owned the lines, and we couldn't get there without paying them. So a joint powers agency was formed to build a 500,000 100,000 volt transmission line from captain Jack Oregon, which is up by Klamath Falls down to Tracy, California, and give us access to Pacific Northwest resources. The JPA can issue debt. It did issue debt. It constructed the asset, and it does the operations and maintenance of the asset. And it is the governance is a 15 member commission. It has a contract general manager and a commission chair, which in fact is currently me. Um, as part of these out of town things, as Assistant Director Bowers mentioned, I have to go do. Um, so the project here's a little map of it. It starts up there. Captain Jack runs through the mountain range down to Olinda, which is actually right there by West Valley High School. If you've ever been out there and seen that massive substation, that's what it is. Keeps on going down to Maxwell, down to Tracy. It's, um, provides 1600 megawatts, which for relativity, Redding's peak load is about 240MW. So it is a very large transmission line. It was commissioned in 1993, which means it took actually about almost ten years for planning, design and construction. And that was in the 80s. So just note the file. If you had to do this again today, it might take 15 plus years through all the environmental and all the permitting processes. Um, it's 340 miles. And as I mentioned, it's managed by the Transmission Agency of Northern California or JP, and it's contracted to Wapa, the Western Area Power Administration, for the actual physical maintenance because the that agency knows how to fix power lines. Redding electric owns 117MW of rights in the joint power agency. That was when it was formed in 1984, and the line was built in about 2004. We bought 25MW of rights from the city of Shasta Lake. Um, we were in a flush cast position at that point in time. Shasta Lake was not. We desired additional capacity. There was some fear that there was a federal bill moving through. That would have allowed the California Department of Water Resources to. Take a minority interest, or we would have had to kind of give it up. And so we thought at the time, we should get some more of this capacity. It takes ten years to build transmission. So Shasta Lake was a willing seller. We were a willing buyer. So we we made the transaction happen. It's currently used to schedule our Bighorn Wind generation from the Pacific Northwest to our customers. And it also allows participation in our reserve sharing group pool, which is kind of if you get in trouble, if you have a power plant, go offline or something's going way wrong. We can access Pacific Northwest generation resources because we have that transmission line link. It's very valuable. Um, the reason we we want to move the 25MW that we bought from Shasta Lake, from Redding outright ownership into the Joint Powers Agency and increased Redding share is for two pieces. One is a risk mitigation factor of the JPA provides almost. And maybe Christine could jump in if I get this wrong, but almost an LLC type liability protection for a publicly owned utility such as us, right? So you have wildfire risk. You have accidents that can happen, things that could, um, provide a significant, significant amount of liability risk to the city. But if it's in the JPA, it's mitigated. And there's also a financial strategy where the JPA, the transmission in Northern California can issue tax exempt debt to do large capital projects, and the line is over 30 years old at this point. There are some large capital projects headed our way. Um, that's going to require financing. And back to what Assistant Director Bowers mentioned. You want to match that that financing term over the life of the asset and not have to pay cash because we own 25MW outside of the JPA. We would have to pay cash for these large capital projects. So there's a there's a financial reason. And then the risk of the for sale to the Department of Water Resources, that's no longer a threat. So those are the main reasons for the entitlement transfer. So quickly, the timeline, um. If I may just briefly clarify, the JPA structure does provide some protections similar to to a corporate entity. Um, but it's not quite as extensive. So it primarily protects from liability for contractual obligations for potential tort liability. The public agency still remains proportionately liable. For wildfires. And stuff. Right? Correct. Thank you. Christian. Yes. Um, the timeline you have to notify the owners of the project if you're looking to move a capacity entitlement from one entity to another, we issued a notification November 1st. It's non-binding. Um, knowing that we needed to bring this to the City Council for recommendation and hopefully approval, and also to the commission of the agency also. So a non-binding notice of intent to transfer was made. We're here tonight seeking council approval. Tomorrow there's a commission meeting in Folsom. That's where I'll be chairing that. And then November 30th, that notification period ends. We don't anticipate any, um, issues from the other owners. And then in December, we would look to get all the agreements executed and send copies, all the parties, and then the transfer would be made effective January 1st. So just to wrap it up, um, Redding electric City of Redding holds 142MW of total transmission entitlement, 117MW through the Joint Power Agency, 25MW outside of it. We would like to transfer the 25MW of Redding entitlement to the JPA to mitigate wildfire liability and enhance our financing and capital improvements. At this point, I would take any questions or comments. Make a motion to approve. Council Member Muns. I have a question. Go ahead. Is there any downside to this, Nick. The only potential downside, which is not something we'd be interested in, was if you were looking to sell your transmission capacity to another entity. Having the 25MW that we own outside the JPA would be very simple sale. You don't have to ask anybody. Once the 25MW moves into the JPA, you have to offer a first right of refusal to the JPA members on a sale. But as I mentioned, it would probably take 10 to 15 years to build additional capacity. Transmission capacity in the West is becoming the most valuable resource, and we have no intent on selling that. So but that's I think it's a really good question. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. So we have a first and a second. Second. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. Thanks. Thanks, Nick. It's A50 kind of night. Don't be alarmed when Nick bolts out the back door because he's heading to Folsom, so. All right. Thanks, Nick. Run for your life, Nick. All right. Everybody's favorite item. 9.9 11 has been pulled. 9.14 A oral. Update. Regarding Senate Bill 329 to consider changes to city council salaries. Yeah, and just to I'm going to kick this off. So it is we did an amended agenda item on Friday, which, uh, allowed for the council to consider the adoption and first reading of an ordinance adjusting city council pay. Um, but for context, I need to take responsibility for this being on your agenda tonight at this sort of late time in this current session, if you will, of council, because it actually came up in May, uh, in May, May 21st, I believe it was. Council member Dacquisto during item 12 suggested that this item come back for council's consideration to consider increasing council pay. Uh, the the council discussed it and decided yes, they'd like to have something come back for action. Action. Um. He then immediately said, and by the way, I'm resigning from the council, so I, uh, lost track of this item. So that's just as simple as it gets. Um, but it was this council body, uh, with the exception of council Member Johnson that had discussed this item 12 and wanted to bring it forward. And so I have brought it forward to make sure that you have the opportunity to consider this before you change the council. Um, and that's why it's here late, and that's why it feels like it doesn't belong. It's really because I failed to bring it forward to your attention prior to this. Um, with that, I will hand it over to the city attorney, but I would I would suggest that you could, you know, start with questions. You could ask for the full legal disposition of what's before you. Um, or you could simply choose to not move forward. So really, I brought this forward because of the reason I stated, um, and the council can choose to receive whatever report they would like. What would you like? Well, I went and watched the May 21st, so I know Mark had asked for it and Dacquisto had asked for this to come forward for future. I know by rule it's only for a future council. So this council can't have that, which I think Councilmember Dacquisto talked about a little bit in his. I don't know if everybody watched it or not. Um, but it would not be for this council. It would be for the next one coming in. Um, and when's the last time? Right now, the city council. Everybody gets paid $600 a month. When's the last time that was changed. From our review? It appears to have been last changed in 1993. 1993? From what to what? Uh, I'm not certain what it was before that, but that's when it was set at.$600 in. 1993. And then how many other? This is a new law. So Shasta Lake City changed theirs. I actually haven't. Looked at theirs. And Anderson, did Anderson change theirs as well? I believe they have, but I can't confirm that. And then the county also gave themselves. Or is that separate? They just did that for fun. County has a different set of statutes governing their their adoption process. Okay. But they did increase. Theirs did. Did you? Have you asked for this? Did you have comments about why you you had said something about? I just supported the asking. I particularly didn't want it. I think it's unnecessary based on the fact that we're all part timers. We all have jobs. And and I think you, you join a city council because you want things to be better in your city. And that's a commitment that you make. The thought process from the governor's creation of this, uh, bill was that it would open it up to more people wanting to express interest in being on a city council. Um, I want the people here that are dedicated and committed to working and making our city better. I'm not looking for somebody that's looking for a paycheck. Um, I work this job pretty hard for the last four years because I'm retired. Those that have other jobs have other responsibilities and don't have the luxury That I've enjoyed. So, um, for me, as this moves forward, I'll vote no against it. Um, I just don't think it's necessary. Especially looking at the future of this city's budget. Even though he used the word bankruptcy. I don't think it's going to happen, but we're still looking at a $5 million shortfall. And if you calculate the numbers on this, once it goes into effect, five council members over four years are going to cost the city a little over $760,000. I think that money is better spent someplace else, maybe on Little League. That's my position. I just to speak my I take a different perspective from this. I believe I do believe that, um, city Council, that if we were had more money that we should actually, we should actually consider this because it really does limit the people who can do this do the job. I would say, you know, I probably put in 20 hours a week. It's not full time, but still it's and I can do that because I make money from another source. But I think that we have limited the type of people who can run for city council because of the if you're going to commit the time to it because the salary is so low. I mean, minimum wage at 20 hours a week would be $1,600 a month. That's minimum wage. So, you know, we don't really this is really a labor of love. We do this because we love the city, but not everybody has that luxury. So I would just say I think it's something that should be considered. But in light of our budgetary constraints, that's the big picture. We have some major budgetary constraints. I don't think this council should make that decision. I think the incoming council should make the decision when they get the, you know, if they want to look at this in January, bring it back for the new council to decide if they have the money to give themselves a raise. But I don't think that this council should make the decision. I would push it off. That would be my. Yeah, it is only for. So if I understand this correct from the email that you sent us, it is only for one council can only make it for a future council, which is what was de Quistos thing was in May was to do it for the next council coming on, which is what Mark's comments were. You didn't make enough money. People didn't make enough money. They were trying to recruit people to run. They they thought that they if there was more money offered that it should be. I went and watched. Did you did you watch. The to remember it? Yeah. So it was fresh. Um, but if you wait for the next one, then it would go into effect in 2026. So the next council could vote themself a raise in 2026. So it would it would really be the council after the next council that would be voting for the raise or that would be getting the raise that would be voted on by the next council. Right. So the whoever seated. Right. Yeah. It would be like the following. So if you did it next year, it would be for 2020. December of 2026. So almost like the 2027 right. So the the seat it's it's synced up so that it's not staggered. Right. So that all of the council members get the raise at the same time. Right. But you can't but the sitting council cannot vote themselves a raise. They have to do it for the next one coming in. Right. So the ones that were in Shasta Lake and Anderson or whatever didn't actually get an immediate raise. It's for the next seated council. So this would then if you if this would be the next council could do it for the council that comes in in 2027. Um, Steve Cohen has a comment. Do you have any other comments before. I'll ask questions after. Steve. Okay, Steve. Good evening. To those that are left. At the very least, this discussion should have been made, I think while there were people in the room, instead of being at the very end and, uh, bad timing with the presentations you had today, I mean, with the budget situation and then this amounting to more than the amount of money that could cover the Little League situation is not good anyway. I'm opposed to the proposition or the proposed pay increase for the city council members. This pay increase would raise their pay from 6 to $900 a month. This is a raise of over 200% over a four year term. The five council members. This raise would equal $456,000. If you add in the increased cost of medical insurance to the city, this adds up to over$670,000. I deeply respect the hard work and dedication that goes into serving our community, but this decision could not come at a worse time. City is facing a projected budget deficit between 5 and $6 million in 2025. This is not just a number. It represents potential cuts in critical services. There will likely be cuts to public safety. Cuts to infrastructure maintenance and community programs that our citizens rely on in times of fiscal challenges. We must prioritize the needs of the people over personal compensation. While I understand that this public service requires time and effort, it is a role historically taken on as a commitment to the community, not as a primary source of income. You all knew this when you were elected Councilwoman. Winter, you have your medical practice. Councilwoman Odette, you have a political consulting practice. Councilman Muns, you retired from Reno PD and have an Instacart income. Councilman Johnson, you're a successful developer and real estate agent. And Councilman Marzano, you have your retirement from CHP. This is a huge increase in this huge increase in pay sends the wrong message to the citizens of Redding, many of whom are struggling with inflation, stagnant wages and a rising cost of living. The city budget must reflect our values. It should focus on maintaining essential services, addressing the deficit and finding ways to invest in long term solutions. Approving this raise at this time would set a precedent of self-interest, at a time when the trust in the government is already fragile, it risks undermining public confidence and alienating the very people you were elected to serve. Instead, I urge the council to lead by example. Show the residents you are willing to make the same sacrifices you asked them for, and postpone the pay increases until our city's financial health is stabilized. Engage with the community to find collaborative solutions to the deficit rather than adding to it. Leadership isn't just about making decisions, it's about making the right decisions. Tonight, I ask you to demonstrate two true leadership by rejecting this raise and prioritizing the collective good to our community over personal gain. Thank you. Thank you so much, Steve. Councilmember Johnson, thank you. Um, City Manager Tiffin, can you tell me, uh, tell us a little bit more about where these funds would all of the the amount if, if given in the future, now or in the future. But regardless of what we do tonight, uh, if city council decided to get up to, let's say, what you were saying, the 1600 a month, uh, let's say we were to say, hey, we're going to we're going to treat council members like it's, you know, 20 hours a week at minimum wage, 1600 a month. Where do you think we would pull the different percentages of that money? Is that 100% general fund? No, no, no, it would be a cost allocation as it is today. So my estimate just off the top of my head is about 35% of that would be general fund. The balance of that would be borne by the other utilities in enterprise funds. Okay. Only 35% comes from the general fund. Approximately. If you look at the various ways we do cost allocations, you have to recognize that with our utilities, it's well over $300 million worth of budget. So that's something like $30,000. If it was 1600 a month, give or take, somewhere around there. But, you know, I'm, I'm a fan of of what Vice Mayor Winter said, pushing it. There's a lot of budget conversations coming up. I think the next council is going to be faced with it. The better decision, I think, for for them to make. In light of that context, I don't think that this is what it actually seems. I, you know, I'm, you know, sitting here and I know that, you know, it seems like, hey, you're the a successful business person. It's hard to do this job if you really love it, to do it lightly and you take a hit. Your business will take a hit. Your the time that you can spend your opportunity costs like if you if you do own a business. And and here's the thing like if we want just retirees or independently wealthy people to do it, or people that have maybe a single income that can support it, then that's that's all we'll be able to pull from. But if you wanted, let's say you have a family that can almost support and they can generally support, you know, their their monthly income and you have someone that can run that can bring in a little bit extra where it doesn't add to the stress. I don't think that, uh, that, that is um, I think that can have a lot of benefit to our community and open the pool. But let's just be real. I mean, 1600 a month isn't going to really change the game that much from 600? So I'll just say it's it's it's it is a big sacrifice. I do think 600 is laughable, but I also think it's bad timing to be doing this right now. And I think that in light of the context of all of the budget conversations we're going to be having and be better for the next council to make that decision. Okay. I would just like to point out that, Michael, make sure you email that whole thing to Michael Dacquisto because he's the one who asked for this item to come back, and he's the one that made the pitch that that the Redding City Council should have a raise. So as long as you send that email to him, I just want to make sure that that that is communicated. So, um, we're all seems like we're all in agreement. Well, I would say that, look, $600 a month after taxes is 400. I know that's what you said on May 21st. Okay. Well, and it doesn't cover my gas bill. I just think 1900 is excessive. And I think we could, you know, for the next council if they want to give themselves a they. Can't give themselves. Well. For the next one. $1,000 a month. I think that's reasonable. I just I thought 19. I don't know where they came up with that number, but somebody in Sacramento did. And I think it's kind of excessive. That's all. But we all agree tonight. Let's put it off until the next council let them deal with it. Okay. Okay I think that's a that's it that's that. So we just do nothing. Yeah. That's a no action. Yeah. Okay. All right. So we are moving on to, um, council travel report. Has anybody traveled at the city's expense? I traveled at certain expense. So I sit on the Shasta Regional Transportation Board for the city of Redding. Um, it is not at the expense of the city, but I was in Sacramento because I sit on the California Council of Governments board, as well as the transportation And liaison. And what they were talking about is all of the transportation budget, vehicle miles traveled, the tax, the gas tax, and what they think the political landscape is going to be. It looks as though Carb, in addition to many other decisions that they are not making, is also not responding back to the sustainable action plans that they've asked from all of the major transportation agencies and council of governments throughout the state. They are supposed to get back within 60 days, and the average amount of time is two years to get back to people about their sustainable action plans. Um, and so, um, in that time, there has been lots of studies. Um, one of the presuppositions was that if you had an electric vehicle, you'd actually travel more because it costs you less to have your vehicle, but that isn't actually true. And so a lot of the metrics and the modeling is not bearing out. So I think you're going to get more delays like what we were talking about with Rou. Um, because the modeling and the projections are not what they anticipated them to be. So one of my questions was, given that there's a new administration, we probably will not be having the same type of federal funding. Do you anticipate that state requirements and programing is going to be limited? Because we are also in a deficit at the state, and it looks like there's probably many programs that will be delayed, and there will be implementations that probably will also be delayed. So I would say that things are not business as usual. Um, and for some that might be good. And but for those that have to make decisions, it seems like there's going to be a lot in limbo. Um, so. Thank you for the update. Wow. That's great. Thank you. That's that. So now item 12. Anybody have any new business? Okay. Yeah. As as Doctor Garner came forward, which I thought was really great I would like to based on what she proposed. I would like to request that we ask staff to engage with Cheshire County Public Health, um, to explore options to address this issue and bring that report back to council. And that could be you know, we're looking we're looking at, I think, of the the tobacco ordinance, the vape shops. You're bringing something back there. I don't know if it would be part of that or separate from that, but I think it would be great to ask, see if staff could just reach out to Jessica and see what options we have. Well, I was having a similar thought while she was presenting. I was wondering, because I know that you said that we had the ordinance, that it hasn't been written yet or passed or approved. No. So I was it was going to come back for a discussion or review based on our based on what we we had talked about last time. And I was curious if this could be put into that recommendation or brought forward as an idea to be merged, because, yeah. Are we allowed to say we don't want that sold in our city? Are you asking? Are you allowed to say that as part of item 12? Or are you allowed to ban it as part of a. As part of an. Ordinance? I would want to review for preemption, but it may well be that you can't. Can we? I think so. I think if going on what the vice mayor suggesting, I think that would be all inclusive. Right. What we would do both a work with public health on sort of what is the magnitude of the issue, because I think, you know, we have today some anecdotal information based on some single focal point, you know, moments. But maybe we get with public health and they can talk about more holistically what's happening. They can do more outreach. They can find out more about that as a community wide issue. Then we can also look into those legal aspects of what can we do. As was mentioned, other states have banned it entirely. Um, but we can also do some investigation with people who are in restaurant businesses. What are they using? You know? So maybe give us a little bit of time and we'll try to bring those things back at least to the same time frame. Then the council could decide whether they should go together or whether they could. I have a question, Julie, do you do you think you could loop the doctor back into discussions with the county? Oh I'm sure yeah, she's very interested in this. This has been really devastating. I think that would be beneficial. Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. More than. Just her. And that's that's what really community health comes in because Doctor Moo can have, you know, his entire network engaged and send out information. And so that's where Shasta County and as a council knows. And just for people in the audience, Shasta County public health is our that's our public health officer by ordinance. And so they are the city of Redding's public health department. So it works really well for us to be engaging them. What would it have to be a different ordinance if we wanted to put any restrictions on the on the sale of Of gas. Candidly, I want to I want to take a little bit of a look at that. I've been pondering that during the discussion of the item. I'm not quite prepared to answer just yet. Okay. Big fat baby. Big fat. Yeah. So it would be. It could. It could be separate from the tobacco or it could be combined. We're looking at. That. Okay. I think Crescent City just enacted an ordinance that I think prohibits the sale of the devices, the inhalation devices. So. Yeah. So you could still allow the use for restaurant sales, but not the Galaxy bottles. Just for. Formality. Based on our conversation, I assume everybody's a go. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Anybody else have any item? Twelves. Nothing. Okay, we are adjourned. Yes, sir. Thank you.