Palm Desert City Council - Regular Meeting, August 28, 2025

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AI transcript text.

[00:09:34] Speaker: Despite the tragedy there, I watched a recent press conference with our DA, and I have a special connection to this case and know some of the folks who contributed to the investigation and subsequent arrests.
[00:09:51] Speaker: The competence and care that went into the initial investigation and the handling of the case by the law...
[00:10:03] Speaker: Enforcement professionals was truly inspiring. I also recently went to a DMV, and I had to get, renew my license, and I wasn't looking forward to that experience, but they moved me through faster than any sloth on Zootopia you might imagine. And the only problem that I saw were in some of the attitudes of the people who had unrealistic expectations. But the staff was efficient, and they were kind, and they handled my situation very fast. Now, I did my homework, and those who were upset came not prepared. But I was inspired by the patience and the good humor and humility of the staff at the DMV. And now I would like to say that I am inspired by the staff of Palm Desert. We have gotten feedback most recently on the El Paso street renovation. We have had letters come in, calls come in complimenting staff on our execution and a project well delivered. And I want to say thank you to all of you, and I'm just thankful to all the very dedicated, committed, and competent public servants that serve us. And so thank you so much. Thank you.
[00:11:28] Mayor Jansancy Hornik: Okay, I think we can all say ditto. Thank you. Is there a report of closed session?
[00:11:39] Staff: Yes, Mayor. Thank you. We have a few reports from closed session this afternoon. On item 4B, the council discussed two potential cases this afternoon—excuse me, on item 4C. And on one of those cases, the council voted unanimously to initiate litigation. That action, the defendants, and the other particulars will be disclosed to any person upon inquiry once the action is formally commenced. Items 4D and 4E, the city council considered the permanent appointment of Chris Escobedo as its city manager. And on those two items as well, I'm pleased to report that the council unanimously voted in favor of the permanent appointment, subject to a final approval of a contract on a future open session agenda. Thank you.
[00:12:30] Mayor Jansancy Hornik: Thank you. And thank you for serving us. Okay, we will now go to awards, presentations, and appointments. We have a proclamation for California's 175th anniversary of statehood. Do we have someone here to receive that? Is Miss Cabra here up there?
[00:13:10] Mayor Jansancy Hornik: Okay. So, how many people were born in California here? Love to see that up here. See, we're proud. Whereas on September 9th, 2025 marks the 175th anniversary of California's admission to the Union as the 31st state on September 9th, 1850, also known as Admission Day. And whereas California has grown to become the fourth largest economy in the world, leading the nation in agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism, and serving as a hub for innovation, industry, and commerce. And whereas the Golden State is celebrated for its varied landscape, from fertile valleys and rugged mountain ranges to its extensive coastline and expansive deserts. And whereas the Coachella Valley, including the city of Palm Desert, contributes to California's rich history and economic vitality through its resort destinations, cultural attractions, and world-renowned events. And whereas California's history includes pivotal moments such as the discovery of gold in 1848, the rapid population growth of the mid-9th century, and the development of industries that have shaped its modern prosperity. And whereas Palm Desert joins cities and counties across the state in commemorating this milestone, recognizing the achievements, perseverance, and progress that have defined California for 175 years. Now, therefore, I, Jansancy Hornik, mayor of the city of Palm Desert, on behalf of the city council, do hereby proclaim...
[00:15:01] Mayor: September 9th, 2025 as California's 175th anniversary of statehood in the city of Palm Desert and encourage residents to take pride in California's remarkable history and its enduring place in the Union. So, thank you for taking the effort to make it down here. I wonder if my colleagues might join me. I'm sorry I didn't call you down before. We're all proud to serve in California and I wonder if you'd like to say a few words.
[00:15:34] Representative: Well, good afternoon everyone. Thank you so much, honorable mayor, honorable city council. It's truly an honor to be here today on behalf of the office of Governor Gavin Newsom to accept this proclamation. As we celebrate California's 175th anniversary, we reflect on this journey of rich history. California is proud, as the mayor said, to be the fourth largest economy in the world, the most diverse state in our nation, and a global icon for innovation. Palm Desert, in particular, has greatly contributed to our state's rich history. This community is a vibrant example of the California spirit and a true testament of the resilience and creativity that define our state. And we also want to commend the city of Palm Desert for being the first city in California to adopt this proclamation, honoring our state's 175th anniversary. As we honor this milestone, let's celebrate not just the history of California, but let's continue to celebrate the bright future we are all building together. And thank you so much again for having us.
[00:16:57] Speaker: You're the first.
[00:17:03] Speaker: We're getting instruction.
[00:17:30] Speaker: Thank you.
[00:18:02] Mayor: Hey, thank you. We're all proud Californians, right? Uh, our next is the family YMCA, the desert presentation.
[00:18:20] YMCA Representative: Good evening all. Thank you for welcoming us in. Madame Mayor, I'm sorry. Could we do this in like five minutes? Uh, I need to swap out the PowerPoint.
[00:18:29] Mayor: Oh, absolutely. Yes, we can. We'll have city—thank you. We'll have city manager's comments in the meantime.
[00:18:37] City Manager: Thank you, Mayor. We'll start with Lieutenant Porus if we can have him join up for a quick update from the sheriff's department.
[00:18:52] Lieutenant Porus: Good afternoon everybody. Everyone, I have something special tonight. As you can see, I brought some backup tonight. Um, last year, city council decided to increase our patrol staffing and our staffing with the department, and uh, to better address our growing needs in the community. We have filled some of the spots already, but these new deputies we're introducing this evening represent that investment, bringing more boots on the ground and enhanced community service to our Cove communities. As I stand here today, I'm not only speaking to council, residents of the city, or city staff, I'm also speaking to them. These individuals standing before you have recently completed a long and demanding journey to earn the title deputy sheriff. Each one went through a highly competitive hiring process which included written exams, physical agility tests, extensive background investigations, interviews, ensuring we select only the most qualified and dedicated candidates. After being hired, they entered the rigorous law enforcement academy where they spent six months immersed in training covering constitutional law, community policing, and deescalation.
[00:20:01] Speaker: ...tactics, emergency driving, firearm qualifications, scenario-based training, and physical tests. The academy is not only about these tests. It's a test of character, judgment, and the ability to serve with integrity and compassion. I'm proud to say they've passed with this distinction. But the journey doesn't end there. These new deputies are now transitioning into the next critical phase of their development, a four-month training field program. During this time, they will be paired with experienced training officers and assigned to work right here in our community. This hands-on training is where they will apply their academy learning to real-life situations, developing the confidence, professionalism, and local familiarity that our residents deserve from their peace officers. They will be responding to calls for service, engaging with the community, enforcing laws, and learning what it means to be the police—to act with respect, fairness, and transparency. The goal is not just to complete their training, but it's to make a positive impact, one call and one contact at a time. We recognize the great responsibility we have in providing law enforcement services to you, and we are committed to ensuring these deputies assigned here represent the highest standards in our department. Let me introduce them one by one: Deputy Jose Alice, Deputy Caleb Blanchard, Deputy Alexander Brock, Deputy Oscar Cervantes, Deputy Jose Contrarus, Deputy David Choy, Deputy Alexander Espinosa, Deputy Sha Flores, Deputy Matthew Hirsch, Deputy Jose Perez, Deputy Roma Romero, and Deputy Pablo Torres. I had the opportunity to meet them individually this morning and shared the great support we get from the City of Palm Desert and our CO communities. And this is an opportunity for you to meet them. And I know I've been telling the City Council and City Manager, 'Oh, the trainees are coming, the trainees are coming.' They're here. So, give us the opportunity to get them through their training program. And I hope when you see these people out and about, say hi to them and say welcome. So, thank you very much.
[00:22:31] Mayor: Thank you. And I think we'd all like to say welcome and thank you for choosing Riverside Sheriff, and welcome. Thank you.
[00:22:40] Mayor: Yeah, I think a standing ovation is in order. Well, more inspiration. Thank you so very, very much.
[00:23:08] City Manager: Have two more items, Mayor. I'll turn it over to Assistant City Manager Richard Canon, who's been leading up a lot of our efforts for animal services. Richard, the floor is yours.
[00:23:20] Richard Canon: Good afternoon. I just wanted to briefly highlight a program we had sponsored—or, I'm sorry, we had partnered with Animal Samaritans to do a free spay and neuter clinic on September 17th and 18th. Animal Samaritans had reached out to us. They had received a large donation to spay and neuter animals within the Coachella Valley, and so they had asked if that was something we'd be interested in. Of course, we said yes. While they initially had approximately 50 spots for about 50 animals, the veterinarian that they're bringing in these two days, I guess, is quite talented because they doubled that number to 100 animals. And while I thought it was going to be a big ask to really promote it today, we started handing out vouchers Friday afternoon and we're down to about 10 remaining. And so, that's about 80 animals that we have already registered or handed out vouchers to, which is pretty, pretty amazing because, in order to qualify, you must be a Palm Desert resident. And so, for each household, you're allowed up to two animals to be spayed or neutered. It's absolutely no cost. The other thing that we combined with that, something that we're covering out of the animal services budget, is the ability to microchip those animals that do not have microchips. So again, that is a free service to our residents. The only qualification is that you must be a resident, and there are income qualifications. We made it pretty simple: it's 80% of the median similar...
[00:25:00] Staff: ...to what we do for our housing. We're not asking for folks to submit their paystubs. We don't necessarily want that for this program, but we are asking them to self-certify that they do meet those qualifications and trusting that they're doing the right thing. And so, we do still have, I think, 10. I thought we had 20 when we first started this meeting. We're down to 10 already. But they are available at the library. So, you can access them after 5:00 as well as on the weekends, assuming we still have them available after tomorrow.
[00:25:36] Councilmember: Thanks.
[00:25:36] Councilmember: That's great news.
[00:25:38] Councilmember: Outstanding. We're moving in the right direction with that.
[00:25:44] Staff: And just one final update. The city contributed to the reconstruction of Papa Dan's through the business enhancement program. In July, you approved the extension to September 1st. Last week, we received an update from the owner requesting an additional extension. So, the new open date is now October 1st. The delay was due to restaurant repairs as well as long lead items needing to come in. But just to update that October 1st is a new date for opening.
[00:26:13] Mayor: Great. Thank you very much. Okay. Any other comments, or are we ready to go for the YMCA? Okay, let's go.
[00:26:28] YMCA Presenter: Good evening. Take two. All right. So, we just wanted to do a little presentation about the YMCA and all that we do. And we thank the City of Palm Desert for everything that you guys do for us as well. So, we labeled this 'Why the Y,' and we're actually right next-door neighbors to you guys as well. So, we opened in 1982, and we pride ourselves on being the largest licensed childcare provider in the Coachella Valley. That allows us to take Riverside County Office of Education funding, which is huge for us. It goes for about 50% of the funding that we have. That's for families that can't afford childcare and meet those income limits. We have sports, childcare, community events, birthday parties over at the Shops in Palm Desert, and then also facility rentals here at our gym area. We like to develop social skills, confidence, leadership, and fitness. And we offer financial assistance programs to all families so that we never turn away any families due to not being able to make that income.
[00:27:32] YMCA Presenter: A little bit about the numbers. Here at the YMCA, we operate an annual budget of 10.88 million. We provide 12,000 program experiences annually. That goes through childcare, camps, facility rentals, preschool. 518 individuals received financial assistance in our 2024-25 fiscal year. And then 950 children are served across multiple sites in Palm Desert, Indian Wells, La Quinta, and also Indio.
[00:28:04] YMCA Presenter: Our impact across the valley: we have five school-age program sites. One of them is here in Palm Desert at our Carter Elementary site. We have three licensed early childhood development centers: Jean Benson in Palm Desert, Doris Mechanic in Indio, and also our La Quinta development center. We have day camps and youth sports offerings, and grant and YMCA financial assistance for swim lessons.
[00:28:30] YMCA Presenter: A little bit how we partner with the City of Palm Desert: we were in the first health and wellness expo that was over there when the new library opened up, which we had a blast at that. We operate the YMCA Aquatic Center, which is owned by the City of Palm Desert. And then between our summer camps here at San Pablo, our Jean Benson Preschool, and our Carter Elementary School site, we serve about 245 kids in the Palm Desert area. And then we also worked with the Palm Desert Library to do some fun activities for the kids as well.
[00:29:04] YMCA Presenter: This is our Carter school-age childcare program, which opened in 1999. We actually had Fuego come out and was with the kids there. So you can see him in the back, and also Carter the Cougar. The kids had a blast when he came in.
[00:29:18] YMCA Presenter: This is our Jean Benson Child Development Center, which is on Orange Blossom there off of Fred Waring.
[00:29:26] YMCA Presenter: And this is our San Pablo YMCA, which opened in 1990, which is right next door here. This is the imagination camp that they did over the summer.
[00:29:36] YMCA Presenter: Our mission: we want to have community outreach to the valley and the presence that we want to have. Helping as many families as we can experience camps, events, childcare, sports, and so much more. Friends to tell other friends about the positive experiences that they're having at the YMCA. Encourage families that our Y is here to help them do life. Offer inclusive programs that help children and families, and also...
[00:30:00] Speaker: Connect with cities to help establish what the YMCA wants to provide. And here are some of our community partnerships. Quite a few of them are here in Palm Desert. We have College of the Desert. They actually got us kickstarted with our flag football league again in 2022. We were able to use their football field during that time. Friends of Desert Mountains is a great one that we partner with to do annual camps and different things where they come in to show the kids adventure. And then we have Desert Sands Unified School District, which we operate our Carter Elementary site. And then a new partnership that we had this year was with Olive Crest. So we do their community days. They have a great program that's over there. And then the Palm Desert Chamber of Commerce will do their connection lunches and different events that they provide. We did their annual—they started the happy hour hangout, which was great that some of our staff went to as well. And just a big thank you to each of you and everything that you do for the YMCA and helping us out.
[00:30:56] Mayor: Great. Thank you. Does anybody have any comments or questions for the Y?
[00:31:02] Council Member: Extreme gratitude as a parent who needed that gap after school that, you know, I know what it was like to be a latchkey kid, and that's not something we can have anymore. It's not safe. But it's always great to know your kids are in a safe place, and thank you for what you provide, not only in terms of care but development, which is necessary, and the fact that you span from Pre-K and TK and all the way up. Just gratitude and appreciation.
[00:31:30] Speaker: Thank you so much.
[00:31:33] Mayor: Any other comments or thoughts? No? Thank you very much.
[00:31:37] Speaker: Thank you all.
[00:31:38] Mayor: Thank you. Okay, we'll move to Council Member reports and requests for action. And why don't we start with Council Member Kintania.
[00:31:51] Council Member Kintania: Thank you, Madame Mayor. I had the privilege to attend two events that were heavily focused on environmental initiatives that could put Palm Desert in another opportunity to lead. One was a SCAG event that provided updates of now-proven models that have been applied in San Antonio, in Phoenix, I believe Tempe, and Los Angeles. And I'm looking forward to see how we can make our communities fight the heat islands, how we can have our kids enjoying the recreation areas more. And one such application was able to reduce the temperature of the pavements by 14 degrees. So not only can we get the bat, but it also benefits our public works staff since they are the ones that are outdoors all that much compared to other departments. So just excited to see that moving forward. Excited to have the enthusiasm shared by our city manager and public works department. So again, Palm Desert can lead. And our contact at the State of California Office of Planning and Research, I think it was, we had a meeting with him and he said, 'Let me find you funding,' and guided us to some of those sources. So not only is it innovative, but it's something that we can do without a gigantic investment from the city. I shared some of that with one of the Desert Sands school board members, and they're excited to see how they can implement that as well. And yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend an electrical vehicle forum with one of our staff members, Chris Garry, and our mayor was the opening speaker. And I know we split and divided and conquered some of the sessions, but one of the things that struck me the most was that San Bernardino Valley Community College District is looking for cities to provide individuals that work with the fleets so they can train them in-house to work on the electric vehicles free. This is a pilot program, but again, this would reduce our reliance on external contracts. And as they said, gone will be the days of taking your car to get serviced somewhere else. We'll have staff here that can make those repairs as necessary. So, I again appreciate the opportunity to attend events and bring back best practices from across the state and across the country to improve Palm Desert. Thank you.
[00:34:29] Mayor: Council Member Nandi, please.
[00:34:31] Council Member Nandi: No comments. Thank you, Mayor.
[00:34:34] Mayor: Hey, Council Member Pettto.
[00:34:37] Council Member Pettto: This has got to be some record. Four Grand Theft Autos, one guy, one day. I learned about that stat. I went to the League of Cities presentation on June 30th with the district attorney and an update on how Prop 36 implementation is working, based on his opinion, it's working in creating incentives and in and
[00:35:02] Council Member: helping with some certain drug felony treatments and things like that. But one of the big things that we still need is jail space because situations like that, where there's folks that there's no deterrent aside from jail. So, that was the take-home message is Prop 36 is working. We still need more resources and jail space to help have the stick and also rehabilitation programs. I was also a couple weeks ago elected as an alternate to the Riverside County regional board for the California League of Cities. So, I'll be starting that assignment effective immediately. And I was able to join Councilwoman Kinttonia on the first day of school at Palm Desert Charter Middle School to welcome all the kids back and see how—personally, I rode my bike and got to see how all the traffic improvements have come to fruition. And I'll tell you what, it's very interesting the people who prioritize their own getting to work or whatever over the safety of our children. I witnessed that over and over. And so there's no amount of—we can do all the best we can with traffic improvements, but there's folks that just ignore them and it's tough to prevent that. So everyone in this room, I'm sure, drives very safely. So pass the message on to the other people who aren't here.
[00:36:40] Mayor: Mayor Pro Tem?
[00:36:41] Mayor Pro Tem: No comments at this time.
[00:36:44] Mayor: Okay. Thank you. I just have a couple things and I want to echo a little bit. It's on the heels of what Council Member Padetto was talking about, the El Paseo improvement. And it's been incredible, and one of the most—I've heard so many positive comments about the great work the staff has done about the traffic flow and how well it's been maintained on the street. And the other thing that was notable to me is how many people commented on how much parking is behind the shops on El Paseo. They just discovered that parking. So that's one of the good things that came out of this. Also, I attended the marketing meeting, the new iteration of our marketing meeting the other day, and it was impressive, the group of marketing professionals that were there, and I know they will continue to do great things for our community. On another note, coming up pretty soon is the second tier EIR, Environmental Impact Report, for CV Rail. It is now in motion. I will keep you apprised of the progress. We will need to hear your voices about this because one of the most important parts of these EIRs is the public outreach. So I will bring this up at meetings and let you know of opportunities to have your voice heard about the rail coming to the Coachella Valley. It's in motion. We know it's going to take a while, but it's—and it's been a long time coming, but we're seeing progress. So, we'll see that second tier, and that has to be done, and then the real motion begins. And it's exciting. And we all did a lot, I know, and that's just a little view of some of the things we've participated in over the last few weeks. We'll now move to non-agenda public comments. Do we have any online?
[00:39:03] Staff: For those on Zoom, if you want to participate in public comment, please click the raise hand button on your computer or smartphone. And if you're calling in by your phone, please dial star nine to raise your hand, and when called upon, press star six to unmute yourself. And Madam Mayor, we have no raised hands.
[00:39:19] Mayor: Thank you. Okay. I have two blue cards. I have Janna Cororusinski.
[00:39:26] Mayor: Can you state your name and your address? And you have three minutes.
[00:39:37] Janna Kchinsky: My name is Janna Kchinsky and I live in Palm Desert, and I'm a member of the Joslyn Senior Center. The members of the Joslyn Senior Center respectfully ask the City of Palm Desert to look into the recent termination of our director, Dr. J. Cellar. We have lost confidence in the board of directors of the Cove Community Senior.
[00:40:00] Miss Kinski: ...Association and question whether they are acting in the best interests of the center. While we understand that the board has the authority to dismiss the director, it is deeply troubling that someone so well regarded by members and who by any measurable standard was doing outstanding work would be abruptly let go without explanation. Following calls for transparency, the board president held a meeting with center members. The meeting was well attended by individuals seeking answers. Unfortunately, no explanation was provided and she declined to take questions regarding the firing despite that being the very reason most people were present. This has raised serious concerns among the membership. There is a growing consensus that the structure and oversight of the board should be reviewed. For instance, why is the president of the board someone who does not reside in the Coachella Valley? And why are not the members of the Joslyn Center represented on the board? Since Dr. Seller took leadership, the Joslyn Center experienced a significant positive transformation. New pickleball courts were added. Meaningful outreach was extended to disabled seniors. The facility was cleaner, more vibrant, and far better maintained. Also, from what I understand, donations to the center increased dramatically due to his outreach. Dr. Seller's visible presence, supportive interactions, and joyful, welcoming demeanor greatly improved the atmosphere at the center. His sense of humor and warmth made a lasting impact on us all. We want the city council to know that the members are upset and deeply disappointed by the board's actions. We respectfully ask for your support in looking into this matter and if possible helping to restore Dr. J. Seller to his role. Thank you.
[00:42:30] Speaker: Thank you, Miss Kinski. Okay, our next one is Soya.
[00:42:47] Sa Lavasani: Hi, my name is Sa Lavasani and I'm a member of Joslyn Center, continuing for what she said before, which we as members agree with her 100%. But I have two things. First of all, she doesn't live—the director of the board—she doesn't live in Coachella Valley, which is in the valley, so why is she presented there as a board member? One. Second of all, why are we not, as members that live there and pay for the membership over there, why are we not on the board? How does the board know what we are doing? That's for second. Third of all, there's a rumor that says the director, Dr. J, requested the financial book and she or he—I don't know the person—didn't release that to him. So that's another one we want to find out, why the financials are not shared with the members. Also, we would like to know that too. And also, we never ever had announced to us there is a board meeting. Never. I've been a member of the Joslyn Center for three years now, and never ever has any board member invited us as members to participate in that board meeting until I got angry and I requested that about a month and a half ago. So finally they let us—they attended this—they created a board, and then I just recently found they hired a guard to protect the board. Waste of money. So please, I would love you to look into it, and we don't want to lose this membership. We don't want to lose the Joslyn Center. We would like somebody that lives in the Coachella Valley and...
[00:45:00] Public Speaker: ...choose a member to be participants in the board so they know exactly what we are requesting, what we like to have. So I would love that if you can look into it. Thank you.
[00:45:11] Mayor: Thank you very much for coming today, and thank you for your time and your thoughts. Okay, we will—I have no more non-agendized items, so we'll move to the consent calendar. Are there any items that anyone would like to pull?
[00:45:33] Council Member: I have a few, Madame Mayor.
[00:45:35] Council Member: Okay. Um, E as in Edward, G as in George, I, K, and O.
[00:45:44] Mayor: Okay.
[00:45:48] Council Member: And Mayor, I also want to pull item I as in ice cream.
[00:45:53] Mayor: So, let's see. We already have that pulled.
[00:45:56] Council Member: Two. It's two of us.
[00:45:57] Mayor: Okay. Uh, are there any others that you'd like pulled?
[00:46:07] Council Member: No. Did you have any?
[00:46:08] Council Member: No.
[00:46:09] Mayor: I'd like to pull J. Uh, and at this time, I would also like to register a recusal on 13X due to, uh, um, the proximity of real property to that project—of my real property to that project. Uh, yes, that's 13X. So, I register a recusal on that. And I'd also just like to make a quick comment, if I could, on—oh, no. You know what? It was pulled, so I don't need to. So, I pulled J, and Council Member Quintanilla has pulled K. So, can we have a motion to, um, move the balance, please?
[00:47:08] Council Member: I will make a motion to move the balance.
[00:47:11] Mayor: We have a second?
[00:47:12] Council Member: Second.
[00:47:13] Mayor: Okay. Please vote.
[00:47:21] City Clerk: Motion passes 5 to 0.
[00:47:23] Mayor: Thank you. Okay, we'll take these—I'll do my best to keep them in order. Uh, 13E, and that is—that'll be Mr. Mejia. The ratification of letter opposing Assembly Bill 339 (Ortega), local public employee organizations: notice requirements.
[00:47:58] Council Member Mejia: I'm available to answer any questions. My, uh, question to this relates to, um, giving staff the opportunities to use our, our talents in-house without relying on external contractors, and also seeing the value of supporting our employee, um, um, organization, employee benefits organization. Although not formally recognized as a union, it serves the same purpose. And I believe that we have an obligation to consider their needs first. The assembly bill, uh, essentially states that we shouldn't, um—well, it's requesting that any contract or things that are going to be put out to bid, that staff have the opportunity to look at it in-house before it is sent to the public. The argument is that it's going to make things take too long, and sometimes things need to move fast. But there is a provision that says that things can be bypassed in the case of an emergency. Another argument is that things would take too long to get approved. But when I've inquired as to how long it takes from the day that something is posted for a public, um, for public bid, it can be as little as 7 to 10 days. I can't imagine that we have something that would be so essential and urgent that we can't give our staff a few days to say, 'Hey guys, this is coming up. Does anybody feel that we can do this in-house?' Of course, granted that their supervisor would permit them to do so. Um, so the, the exemption specifically says if an emergency or other exigent circumstances prevents the public agency from providing the written notice required by the subdivision, the agency shall provide as much advanced time notice as practicable under the circumstances. If the recognized employee organization demands to meet and, uh, confer after receiving written notice, the public...
[00:50:00] Transcript gap: Gemini did not return transcript text for this 00:50:00-00:55:00 clip. Use the official video for this interval.
[00:55:02] Council Member 1: ...through those checkpoints. I mean, I can't help but notice how random searches aren't as random. I can pretty much tell you, I'm surprised when I don't get selected to go and get a secondary inspection or a pat down. And it doesn't matter what I'm wearing, doesn't matter what time of day, it doesn't matter where I'm going. I can't ever say that it's random with how frequently it happens. The extent of experiences that my mom has been subjected to, the harassment and invasive searches, including invasive physiological searches. And they said that she was targeted because she was a single female traveling for a short trip—because you shouldn't have to spend too much time if your grandmother is dying and you want to go see her. Another time, she and her husband were detained, and even though he is a permanent resident, he was held for hours at a time and forced to sign a contract. They had him sign something. They said, 'You can't leave the room until you sign this,' but they would not provide it to him in Spanish and they would not allow him a translator. So, I think that the intent of saying we want to facilitate increased amounts of international travel... I think the real issue should be in funding more CBP at the major ports of entry. I think that in order to increase that flow, it needs to be increasing TSA. And for those broad reasons and very personal experiences, I oppose.
[00:57:02] Mayor: Any comments?
[00:57:06] Council Member 2: And I will say this was about... we are trying to develop the Palm Springs International Airport into a greater hub for international travel, and that was the goal. I'm sure some people have had bad experiences. I won't deny anything that you've said, but I also know I've been pulled aside by customs. It happens. They're doing their job. And our goal is to create a stronger international stream of tourists and visitors to the Palm Springs airport. And that was the goal of having more customs officers. I'm sure, I know that they are working on many other parts to expedite and create a better experience at Palm Springs Airport, and I appreciate that. This is a piece of it, and for that reason, I support it.
[00:58:02] Mayor: Can I have a motion, please?
[00:58:05] Council Member 3: I will make a motion to approve as presented.
[00:58:09] Mayor: Is there a second?
[00:58:10] Council Member 4: I'll second the motion.
[00:58:13] Mayor: Okay. Can we have a vote, please?
[00:58:17] City Clerk: Motion passes 4 to 1.
[00:58:20] Mayor: Thank you. We'll now go to I, adoption of Ordinance Number 1430, amending Palm Desert Municipal Code Section 2.34.050 related to advisory body officers.
[00:58:38] Council Member 1: I would like to... my question is in regards to encouraging more people to serve and to increase the rotation, and that was the reason that it was proposed by Council Member Padetto that we need to encourage and build that leadership. I mean, we do Palm Desert University, and that's where we encourage people to get involved, and that has created a spike in interest. And another key element was that if there were people that were too shy or didn't want to serve, then we needed to encourage them, motivate them, or find out why they are serving in general. One of the committee meetings that I attended, one of the leaders who had had either a chair or vice chair role for some time was very displeased, and I feel that if that individual had known that they could contest it, she may have done so. I find it disparaging that one group would decide, 'We don't want to follow what the Council is saying. We want to follow this way because we like it.' And I really...
[00:59:51] Council Member 2: I'd like to suggest that you... I think you're addressing J.
[00:59:56] Mayor: I is the adoption of the policy. J is the group that wanted to look at it.
[01:00:01] Council Member 1: ...differently.
[01:00:03] Council Member 1: I think I misnumbered them in my notes then. Okay. No, wait a minute. Now, I do have here, isn't that adoption of the ordinance amending the municipal code related to advisory body officers?
[01:00:23] Mayor: Was that not in, or didn't this come forward because there was one committee where they said—
[01:00:28] Staff Member: No, this is the adoption of the actual policy. The next one is the one that I believe you want to address.
[01:00:36] Council Member 1: Yes, my apologies. So, I rescind my comments and we'll wait until we get to letter J. Okay, then can we turn now?
[01:00:47] Mayor: Oh, oh, you pulled this.
[01:00:48] Council Member 1: Yes, so I exempted I...
[01:00:53] Council Member 1: ...and I should have also exempted J, but it's already exempted. So, I can begin with I by—
[01:00:59] Mayor: Okay, please.
[01:01:00] Council Member 1: Okay. So, we just voted on this at our last meeting, and I did vote no on the ordinance because I felt that I have a different take. I believe the ordinance is too rigid in the appointment of chair and vice chair, and I don't support ratifying it. And then I can speak to J next.
[01:01:27] Mayor: Okay. Okay, so you oppose this. I feel it's very similar to just how we do the mayor, mayor pro tem, and I think that's healthy for all of these bodies who have a role in the governance of our city. So, that is why I support it. So, you oppose. Can we have a motion? Actually, before we make a motion, one thought I have that might solve the J situation as well is potentially amending the 'chairperson, vice chairperson shall rotate annually according to a committee's adopted procedure' and then having an established procedure. I think my ultimate goal is a rotation of the chair and vice chair. How each committee does it, I'm less concerned. I think the process of creating the ranking and getting the rotation is to help them kind of move in that direction. But if there's another way, I'm ambivalent to how it happens. I'm just more concerned that it actually happens.
[01:02:38] Council Member 2: I think creating a consistent policy is best not only for staff but for everyone. Everyone knows what to expect. I wouldn't support having everybody create their own policy within a committee. It just creates a mess for the staff, and it's ambiguous at best. And my feeling is that the way this is written will create something everyone can count on. So, I would first suggest that we take I and J separately, and I, the way it is presented, I would support that because it creates consistency, and it makes it, again, it's easier on the staff that way.
[01:03:25] Council Member 3: If that is a motion, Madame Mayor, I will second.
[01:03:28] Mayor: Okay, so we have a motion and a second. Can we have a vote, please?
[01:03:37] Clerk: Motion passes 4 to 1.
[01:03:40] Mayor: Thank you. Now we'll go to J.
[01:03:42] Council Member 1: Thank you, Madame Mayor. Pretty much the same conversation we just had about the need for continuity to carry across the different committees and commissions. And I think another element is, I believe that we had said if an individual does not want to serve as chair or vice chair, they can decline. But I feel that there have been residents that have expressed that in certain committees or commissions, there may be individuals that are very domineering and don't allow for as much discussion. And if they're in that position of authority and may not be as welcoming to hear from others, I think this creates an opportunity for everyone to be heard. And as the Mayor said, we rotate, and it gives the opportunity to present equitable experience and opportunity. And that's why we want people from a variety of backgrounds. We don't want one person that has always had this one very specific perspective to be the chair for x amount of time and not allow shy individuals that have things of equal value to contribute. So—
[01:05:02] Speaker: My perspective is that we deny this request and keep consistent with Item I, which we just—excuse me, Item I, which we just adopted.
[01:05:17] Speaker: Are there any other comments?
[01:05:20] Speaker: I am going to support the request of Item J. I don't like just doing piecemeal, but I want to explain that I will be voting yes because at least Parks and Rec will not have that rigid standard. And hopefully the other committees in time will be able to do something similar if they so choose.
[01:05:42] Speaker: And again, I think this is a model that the Council uses and is a good model for all of our committees and commissions. So, is there a motion?
[01:05:54] Speaker: I move approval.
[01:05:56] Speaker: I'll second.
[01:05:58] Speaker: And just for clarification, this is to deny the request.
[01:06:01] Speaker: Yes. Thank you.
[01:06:05] Speaker: So then, how do I vote if I want to support them?
[01:06:08] Speaker: You would vote no.
[01:06:09] Speaker: I would vote no. There we go. Thank you.
[01:06:12] Speaker: And before I cast my vote, I'm going to be consistent in that I am more concerned that it happens, not how it happens. And if they have a system, then I'm okay with that. So, I'm going to be voting no on the present motion.
[01:06:29] Speaker: Motion passes three to two.
[01:06:32] Speaker: Okay. Thank you. We'll now go to K, which is the acceptance of a resignation from our Finance Committee. And that is Robert Leo, who has served us for some time. And Council Member Kinttonia, you pulled that. Did you wish to speak to that?
[01:06:48] Council Member Kinttonia: I did pull it. I have known Bob personally since 2008. I have worked at two universities where I've worked with him. I've seen the impact that he's had as a professor on hundreds of students. And one day when I was having coffee with him, he shared something so casually. He said, 'I was involved with creating the Pell Grant, and it started on a bar napkin.' And he mentioned it so casually, like he told me that he bought a blue car in 1986. That's the kind of person that he is: to be humble, to be giving, and he served with that level of distinction on the Finance Committee. And when I went to look more into his story about creating the Pell Grant, I want to share with you that it was quite an extensive process and exemplifies that he's an amazing individual. The president, Bill Priest, of the Dallas Community College District, had an upbeat staffer, Bob Leo, who was already digging into federal grants. Leo would prove an essential adviser to the community college bill that was developed, and he attended annual meetings of the National Council of State Directors of Community Colleges. They were chaired by another prominent voice of the movement who headed the community college agency for the New York State. Both he and Leo began making Washington visits to help me. And these are the recollections of a former congressional liaison from the American Association of Junior Colleges at a time when people weren't giving community colleges value. What the community college bill turned into, the 1972 Act, with a provision directing each state to form—and this is named after Senator Pell and all of the work that came from it. I said a dauntless yet somewhat controversial support, but it led to changing not only the way that students receive financial aid, but giving people opportunity for mobility, for growth. And it has made our society better to have qualified, educated individuals that sit in this very room that have been recipients of the Pell Grant. He has impacted millions of students with, I'm sure, billions in funds since this started. So I just wanted to take a few extra moments to give my extreme gratitude from the bottom of my heart as a recipient and as an educator having worked in financial aid. I have seen it firsthand. So, Bob, when you get to watch this, I send you lots of love and infinite gratitude.
[01:09:37] Speaker: Thank you. I had wanted to pull that also because I did want to highlight the volunteerism that actually both Mr. and Mrs. Leo have given us. Peg Leo has served the community in great ways, and as has Bob. And Bob at one time was the head of our Chamber of Commerce. He's been in our community for a long time, and he's given an awful lot, and he's...
[01:10:01] Councilmember: ...provided a lot of service and support. So when it says 'with regret,' we accept the resignation. It is truly with regret. So thank you for that, and we will have to have a motion to accept it, whether we want to or not. So, is there a second?
[01:10:20] Councilmember 2: I second, regretfully.
[01:10:22] Councilmember: Vote, please.
[01:10:28] Councilmember: Motion passes 5 to 0.
[01:10:30] Councilmember: Thank you. We'll next move to O: the resolution amending and restating the administration plan for the Housing Authority's affordable residential communities and authorizing the Executive Director to take appropriate actions for implementation. The reason I have pulled that item is in regards to the change in law which now allows for pets in the city-owned housing. And this has been a concern from animal advocates and ongoing considerations from our work with the Department of Animal Services. And my question is related to how soon we will implement the opportunity for people to have pets in their apartments.
[01:11:19] Jessica Gonzalez: Good evening. Jessica Gonzalez, Housing Manager, Development Services. With respect to your question, the administrative plan that is before you in this item will be effective September 1st. So we would be able to have—the admin plan incorporates those revisions that allow now residents to have pets in their units. There are limitations on the number of pets allowed, and there are prohibitions with respect to certain animals such as reptiles, rabbits. It is provided in the animal policy as Exhibit D.
[01:11:56] Councilmember: Okay. And can you refresh my memory on which date that was? Sorry.
[01:12:00] Jessica Gonzalez: It's September 1st.
[01:12:01] Councilmember: Okay, September 1st.
[01:12:02] Jessica Gonzalez: If approved, yes.
[01:12:04] Councilmember: And is there any restriction on breeds of animals, other than the species of animal?
[01:12:09] Jessica Gonzalez: At this moment, there is not, because there are other variables that need to be considered with respect to accommodations or animals of other considerations for accommodations that need to be provided to our residents. However, there are restrictions that if there is a situation with regards to that animal, then there could be limitations.
[01:12:35] Councilmember: Okay. One of the other topics of conversation that had come up in discussions with our animal campus commission was that sometimes we should encourage our seniors to plan ahead if they're going to have an extended medical procedure or in the event that they pass away. So, I'm pleased to hear that it is already something that will be encouraged in terms of finding the emergency contact or next of kin. So, I know that this adds on another layer of work, but deeply appreciated so that you have less animals that may run away because they're missing their person that has now been gone for an extra amount of time. Another question is, will animals be required to be spayed and neutered in order to be approved for housing?
[01:13:28] Jessica Gonzalez: The animals are being—residents are being asked that any animal that they are asking to be considered and approved within their residency is required to be licensed and spayed or neutered.
[01:13:45] Councilmember: I believe that as the Council, we should implement a policy that requires them to be spayed and neutered. One of the topics in the commission was that the cities need to do more to prevent unwanted pets, and some cities, for example, had not yet implemented a backyard breeder ban. And I think that where we can't enforce upon every resident in the city to do so, we can make that request for people that live in city-owned and managed housing.
[01:14:24] Jessica Gonzalez: It is a provision included in the animal policy.
[01:14:27] Councilmember: So that's—I—
[01:14:29] Jessica Gonzalez: Did I miss that the way I said it, or—
[01:14:31] Councilmember: Yeah, that's what I thought you said. You were asking them to, but not that it's a requirement for our housing.
[01:14:40] Jessica Gonzalez: It is being included as a requirement.
[01:14:41] Councilmember: Perfect. So then I would also like to expand that conversation for future considerations that we add that into our overall municipal code that requires our residents to spay and neuter their animals. I think that's a reasonable amount of responsibility that we can...
[01:15:01] Councilmember: Ask. And if we're telling people it's completely optional, they're not going to come in. If we tell them that we want it done and we need it done, we won't get a 100% compliance, but we will get people that will come in in good faith to do so. And that allows us to help do our part to reduce unwanted animals.
[01:15:20] Staff Member: Mayor and council, if I may, there's an item later where ACM Richard Canon will be talking about the services contract. This will be one part of it, but also this fall there's a series of ordinance changes that were being considered to be brought to you, one including ordinances on spaying and neutering and a few other items as well.
[01:15:43] Councilmember: Perfect.
[01:15:46] Mayor: Do you have your questions answered?
[01:15:48] Councilmember: Yes, I do. Thank you.
[01:15:50] Mayor: Can we have a motion, please?
[01:15:53] Councilmember: Moved.
[01:15:54] Mayor: Second, please.
[01:15:56] Councilmember: Second.
[01:16:00] Mayor: Motion passes 5 to zero. Thank you. Now, just to make sure because we had an awful lot pulled. Did I get everybody's that they needed pulled from the consent? Okay. Then, you know, if I may, can we take just a five-minute break, please? And we'll be back. It is 5:13. We'll be back at 5:18.
[01:23:22] Speaker: Yeah.
[01:23:23] Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.
[01:23:28] Speaker: Okay, we're back. It is 5:20, and we'll go to the first item, 14A: Approve a three-year agreement with the County of Riverside for animal field shelter and licensing services. Mr. Canon, please.
[01:23:47] Mr. Canon: Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. The presentation tonight, what I'd like to do is kind of broke up the contract into three components. The first would be services and rates, the second would be meetings, and then third would be reports. So, some of this is going to look familiar to what we had presented at the study session right before the break, but wanted to just go over this again so it's clear for everyone, as well as those that are seeing it for the first time. And so, there were two options for field services, either a standard or extended plan. What we currently have now is the standard plan. This contract, like the others, is over a three-year period. The new rates that are being proposed are proposed to be phased over a three-year period. There's a component in there about the adoption of county regulations for enforcement of their Ordinance 630. There was an errata that came out today that modified this a little bit. I'll touch on that in a later slide. Billing would be quarterly with annual reconciliation based upon impounds, level of service, and population. If you recall, that was sort of the...
[01:25:02] Speaker: ...methodology, the piece of the pie methodology. Those are the three components of what that fee is based on. They're asking cities or requiring cities to fund vaccination and microchip clinics within the city as well as spay and neuter clinics. Again, these are things that we already have been doing with the last contract. And then the other consideration is contributing $5 per licensed animal to offer low-cost or free spay/neuter programs to residents.
[01:25:31] Speaker: Regarding the meetings component of the items in the contract, they're sort of in three categories: a quarterly in-person meeting, a monthly virtual meeting, and then the attendance at city council meetings if need be.
[01:25:47] Speaker: And the last component of the contract has to do with reports. Our standard reports are provided at no charge, and then up to 12 hours annually for special reports. And then anything in addition to that would be based upon those billable rates that are included in the contract. And the standard reports are enumerated here on the right. I won't read through all of those. And what I will add is we are still working with county staff. They have been working through getting us the GIS information. So everything, they have been very cooperative over the last couple months in making sure that we're able to get what we need to make those decisions in the future.
[01:26:35] Speaker: And so this just gives a breakdown of the three-year contract cost. And so for this year, that cost would be just under 500,000. Just as a reminder, when we adopted the budget, again, we weren't sure what the cost would be, knowing that it was increasing but also having the ability to do those clinics. We had budgeted 620,000. So there is a surplus of approximately 110,000 for this fiscal year for year one. Year two, the cost would go up to roughly 550 million. And then year three, I'll round up to 589. Again, we'll be looking at these annually, again, based upon what transpires. We're hoping, obviously, that our shelter rates go down, but again, this is what they're projecting to be for that three-year amount.
[01:27:40] Speaker: I did a breakout here of overtime. I know one of the questions that had come up at the study session had to do with whether we should go with the extended rate or extended field services that included the weekends. And so what we wanted to do is really analyze and look at the amount of overtime that we were paying. And so we looked over a four-year period. And as you see, over that four-year period, the average is about 29,000 a year, but in total is roughly $117,000. Not a huge amount in comparison to the overall amount.
[01:28:21] Speaker: What we have done, which has been great as I keep talking about using data to make decisions, Kena Perez, the management analyst in development services, did a fantastic job working with county staff and collecting this data but then building this dashboard for us. So we're able to kind of plug and play and really understand quickly. I won't take you through the whole thing, but what we were able to do is really extract a lot of the data to figure out when is the overtime, when are those calls coming in, what times of day, of course what day, as well as what are the kind of service calls.
[01:28:59] Speaker: And so what I did is kind of just summarized it here, looked at what's coming in, you know, during the week, the normal Monday through Friday, as well as Saturday and Sunday. And so, interestingly, more of the billed hours are during the week. When we looked at the weekend calls, we kind of broke it out a little bit further and looked at really what I focused on, what I'm calling the utilization rate. And so what would be those overtime calls on the weekend, Saturday and Sunday, between what would be normal work hours? Because even if we went with that extended plan, we still would be on the hook for overtime if it was beyond five o'clock. And so that utilization rate was only about five, five and a half percent, which is extremely low. And so really looking at that, it didn't quite make sense to recommend we move forward with that extended plan. We also, the sort of the top three calls on the weekend, similar to what we get during...
[01:30:00] Speaker 1: For all overtime calls, they are agency assist. There were nine of those, seven injured wildlife, and five animal cruelty. And agency assist, what that means is a lot of times they'll get a call from the Sheriff's Department to assist, whether it's with a homeless individual, it could be a car accident, there could be a death, or someone had to go into an ambulance that left the animal without care. And so those are typically the agency assist calls. We also wanted to understand kind of how many bites and really the more aggressive animals, are we seeing a lot of those calls? And there were six bite investigations and only one confirmed. But overall, citywide, we only had two overtime calls for aggressive strays, which I don't know how that compares to other years. But again, this is data that we're trying to collect and then understand what that means. But the fact that it is only two, it to me seems relatively low given the size of our city and the fact that we have approximately 1,500 licensed dogs. That's for—is it—that's for a whole year? That's for the entire year.
[01:31:21] Speaker 2: That's for the entire year. Correct.
[01:31:23] Speaker 1: Thank you.
[01:31:25] Speaker 1: And then so what we also... So we did further reach out to county staff and just try to get understanding when we first asked the question as we were doing this analysis, what it would take to transition to that seven-day a week. Given that the animal control officers are on a nine-hour day schedule and the number of officers they have, it would actually require us to hire, bring on another FTE, another... have two animal control officers in the city. And given the number of calls, that demand is, quite honestly, it's just not there. And you're looking at an additional cost of $287,000 annually. So if you look at that compared to $116,000 that we're spending in overtime, it really, plus that utilization rate, it really doesn't pencil out. And so, for those purposes, we were not recommending moving to that extended plan based upon this. I did provide an errata sheet with some modifications. Again, none of these were what we would call substantive changes, but did want to bring them to everyone's attention. The first, for the most part, the first three items, really all of them, clarification items. The ones I really want to point to are the changes to Exhibit A, items five and six, just really clarified that the county would enforce the city's ordinance, not necessarily we must adopt the county's ordinance. And so that is something we're working on. Pedro and his team are working on now. We anticipate taking it to the Animal Services City Council Subcommittee in September for their review. Assuming we get their input and are ready to move forward, we're looking at bringing that for Council's consideration at a public hearing. The earliest would be October, the latest would be November. But we're looking at bringing the items such as whether we want to require spay and neutering citywide—it's something we don't do now—requiring microchipping, address of backyard breeding, and revisit really all of those items that just need to be updated and have been discussed. So, it is in the works and you'll see it here in a few months. And so, we did discuss after the study session that we had, we did meet with the City Council Subcommittee and reviewed sort of all of the terms. And so again, it was staying with that standard plan, including the clinics, which I'd already like to report we're looking at having the first one in November, and that would be a vaccination and microchip clinic, and then looking at planning to do a spay and neuter clinic in January. In addition to that, we also reached out to county staff to see if we can have an adoption event coordinated along with those clinics, and they did agree to that. So in addition to having those clinics, we'll also have an adoption event. While we had them here in the City Hall parking lot, we're going to actually have the vaccination and microchip at the library, and see, as we have a lot more visitors coming in and out given that we have the adoption component with that. Again, just trying to try something new and see...
[01:35:00] Richard: If we can further reduce the shelter, the animals that are in shelter. The subcommittee did not recommend participating in the spay and neuter trust fund. And as I mentioned, staff's already working on those amendments to the animal control regulations. And so with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. In addition to myself, Kimberly Youngberg, who's the assistant director of Department of Animal Services with Riverside County, is also here in attendance. So, if there's any specific questions to Riverside County, she's here to assist in answering those questions. Thanks.
[01:35:40] Mayor: Okay. Thank you very much. I do have one blue card on this, so why don't we have Michael Phillips Russell come on up.
[01:35:56] Michael Phillips Russell: Good afternoon. My name is Michael Phillips Russell. I'm a resident of Cathedral City, but I'm also on the Coachella Valley Animal Campus Commission and the president of Loving All Animals. This afternoon, I would like to extend a very sincere thank you to the entire council for making the study session and this contract public at the study session and then again today so that the community can become better educated and understand the process. So hopefully moving forward, we can avoid some of the problems that we've all experienced in the last year. So really, thank you for making this public and allowing the community to become better educated on how the process works and how they can make change. And second, I would like to say thank you to the city staff. This was a very thoughtful presentation and really great that the efforts and recommendations for that would really improve outcomes for the city's animals. So I just again wanted to thank you so much to making this whole debate about the contract public. It was very frustrating for the last year to see that no one understood the process. No one understood what contracts were. No one understood. So, I really sincerely thank you and hopefully my Zoom calls will go back down to where they used to be. So, thank you. Have a good evening.
[01:37:26] Mayor: Thank you so much for your time today. Do we have any comments online?
[01:37:32] Staff: No online comments, Madame Mayor.
[01:37:35] Mayor: Thank you very much. Okay. Are there any questions? Okay. Please.
[01:37:42] Council Member: Okay. Thank you, Richard, for the report. Couple quick questions. Page 1281 of our agenda, new contract terms, meeting and reports. The quarterly in-person meeting: the county will make a good faith effort to attend one in-person meeting with each quarter up to three hours at no cost. Monthly virtual meetings attendance. And those first two are the ones I'm asking about. Who are those meetings intended to be with?
[01:38:13] Richard: With staff.
[01:38:14] Council Member: Okay. And—
[01:38:15] Richard: Correct. It would be with staff regarding whatever the item may be with respect to the contract.
[01:38:22] Council Member: And that would be okay. So just once every three months, whether it's needed or not, we will have a meeting with staff. And would council members, maybe on the subcommittee, be invited to that to participate?
[01:38:35] Richard: Certainly could be.
[01:38:36] Council Member: Okay. And then a little further down, reports: standard reports listed below will be provided at no charge and lists, you know, dog and/or cats impounded, etc., etc. How often will those reports be provided and to whom? I guess to staff again.
[01:39:01] Kimberly Youngberg: Greetings, Mayor, Council Members. So, the Department of Animal Services is actually working on preparing some monthly reports that are going to go out to all of our city partners that contain a lot of that pertinent information. And so, that's just an effort for us to be proactive and communicate better with our city partners and let you—give you guys an idea of all the work that's going on out there and things happening in your city, and also impounds of animals and events and anything significant that happens.
[01:39:32] Council Member: Good. Perfect. Thank you. And can I ask that those would be provided in the council agenda just so it's being provided to us?
[01:39:41] Richard: We, we, we—
[01:39:43] Staff: Yes. Short answer: yes.
[01:39:44] Council Member: Roberts,
[01:39:46] Richard: A little bit of a longer answer. Our intent is to really demystify all of this and start having these sort of the dashboard kind of what I've already showed you. So, as we get this information, we want to have—really have it on the website for anybody to see.
[01:40:00] Speaker 1: ...and so everything's transparent there. There's no more guessing or questions. Here's the data. Here's what it is, and make that available for all.
[01:40:09] Speaker 2: Perfect.
[01:40:09] Speaker 3: Outstanding.
[01:40:10] Speaker 4: Excellent. Thank you.
[01:40:10] Speaker 5: Great.
[01:40:11] Speaker 1: Thank you.
[01:40:12] Speaker 6: Any other...
[01:40:13] Speaker 2: Yes, I have questions. Can I request that... I love having the public dashboard. Can you also add links on there to the county website? Because if we know people that are looking here, they may want to also know how things are going in other cities, and that would continue an ongoing effort for transparency and making data accessible. Being a strong advocate of data-driven decision making and scrutinizing where we are being efficient and effective, I wanted to follow up on some of the subfunds that are reported in the county budget. So, I have gone through and looked at the publicly available Board of Supervisors budget for the County of Riverside from 2017-18 all the way up to this year. In 17-18, subfund 11102, which comes from... I'll let you describe it. What is fund 102?
[01:41:19] Speaker 1: So, that's the subfund that takes our state-mandated fees and deposits. So what happens is when an animal comes in for spay or neuter, or we've in the past charged deposits when we've sent animals home that require spay or neuter to come back, they're held in that subfund. They have to be held for a certain amount of time, after which, once that time expires, then the county can transfer some of those funds and use them for, and I think it's for education, spay and neuter, and some of those purposes in our communities.
[01:41:59] Speaker 2: Okay. So from that fund, like I said, in 2017-18, the balance of that fund was $12,074. Since then, the fund now contains $532,533. And according to one of the requests—I don't have that full report—I think that you spent approximately $23,000 of that in the last five years on education materials and spay/neuter. Is that approximate?
[01:42:31] Speaker 1: If that's the information we provided you, then yes.
[01:42:35] Speaker 2: Yeah, that was my rough recollection. And can you tell us about subfund 11109?
[01:42:44] Speaker 1: So, I believe those are the subfunds that contain our donations accounts. So those are funds that are publicly donated to the county, and they go into four different buckets. They all have a specific purpose that people can actually choose to donate for. One of them's emergency preparedness. One of them is what we call our healthy pet zone, which is to help persons in need. One of them is our health fund, which is more geared at animals' health in the shelter, but can also be used for pets in need. And then our care fund, which is a general pool of funds that can be used for the greatest need in our department.
[01:43:27] Speaker 2: Thank you. This is something that I had been asking for detail on this fund for years. So then I was happy to finally at least get the categories of what those are, and finally, as of the last two months, was able to get how much the County Department of Animal Services has actually spent from those funds. So in... where am I here? In 2017-18, the balance of fund 109 was $219,696. Since then, given what people have been seeing, their hearts and pockets are extended to want to support animals. We see the need, and people have donated all kinds of things. And for this budget year, it says $1.1 million approximately. So that's a surprise, considering that I know I don't think our staff would be able to submit in our annual budget form to say we have about $1.1 million when looking at the balance of these individual funds. It is alarming. Alarming is the smoothest way that I can phrase this. In the animal care fund, there are $686,536, and I believe from that you've said that you've spent $40,792 over the last 5 years, and it is this...
[01:45:01] Speaker 1: ...goes to equipment supplies, purchasing collars and leashes, education materials, volunteer recognition, and shelter signs. I don't know why these special—the special funds are buying things like shelter signs. And out of that amount, that relates to 5.94% that you have spent over those five years. The disaster relief fund holds $226,860, and you have spent $775 despite having that tropical storm that caused the flooding and had people volunteer their time and their vehicles to get animals in crisis out of there. And you only spent $775 on a disaster supply trailer. The animal health fund, which is again dedicated to helping and provide veterinary services to animals in need, you currently have $89,591, but over the last five years have spent $120 on professional services. The pet zone fund, which is meant to help families keep their animals together and provide things like pet food and things that they may need to keep families and pets together, you have $30,099 and over five years have spent $62.25 on six bags of dog food. That equates to 2% that you've spent there. So, it is—it is alarming to me that in sub-fund 102 that comes from state funds, you have half a million dollars and over five years have only spent 23,000. And from public donations that want to see this go to help animals, you have over $1.1 million and you've only spent 4%. And you're asking us to give you $5 per dog license. So, how—how can you justify asking us for $5 per dog license when you have this money that you are not utilizing?
[01:47:10] Speaker 2: I understand your concerns. Know that these are used as emergency funds currently that roll over as we get these donations. You know, some of you may know that our department has had a lot of turmoil over the past five years with changes in leadership, and so we've been waiting for that proper leadership in order to ensure that we use these funds towards strategic initiatives that will help. In addition, if we have issues like emergencies and things like that that we can encumber with our own budget, we're going to use that first before we go to these funds. So that's the situation that we've been in as we—the—which was the information that we had provided to you. So hopefully now that we have good, strong leadership on board and a plan moving forward, we'll see more revolving in that fund, including, you know, once those funds are spent, they're gone unless we replenish them. And so we're also working on a plan to replenish them to make them more sustainable.
[01:48:18] Speaker 1: I—I can see where the—the plans change and evolve, and we've had changes in leadership over the last five years. That doesn't mean that we're holding out on—on funding of this amount to say, 'Well, we'll wait till the next person spends it.' The animals are in need, and if that weren't the case, there wouldn't be the public calls to pretty, pretty please donate to us. In looking through the services and supplies budget that you were able to provide for me last year, again, there's—there's things like there's a line item 520835 for laundry supplies, and it says zero. Item 520850 for cleaning supplies, zero. 520810, bedding and linen, zero. Awards and recognitions for volunteers, 527280, 3,000. Is that part of what came from the care fund? Again, I—I think that when you're saying that these are essential things that you have to pull, and volunteers are absolutely essential, I'm not disputing that.
[01:49:22] Speaker 2: And I'm not sure what sheets you're looking at right now because things like the laundry and things like that may be accounted for on another sheet somewhere else that covers the rest of the department.
[01:49:33] Speaker 1: This is from the budget sheet that I had been asking for about two years that you finally provided for me last year. I would be happy to provide a copy of that via email and copy our city manager and assistant city manager so that we can go and—and find that answer. So, can you understand that if the information that you finally gave to me after pressing as chair of the animal services commission...
[01:50:00] Councilmember: ...for the Coachella Valley, it took that long to get information and you see so many things that are showing as zero. Can you see why the public is questioning where things are going? And to me, this reflects the ongoing request for a forensic audit.
[01:50:18] Councilmember: I understand that, but again, I think that you're looking—you're separating out one small piece of that and not looking at the whole picture. May I suggest that this might be a better use of time and more efficient if we had a meeting with the subcommittee and we go over these and we make sure that we have proper documentation? Because right now it sounds like there may be some fragmenting of documentation and facts. So, it might be a better and more result-oriented type of a meeting if we could have the subcommittee, our staff, and you, and whoever you would think would be appropriate, have a meeting to figure this out, and then we can report out.
[01:51:05] Staff Representative: We would absolutely love to do that and, you know, we're totally open to being as transparent as possible and would absolutely invite that.
[01:51:16] Mayor: Okay. Thank you. Because right now we have an agreement that we are looking to approve or disapprove, a three-year agreement. So I would like to get back to the agenda item. Are there any other questions regarding the agenda item at this time?
[01:51:36] Councilmember: My last or another additional request that I have with that is that follow-up items on this, if I may request to our city manager or and assistant city manager as well, that we request documents such as those budgets for past years so that we can get that full picture as you mentioned. So another reason for asking for this right now at this stage, even though our mayor feels that it is not necessary, it is absolutely essential to have it documented, the kind of data that we will be asking for in the reports. And this is absolutely one of the topics that was discussed in the subcommittee.
[01:52:20] Mayor: Would you like to add that to the motion to adopt the recommendation and at that time request the—I don't know how many years of budget you want, but you can add that perhaps to the recommendation.
[01:52:41] Councilmember: One final question. When you look at the monthly summaries, I went through and I added all of them up, including not only all of the shelters in the county, but the numbers broken down specifically for the Coachella Valley campus. And there's a couple of categories that I'm understanding that maybe have lumped together for practicality. Under non-live outcomes, it says shelter, foster, and other euthanasia. How is foster linked in with euthanasia?
[01:53:18] Staff Representative: Sometimes, unfortunately, a foster animal has to be euthanized if it's injured or ill or irremediably suffering.
[01:53:27] Councilmember: So, they get counted. They don't come back and get counted as a shelter animal. They get counted as in foster care and then—
[01:53:36] Staff Representative: No, they do come in and they count in our total, but we're also tracking that that was an animal that went to foster.
[01:53:42] Councilmember: Okay. So, not double counted.
[01:53:43] Staff Representative: No, it's not.
[01:53:44] Councilmember: Okay. And then another concern that I have is that in the—between January 1 and the end of June of 2025, you list 265 animals that have died, or cats that have died in care, and 83 dogs that have died in care. Are those numbers consistent with what happens on average, or is that an uptick, or—
[01:54:12] Staff Representative: I couldn't tell you that off of the top of my head, but it probably is an average. Understand that we're an open admission shelter system. So, we take in all animals irregardless of their health, injuries, behavior, all of that. So, they come to us sick, injured, hit by cars, all of that.
[01:54:32] Councilmember: Okay. Absolutely. Appreciate that. This is a question that I wanted to be sure is on public record because there are some of the animal advocates that are accusing the shelter of not treating them properly. But I wanted to be sure to say this—this happens. You can't make sure—magic wand—every animal that comes in is 100% healthy. It happens. So I wanted again to give you that opportunity to get that out there. This is a partnership that we're trying to—
[01:55:00] Councilmember: get. But part of that is getting all of the data. I greatly appreciate the commitment to have ongoing meetings to have ongoing discussions. That made me extremely happy. That was one of the strong points that I felt happened in the subcommittee, and I will send more detailed requests and hope that those are information items that continue to be part of that. And so with that, I move to approve the three-year contract agreement with the county that exempts the request for the $5 from the pet trust fund, and the request for additional data as aforementioned regarding data on budgets for the last five years, including the sub-funds and general funding.
[01:55:47] Mayor: So is it as recommended with addition to five years of budget?
[01:55:52] Councilmember: Yes.
[01:55:53] Councilmember 2: I will second that motion.
[01:55:56] Mayor: May we have a vote, please?
[01:56:01] City Clerk: Motion passes 5 to zero.
[01:56:03] Councilmember: Thank you.
[01:56:04] Mayor: Thank you.
[01:56:07] Mayor: Okay. We'll go to 14B, which is to approve the updates to the outdoor dining deck design guidelines. Mr. Flores.
[01:56:17] Carlos Flores: Thank you, Madame Mayor, members of the City Council. Carlos Flores of Services here to present on proposed updates to our temporary outdoor dining deck guidelines.
[01:56:32] Carlos Flores: All right, this was in your staff report, but a timeline. There's been multiple events on this outdoor dining deck program. Some I wanted to highlight. Back in 2021, there was an extension of the program through 2022, and at that time, there was direction from the City Council to establish Architectural Review Commission-approved dining deck guidelines. So those guidelines were created and approved. Subsequent to that, this program was extended in 2023 up to 2026, and that is the current expiration date. So this program and those guidelines currently expire June 30th of 2026.
[01:57:16] Carlos Flores: So, you know, over the last couple of years, there was activity on El Paseo with the El Paseo street rehabilitation project. And back in June, this Council heard a study session on an update to the outdoor dining deck program. At that time, a subcommittee was created to look at those existing aforementioned guidelines. City staff did meet with the subcommittee on July 1st and August 19th to get direction on updating the guidelines, and those guidelines were presented as they are today. So, what we're looking at today is a bit of a refresher on the already existing guidelines. The guidelines allow restaurants to build dining decks, and they also currently allow restaurants to build decks that reroute pedestrians around outdoor dining deck areas. So, I just want to reiterate that point that existing guidelines today allow decks on the streets as well as temporary sidewalks around outdoor patio areas. As you can see on the right-hand side, that is part of the outdoor dining deck guidelines right now. That shows an illustration of, 'This is what you should build if you're going to do an outdoor sidewalk on the street.' If you're familiar, The Fix restaurant built something like this, and they were able to construct it per our existing guidelines. So per the direction and what we were looking to update is, the recommendation came to not allow dining decks on streets that are above 50 miles per hour, such as El Paseo, and on streets like that, only allow temporary sidewalks to reroute pedestrians if they do not have the space on the sidewalk.
[01:59:01] Carlos Flores: So here's an example again. This is The Fix, if you're familiar. So they brought out their patio all the way up to the curb, and since they did not leave five feet of pedestrian space on the sidewalk, they had to construct the temporary sidewalk to reroute pedestrians. That is that brown area you see there. One thing to note is that the temporary sidewalks follow the same design guidelines as dining decks, meeting the same requirements for safety, vehicular safety, materials, and aesthetics. It requires the same things for temporary sidewalks. Obviously, the sidewalks would have less what I'll call overhead. You know, there's no lighting required, there's no furniture required on it, but the drainage requirements are the same on these sidewalks.
[01:59:51] Carlos Flores: So, this is an illustration. This is not here, but an illustration of what we're talking about and what the push was to allow more of is those outdoor...
[02:00:00] Staff Member: patios adjacent to the restaurants. So you see on the left and the right what this is is, and you do see this currently on El Paseo where restaurants have outdoor dining into the sidewalk. What would still be allowed, what is allowed and would still be allowed, is for these restaurants to expand this area not just on their private property but actually into the public right-of-way. And if they leave five feet of sidewalk space between, you know, their patio and the curb, they would not have to do anything; they'd be able to do this. They could also jot it in and out as you see on the right-hand side. But in instances where they don't leave five feet of space, that's where they would be required to build a temporary sidewalk space.
[02:00:45] Staff Member: So in May and June, and really over the last couple years, city staff, planning staff, our economic development staff, code compliance staff, have had multiple meetings with restaurant owners. And we did meet with these restaurants in May and June, especially those interested in applying for a TUP to reinstall in October 2025.
[02:01:09] Staff Member: After the meeting with the subcommittee, we notified the owners that said they had interest to reapply to let them know the proposed changes. As you have received in your packet, three restaurants did submit public comments opposing the change.
[02:01:26] Staff Member: A couple notes of reference that have come up. Again, the guidelines and the program as it exists right now expire next summer in June 2026.
[02:01:38] Staff Member: Currently, the dining decks or outdoor sidewalks or operators are allowed to sell alcohol within the public right-of-way as part of the temporary catering authorization from ABC. Right now, that expires in 2026, but it is possible that this extends until 2029. So, there is also another bill that would allow the city to designate some of these areas to basically sell alcohol in these areas on a permanent basis. I put that just as a point of reference and consideration on here, and if there is interest, we could bring that back.
[02:02:17] Council Member: A quick question on that. You can go back to the AB 592.
[02:02:23] Council Member: That's only if alcohol is being taken across a sidewalk. Is that accurate?
[02:02:29] Staff Member: That is part of it, but it's also for consumption and sale within the public right-of-way. So for the decks, so it's not just crossing the sidewalk, but it's also the act of serving it within the deck itself. It covers all of that.
[02:02:49] Council Member: So, I want to be real clear on this because I'm not quite sure. I thought I was. So that means when you cross over the sidewalk to that deck is where the question is, or is it when a deck is like the fix? Does it apply to how The Fix has configured what they're doing?
[02:03:14] Staff Member: It applies to both. It applies to both because in the fixed situation, their patio is currently within the public right-of-way, and so that portion there is not something that's typically allowed—
[02:03:28] Council Member: And so that authorization grants that.
[02:03:31] Council Member: Thank you.
[02:03:32] Staff Member: So the recommendation in front of you today is you have the updated dining deck guidelines in front of you. If approved, city staff would follow with updating the city website, informing interested restaurants of updates, and work with interested parties in the TUP process. Regardless of approval or whatever direction happens today, staff is going to continue to monitor TUP applications to have a future update on the dining deck program before its expiration in 2026. But that would come regardless of what happens today. That concludes my presentation.
[02:04:10] Mayor: Okay. And before we go to questions, I do have two blue cards. And are there any public comments online?
[02:04:24] City Clerk: No online comments, Madame Mayor.
[02:04:26] Mayor: Thank you. Okay. The first one I have is Sally Hill. You could give your name, and you have three minutes.
[02:04:37] Sally Hill: Good evening, Mayor, City Council, and staff. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight and for your ongoing service to the community. In April, we were told that the patios on El Paseo would need to be removed for paving on June 1st and that we would be allowed to rebuild them.
[02:05:01] Public Speaker (Sweet Basil Owner): ...again on October 1st. With the assurance that they would remain until June 30th, 2026. Restaurants, including mine, relied on that timeline. We dismantled our patios and invested time and money into storing and preserving them. In my case, I carefully dismantled my $27,000 patio cover so I could reuse it and purchased a $1,500 shed to hold the pieces safely. All this was done in good faith based on the city's promise that we could bring our patios back for the season. Then on the afternoon of July 30th, I received an email from staff outlining new proposed guidelines. After speaking with Vanessa Merger, I understood that no decision would be made until tonight, just one month before we're allowed to rebuild. That leaves businesses like mine without the time we need to submit new plans, secure permits, and prepare for the upcoming season. The proposed changes would be particularly devastating for Sweet Basil. My sidewalk is sloped and I also have a planter in my premise line and another one on the other side. So it would actually, if I went by all the guidelines, by the time you subtract the 5-foot walkways, I would be left with space for one table without a slant. It would be unappealing, unworkable, and extraordinarily expensive. Without my patio or time to plan and adapt, I will likely be forced to eliminating my staff, cutting hours, absorbing significant losses that not only impacts my employees, but it also reduces the sales tax revenue the city depends on. Supporting outdoor dining supports jobs, livelihoods, and Palm Desert's budget. The state of California on Assembly Bill 592, which is likely to be passed, shows that the state leaders recognize the importance of these dining and to the hospitality industry and to our community. Palm Desert has an opportunity to align with this vision, supporting small businesses while enhancing the cultural fabric of our city. Council members, I'm not asking for anything more than what was already agreed. Please honor that original plan and allow party patios to remain until June 26. This will give us one season to operate, stabilize, and prepare for any future changes. We had an agreement and we acted in good faith. Now we ask you to uphold your commitment to the businesses that bring vitality to El Paseo. Work with us to preserve our...
[02:07:58] Mayor: Your time is well over. Thank you very much.
[02:08:01] Public Speaker (Sweet Basil Owner): Thank you.
[02:08:02] Mayor: Thank you. We have another blue card. David Fletcher.
[02:08:15] David Fletcher: Hello, Madame Mayor, council members. I don't know some of you. I don't know all of you. I'm a long-term resident of Palm Desert. I also work for Charwell Properties. We own and manage nine or 10 buildings on El Paseo, and have been a leading force since the '80s on the street to bring it to what it is today. I also sit on the board of the El Paseo Merchant Association. I've been involved with the dining deck program from the beginning and I can tell you that the restaurants were definitely led to believe that they would be able to keep their decks through this upcoming summer 2026 when the guidelines were changed and made stricter, and they said if you step up and make them better then you can keep them till 2026. And that was also told to the restaurants before the street work was done. So I'm a little bit surprised that this is even up for a change right now. But I do agree that the decks do have their issues. People walking through the middle of an area where people are eating, not ideal. They block their neighbors, not ideal. People sitting in the street, not ideal. And so I think, you know, the expanded patio concept with the walk-around sidewalk is a great idea and a much better solution in the long run.
[02:10:01] Public Speaker: I was under the impression that you guys would be considering this as a permanent thing to go forward with. And so I find out today that it's just temporary through 2026. And so I'd like to encourage you to work with staff to make this a permanent situation with the expanded patios, with the walk-around sidewalk. You're not going to get a lot of people to spend a lot of money if they got to take something down in a year or two. And we want it looking nice if they're going to do it. I have several restaurants that want to do this. I've got one that's willing to spend $100,000 on overhangs and really make it nice with misters and the whole thing, but doesn't want to spend the money if he doesn't know that he can keep it, obviously. So, the only other thing I wanted to comment on is the K-rail. I think they're atrociously ugly and would like the council to direct staff to approve bollards on the oncoming traffic side and nothing else on these expanded patios.
[02:11:32] Mayor: And your time is up. Thank you.
[02:11:38] Mayor: Okay, there is nothing online. That's it. Okay. And I have no other blue cards. Does staff have any or does the council have any questions of staff?
[02:11:54] Council Member Joe Pedetto: Discussion, please. Yeah, I don't have questions, but I'll start and I'll say that I want El Paseo to look great and be safe. When the dining decks were removed, I took a bike ride and I really enjoyed how clean and pristine everything looked. And I had many people reach out and say the same. In fact, I got a lot of calls from folks saying, 'Joe, I think it's time for them just to run their path and go away.' However, I think that there is a role for dining decks in El Paseo. And when this came up, having the street open, I thought this would be a good time to potentially look at a modification that would make an improvement. Mr. Fletcher, I appreciate you acknowledging those issues and that this direction was intended to do that. So that was the intent of the suggestion and moving forward. I want to stop there and compliment Carlos. We had a subcommittee meeting and I don't know how he took everything we said. You figured it out in a single paragraph, a couple sentences, how to really nail that we're aiming for safety. So, good work and thank you for that. However, I did take the time to meet with Sally and Sherry from Pizza, and they shared their perspectives, and I appreciated learning where they are. And I think that we're on the same page that long-term we want a permanent solution on El Paseo. I think what we're looking at and what I appreciate is we're on different time horizons, where I'm looking years down the road, some of our operators are looking just to get through season. So, although I suggested this change after talking to some of the operators, I'm leaning more towards letting the program run its course, but immediately work towards what that permanent next iteration looks like, like Mr. Fletcher had suggested. So that's my thoughts.
[02:14:00] Council Member: So, Council Member Pedetto, so then you know, based upon what we heard from our two speakers and then reading all the notes, you are proposing that we keep things as the restaurant owners thought through 2026, and then we look at the permanent solution of the expanded patio with the expanded sidewalk?
[02:14:26] Council Member Joe Pedetto: Correct. And we don't have to wait till the program expires to have those conversations. We could immediately start looking at what that looks like. But any approval under the existing program will run to its expiration, and then we'll immediately—my suggestion is immediately we start the conversations for a more long-term solution in partnership with our community.
[02:14:48] Council Member: Right, because I believe that we did give the—well, the city gave the impression that it was going to allow them to continue as is through...
[02:15:00] Speaker 1: 2026 through the summer of 2026. I do want to also give cover to staff. I told Sally I take responsibility. The concern, the idea that the city made a promise and staff made a promise, that's not on them. They were sharing exactly what the guidelines were at the time. This was something that I brought up and the Council suggested moving forward. So, I do want to clear staff on that. I take full responsibility for that. But also, the first paragraph of the guidelines state that it's temporary and subject to change at any time. So, it's not necessarily like, 'Hey, you made a promise,' and it's spelled out right up front that it can change. Now, this is a big change and there's only a short amount of time left. So, I get that it would amount, with those variables, to a substantial change, right? So, I'm supportive of us going back to allowing it to go through to 2026 and then looking at something that's more permanent because we need to give our restaurants certainty, like was brought up. Which business owner would invest $100,000 if it was only going to last a year? It's impossible to recoup that cost. And if we want it to look nice, then they need to spend several thousand dollars. But who would spend several thousand dollars if it's temporary and only going to last a year or two? So, what I'm saying is I want to support keeping things as is through 2026 and then moving forward, have something before us that provides certainty to our restaurant owners.
[02:16:55] Speaker 2: Okay. And I appreciate you coming and speaking tonight. It's good input to hear from restaurateurs and property owners. The idea of permanency, I don't think we can achieve simply because we're at the mercy of state law and serving alcohol and rights-of-way. So we can say we want to make these guidelines where we allow outdoor dining decks on the sidewalks all the way to the curb or beyond, and the state comes in and says, 'Well, you know, you're no longer allowed to serve alcohol in the public rights-of-way.' So that's out of our hands. My concern about—I agree with Mr. Fletcher, and this is why we came to this conclusion about diverting the sidewalks around, because then you don't—it's a safety issue. You're not having diners sitting there for an hour or two potentially having cars run into them. You have walkers who are just passing through. The likelihood of anybody getting hurt from a car coming through those, it minimizes, I think, the risk or reduces the risk quite a bit. And also, of course, having pedestrians pass through, servers serving restaurant-goers who are in the public right-of-way between the restaurant—and so that's what we're trying to achieve here. If we extend this program for a year till June 30th of 2026, the restaurateurs will still face that they may not be willing. That's all we're giving them is a year. Come July 1st of 2026, we may have decided through the course of the intervening nine months to go back to this sidewalk diversion. So for this season, I would see everybody would just still kind of be up in the air, and again, we'd still be subject to state law that expires at the same time. We intentionally had the expiration of the dining deck program to coincide with the state law, as far as we knew at that time, the period when the state law would expire. So I don't think that—I like Joe's proposal. It gives restaurateurs like Sally, Ms. Hill here, a chance to rebuild under the terms she had understood before she took it down. So it solves that problem. But I don't foresee that through this season anyway, until June 30th, any restaurateur would invest six figures into something that would potentially be torn down again. I also would like to see—I think the other problem we were trying to solve is the appearance and safety of the dining decks themselves. I think we all kind of felt that the dining decks, as they were constructed during COVID, were kind of built without a whole lot of guidelines or safety considerations or adherence. We didn't set out a lot of expectations how we expect them to be built. And so we would go right back to a situation where if we say, 'Okay, status quo. You guys can rebuild as they were constructed before we paved the street,' we'd run into some of those same concerns about potentially appearance and if we haven't set forth expectations. So, that would...
[02:20:01] Councilmember: There would be two concerns I would have. I mean, I'm totally willing to back up Joe's proposal of just letting restaurateurs rebuild as they were before for the next year until June 30th until we come up with a permanent or more permanent solution. However, we would potentially face the same issues of safety and appearance that we had before. If I may ask a question. Carlos, you suggested that staff is—you mentioned staff is researching that there may be other alternatives than just this state law that would allow for some flexibility in something like this, right? Is that something that you guys are looking at?
[02:20:41] Carlos: Correct. And it's twofold, right? The first part is yes, we're looking at the temporary authorization that expires right now in 2026, but might expire until 2029 with recent legislation. That is still a temporary one. But there is also a possible permanent solution that was just made effective this year called what they're calling an entertainment zone. We don't have every single detail on that, but there is the possibility of a more permanent solution for the question about selling alcohol or serving alcohol within the right-of-way. And that would be—that is something that staff would bring up in a future conversation and looking at the current expiration of our program to see where we want to head for an extension or permanent solution.
[02:21:37] Mayor: Questions? Any other? Yes, please.
[02:21:41] Councilmember: I'm looking at this from both sides, understanding that this has been a significant investment, and I agree with Mayor Pro Tem that an extension would just mean that we would extend the situation. Because as Councilmember Pedetto stated, at no point did we ever state that we were even open to this being a permanent solution. Every step of the way, we looked at different ways to clarify things, such as the cost per square foot, the aesthetics, the safety, and I think this was exactly what we were doing to support the dining decks that were already up. I'm completely in agreement and have heard the same thing about residents that said, 'You know, it looks better. I like it. Things going to the way it was, I like the not having to step out of the way and wait for somebody to pass.' Or others say they don't want dogs walking next to them when they're trying to eat their food. So, I see both sides of it. And where this may be a financial challenge for those that have invested in the dining decks, it's also a financial hardship to those that can't afford the dining decks and have seen this as an opportunity that they have been missing out on because people are going to those where they can see right off the bat. And I'm looking at it again with both sides. My understanding is that owning a restaurant is one of the riskiest ventures, so I've been told. I've never had the desire to run a restaurant. I also am aware that there have been changes in the cost of food. There have been changes in the cost of labor. All of those things are hitting all of our businesses equally. And as much as I understand and empathize with the concern, I concur that we would just be extending the heartache and the frustration if we don't know what's ahead and if we would have to make that change. We could very easily say, 'Let's look at that entertainment zone, get it all done, go through the rezoning process,' which is not fun, as my peer on the zoning subcommittee knows, only to then be told you can't do it anymore. And to have that again, to be told once again, 'You've gone through having to regrade that part, and you've had to make all these changes, and you've put in the sidewalk, and now we can't do it anymore.' That's, for me, a more graceful approach to say we need to hold off for now. Where I see that maybe outdoor dining has run its course, I can see the value as stated right now. Let's let it go, and then we'll start immediately the process. What, we're just going to bleed them for more...
[02:25:00] Council Member: ...money that you could be spending on internal upgrades and additional marketing and internal changes. So, that's where my heart is. What is ultimately going to not only benefit you, but benefit the other restaurants that are on El Paseo that didn't have the opportunity, either due to proximity or to being able to finance. So, those are...
[02:25:31] Mayor: So, I go last. It's the way it goes when you're the mayor. Back in April of 2024 was the first time we stopped and we spoke to the restaurateurs, as it is in Ms. Hill's case. And we spoke to them about, 'You've got to get up.' We were going to redo El Paseo in 2024, but we recognized that it was unfair to a business to ask them in two months to pull up a deck and be ready to go, and it would be an impossible task. So, we postponed it a year to give everyone the chance they needed to do everything they do, make the necessary arrangements. We know that your business model wasn't made based on a dining deck, but we've also been looking for almost a decade at outside dining and all the attributes of outside dining that bring to the vibrancy of a street. And we saw it with the decks, and certainly some decks were nicer than other decks. We saw that, and we made a big push about the aesthetics, and I still think we have to push on that given the situation that this is only good through 2026. The rest have gone through the extended efforts of finding places to store their decks. They wouldn't have stored them had they known this. I agree with the concept of, 'Let's have extended patios and then put the sidewalks.' It looks nicer, it's neater. But we've got people who stored a deck, and this is only good through '26 as we know it. My inclination is, as Council Member Pedetto said, let's let the decks come back as they were configured. Sorry, Carlos, you had to go be the bearer of bad news and now it's getting flipped on you. And immediately begin the process, although it sounds like the solution is at hand. It sounds like the subcommittee with the staff worked out a great solution for these dining decks. So, my thought would be, yes, let's go through this. Let the restaurateurs put their decks back as they had them through '26, but only expect to have those through '26 because there will be a design change because we're looking at the overall good of the street and the overall aesthetic of the street. So, that is my thought on it, and I am willing to make that motion.
[02:28:41] Council Member: I would second it if that's your motion.
[02:28:48] Council Member: Just so long as the restaurateurs are well aware this gives them just nine months of certainty.
[02:28:54] Mayor: Well—
[02:28:54] Council Member: I mean, it has to be clear and upfront, right?
[02:28:57] Mayor: I mean—
[02:28:57] Council Member: I think that's what they're asking for.
[02:28:59] Mayor: Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. So, when Carlos interfaces with these restaurateurs, when Carlos interfaces with all the business owners, I hope that would be made clear that there is no certainty beyond June 30th of '26.
[02:29:15] Council Member: And ultimately, the considerations—I think things may change between now and then, but at this point, appearance and safety are the two main considerations in the deliberations between now and June 30th. So—
[02:29:27] Mayor: Well, and we're looking at the AB 592 or whatever it is. So, we are at the whim of our assembly members and however that's signed. And also, we will, though, be looking at perfecting guidelines that if it is extended, we will have guidelines that will be in the best interest of the entirety of El Paseo and the City of Palm Desert. Okay. Is that okay with everyone? Is—
[02:32:30] Mayor: Is that a clear enough motion? Okay. So, we have a motion. We have a second. Please vote.
[02:32:30] City Clerk: Council Member Quintanilla?
[02:32:30] Council Member: I'm still weighing. This is a tough one.
[02:32:30] City Clerk: Motion passes four to zero to one.
[02:32:30] Mayor: Thank you, everyone. This is going to be way more difficult.
[02:32:30] Council Member: Yeah. Thank you, everyone, for coming and speaking on this issue and sharing your thoughts.
[02:32:30] Mayor: Okay. We will now move to 14C: Introduction of ordinances amending the Palm Desert Municipal Code to rename the Cultural Resources Preservation Committee and the Resource Preservation and Enhancement Committee.
[02:32:31] Council Member: Madam Mayor, I'm happy to say that this might be a little bit easier. This is to change the Resource Preservation and Enhancement Committee to the Environmental Resources Committee, and the Cultural Resources Preservation Committee to the Historic Preservation Committee.
[02:32:31] Mayor: I'm going to be so bold as to make that motion. Is there a second?
[02:32:31] Council Member: I will second it.
[02:32:31] Council Member: If I may add one comment. I remember when this was even discussed. I saw two members of staff look at each other with relief that this was being considered, and I know this helps staff. Someone said that they have even mixed up the names or the agenda because it's so close in its name, and it'll help people that are applying for these committees and commissions to have a better understanding of what they're doing. So, my gratitude to Council Member Balocco for helping us come back to the side of sanity and renaming them in ways that make sense. And now we can vote.
[02:32:32] City Clerk: Motion passes 5 to 0.
[02:32:32] Mayor: Thank you. We will now move to 15A, which is to approve a General Plan Amendment and Zoning Ordinance Amendment to permit single-family dwellings and daycare centers in the Downtown Edge Transition Overlay, seek a CEQA determination. And I will have to recuse myself.
[02:32:32] Council Member: As will I.
[02:32:32] Mayor: As will Mayor Pro Tem, and Council Member will be taking over.
[02:32:32] Council Member: Thank you, Mayor. Okay. So, I am going to read it. 15A: Approve a General Plan Amendment and Zoning Ordinance Amendment to permit single-family dwellings and daycare centers in the Downtown Edge Transition Overlay, CEQA determination. And I will ask for the staff report now.
[02:32:33] Carlos Flores: Thank you, members of City Council. Carlos Flores, Services, here to... This is... wrong one.
[02:32:33] Carlos Flores: All right. The proposal in front of you today is a General Plan Amendment and Zoning Text Amendment that would do the following: It would add language that would allow single-family dwellings in our City Center and Downtown. It would remove the 12-unit-to-the-acre minimum density to allow for single-family units. Basically, how the math works out, you can't allow single-family dwellings without removing the minimum density on this site. We would also revise and clarify language in the intent and purpose of our City Center Downtown General Plan designation to reinforce that we allow moderate- to high-intensity mixed-use development and allow hotel uses. Those are the changes within our General Plan. Within the Zoning Text Amendment, what we would do is permit single-family dwellings in our DETO instead of being prohibited. And we would also allow daycare centers with a CUP in this zone. For a bit of reference in front of you, when I talk about the Downtown in our General Plan, this is the area where it is located: between Deep Canyon and Monterey, concentrated within the El Paseo and Highway 111 areas. This is the Downtown Edge Transition Overlay District, DETO. So, as you can see, it is typically along Alessandro and Shadow Mountain Drive. The idea and intent of it is that it is on the edges of our downtown areas. So, if I could summarize why we are making this change today, the DETO is the only...
[02:35:02] Staff: zone in our downtown that prohibits single-family dwellings, and it is the only zone in our downtown that currently has single-family dwellings. So with that, we are asking for that to change and to allow it. The other part that we are proposing in front of you today is to allow daycare centers within our DEO. It's actually a pretty similar scenario. Historically, we have had a daycare center within our DEO zone, if you know by reference, the Wallaroo Center. And so as you can see on the screen in front of you, we allow small family daycares and large family daycares within the DEO, but we prohibit daycare centers. On the screen is just a distinction of what the difference is. A daycare center is a larger operation and includes preschools.
[02:35:50] Staff: So again, just going through what we're talking about when we talk about downtown edge transition overlay. As you can see in highlights, there is existing single-family homes. We are proposing today to make those, instead of being non-conforming uses, to be conforming uses and to also allow future development of single-family homes there. This site here is the aforementioned where Wallaroo Center used to be located. We are proposing to allow daycare centers on properties such as this.
[02:36:22] Staff: This is the simple zone text amendment, what it would actually look like: changing the prohibited to permitted for single-family, and changing the prohibited to conditional use permit for a daycare center. This is the red text of what it would look like on the general plan public review. So, for purposes of CEQA, we find that this is not considered a project for purposes of CEQA. This item in front of you today was publicly noticed actually 20 days ahead of time, and the Planning Commission considered this item on July 15th and recommended that the City Council approve. So with all that said, our recommendation today is to approve the general plan amendment and zoning text amendment. Thank you.
[02:37:04] Acting Mayor: Thank you for that report. Are there any questions from the council members to staff?
[02:37:12] Council Member: First, do we have public comments first or do we ask our questions first? You know, public hearings are...
[02:37:17] Acting Mayor: I'm following this sheet. I'm always paranoid about public comments, so I just want to be sure that...
[02:37:27] Council Member: No, my question is more of a comment, so I will withhold.
[02:37:31] Acting Mayor: Now, I will open a public hearing. And is there anyone else that needs... Well, there's no applicant for this as far as I'm aware of. And then the public hearing is open. And is there anyone here in our audience that wants to speak on the issue at this point?
[02:37:57] Staff: Madame Acting Mayor, no online comments and no public comments.
[02:38:02] Acting Mayor: Okay. Well, then I will close the public hearing.
[02:38:10] Acting Mayor: Okay. So, all who have wished to have spoken have done so, and there was no one, and I've closed the hearing. Now, it's time for comments. Um, Council Member Kintania, you said you had...
[02:38:24] Council Member Kintania: I have a comment to say thank you to staff for tackling such a complex issue that looks like regulatory Jenga because there were things piled on top of things that didn't need to be there when you saw that they shouldn't be there, but they've already been allowed. How do we get to something that's comprehensive and equitable to the growth that's coming as Palm Desert continues to evolve? And my gratitude for Council Member Pedetto as well, as we shared some of the same vision of supporting growing families and that part of economic development includes child care. During the pandemic when people said, 'Oh, people don't want to work.' No, they can't afford child care and people need to know that their kids are safe or close by. I've had to make 30-minute drives one way for child care, and if we can provide this for our local residents, for our staff, I think this is a win-win all around. So, I support.
[02:39:30] Acting Mayor: So, we'll make a motion to approve.
[02:39:33] Council Member: I'll move approval.
[02:39:34] Acting Mayor: Okay. Do I have a second?
[02:39:36] Council Member: I second.
[02:39:40] Clerk: Council Member Niscandi.
[02:39:42] Council Member Niscandi: Yes.
[02:39:44] Clerk: Council Member Pedto.
[02:39:46] Clerk: Council Member Kintania.
[02:39:46] Council Member Kintania: Aye.
[02:39:46] Clerk: Motion passes three to zero with Mayor Pro Tem and Mayor Harnik recused.
[02:40:00] Speaker: And I apologize. I did not state the reason I was recusing myself. I have real property that is within the zoning area that was addressed today.
[02:40:11] Speaker: And the same applies to my reason for recusal. Thank you.
[02:40:20] Speaker: Okay, we'll go to 15B, which is adopt a resolution entitled a resolution of the City of Palm Desert, California, approving an update and establishment of related use and regulatory fees for development and regulatory services.
[02:40:41] Rosie Lua: Good evening, Madam Mayor and members of the City Council. Rosie Lua, interim director of Development Services. The item before you is a fee schedule update for development services fees as well as regulatory items.
[02:41:04] Rosie Lua: All right, there we go. Before we get into this item, I wanted to go through a couple of things that are important before we move forward, and that is the Development Services Department has gone through some strategic revamps starting in 2023 with the goal of building capacity, streamlining processes, and responding to the development community. Historically, the city's development review process has been hampered by a couple of things that are important to mention, and that is siloed departmental operations, manual workflows and inefficient processes, software limitations that force steps outside of the system, complex permit fee models difficult to explain to the public, unclear or unenforceable guidelines for submittal and engineering review.
[02:41:58] Rosie Lua: We've had inconsistent application paths and incomplete documentation requirements for permitting, staffing instabilities, as well as resistance to change and frequent turnover. These were relevant gaps.
[02:42:13] Rosie Lua: We've spent the last two years with initiatives and milestones, leadership-driven improvements, not accepting 'this is how we've always done this.' We've had internal staffing changes to better align with resources. We've enhanced cross-departmental collaboration. We've contracted holistic systems integration solutions to lead this process improvement initiative. We've integrated engineering into the Development Services Department, noticing that Development Services could not function without engineering within their department because they played a key role in the permitting process.
[02:42:58] Rosie Lua: We also had process optimization identified and analyzed departmental bottlenecks. We reviewed each permit process to examine intake, review, and approval procedures. We had cross-functional strategies to improve workflows and efficiencies. And as you can see, I have fire here because they're also a crucial part of this process.
[02:43:23] Rosie Lua: So for 2025, some of these outcomes were that we revamped applications, our online presence, we integrated quality control measures for engineering without increasing our timeframes. We adopted new guidelines in March for engineering standards as well as landscape standards. And the item before you here is just part of that initiative, which is bringing forward the fee schedule. Part of this fee schedule is to change that methodology to calculate permits so that we could have easier ways to explain permit fees to our community, as well as recommending approval of this fee study. We also are launching a new software system to solidify all those processes and workflows that we've been working on, and that is to launch October 2025.
[02:44:13] Rosie Lua: With that, we'll have a Camino guide, which is a step-by-step guide for the permitting process that will be available for the public, as well as in January we will have in-house services here at our City Hall for plan reviews and inspections, and that will definitely close that gap. Staff understands that with a fee schedule is a commitment to the development community that we need to meet our metrics. We need to make sure that our processes work because they expect that from us, and that is our commitment to the City Council is to come quarterly to give you progress updates as well as metrics on how we are doing. With that, I will start introducing the item. The item here is a fee schedule. Again, two key components in this resolution.
[02:45:01] Staff: One is that methodology which is changing from that complex approach which requires a software system to calculate fees to a valuation-based system so that those in the public that want a permit will be able to know right away what is that permit fee. And then the recommendation that we want to implement a new fee schedule within the three-year phased-in approach, and that would be year one effective within the next 60 days. Just for transparency, this item was noticed publicly in the newspaper as required by state law. There were written notices to interested parties that were registered at the city clerk, which are our stakeholders. Those discussions started in May, and we received letters of support from the Desert Builders Association as well as Southern California Gas Company. We've also sent courtesy emails to 2,138 active contractors and developers and engineers within our system. We did receive some letters of opposition: two engineers and one architect. And now with that, I will introduce our consultant, and that would be Terry Matson. He's with Clear Source Financial, as well as Aneli Gazarko. She is with Holistic Integration Systems. Both of which will present in this next presentation to you.
[02:46:33] Terry Madson: Well, good evening, Mayor and members of the Council. As mentioned, I'm here from Clear Source. My name is Terry Madson. I know you've had a very full agenda, so I am going to move quickly through this presentation and then just make time for the City Council to take us through any Q&A or feedback you have. So, you'll notice me going fast through these slides. So, the presentation will be broken into two parts: just background and fundamentals, and then the second portion of the presentation will focus specifically on what we're seeing in Palm Desert and what we're recommending for Council consideration this evening. Just by way of reminder, when we think about California communities, we think about this idea of you have, you know, infinite opportunity to do community good, but you have limited resource. So you sort of have challenges in terms of identifying all of the potential opportunities and then how do I fund those? And what we see from communities primarily is this idea of we would use our tax dollars, our general revenues, to be put towards services of broad community benefit. We think of this as like public safety, public works, park maintenance type services. And when we see a specific receiver of service, we try and find a direct recovery for the cost of that service. And so most of the time we think of that as permitting, specialized licensing, plan review, inspection services, and so forth. This particular item that's being proposed for Council this evening is limited in scope to development service-based fees. So we're thinking about planning fees, building fees, and engineering fees. And we are thinking about services that are being provided, so like that idea of plan review or inspection. We're not thinking about development impact fees where we're trying to mitigate the impacts of new development, impact of infrastructure, and so forth. And just fundamentally, what we want to point out is we are not asking the Council to consider anything related to taxes, assessments, utility rates. Those things we sort of feel on a day-to-day basis as a community. They are not part of this discussion or this item. These are items that are periodic in nature and they're regulatory in nature. These fees have been relatively unchanged since 2012. So, we're going with on more than a decade without any sort of significant fee updates. And just for a sense of context, if we looked at regional consumer price index changes in that time, you're thinking about, you know, almost a 40% change in your regional CPI. As cities, you face significant inflationary pressures dealing with wages, mandatory wages in California, insurance changes that you face as public entities, utility rates, and so forth. So just a lot of financial, inflationary impacts that you've encountered since 2012. So, cities like yours undertake these types of studies. This is common in California. La Quinta functions similarly, Rancho Mirage, Cathedral City, all California cities operate under the same fundamental guidelines.
[02:50:00] Speaker: ...that are outlined in the constitution and the California government code. So the primary reason you undertake these types of studies is to ensure compliance with legal requirements. Everything that's being proposed for city council this evening is intended to comply with the California Constitution and California government code that really outline this idea of setting fees that are proportional to your cost. So if something has a high cost of service, you could apply a high fee. If something had a low cost of service, you would want to have a lower fee. The fee is not intended to be a profit-making endeavor. It is a cost recovery for service provided. It is not beyond that.
[02:50:43] Speaker: When we know that when we recover our costs of service from fees from the receiver of service, we are by definition freeing up our general fund resources to be used for some other specific purpose, a potentially broad community-wide benefit. And then finally, this last bullet, this idea that when we recover our cost of service, it helps us to position ourselves to continue to meet the service level expectation of the community.
[02:51:15] Speaker: I mentioned the idea that these are governed by constitution and government code.
[02:51:25] Speaker: City Clerk, would you mind pushing us through to the next slide? This concept of cost of service, I'll just illustrate it briefly because these are service-based fees. We try and identify what is the hourly cost of providing service and what is our typical service time, and we think about this over and over and over. You know, a city's fee schedule has hundreds of items. So we worked with staff extensively to contemplate, you know, when this particular item comes through the door, what would we typically expect? And that helps us understand our cost of service. The cost of service establishes your legal ceiling.
[02:52:04] Speaker: City councils frequently make a philosophical decision once they receive this information. And the idea is, once I know my cost of service, how much do I want to recover of that cost from the receiver of service? And what we see most commonly is something that aligns with this chart which says, if I see a high level of individual benefit provided, I will likely target a higher cost recovery versus if I see a high community benefit, I'll likely target a lower cost recovery.
[02:52:36] Speaker: The common illustrations we use are, if I want to remodel my kitchen or add square footage, I am the one who enjoys the enhanced property values. I'm the one who enjoys the new kitchen and so forth. And so we see a high level of direct benefit. If the city doesn't recover the cost of that review and inspection from me, it still incurs the cost. And so then what we're saying is the other residents and businesses of Palm Desert would cover a portion of that cost of service being provided for that regulation of that construction.
[02:53:09] Speaker: On like a community-wide benefit side, what we see most commonly is like a swim lesson. So, there is a cost to providing swim lessons. We see an individual that benefits from receiving those swim lessons. They learn a new skill, but communities frequently subsidize that cost because they say, 'I'm offering a life-changing, life-saving opportunity, and it may be cost-prohibitive if I didn't choose to subsidize because of the cost of aquatic facilities and so forth.'
[02:53:40] Speaker: So, just by way of reminder, that cost of service sets your ceiling. The council sets fees at an amount up to the cost of service or less than that. But the cost is the cost. And so, if you decide to adopt a fee that's less than the cost, you as a city are still incurring the cost, we would just say you have partial cost recovery. Some of the cost recovery is coming from your applicant or receiver of service and you are covering the difference.
[02:54:07] Speaker: So that is common to California cities and counties. What follows is specialized to Palm Desert. It's specific to Palm Desert.
[02:54:17] Speaker: So in Palm Desert, the director mentioned staff is proposing a multi-year phase-in. So we have identified under-recovery for the majority of fees. That's because it's been over a decade since you've updated these and we talked about that cost pressure you're facing. But staff is saying although there is this idea of the potential for enhanced cost recovery, in order to collaborate with the development community and give people time to prepare and accommodate to this, we're recommending a three-year phase-in.
[02:54:53] Speaker: The director talked about some of these process improvements, so I won't belabor them.
[02:55:00] Staff Member: You want to—we're good. Okay. I'm going to just jump these process improvements because you did see them and hear about them.
[02:55:09] Staff Member: And then, so now we'll just talk high-level, 30,000-foot level by category: building fees, planning fees, and engineering fees. And what we want to say is on the building side, we are proposing a schedule that says for your most commonly requested permits, let's have a very simplified schedule where someone would know, 'If I need to change out my HVAC unit, if I want to redo my roof, if I want to install rooftop solar, what am I going to pay?' And there's just these fixed fees for service. The fee schedule is intended to scale well for project complexity. So, more complex project, higher fees; less complex project, lower fees.
[02:55:49] Staff Member: And then we think about this idea of regional comparison. So as councils, you receive an abundance of information. And one of the questions you may have is, 'If I chose to adopt these fees as proposed, would I be positioning Palm Desert as some sort of regional outlier?' I'm going to show you a few slides to help illustrate the concept that we don't believe that would be the case. And so we mentioned the idea of the fees are driven by this underlying cost of service that's fundamentally linked to your hourly rates. Your hourly rates, as proposed in this schedule, would be well aligned to the region, right in the mid-range of the region.
[02:56:30] Staff Member: On the planning side, you know, cost recovery varies from fee to fee to fee. So, a TUP may have a different current cost recovery level than a zone change, but what we're looking at is, can we move ourselves towards cost recovery over time with the idea that these services are regulatory in nature, but there's a few areas where we would continue to target less than full cost recovery? Some places like appeals, where you're trying to make sure that people aren't sort of prohibited from having access to you.
[02:57:04] Staff Member: Again, the hourly rate for services aligns well to the region today. You're at the low end of the region today. And if the fees were adopted, you would move yourself into the mid-range of the region. And you can see everyone's relatively close. It's just they've been through the study already.
[02:57:24] Staff Member: On the engineering encroachment permit side, again, there's a restructuring of fees to account for the types of encroachments you're likely to encounter. Full cost recovery is proposed. This schedule has been provided to the utility companies, who are like a primary user of the encroachment permitting process, and so forth.
[02:57:45] Staff Member: And again, your engineering hourly rate aligns well to the region as proposed, and today it would be at the low end of the region.
[02:57:55] Staff Member: So, just if you were thinking about a project perspective, that we thought about, 'Does the underlying cost of service make sense to us?' Those slides were meant to indicate that yes. And now we would say to ourselves, 'Well, what if we looked at a sample project, a prototype project that might incur in Palm Desert?' And there is an organization called DVBA that every few years they prepare a study that looks at a prototype project and says, 'For this type of project, what would you pay in the Coachella Valley in these different cities?' And so we think it's a good tool for us. And so the study was prepared in 2024, in calendar year 2024. So it's a little bit dated, but it does say as of 2024, Palm Desert's current fees were really the low end of the region. And this is made up of impact fees and these service-based regulatory fees. If we recommended adjustments to these fees, we would anticipate that you would move closer into the mid-range of the region. And I think you would still be at the lower end because your impact fees remain at the lower end of the region, and they're a significant sort of driver of fees paid.
[02:59:10] Staff Member: So final slides are just thinking about a few projects, this idea of minor residential projects. Sometimes council say to themselves, 'If somebody's coming in the door and they're really just trying to comply with the rules and they want to pull a permit, are we modifying that to some form of radical change?' And the answer is no. When we look at these very common components like HVAC change outs, patio cover installations, re-roofs, or swimming pools, there are proposed modifications, but we would say they are small modifications in the sort of scheme of time. They're linked to the actual time it takes staff to perform service. And as compared to the actual cost of the project, this should be a minor portion of the cost of the...
[03:00:00] Presenter: ...of the project for the homeowner. When we think about new construction, we walked through that same exercise and we looked at, you know, a large custom home, a hotel, small commercial, and everything we saw sort of felt logical based on how long it's been since you changed fees and what the existing structure looks like versus the proposed structure. And then finally, these ideas of land action reviews, planning, entitlement reviews, map reviews, and so forth. What would you look like today? What would you look like at year one, year two, and year three? And all of these were prepared independently. The regional comparison was subsequent to the analysis. So we prepared a Palm Desert analysis based on your costs and your services and then followed up to say, based on that, how would we align to the region? So we did not try and force Palm Desert to the region. It just coincidentally worked out to, in some places, you aligned well and so forth. So, um...
[03:01:08] Council Member: Can I interrupt you for a second? Can you go back two slides, please? Yeah, single-family dwelling. Current fee is $29,000.
[03:01:19] Presenter: For a large, a magnitudinal dwelling that has a $3 million... so this is a big custom home with a, you know, $3 million construction valuation, something you might see, um, maybe in like the Bighorn area or something like that. Um, but yeah, big custom home.
[03:01:34] Council Member: Because on page 1427, the development services fees, when you're comparing various cities, use the, um, basis of a 60-unit tract home development, and the fee there was, currently we're, it's $6,000, $6,500. So it's five times as much to build a single home than it is to get a fee permit for a 60-home development.
[03:01:57] Presenter: It is because what happens is on the 60-home development, you have a lot of economies of scale. So the map work gets broken out amongst 60 homes, and then the plan review is the intensive part, and the plan review is identical for those 60-unit homes, versus a custom plan.
[03:02:13] Council Member: Just caught my attention. Appreciate it.
[03:02:15] Presenter: Yeah. And so, um, our final question as an outsider is, do we believe if the City Council adopted these fees that there was like sort of an indication that it would deter development and cause somebody to choose to develop somewhere other than Palm Desert? And again, our outside editorial opinion is there is nothing that would indicate that in what is being proposed for City Council this...
[03:02:43] Council Member: One more point of clarification, because I think Councilman Trouy is still confused.
[03:02:48] Councilman Trouy: So the $8,000 permit fee, that's per house on a 60?
[03:02:53] Presenter: Yeah. So, uh, from a fiscal impact perspective, we've identified under-recovery, but because the phasing approach is recommended, you would achieve enhanced cost recovery, but you would achieve it over time. Um, we see about $300,000 per year in enhanced cost recovery, assuming development cycles remain relatively similar. And just the point of emphasis here is this is to offset costs that Palm Desert is already incurring. Thank you so much for your time and attention after this busy evening. I'm open to receive any feedback or questions from the Council.
[03:03:33] Mayor: Okay, now is the time for any questions. Are there any questions?
[03:03:40] Council Member: Just a question. Yes. My, my question is, am I recalling correctly that the approximate amount that we would be able to recover is like 900,000? Is that...
[03:03:52] Presenter: ...over time? Yes.
[03:03:53] Council Member: Just want to be sure we get that on record in terms of the benefit of what we're considering. Thank you.
[03:04:00] Mayor: Any other questions? Okay, ask your question.
[03:04:04] Council Member: Okay, I do have a question. Um, do we have any other idea how the other cities, what their percentage of cost recovery is at these fees? Any idea?
[03:04:16] Presenter: So we work with several other communities in the region, and I would say that, um, for development services, generally cities are hoping to achieve full cost recovery. That is, um, you know, post-2010, post-elimination of RDAs and so forth, um, and just a different fiscal world. And even the development community itself, the stakeholder groups, have sort of acknowledged this idea of development would pay its share.
[03:04:48] Council Member: We're in mid-range, is that what I recall you saying?
[03:04:51] Presenter: The proposed fees would put you in the mid-range, but that's separate from the cost recovery.
[03:04:54] Council Member: I do have two other questions. Um, we can anticipate greater...
[03:05:00] Speaker 1: Cost recovery if we implement these fees, but it sounds like we can also anticipate a speedier approval process because we're changing the methodology, not just the fees. So, the developers will see benefit to the higher costs.
[03:05:17] Speaker 2: That is correct. That is why we went through a whole year's process of workflows and procedures and doing all that. Yes.
[03:05:24] Speaker 1: Terrific. Okay. Well, I just hope the developers see some benefit to paying more.
[03:05:27] Speaker 2: Good.
[03:05:28] Speaker 1: Any other questions?
[03:05:30] Speaker 3: No questions.
[03:05:32] Speaker 1: Oh, and one more.
[03:05:33] Speaker 3: One more.
[03:05:34] Speaker 1: Yep. Um, also clarity, the new system will be implemented October.
[03:05:41] Speaker 2: October. Yes. October 27.
[03:05:43] Speaker 1: If we approve this this evening or I'm sorry, this is a public hearing. We won't be able to approve it tonight. We're giving you direction, right?
[03:05:49] Speaker 2: No, this is an approval for this item.
[03:05:51] Speaker 1: Oh, it is public hearing, not a Okay, got it. It will be effective within 60 days aligned with our launch of the clear system.
[03:05:59] Speaker 2: We will be able to synchronize the two.
[03:06:00] Speaker 1: That's correct.
[03:06:01] Speaker 2: Perfect. Thank you.
[03:06:04] Speaker 1: No other questions. So we'll...
[03:06:06] Speaker 4: Yes,
[03:06:08] Speaker 1: ...not while I have it in my hand. Um, so we will open the public hearing and are there any... is there anyone online?
[03:06:19] Speaker 5: No online comments.
[03:06:20] Speaker 1: No online and I have no blue cards. So, um, that's easy. So, we have no public testimony, favor or oppose. So, let's say we... I just couldn't do this without this. We're going to close it. And now we will have council member comments.
[03:06:45] Speaker 6: If I may make a comment. Um, I think this is a great example of what we need to do to ensure that we are right where we need to be and aren't falling behind. It was unfortunate to see how we weren't recovering the funds for the aquatic center and how we could have been doing a better job of maintaining and keeping things going. I feel that um it's excellent to see that this was done in mind that with um with our residential permitting not being an astronomical change. I think when I first saw it, those were some of the concerns that I had with some of these look like they're tripling, but these are being applied to larger projects that of course take larger time from um staff investment. I appreciate also that um where we did have two negative comments, it was more about the process and I'm pleased not only to um have it put on public record what some of those reasons were and how this is all going to work to remediate that um and how much of this was not just done oh we tell ourselves this is how how we need to change but having an outside consultant is a neutral party and to let us know how we compare compared to other cities. So the individuals that were saying we don't like you and this is too expensive. We can also show if you aren't a fan of our new fees, it could be easier or much more expensive elsewhere. You have choices that you can make and thank you for choosing Palm Desert otherwise. Um so thank you. That was very very thorough and what an incredible amount of work from staff. That is very detailed and I just my extensive gratitude.
[03:08:38] Speaker 7: Discussion. Well, I'm I'm ready to approve. I I like the valuation approach phased in over three years enhanced cost recovery and again thank you for an excellent report and to staff and I actually talked to them again today. You made every effort to make sure all our questions were answered and understood ahead of time. So, I really appreciate it. Thank you.
[03:09:03] Speaker 8: Yeah, I just want to add great report and well presented uh by staff and way to go to clean up what I consider a blind spot in our policy. So, thank you. And I will make a motion if we're ready.
[03:09:15] Speaker 1: Give me a just a moment if if you would please. Um, so I do appreciate the phased approach very much. Um, I did have a question. I had two that I had written down last night and that was so long ago I forgot. Why are some things subject to CPI and others not?
[03:09:39] Speaker 2: There's two reasons. One is the state sets the fee in some cases and so you don't have permission to choose CPI. And the other time you'll see items that are not subject to CPI would be when they're already a percentage of some other fee.
[03:09:55] Speaker 1: I see. Okay. Thank you. That's very clear. And then I saw we have a 3%
[03:10:01] Councilmember: Credit card processing fee. Is that how we prefer to be paid is by credit card, or how do we prefer to be paid?
[03:10:09] Staff Member: That would, I guess that's a question for you. Yeah. Well, it's not that we have a preference to be paid. It is the easiest mechanism when they're online, and so we make it available to them and...
[03:10:19] Councilmember: Okay.
[03:10:19] Staff Member: ...goes along with it.
[03:10:20] Councilmember: All right. Thank you. I would imagine if people were told to pay by check, it would be much more frustrating.
[03:10:27] Mayor: Um, I, I do want to mention, and, and I heard your comments, Miss Lua, where you said, you know, you've seen there were some sloppy things, there were things that could be cleaned up, and there was an intention to clean all that up along with the fee adjustments, and I appreciate that because the, the, the letters, the communications we did receive are from really well-respected design and, and building professionals, and they had, and I must say they had some very, uh, difficult comments. But, and I also must comment that there are equal number of design and building professionals who will, you know, sing the praises of Palm Desert. But I just want to make sure that concurrently while we look at these adjustments, we are also making sure that we have the most efficient process internally that really represents the values of Palm Desert. And those are my comments. Are there any other comments? Okay, let's, um, I'll entertain a motion. It's your moment.
[03:11:40] Councilmember: All right, I will make a motion to approve, uh, staff's recommendations.
[03:11:44] Mayor: Is there a second?
[03:11:45] Councilmember: I'll second the motion.
[03:11:48] Mayor: Okay, please vote. Motion passes 5 to zero. Okay, thank you. Uh, is there any, any unfinished business? We will have to have on our September 11th... I should have requested we need to designate who will the voter be for the League of Cities for the council, and I should have requested that, or do we already have that?
[03:12:16] City Clerk: You already have that in the annual appointments.
[03:12:18] Mayor: Thank you. Well, welcome back, everybody. Seeing no unfinished business, this meeting stands adjourned.