MINUTES
CITY OF DELANO
CITY COUNCIL – REGULAR MEETING
October 21, 2024
CALL TO ORDER
Mayor Alindajao called the meeting to order at 5:30 p.m. in the City Hall Council Chambers, 1015 – 11th Avenue.
INVOCATION
Pastor David Vivas offered the invocation.
FLAG SALUTE
Councilmember Solorio-Ruiz led the flag salute.
ROLL CALL
Council members present: Mayor Joe Alindajao, Mayor Pro Tem Morris, Councilmember Nunez, Councilmember Solorio-Ruiz, Councilmember Vasquez.
Council members absent: None
OFFICIALS PRESENT
City Manager Reyna, City Clerk Chavez, City Attorney Hensley, Police Chief Nicholson, Finance Director Rios, Acting Community Development Director Evanson, Fire Chief Duncan, Recreation Manager Batth-Chavez, Associate Engineer Nunez, and IT Manager Enriquez
PRESENTATIONS AND AWARDS
No items.
ITEMS FROM THE PUBLIC
1. Claribel Gutierrez – “I want to come up here and thank you for your support on the A3357to grow our own medical school so thanks to your letters of support the bill will be signed and hopefully next year we can start building and have the opportunity to those who want to finance and help us. I know a lot of people want to experience and go all over the country but a lot of residents are part of the less fortunate and we don’t want them to struggle to get a job, find transportation, and to get an education. We’re trying to break those barriers so thank you for helping the Assemblywoman and her team to make this dream come true.”
CONSENT AGENDA
1) Authorization to waive the reading of any ordinance in its entirety and consenting to the reading of such ordinances by title only
2) Warrant Register in the amount of $ 2,453,464.25
3) Authorize the Chief of Police to Modify the Delano Police Department Take Home Vehicle Program Policy and increase the range from 8 miles to 50 miles from the Delano city limits
4) Adopt resolution approving the new class specification for Public Works Director and authorize the Finance Director to appropriate funds for one full-time Public Works Director to the City’s Budget (Resolution No. 2024-47)
5) Accepting irrevocable offer of dedication for Industrial Way right of way from Far Away Eyes, LLC., and authorizing the City Manager to sign the certificates of acceptance and ordering the recordation of the same
6) Award of contract for the 2024 Installation of Traffic Striping Citywide Project to Central Valley Striping, in the amount of $111,399.20 and authorize the City Manager, or her designee, to sign any documents needed to carry this project to completion (Agreement No. 2024-53)
7) Award of contract for the “2024 Various Streets Slurry Seal Project” to Doolittle Construction, LLC, in the amount of $659,000.00 and authorize the City Manager or her designee to sign any documents needed to complete the project (Agreement No. 2024- 55)
8) Resolution authorizing the City Manager to enter into an agreement with Pitney Bowes for a 60-month lease for postage/folding equipment through government contract pricing. (Resolution No. 2024-48) (Agreement No. 2024-55)
Item #3 pulled by Yolanda Vega.
Vice Mayor Morris requested table item #3.
Reason for being pulled: Concerns about why this item has not been brought to the Council and why there has not been a presentation and where the monies are coming from. She would also want to know why there wasn’t a presentation advising the community and why this item was placed on consent rather than regular.
Motion was made by: Morris to table item 3 on consent items; 2nd by: Vasquez
Vote: 2-3
Ayes: Morris / Vasquez
Nays: Alindajao / Nunez / Solorio-Ruiz
Absent: None
Abstentions: None
Motion fails.
Mayor Alindajao opens up comments and questions from the Council.
Vasquez: “My first question is why is this not going to be during negotiations? Why are you bringing in early? When is the contract up for DPOA? How are we taking in to consideration all the other unions? Because the note says that or the information we got says that it's coming from general fund has the chief seek grants. Why is it 50 miles? Everywhere else has 30 miles and less.” Alindajao: “Other than questions you have, do you want to make any comments about the item itself?”
Vasquez: “Well, I don't feel comfortable making comments until I have those answers, so I think we are doing a disservice by prematurely putting this on the agenda. Probably possibly other unions contracts are coming up around the same time and I've been around this a long time where I see certain unions get a lot of the monies and not take to the other unions into consideration. And for all fairness, I would rather take a look at this when everybody's contracts up because I don't want to cheat out any other association on funding, especially that this is coming from the general fund.”
Nunez: “Looking at this, this is not a negotiable item. This is a policy change. The funding comes from regular general fund and this is a recruitment, a tool that the city needs to recruit police officers from outside cities to come and work in our city. The city is currently recruiting heavily and we're still falling behind. We're losing officers faster than we can get them. We need to find another tool to get them to come here. This is one of the tools that the city controls that is not in the MOU and the office. This can be pulled at any time from the city without a meeting conferred to what I understand.” Solorio-Ruiz: “I didn't know this topic was going to be controversial. So I recently attended the California League of Cities where it's council members from all over California come together to talk about the solutions on different issues and one of them that I discussed with several folks was the issue in regards to recruitment and retention with our police officers. I don't need to tell other council members that we are struggling in our city, we are struggling when it comes to recruitment and retention. I pose the question, do you have other solutions to in terms of being able to say this is what we can do to be able to keep our officers and retain our officers in regards to the other associations and unions? This is simply a policy update. It is not a negotiation process and ultimately I think that we have to make some tough calls at times because if you look across the board anywhere in terms of what's the number one issue in quite frankly America, it's the issue of public safety and what are we doing to address that? I think that this is a solution that's really not that much to ask for. We talked about money, the estimate I believe is around $70,000, is that correct? That's correct. That's not as much to ask for in terms of the budgets and the different line items that we approve daily. 70,000 is what we're asking in terms of being able to recruit and retain good police officers in our community. I personally think that's worth it. If others don't, that's their opinion. I can't change that. There's other communities you did mention, you are correct, there's other communities that are less miles in what we are, what is being proposed and I think that's a good thing. I think why not have a good package in Delano to be competitive with all these other communities? So I think yes, there is urgency to get this done because it's important for our officers to feel like they truly matter. And look when it comes to our employees across the board, and I don't want to get into details, I do believe we've treated our employees well in our city and we look back to the packages we've approved.
But overall, this item alone, I think it's, it's important and I think we should do it. It's the least we can do in terms of one of many solutions to recruit and retain our officers. So that's my opinion and my perspective.”
Morris: “Well, and you guys know I've always supported you. I've been here 17 years and there's been very few times. I have never supported you guys in whatever you guys wanted to, but I have some issues with this particular item and my first issue is, and I'm looking at some of these items and I'm saying really like say for instance, increased officer visibility. Yeah, I can see if you're in town and you're in the neighborhood and you have a police car that deters crime in our community, but if you have a car or police car in Bakersfield, what good is it doing us there? I don't see there's invisibility to help our community out. If your car is someplace else, it says faster responsible, faster response house. Sure, if you're in this community I can see a faster response. But if you're in Bakersfield having to come here, I mean it's going to take you just as long to get in your police cars. It is to get in your own car and get here.
Really improve vehicle maintenance and longevity really. And I'm thinking take your car home and something's wrong with it. You're not going to say, oh gosh, I'm going to go get my car fixed because it doesn't sound right. Sure, you're going to bring it in, you're going to take it to the mechanic here at the city and say, okay, hey, my car's not working right. So I can't see how that's helping us out with maintenance. So I can't see that it's going to save us on a wear and tear in the car. Retention and recruitment. I don't believe that extending the mileage is going to cause any retention. Be honest with you because many officers have applied in Bakersfield to get a job or Visalia or Tulare or wherever else. If you can't get a job there and then get a job here, you knew when you applied here, that's what it was going to take to get here to have this job. And I don't see why we should pay for the mileage for an officer who's having to travel and that was his choice. I'm sure when that opening comes up in Bakersfield, they're going to take that job in Bakersfield because it's way closer to where they live. So I can't see that that's going to really affect retention. Along with that, you see that all the police departments that you named here, Arvin, Taft, Shafter, McFarland, I can see why they're extending their mileage out because they have trouble getting officers in those particular community. They're smaller. I can see the cause of the size, but we're the second largest community in this county and plus that with wear and tear, we're looking at a hundred thousand mile cars. You say, oh we need a hundred thousand, we have to trade into this car now they have so much mileage on it now we're going to have to get a new car. So with all the mileage that it's going to cause and wear and tear on our fleet, I don't think it's worth it to be honest with you. And that's my thing. Our insurance is going to go up, our fuel and maintenance is going to go up.
This is the end of our fleet purchase because we're going to have to purchase a lot more police cars. I'm sure once we get our staff pool with other employees that we have to hire on our police force, a majority of our budget in this city goes to the police department. And so I'm saying this is a perk and when you're getting most of the money in this community, I think that we should consider $75,000 a year. It's still a lot of money plus all the other expenses that this is going to incur. So with that fellas, I'm sorry, I wish I could say different. Like I said, it's not like I don't want to support you, but there's some issues that I feel doesn't really benefit our community. So for that reason, that's why I am voting against this particular item. That's my thing.”
Vasquez: “Chief, do you have the numbers in regards to how many of vehicles will be going to what areas? Like 10 going to Bakersfield, how many are going to Visalia two to Fresno? What is this looking like? The majority of vehicles going to be gone out of the city.” Chief Nicholson: “We do have the number breakdown regarding the number of vehicles that are currently being took home by the officers now that actually live in the city of Delano and out of 47 officers that we currently have, 20 of those live within the current eight-mile range.” Vasquez: “And where do you anticipate the other 27 going to? What areas of Kerns Kings, Tulare County, what is that looking like?”
Chief: “So it would be a combination of Tulare County, Kings County and Kern County. Those the ones that do live in Fresno are outside of the 50 mile range and they would not be able to take home a vehicle.”
Solorio-Ruiz: “I wanted to address in my opinion what I think for maintenance and other issues that were brought up and I did some research before and look, we can go back and forth. There's arguments against it. There's arguments for it and I think the arguments for it outweighs the ones that are not when it comes to maintenance and longevity. They found that officers who are able to take their vehicle home, regardless of where it's at, they have a sense of pride and a sense of ownership for that vehicle that they are taking care of it more when it comes to recruitment and retention. I do think we have an issue here in Delano and of course last council meeting, we weren't able to get the departmental report on recruitment and retention with our officers and either today, but we definitely should get into the numbers as far as how many officers we really have out patrolling our streets right now. If we disclose that, I think people would be very concerned. I deeply do believe that other cities do it. We see that Arvin, all these other communities, they have around 30, 35 miles radius. And currently right now chief, how much is our policy now?
Chief Nicholson: “The current radius right now is eight miles.” Solorio-Ruiz: “How long has that been in the books for?” Chief Nicholson: “At least 15 years.”
Solorio-Ruiz: “To me, I think that's disrespectful to our officers in terms of what are we providing to make sure that they're equipped with all the tools they need to do their job. And so also of course to make sure that we are recruiting good talent and look Delano’s growing, we are growing exponentially in our city and with growth we need to make sure we also take care of who's protecting our community. And so, I wanted to respond to the Vice Mayor's comments on that and thank you.”
Alindajao: “Alright, big picture is that Delano Police Department is currently challenged with staffing, as is other police agents throughout the county. When I say that there's a problem with staffing and retention, it may seem innocuous to people to hear that, but the real impact of that is that it puts more pressure on the officers that have to carry the load while they're missing or properly staffed and that puts pressure on the rest of the staff at the police department and that's the bottom line. What we're trying to do with this particular policy change is to retain our current officers who work outside of the city and also recruit officers. It is a benefit for them to have take home vehicles. It attracts new officers to the city along with our signing bonuses, along with other perks. Let me tell you, I have the privilege of working in law enforcement and working with law enforcement agencies all over the county and it is a huge problem, huge problem. The sheriff's office before, I think it was Measure K if I had the right letter, had a hundred deputy deficit for the longest time and it just created a whole host of problems. This is an issue that we struggle with. This is an issue that we have to address and we feel, I feel that changing our take home policy would help address retention and recruitment. Now they say, well why isn't this a negotiated item? Well, it never was a negotiated item, so why should it be now? It was a departmental policy that was put in place 15 years ago. We're simply modifying that policy today in 2000. According to my numbers and the staff report, this change only impacts 25% of the police force to the tune of $70,000 in a $210 million two year budget. I think it's well worth the investment in order to recruit and retain officers.” Motion was made by: Solorio-Ruiz to approve item 3 on consent items; 2nd by: Nunez
Vote: 3-1
Ayes: Alindajao / Nunez / Solorio-Ruiz
Nays: Morris
Absent: None
Abstentions: Vasquez
Motion was made by: Solorio – Ruiz to approve items 1,2, 4-8 on consent items; 2nd by: Nunez
Vote: 5-0
Ayes: Alindajao/Morris/Nunez/Solorio – Ruiz/Vasquez
Nays: None
Absent: None
Abstentions: None
PUBLIC HEARINGS
13) Combined Development Permit No. CDP 2024-001, an application for a proposed prezoning of approximately 355 acres to prezoning district consistent with a land use designation as shown on the City of Delano General Plan map adopted in 2005 as a prerequisite of City Annexation. The sites are located west and south of the current City limits and include nine (9) parcels of land including the rights-of-way along the frontage of said parcels, which are subject to prezoning and eventual annexation. The applicant is the City of Delano, 1015 11th Avenue Delano CA 93215. (Assessor Parcel Numbers: 520-170-02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 14 and 047-170-03 and 04) (Continued from the October 21, 2024, Regular Council Meeting) California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)
This project is categorically exempt from the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) §15183, Projects Consistent with Community Plan, General Plan or Zoning as the project is consistent with the general plan designation, policies and zoning designation.
Staff Report provided by Interim Community Development Director Evanson.
Mayor Alindajao opened public comment.
No public comment.
Mayor Alindajao closed public comment.
Motion was made by: Nunez to approve resolution;
2nd by: Morris
Vote: 5-0
Ayes: Alindajao/Morris/Nunez/Solorio – Ruiz/Vasquez
Nays: None
Absent: None
Abstentions: None
14) Introduction and first reading of an ordinance of the City of Delano amending Section 20.14.35 (Signs with changeable copy) of the Delano Municipal Code which would apply citywide. The proposed Zoning Text Amendment would allow (i) electronic and mechanical signs that have changeable copy and is located within the Downtown Commercial (DC) District along High Street between 9th and 13th; (ii) would be subject to administrative approval from the Community Development Director through the Sign Program process (Continued to the October 21, 2024, Regular Council Meeting)
California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Determination The proposed Zoning Text Amendment is exempt from review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) because it can be seen with certainty that there is no possibility that the proposed amendments may have a significant effect on the environment. In addition, the proposed Zone Text Amendment is statutorily exempt from CEQA pursuant to Title 14, Section 15273(a) of the California Code of
Regulations.
Staff Report provided by Interim Community Development Director Evanson.
Mayor Alindajao opened public comment.
No public comment.
Mayor Alindajao closed public comment.
Motion was made by: Solorio – Ruiz to approve;
2nd by: Nunez
Vote: 5-0
Ayes: Alindajao/Morris/Nunez/Solorio–Ruiz/Vasquez
Nays: None
Absent: None
Abstentions: None
REGULAR AGENDA
No Items
DEPARTMENTAL REPORTS
None.
COUNCIL STATEMENTS AND REPORTS
Council member Vasquez – “I just wanted to give thank you to all the organizations that have been doing events the past couple of months. Filipino weekend harvest holidays, the cancer run, the Kiwanis.
It's great to see the community engaging and being excited and happy to attend those events.” Council member Solorio-Ruiz – “I attended some promotions from the Delano Police Department that was great to attend and know and hear that our officers are moving up and I think that that's what we want. It was a heartwarming experience to see all their families there as well. I also wanted to give a shout out to some local businesses who assisted in donating some jackets and coats for our youth in Delano such as athletics, MGS Glam, Five Rivers, Rodriguez, and Associates, YK, as well as Flor Olvera.
They donated to the drive that I was hosting for our youth and we provided, I believe, over 80 jackets to our youth. So I think that that is something that we can all get on board and it's a big deal and it's a good deal. Of course, Filipino weekend happened, which is was a big hit. It's a Delano tradition. We were back and we saw many folks from all over coming to celebrate that big deal. I also attended the California League of Cities this past week. Again, like I repeated earlier, it is a conference where a bunch of council members from all over California come together to talk about how to solve some issues. We learned about a different variety of them coming from us how to solve our fentanyl crisis through a community approach with our law enforcement and different partners. That was a really good conversation that I think we can maybe replicate a little bit of that here in the City of Delano. Of course, with the proposal coming forward and conversations with our City Attorney and City Manager that might fit our community and city. There's others ranging from housing and homelessness and I think of course we are trying to combat that already as it is. But overall, that is all on my end.” Councilmember Nunez – “I got a letter here from the DPOA, they're having a police officer’s foundation is soliciting funds for their annual shop at a cop. I believe it's going to be their 30th year. If anybody's interested in and donating, you can donate to [email protected]. And that's all I have.” Mayor Pro-Tem Morris – “Yeah, a couple of things. I think you're still having a candidates forum tomorrow, right? Right. Tomorrow starting at 5:30 I wasn't sure exactly what time that was. I know that we're having it tomorrow. The other thing is the State of the City, the Delano Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring the state of the city. So what that is, is the best of Delano. So you see all these best of Bakersfield, the best tile company, the best restaurant, the best whatever. We're having that for Delano businesses and in our community. So come out to, there's a dinner on Friday. And also too, the pumpkin patch is still going on. We still need a lot of help out there. We spend our days out there primarily starting 8:30 till about one or two o'clock in the afternoon. But well worth it to go out there and see the kids' faces and the good time that they're having out at the pumpkin patch. So I want to invite everybody to come out or volunteer if you can. The only other thing I think is the PD sponsoring trunk or treat on the 30th, I believe. And so come out and support that. And if you come out support that, I think you have to go trick or treating the next day because I'll tell you, come out there. You come out there with a bag of candy. So we want to invite everyone to tell everyone about that, to invite your kiddos out there and to have a safe and fun Halloween. So thank you very much.”
Mayor Alindajao – No comments.
CLOSED SESSION
No items.
ADJOURNMENT
Moved by Solorio – Ruiz seconded by Nunez and unanimously carried 5-0 to adjourn the meeting at 6:07 PM
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Ricardo G. Chavez, City Clerk