CITY OF HIDDEN HILLS
REGULAR CITY COUNCIL MEETING
(IN-PERSON AND VIDEO CONFERENCE)
6165 Spring Valley Road
Monday, March 13, 2023 at 5:30 p.m.
NOTE: The Hidden Hills City Council and City staff will be participating in this meeting in-
MINUTES
CALL TO ORDER AND PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
A regular meeting of the City Council of the City of Hidden Hills was duly held via teleconference and in person on Monday, March 13, 2023 at the hour of 5:30 p.m. Mayor Steve Freedland called the meeting to order and presided thereover.
ROLL CALL
Council: Mayor Steve Freedland
Mayor Pro Tem Eniko Gold
Council Member Joe Loggia
Council Member Laura McCorkindale
Council Member Larry G. Weber
Staff: City Manager Kerry Kallman
City Attorney Roxanne Diaz
City Engineer Dirk Lovett
Administrative Analyst Chantelle Limón
Accounting Specialist Theresa Hernandez
City Clerk Deana L. Gonzalez
City Council Minutes
March 13, 2023
AUDIENCE
There were no comments.
CITY COUNCIL COMMENTS
Happy Birthday to Council Member McCorkindale on March 19 and to Accounting Specialist Theresa Hernandez on March 20.
Mayor Pro Tem Gold wished former Council Member Stuart Siegel happy birthday on March 25. she also stated that she attended the 38th annual women of the year awards which honors those vomen who do a lot for the community. She also requested that Council Member Loggia serv with her on the Salary Survey and Compensation Ad Hoc Committee with her, for which he accepted.
Councilmember McCorkindale stated that she'd like Council Member Loggia to join her on the Ad Hoc Burglary Committee, for which he accepted.
STAFF COMMENTS
There were no comments.
CONSENT CALENDAR
City Council Minutes - February 15, 2023 Special Meeting City Council Minutes - February 27, 2023 Regular Meeting C. Demand List
D. Ordinance No. 384 Amending the Hidden Hills Municipal Code Regarding Senate Bill 9 Subdivisions and Development Projects and Finding the Ordinance is Exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act Pursuant to California Environmental Quality Act Regulations Section 15061(b)(3) Upon MOTION of Council Member Weber, seconded by Councilmember Loggia, and carried unanimously on roll call vote, it was resolved to approve items A, B, C, and D of the consent calendar as submitted.
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OLD BUSINESS
Review and Consideration of An Underground Utility Assessment Program and Direction from City Council on Proceeding with the Program
City Manager Kallman provided a brief report regarding the subject item and introduced Jeff Cooper from NVS to present his comprehensive review of the program:
the scope of work has been completed; all the overhead utilities have been mapped (information provided by the City and SCE), and all files will be transferred to the city, so that the City has documentation on where all the existing overhead utilities are located and a master plan can be created; then, based on all those maps a cost estimate to underground all the City's overhead utilities is approximately $81 million, which is based on the cost of linear foot, current construction costs, and a 20% contingency for unexpected issues that occur; the other part of the scope was to look at financial options for the city to pay for undergrounding all overhead utilities; what is recommended is to put in place a program to allow property owners to do an assessment district; a boilerplate petition package has been created to give property honors an option to speed up the process, while the City continues with its undergrounding processes; if the City Council wants to have a program available for property owners, the rules or codes are already established by the Municipal Improvement Act of 1913, and a proposition called Proposition 218, which provides property owners an explanation of the program and allow them, if they're interested, to start the process.
Mayor Pro Tem Gold thanked Mr. Cooper for his presentation. She asked if residents decide to form an assessment district and go ahead with the project, do they have to pay prevailing wages, as the City does pay prevailing wages?
Mr. Cooper responded that prevailing wages will have to be paid when the project is built and those costs will be built into the construction costs already.
Mayor Pro Tem Gold also asked when forming an assessment district, can only those residents wart date a pote on their property participate or can anybady who wil benefit be able to Mr. Cooper replied that residents are not required to have a pole on their property to participate and that if it is beneficial for a property owner, they can certainly participate.
Mayor Freedland asked if residents could be compelled to participate? City Attorney Diaz stated that once the Assessment District is formed, those who are within that district will have to participate.
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Mayor Freedland asked how is the money extracted from the people that do not want to participate? Mr. Cooper explained that once the district is formed per code, a cash collection letter will be sent and residents are given time to either write a check out and pay off the assessment, or they can let it go to Bond, and then it's included on their property taxes, usually over a 20-year period.
Council Member Loggia wanted to confirm a couple items from the report, including that there are only 155 homes connected to the overhead transmission lines, so that means the majority of Hidden Hills would need to underground? Also, his other questions are regarding the funding mechanisms, which are the enhanced infrastructure financing district, utility users, tax, mello-roos, and utility surcharge. Is there a percentage statewide preference of other cities? Mr. Cooper replied that the most common is assessment districts.
Council Member Loggia inquired that if cities have made the decision to spend the amount of money to underground the whole city and assess every resident in the city? Mr. Cooper responded that the keyword assessment requires that people have a benefit and it requires a vote. A City can't just levy an assessment without going through this process. However, as an example, the City of San Diego put a franchise fee on their power bills and raise fees on their power bills to underground overhead utilities in the City of San Diego. This method is pretty controversial, and he is certainly not recommending this way of doing it.
Council Member Loggia asked if there examples of cities that have implemented the assessment district option and have given the City the option to participate in some percentage up to a number per year. For example, if the City wanted to encourage residents to actually do this assessment district people and the City to subsidize however many projects up to a 1 million dollars per year on a first come first, serve basis. Is that done anywhere? Is that something the City could do? Mr. Cooper responded that the hasn't seen that done before, however, the City of Newport Beach has done many, many successful assessment districts. and the way they encourage it is they will upfront the soft cost, like doing the petition and doing the engineers report. They basically sponsor it until the district is approved. They have the option of just donating those funds to the project. or they can be paid by back by the assessment district. So, one option, if the City wants to encourage these projects, is to have funds available to do the upfront work, which is the petition, the engineers report and the ballot. and then, once you have an approved ballot and you have a real project, then the city could have the choice of getting paid back or just incentivize it to the property owners.
City Manager Kallman commented to Council Member Loggia's point, the Council can make a policy to spend up to a 1 million dollars per year, and to simplify it, it would be if it was a 20 million dollar project the city and it gets under way. The city will pay off the first 1 million to get it down to 19 million dollars, and that's what the residents would be paying back.
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Council Member Loggia stated that 81 million dollars is a big pill for us to swallow as a city. So how can we translate for every 1 million dollars we put in? If we could make that 10 million dollars that somebody else is putting in, they benefit because they get it cheaper. If that's what they want to do, we benetit because we're getting more undergrounding in the city. That is the kind of a program, I think, we should explore.
Mayor Freedland thinks it's a great idea as my concern is that it's going to be difficult to get people to vote to tax themselves, and form these districts, so anything we can do to incentivize them I think is a win-win.
Mr. Cooper added that he has helped the City of Santa Monica with street lighting projects, and they've had a policy in those districts that if the district is approved and successful, and they move ahead with the project, the City will pay for half the cost.
Council Member Weber is still concerned about those residents who vote against an assessment district because they can't afford it. There's still a lot of people in Hidden Hills that have lived here for 50 and 60 years, and I can't see them being driven into an assessment district when they can't afford to do that, because the assessment on top of their property tax will probably be more than double with their property taxes right now. Low property taxes are probably what keeps them here.
City Attorney Diaz clarified that forming assessment districts is a two-step process. First there's a petition process, and once there is 60 percent of interest to move forward with the petition, then there's a Proposition 218 process, and that's a majority protest process. So, there's one more opportunity for residents to say n, even if the petition process goes underway, and the amount of the assessment depend on: how big that district is, how small that the district is, what's already underground and what's not. It's hard to say whether it's going to be just as expensive as a regular property tax assessment, for example based on value of property. Here it's talking about the cost of the underground work the value of it, and how your property receives a benefit more than the property next door. So, it's hard to quantify what that number will be, and whether it will be extraordinary or not. It will be an expense, though. It will come back to the City Council for a vote and if it's a really close vote the City Council could decide on a majority vote not to proceed Mayor Freedland stated that the City has an ordinance that requires people to re-roof their house if they have a wood shake roof that needs repair, and it's over a certain square footage. But there's also an appeal process that if it's a financial hardship, they can appeal that and Council can take that into consideration. So there is a little bit of consideration that's available to Council to not force the issue on somebody. We clearly don't want to run anybody out of town and to Council Member Weber's point, and it is a very valid question and a concern we should have.
Mayor Pro Tem Gold asked Mr. Cooper what the smallest assessment district he has seen? Mr.
Cooper responded that the smallest district he's ever contemplated is about 20 parcels. The largest City Council Minutes
March 13, 2023
one he's ever done is 965 Parcels in Newport Beach. Most of your districts are around 50 to 100 parcels. There is a better economy scale the more parcels are in the district.
Mayor Pro Tem Gold then asked staff what the smallest pole removal pole project was? City Manager Kallman commented that the last project was 9 polls, and that was that was really based on the on the run that we could get. A total of 35 poles have been removed in the City. When staff looks at projects, it is always an area that has a lot of poles in a row. Mr. Cooper, can we do an assessment district for 10 poles?
City Attorney Diaz commented that looking at the 1913 act, or maybe it was the 1911 act, there's a provision that gets incorporated that the petition can't be signed by not less than 5 owners of accessible land, so there's a minimum threshold.
Mr. Cooper added that it isn't really economically feasible to do a district with only 5 parcels, because it's quite a process, so his rule of thumb would be 10.
Resident Mathy Wasserman inquired if interest is spread out over the 20-year property tax bill? Mr. Cooper responded that those who pay cash will not pay any of the finance charges or any interest. Those that want to pay over time will not get the cash discount and will pay a little bit bigger amount plus interest over time and typically the interest rates are fixed.
Mayor Freedland asked if the assessment district has to be contiguous.
Mr. Cooper responded that it pretty much does, but we can stop and start it. For example, if there is a whole block that was very interested in it, we want to focus on that block, but if there was an area next to it that just didn't want to be in it we want to respect that. Instead of trying to get more people in you try to keep the boundaries where people benefit, and as many people as you can that would be interested in doing this that way. We avoid bringing people in that don't want to do this.
He really hasn't met anyone that doesn't want their overhead utilities undergrounded.
Council Member Loggia asked if there are 12 residents on a street and 7 want to be part of the assessment district and 5 do not, can the 7 residents split cost of the assessment district, including those 5 parcels that can't afford to be in it?
City Attorney Diaz stated that it could not be done that way as it changes the benefit analysis and makes it vulnerable to challenge.
City Manager Kallman is asking for a consensus that the Council would like to move forward with this project. If that is the consensus then several steps will be taken. Staff look into some of the questions that have been voiced tonight and bring those answers back to the Council. Staff would like some direction on incentivizing. Is the consensus of the Council to research incentives? Some City Council Minutes
March 13, 2023
money should be set aside for the first round of deposits all the way up to Council Member Loggia's idea. Staff will take a look at some municipal code updates to make sure that our code is aligned with doing this, and then finally, staff would recommend that we enter into a longer term agreement with NV5, who will continue to work side by side with City staff on this project as it involves very complicated time and consuming things with an enormous benefit. Staff would love to hear feedback from the Council Members.
Mayor Freedland appreciates the consultant's comment that this is not to replace what the City is currently doing. If we were to see a tremendous interest in people doing this, then I could see, utilizing whatever money we had set aside to do undergrounding projects and using it to incentivize, because the larger the project the better benefit for everybody. Personally, I'm leaning towards what Council Member Loggia suggested as far as putting up some real incentives that actually puts a dent in the project for the people who are interested in assessing themselves.
Mayor Pro Tem Gold echoed Council Member Weber's concerns, and she is glad to hear that there is one more step, for the Council, is the last vote on this issue, because I think we really have to be cognizant of people's limited finances. Some people are elderly on fixed income, so we can't forget about that. But I'm all for moving forward with this and just being very considerate of our constituents in the process.
Council Member Weber agrees with moving forward and as far as incentives, they should be on a case-by-case basis.
Councilmember McCorkindale agrees with moving forward on assessment district; however, in terms of incentives, she thinks the Council has to look at in conjunction with the upcoming meeting where we're going to discuss the old way of doing it, and the assessments would have to balance out with the people who are getting the full benefit of the city money. So, she doesn't think Council can answer that, until they have the second part of this conversation.
Council Member Loggia is in favor of moving forward and in favor of staff, moving forward and flushing out more of the details to see how something like this would work
NEW BUSINESS
A. Consideration of (1) Approval of an Agreement with Tommy's Hamburgers and Payment of a $7,582.50 Deposit for Two Trucks to Serve Lunch at the 2023 Fiesta and (2) Approval of an Agreement with Southland Shows and Payment of a $39,250 Deposit to Provide Amusement Rides, Carnival Games, and Prizes for the 2023 Fiesta Administrative Analyst Limón presented the following report:
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the annual two-day Hidden Hills Fiesta celebration returns this year, scheduled for September 30 and October 1, 2023; burgers for lunch in front of the Community Center on Saturday atternoon is a Fiesta tradition; in recent years, In-N-Out burger has provided lunch service, bringing two of their food trucks; unfortunately this year, In-N-Out is not available on September 30, staff requested to be placed on a waiting list; instead, staff inquired with Tommy's Hamburgers about providing a similar lunch service as In-N-Out and they are available, providing two food trucks with a menu of double chili cheeseburgers, hamburgers, or cheeseburgers, along with fries, and a drink; should In-N- Out become available, Tommy's offers a cancelation policy and will honor a full refund if the order is canceled 14 days prior to the event; the proposed estimate for catering provided by Tommy's Hamburgers is $10,110 with a deposit of $7,582.50 due now; the Saturday night carnival is the focal point of Fiesta with attractions for all ages. In 2021, the City contracted with Southland Shows for the first time, and then returned in 2022; staff has had an excellent experience working with the vendor and resident feedback supports bringing them back to Fiesta 2023; the proposed total cost to Southland Shows is $78,500 with a deposit of $39,250 due now.
Council Member Loggia has concerns with the terms and conditions of the contract with Tommy's Hamburgers. He states that in the agreement that the City is to indemnify and hold harmless Tommy's Burgers for anything that happens at the Fiesta lunch. In his experience, these things are mutual to hold harmless and mutual indemnification. He has requested that the City Attorney review this contract further.
City Attorney Diaz did point out that there is an exception in Tommy's Hamburgers contract with respect to the indemnity, if it's the gross negligence of Tommy's, and its products and it's vehicle.
So, certainly, if there was a food poisoning, that would probably come under gross negligence, but she does understand Council Member Loggia's concern, and certainly she is happy to as part of the recommendation moving forward that the City Council would indicate that the contract is approved in the form negotiated and approved by the City Manager and the City Attorney with respect to insurance and indemnity. If it is non-negotiable by Tommy's Hamburgers, then staff will bring it back to the Council to make that business decision.
As there was no further discussion, upon MOTION of Council Member Weber, seconded by Council Member Loggia, and unanimously carried on a roll call vote, it was resolved approve: (1) City Council Minutes
П March 13, 2023
a deposit in the amount of $7,582.50 to Tommy's Hamburgers and (2) a deposit in the amount of $39,250 to Southland Shows; and (3) authorize staff to prepare an Agreement with each vendor and authorize the Mayor and City Clerk to execute the agreements on behalf of the City.
B. Consideration of Approval of a Construction Contract with Martin Construction, Inc. for Phase 1A Fiber Conduit Construction in the Area of Ashley Ridge and Jim Bridger Roads
City Manager Kallman presented the following report:
at its meeting of in September of 2022, the City Council approved a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with fiber consultant Onward to design the City's Fiber to the Home Project, who is currently working on the design, which will be done in five phases, including trenching, conduit, and junction boxes to place fiber in the communities roads and trails; it came to staffs attention last year that the Hidden Hills Community Association (HHCA) scheduled the reconstruction of Jim Bridger and the other roads in the Ashley Ridge subdivision for this April, which will include full street removal and replacement on some portions of the roads, and asphalt overlay on others; to avoid asphalt disruption and some prions to rid and ai additional costs associated with fiber trenching after the roads are reconstructed, staff requested Onward to prepare a Phase 1A plan that would complete a portion of the trenching work impacting Jim Bridger Road, Ashley Ridge Road, Walker Road, and Butterfield Road, prior to April; at the HHCA's Board meeting in August 2022, the Board authorized the City of Hidden Hills to trench and install the Phase 1A fiber conduit prior to the scheduled resurfacing of roads within the Jim Bridger/Ashley Ridge area and an encroachment permit (no fee) for the City was issued; bids received are listed below and Martin Construction, Inc. has the lowest bid of $359,390; since the original bids were received, a redesign and scheduling alternatives resulted in significant cost savings of $162,523, updating the quote to $196,867; all work should be completed by mid-May/early June, with a commitment to work on Saturdays should that be necessary; the City Fiber to the Home Ad-hoc Committee's recommendation that the City Council award a contract to Martin Construction to proceed with the Phase 1A fiber conduit work at this time.
Onward Consultant Nick Kecler presented a PowerPoint reiterating many factors in the staff report presented by City Manager Kallman.
Council Member Loggia asked staff if the ask for approval amount, including the 10% contingency, includes additional funds for any unforeseen delays. City Engineer responded that City Council Minutes
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that was a great question and confirmed that it did not. City Engineer Lovett suggested that authorizing the City Manager to spend up to an additional $25,000 would help not delaying the project, bringing the total cost for this project to approximately $241,000.
Mayor Pro Tem Gold stated that the commitment from the City Council to their constituents to bring Fiber to the Home is most important and hopes that this vote will go forward tonight.
Council Member Weber agreed with Mayor Pro Tem Gold and also confirmed with staff that a majority of the funding of this project will be coming from the American Rescue Plan funds and the balance will come from the general fund reserves.
Council Member McCorkindale thanked the consultant for bringing this project in at a lower cost and also the HHCA for their willingness to delay the project so that it will benefit all those involved.
Upon MOTION of Council Member Weber, seconded by Mayor Pro Tem Gold and unanimously carried on roll call vote it was resolved to approve the construction contract with Martin Construction Phase 1 conduit construction in the form approved by the City Attorney in the amount of $216,553.70 including a 10% contingency, and authorize the City Manager to spend up to an additional $25,000 for any unforeseen costs.
C. Review of Fiscal Year 2022/23 Mid-Year Budget Report City Manager Kallman presented the following report:
staff anticipates about $4.4 million dollars in General Fund revenue this year, which is approximately 60% more than anticipated; the General Fund revenue property taxes expect to come at about $1.4 million about 5% more than originally anticipated; Building and Safety revenue is strong, and we are at our budgeted amount; expenses are doing fine; there were some changes to the budgeted expenses this year, mainly in the capital projects; staff was hoping that the undergrounding little hollow project would be underway at this point, however, looking at the calendar it's not mathematically possible to get this under way Budge, the Couri did cal yeat sadfe eument over remove thr and dat va tor City Council Minutes
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the additional costs related to recycling water; the City did receive a total of $452,000 from the American Rescue plan, which has been spent first on design engineering.
Mayor Freedland thanked staff for the report. He also suggested that since Mayor Pro Tem Gold was on the 2022-2023 budget committee, that she remain on it and be accompanied this year by Council Member Loggia. Mayor Pro Tem Gold and Council Member Loggia and the rest of the council agreed.
ADJOURNMENT
There being no further business to come before the Council, the meeting was adjourned.
AFTEST: Steve Freedland, Mayor