December 23, 2024
Ms. Leslie Caviglia, City Manager
City of Visalia
707 West Acequia Ave.
Visalia, CA 93291
Ms. Caviglia:
Nielsen Merksamer Parrinello Gross & Leoni LLP (Nielsen Merksamer) has been honored to work with the City of Visalia over the past several years. We appreciate your recent extension of our contract and look forward to working with you in 2025.
We have truly enjoyed working with the Council, you and Devon over the course of the past several years, including in 2024 where we accomplished the following:
• Strengthened the city’s presence and influence in Sacramento by establishing relationships and coalitions with the city’s partners, like CalCities, to lobby for and against bills.
• Met with Visalia’s elected state officials in Sacramento regarding issues of importance to the city.
• Updated the city’s legislative platform to guide city positions on bills and expedite our response to legislation introduced in each legislative session. • Tracked hundreds of introduced and amended bills and working with city staff to establish an annual list of priority bills for lobbying. • Lobbied bills dealing with a range of issues including warehouse siting reform, planning and zoning of truck routes, filling vacancies of local public employees, enforcement of local housing elements, homelessness, law enforcement issues, workers compensation issues and protection of local government control.
• Reviewed the annual state budget and May Revise for proposals that could negatively impact the city and engaged in budget discussions to attempt to secure funds for the city.
We look forward to focusing on a number of important items for the City in the coming year, including, but not limited to:
• Protecting local government funding and programs, even though the estimated deficit for the budget is only $2B, there is concern this number will grow.
• Engaging on behalf of the City on legislation addressing the “affordability crisis” in California.
• Continuing to pursue funding and policies to address water supply and SGMA implementation.
• Pushing back on continued legislation that promotes housing development at the expense of local control.
• Supporting and promoting policies that benefit the Industrial Park and increase job opportunities in the state.
• Engaging on legislation that assist local government in addressing local homelessness, housing and zero-emission fleet vehicles. • Any other issues as directed by Council and city staff.
Once again, thank you for giving us the opportunity to represent the City of Visalia in Sacramento. We look forward to continuing our work together.
Sincerely,
John J. Moffatt Michelle Rubalcava