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Alexis Velasquez

Mr. Hawkins

American Government, P Period 2

2 October 2016

Evaluation of City Council Meeting 9/27/2016

I, Alexis Velasquez, attended the meeting of the council of the city of Vacaville California on

September 27, 2016. One the first events that occurred to start the meeting with the Pledge of

Elegance. Everyone rose and respectfully stated the phrase, and then they had us all sit so the

members could proceed with the meeting. The first matter of business came from the Police

department. The current Police Chief, Mr. John Carli, presented a statement about the current

state of the Vacaville Police department. According to the documents and presentations they

shared, crime in Vacaville had been reduced to that of 15%. Several police officers also went to

local high schools in the local community, teaching law enforcement and defense techniques to

the students. After the Chief was finished, the council allowed a few Citizen Hearings. These let

people from the district come to the City Council for any concerns that they had. The one of

people who came was a woman who was concerned about the state of a beaver dam that could

possibly flood and flush water out into other areas. After her, another woman with the city of

Vacaville presented an update of the progress on the take down of the local Leisure Town Golf

Course. When she was finished, a man came up to the stand to talk about money, and the

removal of eucalyptus trees, that he states was an unfederal course of action. The council stated

that they wanted the trees removed because the area occupied Horse Shoe Road. The man who

came was questioning if the people had any say in the matter.
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After the council listened and allowed the speakers back to their seats, they began with

their next state of business, the Zoning District. The organizations official title was the

Residential Medium High Density Zoning District, or by their acronym, RMH. Their main

priority for being there was to introduce a project they wanted to be put into production. Their

idea proposed a small family day care for homes within apartment buildings, very much along

the same lines as the apartment playgrounds. Mention of certain rules for the organization were

also made and established at this time. The next issue to come up after was Economic

Development Incentive Program. This program stated that they were designed to stimulate

private sector investment in the city of Vacaville. To retain and grow the tax structure and jobs,

they believed would provide a rebate of sales in Vacaville.

When their statement was complete, two final companies came up to present their own

statements of business to the council. The first was a group titled CDBG (California

Development Block Grant) and state wide company that provide housing in California. The

second was from the Public Work Department, a public outreach program. Public outreach,, from

their recordings had proven to be difficult at the time. However there had been construction

project plans that were staged for street lights which they reasoned, the traffic would be smoother

with these newer traffic signals. They estimated around $817,276 as an Engineers estimate.

Three bids were received on September 8, 2016 with the total bid coming in at $777,473.20.

They believed that the project would likely be complete by March 2017. And with that, the

meeting was adjourned.

Comparing to the first meeting I attended, this one seemed much more business-like.

Everything was run very tightly and without much time to think about the issues. On the one

hand, I admire that the city council is very sufficient and trust each other enough to make such
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quick decisions without much disagreement. On the other hand, it also slightly concerns me.

They seem to be so much like a well-oiled machine that is becomes difficult for new ideas and

people to squeeze in with them. If the council were to address outsiders more, I believe more

new ideas would come forth to the stand. However, I still appreciated the meeting and the topics

that were discussed and I felt I did learn a lot about how our city is operated. I even felt very

proud and safe knowing that crime in our city has dropped even lower than it already is. I

thought the meeting was a solid piece of democratic education.