Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Alexis Velasquez
Mr. Hawkins
2 October 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.
2 Velasquez
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,
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
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
3 Velasquez
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