The Los Banos City Council at its March 19 meeting accepted the land deed for the delayed Shaunessy Village Park.
According to the Los Banos Parks and Recreation Director Joe Heim’s report, Shaunessy Village Park has been delayed since early 2024. As previously reported in The Westside Express, Stonefield continued to own the land for the park well after the bid for construction had been awarded.
At this meeting, the council was finally able to accept the Grant Deed for all 2.33 Acres. The park will include a playground with sensory friendly equipment, looping pathways, a four-foot fence for the main courtyard including the playground, a large basin, and 75 trees.
The timeline for the park, as publish in The Express, began with a community meeting by Heim on Oct. 3, 2022 to seek ideas as to what residents wanted in their park.
Following a rebid in late 2023, Ronny’s Inc. of Los Banos was awarded $897,201.03 to construct the park on Dec 6, 2023. Heim reported that following a project suspension, the bidder is allowed to increase the cost to account for it. He also noted that if the project were rebid, it would likely add 25-30% more to the cost.
Council members thanked staff for their effort in making the grant deed possible. “It hasn’t been fair to those residents in the neighborhood,” Mayor Michael Amabile said. “We wanted to see it done. So thank you to everybody. It was a lot of work. Now we’re going to work on the De Anza-Mercey Springs intersection. We’re going to get that fixed too.”
The process for hiring a new city manager was delayed to April 16. “A lot of pages to review, a lot of companies to review before we move on with that,” Amabile said. More than 14 different hiring firms across the country applied according to Interim City Manager Gary Brizzee’s report.
In the consent agenda was an item to call for a mail-in election for District 1 for August 26 of this year. Coming after multiple meetings of deliberation and public comment, it was decided a mail-in election would be best to fill the empty seat on the council.
Also on the consent agenda was a street maintenance project for two roads and three courts between Snow Goose Drive in the east , North Fallbrook Drive in the north west, and South Creekside Drive in the south.
City staff recommended that the city reject the single bidder, in part so that the money could be rolled over into a larger project to be bid in June that would “maximize dollars spent,” according to Brizzee. “It wasn’t a competitive bid, since we only had one,” City Engineer Chuck Bergeson said.
Councilmember Deborah Lewis pointed out that the bidder, Consolidated Engineering Inc, was under budget and shouldn’t have been led on with a project if we weren’t going to hire them. “We had someone that did what we wanted them to do, and now we’re rejecting it,” Lewis continued. “Don’t put something out there and reject it when they’ve done what you’ve asked them to do.”
The council also discussed an HVAC replacement project. Peninsula Clean Energy gave the city a $422,711 grant to replace approximately 20 aging HVAC units with heat pump-based units, according to Brizzee. The total cost is $692,000 for the whole project.
Brizzee said the ones being replaced are the most used and the oldest, averaging over 20 years old, including three units in fire stations, two in city hall, two in the Madison Avenue Yard, one at Ranchwood Park, five in the Miller & Lux Building, one in Pacheco Park, and twelve for the Community Center. All would be replaced, according to the staff report.
Councilmember Lewis raised a concern that heat pumps in the project rely on electricity and that in the event of a blackout these HVAC systems will be inoperable without backup generators. “We need to figure out how to get [back-up] coverage to those units in our city so those employees can continue to do business. If it’s cold in the winter or hot in the summer, they need to be protected,” Lewis said.
Mayor Amabile asked if the community center has a back-up generator. Parks and Rec Director Joe Heim clarified that the center is wired to have one but lacks one currently.
Both the street project bid rejection and HVAC project were voted on unanimously at the end of the consent agenda.
At the beginning of the meeting, the council recognized that March is Red Cross month. Amabile thanked the Red Cross of Merced County for all their efforts.
During a housing element update, Community and Economic Development Director Stacy Elms said the 2032 goal of 2,817 more units is not fully representative of the current plan. The multi-jurisdictional housing element being done by all cities in the county is currently still going through the approval process, and once that is complete, the goal within that plan will be the city’s new goal. The update only covered June 10, 2023, to Dec. 31, 2024. During that time the city approved 315 total housing units.
Near the end of the meeting, the City Co-sponsored, with State Senator Anna Caballero and the Coachella Valley Water District, State Senate Bill 466, the Chromium-6 MCL Compliance Safeguard Act. According to City Attorney Bill Vaughn’s report, the bill would give the city legal protection as it works to get within compliance of stricter chromium standards within the water supply.
A city staff report from 2018 found that the chromium-6 in our region is naturally occurring but does put all 13 of the city’s wells over the new standards. The city will pay $4,000 per month to lobby for the bill if it makes it out of committee, but if it doesn’t, Vaughn explained, the fee will be less. We’ll readjust our agreement.”
In his report, Brizzee mentioned the current progress of the Tiny Homes project for the homeless. He reported that the city hopes to have the groundbreaking started within 90 days, and the first leases set up in roughly 24 months.
Brizzee also mentioned that seven Los Banos police officers on March 28 will graduate from the Fresno Police Academy. Brizzee said, “That’s a record for the police department.”
After the meeting concluded, Mayor Amabile confirmed to The Westside Express that 60 individuals from the G Street homeless encampment are planned to be re-housed in Stockton, though the plans are very early in planning and may change. Amabile said the beds have been “reserved” for the individuals.
