With a member short, the Ceres City Council on Monday was deadlocked in a 2-2 vote over pursuing a grant of $4.5 million to upgrade Roeding Heights Park.
Vice Mayor Daniel Martinez’s absence set up the deadlock vote.
Councilwoman Cerina Ortero and Councilman James Casey voted against moving forward on the grant while Mayor Javier Lopez and Councilwoman Rosalinda Vierra voted in favor of an application.
Interim City Manager Steve Williams said unless the city can identify another source of funding to cover Capitol Advocacy’s charge other than the General Fund, the matter of pursuing the grant won’t be coming back for consideration before a full council. Otherwise, he said the city will live with the council’s procedural denial to proceed.
Otero’s objections were over the $29,500 to be taken from General Fund Reserve to pay for the city’s grant writing firm, Capitol Advocacy and her noting “we’re not guaranteed that we’re going to be approved for the funding.” She also wanted the council to review the parks master plan before talk about funding parks. Otero also asked the council to consider funding park improvements through the city’s Capital Improvement Project accounts.
Josh Casas, the city’s acting public works director, noted that Capital Improvement funds cannot be used to pay for grant writing.
He said the grant application from Ceres would be “a very strong contender.”
Mayor Javier Lopez suggested the grant writing costs could be funded from the General Fund reserves since $300,000 of new money is expected to come the city’s way because of the third-party efforts of Hinderliter De Llamas & Associates (HDL) to recover sales tax and business license revenues.
A representative of Capital Advocacy suggested the city should pursue the grant.
“This particular park does stand in a very, very competitive position for this grant,” Vanessa Vergara of Capitol Advocacy told the council over Zoom. “So Mayor Lopez, I’m very confident that with my team and with the city team as well we can absolutely put a very strong application forward.”
“I know that the City of Ceres does need some TLC in some places,” said Mayor Lopez. “Roeding (Heights) Park is one of the most underserved places in our city, and I feel that those residents deserve an opportunity to give some input. Because I believe that is one of the requirements that citizens give their input and I believe the city of Ceres will be there to make sure we receive that information, so I will be supporting this.”
While stating that she has children and that parks are very important, Otero said: “I don’t feel that we’re in a good position right now to move forward with this. It’s still 50-50 to me on if we’re going to get approved or not and this would be dipping into the general fund reserve again. There could be something else that comes up in the next several months where you might need it. So I don’t see why maybe we can just table this until next year and see where we’re at.”
Otero also suggested the city is “not forgetting about the parks,” citing the work that will be going into fixing the playground structures at Independence Park.
The grant application deadline is Dec. 17. The grant was only announced three weeks ago, said Casas.
The city still plans to hold a Saturday, Oct. 17 meeting from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Roeding Heights Park to receive input from Ceres residents about what they want to see included there. Councilwoman Vierra said the community has already asked for a splash pad for children at the park.
