Mayor Travis Paden Wednesday Wrap Up 8/6/25

Mayor Travis Paden takes listeners behind the scenes of Hanford's marathon six-hour City Council meeting in this special edition of the Hanford Insider Podcast. What started at 4 PM and stretched until 10 PM covered critical decisions that will shape the city's future for years to come.

The Council chambers were packed as three of Hanford's finest received recognition – with Officer Matthew Novielli's swearing-in and the promotions of Sergeants Rolando Jaime and Chad Medeiros highlighting the community's commitment to public safety. This commitment extended to substantial raises for police and fire personnel, with new contracts providing 9-9.5% increases over two years to those who protect our neighborhoods.

Public safety remained center stage as Mayor Paden detailed the milestone decision to hire Darden Architects to design Hanford's comprehensive public safety complex – fulfilling the promise made to voters through Measure H. This isn't merely a police station but a forward-thinking facility encompassing emergency services, administration offices, and specialized training areas. Meanwhile, immediate safety concerns are being addressed with 36 new flashing beacons and radar feedback signs to combat speeding, particularly timely as students return to school.

The East Lacey Corridor project represents another significant development as the city embarks on a two-year transformation process. Mayor Paden emphasizes this is just the beginning, with multiple opportunities for public input scheduled in the coming months. Additional topics included potential changes to feather flag signage regulations, park drinking fountain upgrades, and a new downtown mural bringing color to West 8th Street.

Want to dive deeper into any of these topics? Visit www.hanfordca.gov to watch the full meeting with convenient navigation features that let you jump directly to specific agenda items. Have questions or feedback? Connect directly with Mayor Paden at TPaden@hanfordca.gov, and mark your calendar for the next meeting on Tuesday, August 19th.

You can find the Hanford Insider at www.hanfordinsider.com and on social media at @hanfordinsider
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Chapters

• 0:00 Mayor Payton's Meeting Introduction
• 0:31 Study Session: Taxes and Projects
• 2:05 Closed Session and Police Ceremonies
• 2:56 Consent Calendar and Safety Upgrades
• 4:16 Public Safety Building and Future Meetings
• 6:26 Final Remarks and Contact Information

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

You're listening to a special edition of the Hanford Insider Podcast featuring Mayor Travis Payton with his Wednesday wrap-up of the August 5th Hanford City Council meeting. Hello, hanford Mayor Travis Payton here with this week's Wednesday wrap-up Everything that we discussed at last night's Hanford City Council meeting for Tuesday, august 5th. That meeting started at 4 pm until 10 pm, so it was a six-hour meeting, so there's a lot to discuss. In our study session, we discussed the timing of the transient occupancy tax ballot measure. This is the hotel tax, and this is something that we initially started in November to be on the November ballot, something that we initially started in November to be on the November ballot, but we saw that there was not enough time to provide education for the members of the community, and so we decided to postpone that until June of 2026 for the primary the California primary. Also, we had the presentation of the possible adoption of our East Lacey Corridor project and the design concept. Now, this took a long time for us to receive the information from city staff, who's done an amazing job. Our engineers produced some great work, but also we are able to have our input, but also the public's input as well, and so this is just. This is a two-year project and so it is going to be. This is square one, and we are just at the very beginning stages of this project. So please stay tuned, because there are going to be multiple meetings, and stay tuned to our city website to make sure that you get all the information that you need on this project. Also, we discussed the city setback regulations of property development and we were talking about the rear side setbacks the side setbacks and see how far things can be built on your property in your backyard and how far away from the fence that it needs to be, and so we are going to come back with, at our next meeting, more information on that and some final answers. So stay tuned. In our closed session, we talked about property negotiations, anticipated litigations and also the recruitment process for our new city manager, and so that was discussed in closed session.

Speaker 1: 2:17

In our regular meeting at 7 pm, the city council chambers was packed. It was there for the badge pinning and swearing in of three new Hanford police officers Officer Matthew Novielli and the promotion of Sergeant Rolando Jaime and also Sergeant Chad Medeiros. We thank them for their service and we also just appreciate their families for this sacrifice of them serving our community. On the consent calendar, we also approved the contracts or the agreements, the MOUs, for police and fire associations, for wages, benefits and working conditions. This is a two-year contract where we were able to give nine and nine and a half percent respectively to our public safety personnel for all the hard work that they do for our community. Also, we approved a mural on West 8th Street and I will go ahead and put that mural picture on my social media for you to view and that is in our downtown businesses. We also talked about pedestrian and traffic safety upgrades. We know that there's an issue in our city regarding speeding and the safety for especially when our kids are just getting ready to go back to school, and so we were able to purchase 36 flashing beacons, radar feedback signs to tell a car how fast they are going on the road, as well as the video detection system for intersections.

Speaker 1: 3:50

Secondly, our parks. We tabled the discussion of providing or purchasing 10 new drinking fountains for our parks and landscape assessment districts, and the reason why we held off and tabled that is because we found more drinking fountains that we needed to address at Coe Park and at Lacey Park, and so we wanted to add that to this budget item, and so that will come back at our next meeting. Also, the police department received a $39,500 grant from Homeland Security for technology to help us with drug. What do I want to say? Awareness, not awareness, but identification. And I forget the name of it, but check our city website for the staff report on that one.

Speaker 1: 4:42

In general business, now this is a big one Our Measure H funds. When you voted for Measure H, you were voting for a new public safety building. So we are also at the stage one of this and moving forward, and so we needed to hire Darden architects to design the Hanford's new public safety building. Now, this is not just a police station. It's even more than that, and it's what I want to say is it's like a complex from a shooting range, emergency services, fire administration, as well as police administration and the police station. We don't know exactly where the police station is going to be no decisions have been made but we hired the architects to start designing this new facility and that facility. Once they can the architects come up with it, we can put it on wherever land best suits the needs of our community.

Speaker 1: 5:45

Also, we had a discussion of proposed changes to the feather flag signage rules. Currently, no feather flags are allowed in the city of Hanford, so we're revisiting that because for some businesses it's very important to have a feather flag, and so we will be coming back to our next meeting with the final amendments to this ordinance, and so stay tuned for more information. As always, public participation is super important. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or send me an email at tpayton at hanfordcagov, but stay tuned for our next meeting, which is going to be on Tuesday, august 19. Thank you, and also visit our website at wwwhanfordcity where you can view this meeting. I mean, as I said, it was six hours in length, but you can move forward in the video by pressing the agenda item and it'll take you right to that item at hand. But make sure you stay involved, ask questions and have a good rest of your day, thank you.