The September 16 meeting is a working session dominated by contract extensions and capital-project authorizations. The AMENDED packet (523 pages) adds one large minutes-approval bundle covering 22 back meetings from March 2024 through August 2026 and moves the Cal Cities voting-delegate appointment from the consent calendar to the Regular Calendar as G.3. No other staff reports were changed from the original release.

The largest fiscal actions on the consent calendar are the on-call well and pump repair authorization ($1.0 million), the after-school Bridge Program contract with Lodi Unified (up to $657,000), the DeBenedetti Park Improvements 2027 bid authorization (~$5.1 million project cost), and the Well No. 8 abandonment change orders ($320,000). The Access Center construction management extension to March 31, 2027 (Bickford Ventures) is the most politically watched consent item.

The Regular Calendar has three items. G.1 is the quarterly Access Center operations, construction, and funding update — the meeting's most substantive policy item — with a Council-feedback request on long-term financial sustainability. G.2 updates the unpermitted food-vendor task force. G.3 is the appointment of a Cal Cities voting delegate for the September 23–25 conference in Anaheim.

Council: Mayor Ramon Yepez, Mayor Pro Tempore Mikey Hothi, Council Members Cameron Bregman, Lisa Craig-Hensley, and Alan Nakanishi. Interim City Clerk Walfred Solorzano.

This is a housekeeping meeting rather than a policy meeting, and almost all of it is about who gets to decide things at City Hall. Of the ten action items, six either hand new decision-making power to the City Manager or sign off on decisions the City Manager has already made.

Three things make the meeting notable. First, a record minutes backlog: Consent item C.1 asks Council to approve 26 sets of minutes at once, reaching back to March 6, 2024 — and it is the second such batch in seven weeks, following another 26-set catch-up approved July 15, 2026 that reached back to November 2023. The staff report offers no explanation for the delay.

Second, the City Manager's authority continues to expand. Item C.4 would delegate to the City Manager all personnel and administrative matters for the Interim City Clerk — including appointment and termination — two weeks before the ordinance transferring City Clerk appointment authority from Council to the City Manager takes effect on September 18, 2026. Item G.1 asks Council merely to ratify a Public Works Director the City Manager already selected. Item G.2 would let the City Manager award a contract up to $360,000 without returning to Council.

Third, a federal grant report with weak delivery numbers. The public hearing (F.1) is Lodi's yearly report card to the federal government on how it spent its Community Development Block Grant money — the annual federal grant the City uses for neighborhood improvements, housing, and social services. Lodi was guaranteed $655,037 for the year and spent $282,568.19 of it, and it built none of the 54 affordable-housing units it had set as its annual goal.

Council will also meet privately beforehand on five matters, four of them lawsuits — including two separate 2026 suits by former City Manager Scott Carney and one by Christopher Bennitt.

This is a governance-heavy agenda dressed up as a routine August meeting. There are no public hearings. Five threads run through the 291-page packet: a twice-deferred, formally protested $616,700 citywide tree maintenance award (G.3) that will determine who operates Lodi's street-tree inventory for the next two to four years; a no-bid $115,000 consulting contract (G.2) to CityWise Strategies, LLC — the firm of Aaron Busch, Lodi's Interim City Manager through June 22, 2026; a first-reading ordinance moving City Clerk appointment and removal authority from the Council to the City Manager (G.6), introduced two days after the incumbent Clerk's last day; a single consent vote clearing a two-year backlog of 18 sets of minutes (C.1), ten of which record canceled meetings; and continued fiscal strain visible in a boiler award 57% over the Engineer's Estimate funded by draining two other capital accounts (C.6) alongside the elimination of executive CalPERS employee cost-sharing (G.5).

Also on the agenda: ratification of David Hanham as Community Development Director at $201,619.47, filling a vacancy open since February 24, 2026 (G.4); an informational report restoring Friday library service and ending Sunday hours for a net gain of four weekly public service hours at no added cost (G.1); a countywide free bus transfer pilot including Lodi GrapeLine (C.7); and recognition of Lodi as America's Favorite Small Town 2026.

This is a governance-heavy agenda dressed up as a routine August meeting. There are no public hearings. Five threads run through the 291-page packet: a twice-deferred, formally protested $616,700 citywide tree maintenance award (G.3) that will determine who operates Lodi's street-tree inventory for the next two to four years; a no-bid $115,000 consulting contract (G.2) to CityWise Strategies, LLC — the firm of Aaron Busch, Lodi's Interim City Manager through June 22, 2026; a first-reading ordinance moving City Clerk appointment and removal authority from the Council to the City Manager (G.6), introduced two days after the incumbent Clerk's last day; a single consent vote clearing a two-year backlog of 18 sets of minutes (C.1), ten of which record canceled meetings; and continued fiscal strain visible in a boiler award 57% over the Engineer's Estimate funded by draining two other capital accounts (C.6) alongside the elimination of executive CalPERS employee cost-sharing (G.5).

Also on the agenda: ratification of David Hanham as Community Development Director at $201,619.47, filling a vacancy open since February 24, 2026 (G.4); an informational report restoring Friday library service and ending Sunday hours for a net gain of four weekly public service hours at no added cost (G.1); a countywide free bus transfer pilot including Lodi GrapeLine (C.7); and recognition of Lodi as America's Favorite Small Town 2026.

The July 15, 2026 Lodi City Council meeting opens with a lengthy closed session covering the City Attorney and City Clerk recruitments plus two active lawsuits filed by former City Manager Scott R. Carney — a whistleblower/wrongful termination action and a companion Public Records Act suit. The open session moves through a Junior Giants proclamation, a certificate of appreciation for outgoing City Clerk Olivia Nashed, and a consent calendar dominated by two substantial items: TANC Project Agreement No. 3 Amendment No. 1, which zeroes out Lodi's scheduling rights on the California-Oregon Transmission Project, and a three-year $694,600 professional services agreement with West Yost & Associates for wastewater regulatory compliance at White Slough. No public hearings are scheduled.

The regular calendar features an informational presentation on Opportunity Zones 2.0 and a staff recommendation to nominate Census Tract 45.02 in place of the underperforming Tract 44.03, an ad hoc committee to advise on a Government Relations RFP, and appointment of Walfred Solorzano as Interim City Clerk at $70.41/hour. The meeting closes with the second reading and adoption of Ordinance No. 2048, which replaces Lodi's 2022 mobile food-vending framework with an operator-permit model but keeps the controversial food-truck caps.

The July 1, 2026 regular meeting is a light public-facing agenda built on a heavy financial foundation. There are no scheduled presentations and the closed session covers a single item: recruitment of a permanent City Clerk. The consent calendar carries the most consequential dollars — two write-off authorizations totaling roughly $3.32 million in uncollectible utility and general-billing accounts (items C.5 and C.6), alongside a no-bid power-cable purchase, a renewed Stockton fire-dispatch contract, and an environmental-remediation reimbursement tied to the downtown Central Plume.

The lone public hearing (F.1) introduces a new mobile food vending ordinance with population-based permit caps and buffer zones. The regular calendar is dominated by labor and finance housekeeping: a rewritten purchasing policy (G.1), a sweep of CalPERS cost-share reductions across bargaining units (G.2–G.6), AFSCME salary-schedule corrections (G.7–G.8), and adoption of an SB 707 meeting-disruption policy due by July 1, 2026 (G.9).

This summary covers every item across the closed session, consent calendar, public hearing, and regular calendar. It includes a dedicated section on the City Clerk transition (and the background of long-serving Clerk Olivia Nashed), an expanded item-by-item consent calendar table, and concludes with a detailed addendum analyzing exactly which departments, revenue streams, and years are driving the $3.32M write-off.

The June 17 meeting is dominated by one marquee action — adoption of the FY 2026/27 Financial Plan and Budget — set against a backdrop of tightening General Fund reserves. The all-funds budget totals $302,351,060, with a General Fund of $96,208,300 that plans a second consecutive deficit year, drawing unreserved reserves down from 39% to 27% of revenue over three years.

The closed session continues the high-profile City Manager matters that have been before the Council since 2025. The consent calendar runs 18 items, the only genuinely contested one being the tree-maintenance award (a bid protest). Public hearings cover a routine landscape-district levy, a capped 2.6% wastewater rate increase, and the annual vacancy report (7.6% citywide). The regular calendar adds a five-year homeless-shelter operator agreement with OMI and a Council-requested discussion on preventing data centers in Lodi.