GOOD AFTERNOON, EVERYONE. I'D LIKE TO CALL THIS BUDGET STUDY SESSION, OUR SECOND BUDGET STUDY SESSION, TO ORDER. LET'S GO AHEAD WITH ROLL CALL. COUNCILMEMBER BLAUER. PRESENT. COUNCILMEMBER HENRIQUEZ. PRESENT. COUNCILMEMBER PONCEA IS ABSENT. COUNCILMEMBER PADILLA. PRESENT. COUNCILMEMBER VILLA-PEDUA. PRESENT. VICE MAYOR LEE. PRESENT. MAYOR FAGAZI. PRESENT. WE HAVE A QUORUM. Okay, so I would like to take things out of order today, but if we have a general public comment, I will go ahead and entertain the general public comment first. Mary Elizabeth. Hi, Mary Elizabeth. I live here in Central Stockton, and I am served by Cal Water. And so I noticed on the slides, you know, that I think 16 to 19% of the revenue comes from utility taxes. And I want to make sure, you know, that you're all aware and maybe something that you could ask for is a breakdown on which utilities you're getting that 6%. And I know there was an overage last year because of the increase in utilities related to the heat wave that we had. And so when we have more heat waves, people have to use their electricity more to try to stay cool. And so they're paying on top of that an extra 6% on that extra. And so... THE CITY OF STOCKTON PROVIDES WASTE WATER, STORM WATER SERVICES THROUGHOUT THE CITY, BUT ONLY WATER SERVICES IN THE NORTH OF THE TOWN AND IN THE SOUTH OF THE TOWN. THE MIDDLE PART, THE OLDER PART OF THE TOWN IS SERVED BY CAL WATER THAT'S BEEN HERE OVER 100 YEARS, AND CAL WATER for some reason is the utility that people are paying extra 6%. If you are provided water, sewer, or wastewater by the city of Stockton, you're not paying 6% utility tax. And so, you know, there was an issue that came up in regards to the water hydrants. and uh... the fire and you know a comment made well we don't get any money you know from cal water on that and uh... there's all kinds of complicated uh... california p u c uh... hearing uh... meetings that i hope that the city might get more involved in uh... to represent the people in uh... the central part of town but That 6% is a significant amount of money when you count it over. And if you look at where we have disadvantaged communities, many, many, many of those disadvantaged communities are located within the Cal Water Service area. And so I'd like at least some point that the city could take a look at those utility taxes and what they're paying for and who's paying for them. Thank you. That concludes public comment. Okay, wonderful. So we are going to move things out of order slightly only because I want to make sure that we get the item we need to vote on done. And of course, I don't have my agenda sitting in front of me, but just give me five seconds and I will... It is 3.1. Huh? It's 3.1. 3.1? Okay, so we're going to go ahead then and move forward with item 3.1, which is to approve a contract with Peckham and McKinney. I'm going off the top of my head for hiring of a CFO, AFC, okay, okay. Yeah, Administrative Services Department recruitment through Peckham and McKinney. It just came to me. Hello, Rosemary Revis, Director of Human Resources. We did initiate a formal RFP to recruit for the six vacancies in ASD, which is a CFO, two ACFOs, budget officer, assistant budget officer, and procurement manager. We did get nine responses. We did have a group of representatives from the HR department that did review all of the submissions for the recruitment, and then we did... select Peckham and McKinney. So this is just the contract to come forward. I know we wanted to add it today because we want to expedite this recruitment and get it started so we didn't want to wait a couple more weeks. Okay, are there any questions from council on this contract? Any public comment? We have no public comment. Okay, so council, what's the pleasure? I'd like a second. Okay, council members, please vote. Motion carries six to zero with Councilwoman Ponce absent. Okay, now we're getting to the meat of the day which is our continuation of our budget study session. I know there was a request for a presentation. Are we moving forward with that or? So, OVP will be presenting to us. Yep, come on in, Laura. Good morning. We are continuing with our item for the budget study session continuation. And there are several items that council requested. So at this time, the Office of Violence Prevention will make their presentations. Good afternoon, everyone. Laura Larson, the director with the Stockton Office of Violence Prevention. Before we jump into the budget conversation, I just wanted to my team is here and we're all wearing orange because June is a gun violence prevention month and tomorrow is actually the official national day for wearing orange but we're here today so we're wearing it today so if you see us out and about throughout the month of June we're going to be doing pop-ups Our campaign this year is Peace in the Port. And we're just trying to bring awareness, bring awareness to gun violence, honor those that have lost their lives to gun violence, and then provide opportunities and connect people in the community with healing resources. And ultimately, we just want to let residents know is that Individually, we can do a little, but together we can do a lot. For example, the See Something, Say Something campaign is one opportunity that we all can participate in when we see something that needs to have attention drawn to it. So I want to thank my team for being here, and yeah. Before you get into it. Ms. Larson, typically you guys host, or I don't know if it's this group that hosts an event at Victory Park with regards to... gun violence. Do you know when that date might be or what group? I've not heard of that. Do you guys know? Go ahead. We actually don't coordinate that, but we've been involved in it. I haven't seen anything about it. I was just asked by Council Member Enriquez about that. We don't have that meeting going, but we're going to do some stuff. We're going to do some stuff. That wasn't us that put that. Okay, thank you. Council Member Enriquez? Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, and just to add to that, I know we have a very active Moms Demand Action chapter. So they were the ones that coordinated the last two years at Victory Park, which I was a part of. But I know they aren't doing it this year. I checked this morning, their events, they don't have it. The nearest one will be in Sacramento. But I think we can always work with them to figure out if we can do something this month nonetheless, because I know you all have these flyers about all that you plan to do. So I think if we get in contact with them, moving forward and have that better relationship, I think we can have a consistent event every year with your office. Absolutely. Thank you. And just to let you know, I'll send out a schedule where we're going to be throughout the community doing our pop-ups as well. We have Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Sorry. I mean, well, first I want to say, can you hear me? Is it on? You know, I really appreciate all the work that all of you are doing every day. As you know, I've been up there many times. I love the work, the information, the engagement. And this is a personal experience. thing for me because of what I've been through in my life and now sitting in this seat and having the privilege of being able to have my colleagues hear the work, see the work, understand how we can support the work. I do want to just highlight Pedals for Peace, which is something that I participated in last year. I found out that there is no plan to do it this year. I think between them, I forgot her name, you know. Balloons Over Bullets. Well, there's Balloons Over Bullets and then there's the folks who are over at SEIU. I can't think of her name right now, but I know the person. i would love to support something like that participate some like that it was good to see so many young people get out you and i met all those bike riders uh... in lincoln village if there's a way we can do something i think engaging the youth right now on something positive uh... just let us know how we can support we will definitely circle back with that council member villaputua yes thank you mayor i just want to say thank you you guys uh... always supporting coming to shirley parks having some meetings that Every time I ask for you guys to come, you're always doing a report. So just continue what you guys are doing for our community. I appreciate it. I know our colleagues appreciate what you guys are doing, and I'm looking forward to working with you guys and other events during the year. Thank you. Thank you. Showing you all the love from the gym. I love it. I love it. So it really is an honor to be here this afternoon. OBP normally is included in the city manager's budget sharing out. And so we don't really get an opportunity to just go over our budget. So I thank you for that opportunity. So what I did here is I just put together some key considerations for my department. First and foremost, we're going to continue to implement the ceasefire strategies. That has been in effect for over 25 years, and it has proven to be effective. And so we're not changing the core strategies, but we are certainly enhancing those core strategies, and I will briefly talk about that here. We're also going to continue to address the root cause of violence by providing targeted support to those most impacted while responding to shootings to assist victims, families, and reduce retaliation. this year we're also going to be expanding our school-based peacekeeper program uh... some of you may recall that when uh... peacekeepers first started operation peacekeepers jose could speak to that he's been around for about twenty five years the peacekeepers were in the schools and it was a very effective program we have data to show that it really did reduce the incidences of gang violence on campus and so this year we are really going to focus on uh... through grant funding and what not bringing that program back already coordinating with SUSD, already coordinating with Office of Education, so that we can get into those schools and mitigate the violence that maybe starts on campus, bleeds out to the community, or starts in the community, and then bleeds back into the campus. We're also going to develop an employment readiness program. And this program really is going to be a paid internship program where we're going to bring them in, teach them some life skills, teach them some employment skills, and provide a small stipend so that they can be committed, coming, doing what they need to do, and then connect them with trade schools or whatnot and get them a job that would definitely be a grant funded opportunity that we're going to approach we're going to increase our trauma-informed services and substance use programming we're going to support healing recovery and long-term safety this will also be funded through grant funds And then most importantly, we are going to launch a 24-7 crisis response hotline where youth in our community, whether it's in the middle of the night, whether they're at school, if they're feeling pressured to carry a gun for someone or to engage in gang violence, we want them to know that you can call someone. And the peacekeepers are on call 24-7 anyway, so it just made sense to create this hotline where they can text us, call us, and if they need help in the moment, We can go out and help them. If we can mitigate the situation over the phone and then follow up during work hours the next day, we will do that. But regardless, we definitely want to make sure that our young people know that you don't have to succumb to the pressures of, you know, pick up this gun, carry this gun for me, and go carry out this act. Councilwoman Padilla has a question. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Do we know what age group the employment readiness might focus on? Oh, yeah. So it's going to be 17 to 35. Okay. Thank you. We did expand the age. We have a current federal grant, and that age was 18 to 25. But my goodness, we have so many older gentlemen who are just getting out of prison, and women, or just older people who are still trying to, you know, gather their footing, and that program wasn't able to serve them. So we did want to expand out this particular program. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. Yesterday I met with somebody from, I won't name the neighborhood, but I'll just say somebody that you all work with. uh... in the community and he had his little relative with him who was probably thirteen and i said uh... and i said well what's his relationship to all this and his response to me was we keep somebody this young next to us in case something has to happen because they know the younger people as you know are committing the more violent crimes because of the way that the laws in the state have been written Following off of my colleague's question around the age for the job referral, do we have programming or things targeting the younger demographic who we know are at a higher risk of utilization for homicides or other violent crimes? Yeah, that's a really great question. Just this week we had about 20, 21 young people in our office and they were from the ages of 12 all the way up to adults. And we talked with them about, you know, your messaging that, you know, stop what you're doing or you're going to end up on law enforcement's radar or you could end up, you know, worse off. I didn't say it like that, but you know what I'm saying. I would not repeat it like that. But we just gave them that core messaging of, like, you are important and you matter and there are things for you to do other than get caught up in the violence. And so what ended up happening is the next day we had our... Unleash Your Power, which is our new cognitive behavioral book that we generated with our current CalVIP grant. And they came back. They came back the next day and they started that program, which is basically teaching them how to think about what's going on in life and how to navigate the challenges of life. We can't necessarily change what's going on in people's homes or in their communities. but we can help them think differently about what's going on with it, and we can help empower them to know that you don't have to be a victim to what's happening around you. You can make choices to step out of that. But to your point, for this summer, we're looking at taking a bunch of young folks up to big trees, do some campouts up there. I'm not camping out because there's bears, but people like to camp out, but there's hotels as well. And so getting them out of Stockton, getting them over to Monterey, taking them to the aquarium. So we're really trying this summer to just get people out of Stockton because that is our number one deterrence to violence. And I know when we had that meeting with folks from the state about the grant opportunity, I know you were excited about maybe coming up with programming related to how we could write some grants to get some state funding. I know we've been talking about Silver Lake. and ideating what that could be. I don't know where we are on that. I'm not asking for that today, but just, again, continuing to put it on everybody's radar as we look at prevention. Because the reason why I wanted your department to present today, not only because I've spent a lot of time up there talking to the people that I know you're doing a lot of hard work with, I will point to you with the gray hat. I saw your passion and your emotion around the work that you're doing, so I know how much you all believe in it. And I believe in it. I share that belief, and I believe in the vision that changing the culture of our city and making it a safer place where dreamers' dreams can be unlocked and not killed, literally, is not just the enforcement piece of it. It's what are we investing as a city with the limited resources we have, and how are we preventing crime by investing in families and these younger people. And when I think about the police chief's parenting initiative to reach the parents, so we have the PD trying to reach the parents and get them engaged. The mayor's committed to working with the school districts on our three by three to making sure that the schools are engaged. We have the city manager's office supporting the see something, say something campaign. Okay, but now how are we preventing people from going down that path that we've all had a chance to go down and stay the course? So interested to hear more about what you're asking for and how we can support that work. For sure. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I'm really glad that you guys are entertaining those programs for the young individuals. And I don't even know if this is lawful or even appropriate, but money is always a motivator. And sometimes with these younger youths, these small crimes or robbery, theft, or jewelry are for the intention of money or something monetary. Is there some type of grant or is there something that we could do to provide maybe gift cards for groceries or gas for their family or, you know, even clothing, monumental because, again, money is always definitely a major factor. Councilwoman, I like the way you think. So first and foremost, if someone is coming upstairs to the Office of Violence Prevention, there's already a demonstrated need, whether it's employment, housing, food, clothes, whatnot. If we are inviting them to attend a training or a program, we are providing incentives for them to come. It's more important to get them there to hear the message than it is to worry about giving them a gift card. As to food and whatnot, the city is the payer of the last resort. That's how I was always trained in government business and so we will connect to community resources and say hey can you help this family however We don't get caught up in trying to connect someone to have them help them. If it's an immediate need, we're doing it. So when my team is responding to shootings in the middle of the night, if that family is saying, hey, you know, I'm going to be here at the hospital, my son has been shot, I can't work, and they have an unpaid PG&E bill or if they have a portion of their rent that needs to be paid, we're helping them with that. If they have a car that the registration can't be covered because they're dealing with, you know, a loved one who has been hurt, we're helping with that. So we are already doing that. But again, we have, as you'll see, we have a very small budget to do that, and so we work within our means. Okay, thank you. So this particular slide, I really just wanted to take a quick minute to just show what is the impact of the ceasefire model. So Stockton has taken a two-prong approach to addressing gun and gang violence for the last 25 years. And so obviously the most important aspect to addressing gun violence, it's law enforcement. They go out, they do what they do, they do their stings, they arrest the people, they lock them up, and they put them in jail, but they come out. A lot of them come out. And when they come out, if there had been no programming to help them change those behaviors, what do you think they're going to do when they get back out? Recidivism. They're going right back to that. And so this particular study really shows that over the past 25 years, we had Dr. Anthony Braga, who is world-renowned for his studies in violence and ceasefire strategies, focused deterrent strategies. I'm sorry. They came out in 2022, and they really looked at our data. and we can come up here and tell you a story all day long but the proof is in the pudding and that pudding is the data and so what their team found is they looked they did a longitudinal study and what they found is that over the past 25 years so from 1997 to 2022 those individuals that engaged with the ceasefire model were 40 percent less likely to be reshot Those, and how do we know that? Because we know the individuals that are driving the gang and gun violence in Stockton. So we looked at the individuals that were invited to participate, and then we looked at the individuals that participated and those that didn't. And the ones that chose to decline our services, they were more likely to be shot than the ones that participated. Recidivism. There was a 25% reduction in overall recidivism, meaning that over 25 years, there was a 25% reduction of our citizens in this town being re-arrested. And then... Most impressive, there was a 32% reduction in violent recidivism. That could be child abuse. That could be murder. That could be gun violence. It runs the gamut. But that is a huge decrease in recidivism. When you look at other programs that track their recidivism, the state of California's prison system, their recidivism is like 75%, 60%. It's extremely high. So our recidivism is a really great number. And then what they also found is that over the 25 years that there was a 30% decrease in homicides overall. And there was a 13% reduction during COVID. You all may recall during COVID, violence was escalating everywhere and homicides were escalating. But for Stockton, because the peacekeepers did not, they were essential workers and they continued to work. Law enforcement was continuing to work and we were out there doing what we were tasked to do. And we found we had a 13% reduction during COVID. And just to bring you up year to date, homicides, there's been 17 year to date, and that's a 29% reduction compared to last year. And for non-fatal shootings, we've had 44, and that's a 10% reduction. And please don't misconstrue my sharing those numbers. Any shooting, any homicide is too much. But when you're looking at our numbers to see, like, are we having an impact or making a difference, it certainly does demonstrate that we are trending in that direction. Vice Mayor? Thank you, Mary. Yeah, I'm glad you, I like that last qualifier because in the past when I've heard people reading off the data on a sheet, we're talking about human lives and there's no, you know, so I do appreciate that. Have we seen a trend upward? in youth homicide and youth gun violence this year as it relates to last year? Do you not have that data today? I don't have the exact data, but I will tell you that we are seeing that trend. And what's unfortunate, and this is what's kind of driving my programming for the grant that I'm going to be talking about, is that we're seeing the trend and they're in high school. And there's a concentration in a particular type of school in Stockton that we're seeing that trend. And so, yes. And it's getting younger. are we getting cooperation from the schools and the school districts with the work that you're doing i remember back when i went to stag 95 94 that's when i started seeing the peacekeepers coming around in the schools are we still in the schools the way we were then they so we get called all the time um bear creek calls us um what's the other one what is Yeah, whenever there's something going on, like there's gang violence about to happen or whatever, they call us to go up there. And that's fine. We want to respond. But we have to get more involved in the prevention side of it so we don't get these urgent calls. And to your point, Any bureaucracy that you try and navigate in, you just have to continue to knock on those doors, send those emails, can we do this, create MOUs, and just keep showing up to say, like, I know this year that there has been an increase on their campuses, and so this year that I've been reaching out to everyone, they're like, yeah, we need you. Yes, you do, and here we are, and let's do this. So it's just a matter of they have to trust us, right? And so it's just a matter of continuing knocking on their doors, and this year I think it's going to happen. Well, I know it's going to happen. So this here, I just wanted to show you. Oh, you can't really see that. It says impact of OVP. So the prior slide really shows the overall impact of ceasefire. This is specifically my program. And what's important about this is like, yeah, these are numbers. 172 employment services. That's people that we have connected to either temporary services, long-term services, employment jobs, trade schools, or whatnot. And that is a 12% increase from last year. Social services, this is people who need Medi-Cal, health insurance, dental insurance, food stamps, or therapy, or whatever they might need that falls within the bracket of social services. 208 people were served, and that's a 44% increase from last year. Driver's license, 127 individuals were connected with our trainer that comes here every week, or excuse me, is it every week or every other week? Every week, and he is a DMV trainer, instructor, and he comes up there and he slowly and methodically goes over the DMV book so that they can pass that permit and get that driver's license. I don't know how many of you have taken a driver's license test lately, a written one, but it is no joke. I think it is written in a foreign language, and I could probably use some remediation. But it's really, really hard. And we were telling our guys, you just got to study. You just got to study. Go do the online test. And what we found was is our guys were coming back very defeated, saying, you know what? I can't do it. I'm not smart enough. I'm never going to get my driver's license. Well, no, yes you are. You are smart enough. And you just need someone to give you a little bit of tutoring. And so bringing in that trainer, he sits down with them and he takes his time. And we do incentivize them. You keep coming in. You sit down with them. And when you go past that permit, we're going to give you a gift card. And then when you get that driver's license, It is profound when you see a gangster standing with his driver's license and he's saying, I got my L. It is something that we all go through when we're young adults, but even as an older adult, that feeling of success, it's profound to see that joy for them. Now we just got to work on insurance and registrations. Mental health services. So here, one of the driving forces behind violence is untreated trauma. And so here we have 456 individuals engaged in some type of therapeutic service last year. That was 173% increase. And how did we do this? Well, we have a therapist. We work with Be Smooth Incorporated, and they understand gun violence. They know how it impacts the victim's family, and they also know how it impacts the suspect's family. So we were often, here's individual therapy. You should go. You should go. I'm not going. I'm not crazy. I don't need it. But then we found that when we brought them all to the table and they started doing group therapy, then they're sitting around with their peers, and they're saying, you're sad too? I didn't know you were sad. oh, well, I'm feeling that way, too. And then they're unpacking their trauma about their loved ones that have lost currently or that have lost in the past. And so that has been a big driving force of these individuals coming up, sitting down with the therapist, and just going through these different trauma-focused trainings that they go through every other week. Thank you, Mary. I know we also had connected you with Genevieve at the county to talk about how we can maybe supplement some of the services and services money that we have to pay for service have you all connected and solidified a relationship with them or were we with that yeah the challenge with uh county behavioral health is that you have to be um moderate to severe in order to benefit from those services so yes we connected and know they're they they don't work with our population of individuals unless they have been diagnosed with a mental health treatment Well, we just helped them get a $130 million grant. So I'm sure that there's a couple coins that could figure this out. So I'll reach out to Genevieve. Well, when I get there, we are applying for Prop 47. And so Prop 47 is mental health-based as well as substance abuse-based. It's an $8 million grant. I don't know if we're going to get the full amount, but we're definitely looking for expanding our connections for more funding for mental health. And it's not just therapy, right? Please don't get me, I don't want to confuse this. It's not just therapy. We have to get these young people out, get them out in the community, get them out at the beach, let them experience something other than the concrete in Stockton. And so our therapeutic approach is more than just sitting down and talking with a professional. And I just want to add to that. I took students annually to Yosemite, backpacking. No showers, no bathrooms, no cell phones. And I've taken a number of students who identified with one group or another, and it literally changed their outlook on life. Absolutely. One of the young men, I have pictures of him all red, his shorts that went down to his shins, his crease in his white shirt, you know, red hat, red shoes, you know, anyway. He's now a very successful business owner, extremely. Bought his parents a house in Brookside, completely legit. His business still has red truck. It is a red. He has all red trucks. But he said had he not done that, he probably would either be dead or in jail because it has getting out of your comfort zone because they were afraid of crickets at night. You know, the sound was deafening. the silence but when you interject an animal or something like that little squirrels like oh my god a squirrel but taking people out definitely and it shows them that there's more to life than what is even though I love Stockton but there's more to life than just absolutely circumstance here in Stockton I love what you said. And we hear it time and time again. If it wasn't for this, if it wasn't for that, I would be dead or I would be in prison. And that's what the driving force is. Sometimes we experience losses within the programming that we're doing, whether someone is getting arrested for a probation violation or they committed another crime. And I always tell my team, we can't get caught up in that because you have to look at the successes that we have had. And it's also important to note that behavior change is really hard. I don't want law enforcement to know how many speeding tickets I have, but you would think the first speeding ticket I got, I would stop speeding. But it took a few more. I don't have any currently. But so we have to remember, and I always tell my staff when they get frustrated, well, why don't they just stop doing that? Because behavior change is hard. And you have to give them the opportunities to make those mistakes. And when they have a success, regardless of how big that success is, we celebrate the smallest success that it is. So then we have our cognitive behavioral training. We had 92 individuals go through that program. High school diplomas, this year and last year, we really focus in on go to school, get your high school diploma, Office of Education's Comeback Kids. You know, we are incentivizing our guys, go get that diploma. There's no reason why you shouldn't get that diploma. Some folks want to go do the GED. Why? Just go do the Come Back Kids. Sit down. You get a tutor. They check in with you every week. You take a laptop home. You can get that high school diploma. And so this year, 53 people got their high school diplomas, and we attended their graduation. And that, again, is profound. The last one here is just emergency and permanent housing. Being able to put people in a hotel right after a shooting if they're scared, letting the dust settle before they go home, and also finding individuals that are living in unsafe locations to find permanent housing for them. And here I'll just go quickly on this one. There was 131 conflict mediations this last year, and it was up 134% from the year prior. Shooting responses, there were 93. And we actually went down. which is a good thing. That means there was a 16% reduction in our needs to respond to shootings in Stockton. And then we had 190 referrals that were sent to us that the peacekeepers followed up on. Any questions before I get into the actual budget numbers here? Yes. I was hoping for a slide that just, and the reason why I wanted your department to present today is I know how much this council is committed to addressing the needs of public safety, specifically prevention as much as we are enforcement. So thank you. Do you have a slide on the cost per homicide, cost per violent shooting, or can you just speak to that so people can understand that? That's the first thing. The second thing is I think people need to, just in humanizing all these numbers and conversations, I mean, you all have been working with a population that sometimes they come down and meet with you and then sometimes they don't because they've been murdered. And I met a guy in your department. I'm not sure if the councilman was with me that day or one of them. who had just gotten his barber clippers, you all had helped him become a barber, and then he got shot in that shooting, Martin Luther King. And so just to humanize this, this is a real thing, that there are people who are working with you, trying to get out the trenches, trying to get out the streets. We're doing everything we can, and still the streets find them somehow, or stuff happens. So it's like that ongoing work to keep people moving forward is important. But I'd like, if you can, to just talk about the cost per homicide, cost per violent shooting. Mr. Lee, I should have known to put that slide in here for you. But yeah, so we haven't ran the numbers for 2024, but for 2023, the cost of one homicide is $3.1 million. And that's all of the emergency services, the hospital services, and loss of wages, and all of that compiles at $3.1 million. And just for a shooting, I believe it's $1.1 million. Just for a shooting. So that's a lot of money. So last year we had, I think, 55 homicides and then 140 violent... So just kind of put all that together. It's millions of dollars, multi-millions of dollars. So all of the work that I've been talking about, it is actually carried out by a very small team. We have eight full-time peacekeepers, and we have two part-time peacekeepers. I have two administrative individuals who help us keep the office running. I have a budget officer who helps make sure that I don't overdraw our accounts. And then I have two supervisors, and then I have my data analyst, which is very important because she is the one that pulls all these numbers together for us. And the cost of all of this is right here. So for 2025, we have our general fund breakdown. Employee services, which is salary and benefits out of the general fund, it's $691,947. And then we have other services, which is out of general fund, it's $246,000. And then materials and supplies, 20,000. So for out of general funds, we are pulling out 961,181. And then out of measure A, it's 1,809,669,000. Go ahead. Thank you, Mary. So if I can really quick, Brandon. Brandon, right? If you can step up there. If you can just help me with some numbers because I'm a proud GED. recipient, by the way. So I take, when you guys start talking about GEDs, the mayor and the councilman here start mumbling, you know, whatever. I know. But anyway, that's why they're here. They're smart, too. Okay, cool. So when we talked about Measure A, Measure B, the other day I started getting a little bit more information as it relates to the money that taxpayers have committed to law enforcement and prevention. What are we currently budgeted for PD right now, just numbers wise? And this is specifically just what the Measure A budget is for... No, no, just for this year in the budget, what are we... For the entire police department or just... For the whole police department. Whole police department's budget including Measure A and other funding sources is... One hundred and ninety-five million dollars. One hundred and ninety-five million. That's for the year? That's for the year. And that's total budget? Total budget for the police department. Okay. And so, can you tell me what you're asking for in your budget for OVP for prevention this year? Well, I asked for a lot, but because of the budget constraints, our budget is remaining the same as it was last year. So I believe it's a total of 2.1 million. Okay, 2.1 million. Just want to kind of put those numbers out there. Not to say that one is more important than the other. I think both are equally significantly important as it relates to how we're approaching crime, how we're approaching saving lives and making our community feel safer. You know, one is investing in enforcing the law and taking people off the street and the other is trying to prevent people from getting in a position of having to be taken off. the street. The other thing we're not talking about is exactly the impact of when people do commit crimes that are taken off the street, how that leaves the family vacant. Father's not there. Mother's not there. Brother's not there. Brother died. Sister died. And the mental health and social impacts on a community. They go to Councilman Padilla's classroom. That kid's not in that seat anymore. What does that do to the classroom? What does it do to the teacher, right? So there's a trickle-down effect. So I just wanted to point out the... the amount we've asked for, the amount that you've been allotted, and then when we get into talking about what the needs are that you asked for, hopefully the council will see the value in exploring that. Thank you for that. And so I'm gonna leave you with this. So our budget plans are as follows. So the city has what it has. It can allot what it can allot to us. However, for me, that doesn't mean that I'm gonna stop looking for opportunities to find the funding because our families and these individuals that come up to the third floor every week They need it, and they're worth it. So the first thing that I'm working on right now is getting the Office of Violence Prevention certified for Medi-Cal billing. Right now, we can actually seek reimbursement from the state for the violence prevention efforts that we are already doing. So we're not creating a new program. We're not creating new work. We are just saying, hey, state, we went out, we did this violence prevention work when we respond to the hospitals, and now they're going to give us, I think it's... $25 an hour, a half hour, so it's like $56 for an hour worth of work. And while that might not seem significant, when we did a quick overlook at what the Medi-Cal reimbursement could bring in, it could bring in over a million dollars a year for us. And so getting certified for Medi-Cal billing is a beast, but we're working on it, and I just found someone to help us do that. So that's first and foremost what we're doing to find additional revenue. Secondly, we are in the process of applying for the CalVIP 5 cohort grant. That money is going to fund the school-based peacekeeper program I want to do. And when does that come back? I mean, you're submitting it now. January of 26. We are still in cohort 4. But staff are really expensive, so that grant is only going to provide two full-time individuals and five part-time staff. And you're writing the grants yourself? Yes, ma'am. The other grant I am writing is in partnership with Friends Outside, is Proposition 47. So this grant really is, it's a lot of money. It's up to $8 million for a three-year program. And it's really about addressing the shortfalls, the gaps in mental health services and substance treatment facilities. just like I said earlier about mental health you know you have to be mild to moderate no excuse me moderate to severe to get mental health services it's the same thing with substance abuse treatment so this grant are the program that we're going to put together for this one it's going to the diversion courts and those individuals that don't meet that high threshold for the county funded services we're going to develop a program where they're going to come to us we're going to program them OBP is going to work with those that are dealing with mental health, substance use, and gang and gun violence. And then our other partners are going to deal with the other side of that. So I'm not really sure how much we're asking for that particular grant, but I'm going to try and squeeze out every penny that I possibly can. Councilwoman Padilla. Thank you. Ms. Larson, have we received those grants before in the past, 5 and 47? CalVIP, yes. Prop 47, no. The county has not applied for Prop 47. So this is Cohort 5 for Prop 47, and I think County Behavioral Health applied for Cohort 1. So nobody's applied for it, and the government entity has to apply for the funds. Okay, and when does that application process start or end? It starts, well, we apply for it on the 23rd, and then they'll come back, I want to say, in October with the awards. Okay. Just estimate, do you have even just a ballpark of what you might receive with those grants? I don't know, but I'm going to build out a program with my partners to try and get the full 8 million. Okay. I just did a little math, and please correct me if I'm wrong. Based on the 24-25 projected and now the... 25, 26, there's a difference of like $470,000, right? For our budget? Yeah. And is that accurate? Yes. Okay. So that doesn't take in account these grants, right? Absolutely not. Okay. So that would offset that $470,000. once you receive. I'm manifesting. Yeah, so, but the challenge being is when you are chasing grants, you have to program according to what the grant regulations are. Yes. With our funding through the city, there's a lot of latitude to adjust our programming according to the needs of the community. Grant funding is lovely, but again, it's restrictive as well. Yeah, yeah. Okay, thank you. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. So let me just go back to the CalVIP grant. So you're saying under the CalVIP grant, What you're hoping that does is add two FTEs? Two FTEs and, is it two FTEs? Five part time. And then five part time, yeah. So two FTEs and five part time under the Friends Outside Prop 47 grant, what are you hoping to get out of that? Maybe three. FTEs? Yes. Two would be the ones to run the program and then a program, we need a grant program manager to operate it. So let me ask, so right now with everything happening in the state and the federal government with funding being extremely questionable, you don't know if you're going to get it or not. There's no guarantee when you write a grant that you're going to get it. We're not even sure, if I may interject, we're not even sure about the CalVIP, which we always have gotten in the past, because it's competitive now, because they took away the match, and so everybody can apply, and it's only $2 million. You're ahead of me, but I understand. So let me ask a question. With the two FTEs and five part-time, is the need for those positions, like do you have a need, is there a need in the community for those positions to be filled now? Yes. Okay. And then... The Prop 47 grant, which would be a partnership with Friends Outside, that would be an additional service, additional program that would be in addition to what you're already doing, that would be managed and executed by staff as part of that grant. Correct. So we don't do substance use and mental health servicing right now. We connect them to partners. And we're not going to be providing direct services. We are going to be their mentors, making sure that they get there and making sure that they're following through. Under the CalVIP grant, those two FTEs, what would those positions be? One of them would be the school-based supervisor. So he would be going out following the school-based peacekeepers to make sure that they are just to support them. And then the other one would be a lead peacekeeper. So they would be out there to follow up. Like, they're going to be part-time, so they can't work more than 1,000 hours a year. So the lead peacekeeper would pick up wherever the part-time folks could not. And the five part-time would be? Peacekeepers? Peacekeepers, yes. Okay. Just the other thing, and this is just more feedback that I've gotten from attending your meetings and talking to people in the community. You know the peacekeeper name is a thing where culturally, you know. So are you all evaluating that, internalizing or ideating how you can address the... We haven't because it's been around forever. But just because something's been around forever doesn't necessarily mean that it needs to stay around forever. um but it is certainly something we know that there are there's a stigma with the name and um there's been a lot to manage and um i'll put that on my radar yeah i mean you you have a creative team you guys will figure it out thank you council member blauer thank you mayor laura i appreciate you being here and doing this presentation and i appreciate all the good work that all of you do um In the past I've really enjoyed going to your OVP cafes where you've got the outreach to the community. And I just listening to what the vice mayor made a good point that we spent 195 million on enforcement versus 2.5 on prevention. And it does seem out of whack. And unfortunately I know this. THIS PARTICULAR BUDGET CYCLE, YOU KNOW, I DON'T THINK THERE'S A LOT WE CAN DO NOW, BUT LOOKING TO THE FUTURE, I MEAN, THAT DEFINITELY SEEMS LIKE SOMETHING THAT, YOU KNOW, WE NEED TO DO. BUT I DO WANT TO REALLY APPLAUD YOU FOR GOING AFTER GRANTS BECAUSE THAT, YOU KNOW, AND WHILE THERE IS UNCERTAINTY, THERE IS MONEY OUT THERE TO BE HAD. AND ONE THING I WOULD ENCOURAGE, ONE THING IN THIS BUDGET IS UNDER THE CITY MANAGER'S OFFICE, THE OGSF, Remind me again what that is, Office of Grants and Strategic Funding. We'll call them OGs. The OGSF. Not as cool as the other one, OPTICS, so maybe we can work on that acronym. But I would strongly encourage you, once that's up and running, to really take advantage of that as a resource. We will. I will. Thank you. Oh, Council Member Blauer, oh, Council Member Blauer, I am a believer that things can happen. I want to say that while I understand we're here to figure out how to make a $15 million cut to our budget to balance it, which I'm confident we are because we all want to get out of here today and we're right here at the finish line. We have a superstar guy in the budget team right here, is we do, we are, we can be creative. And here's why I wanted to have this conversation today. I have invested a lot of time in going to the department, not just to meet with staff, meet with you, but meet with the people and the population that we're serving. And so I appreciate hearing the council member acknowledge the extreme comparison or lack of whatever. Thank you. That was the word. Should have got my high school diploma. But anyway, you know, I may be lost for words, but I'm not lost on the insight and vision I have for how we can be doing more as a city. And I just think, you know, the one thing that I know I'm fighting for is all the things that you're doing out there to get to the people to be able to help them follow their dreams like I was able to. And I'm a part of this community because this is literally, you know, these were the people who were in my life when I was off track. We do have creativity as a group. We do have the authority as a body to figure this out. And what I want to know is if we have open positions in other departments that are not filled that we can transfer to this department so we can fill positions that can do the important work. Because all of us ran on anti-crime, safety, saving our kids, helping people, all that. And we're all going to campaign soon about that same commitment. I want us to be real about that, but understanding what our options are. So I'll look to the city manager, deputy city manager, budget team. What creativity and flexibility do we have in consideration for at least looking at how we can serve the needs of this department by being creative and asking others to respect that. Appreciate it. Rosemary Rivas, Director of Human Resources. So I'll kind of speak on the FTE side. Currently, you're asking if we do have existing vacancies that aren't filled, if we could reutilize or repurpose those vacancies to create more positions in OVP. Correct. Correct. So yes, so what we would do is there's various areas that we would have to look at. First off, funding. We would have to look for a general fund position, right? So there is not, out of the 243 that we do have, we would have to say which ones are generally funded. And then we would have to meet with the departments to say and justify and work strategically with them to say, do you need this position and which ones can we take? But yes. Can that be done? Yes. Okay, so the question then that I would ask, and I don't know if it's the mayor who's been in this predicament before or the city manager or city attorneys or you, what is the process then so we can all get out of here to say, okay, we accept the city manager's recommendations as presented yesterday with respect to how we need to reduce the budget, but in order to balance it and maintain the balance, knowing that from what I heard from Ms. Larson is that two FTEs and five part-time positions A total of seven positions is what they need in order to serve the population and the current needs in our community now. And not knowing if a grant is going to come or not, but that's something that we can figure out. How do we accomplish that? What's that process? So they can... they can educate you on the process so if you're looking at full-time employees that's a full-time vacancies we don't have part-time vacancies that are available so i just want to make that clear so in my previous experience in labor negotiations at the union it may be different because it is hospital this is city whatever um i always went in looking at how top heavy an organization was right we have three dcms we have two afs acfos a lot of positions that have not been filled and the organization is still standing uh... we have you know there are ways of being creative i don't want us to have to go back into a lot of work to figure all that out in reorganizing the organization however uh... one f t e could be to a part-time employees right so there's there's creativity and how we do that uh... i guess i'm asking is what is the process to do that i would just recommend when you do make the request that you either say use the you know existing vacancies to create this many full-time or kind of break that full-time position into two. So just the way you kind of requested. So I'm going to take my GED and defer to the mayor, who's an educator, to tell us what that process is and whatever the appropriate motion would be so we can get out of here. Yeah, so as you requested yesterday, you wanted to know what funds were requested by departments that... with that 4.5 million that we wouldn't be doing. So they're in the presentation. We will go through all of those slides, see what's needed to balance the budget, look at a list of things that we can then select to help balance the budget. We will give staff direction on that. Then that balanced budget, based on what we want in or out of it, will come back to us on the 24th of June. Am I correct? Correct. So you basically just answered what I asked for? Yeah. Okay, great. So as long as we're clear on the record that that's what I'm looking for, and I just think it just reaffirms our commitment. I know the mayor's commitment, this council's commitment, and the city's commitment to doing all we can to reach as many people as we can. So thank you. Okay. Anything else? Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, with that being said, we're going to go to talking about our policies that we have currently in place. But before we get there, is Chief Edwards here? I saw him in there. He's in there. Our chief? Yeah, he's in here. Our chief car. Who's here? Both? Okay. If we could have Chief Edwards come out, I have some follow-up questions. before we get into the meat and potatoes. I already said meat and potatoes. You're hungry. Yeah. If he could come out, please. Oh, he's eating, too. Both of them are eating. Oh, yum, yum, yum. Okay. So yesterday, I have to say that it didn't quite set right with me. And, you know, when it was mentioned about the 35,000, I know that the city manager said, don't worry, the 35,000 is coming. But in terms of recruitment, I mean, I've seen you guys at my school. I've seen you at Edison. I've seen you at Stag. Our schools are extremely diverse. And we are trying to recruit people from our city, which was named the most diverse city. So when it said we're not going out for diversity, well, if we're at our schools, are we not looking at individuals who are diverse? Absolutely, and I think that's what our focus has been, is to hire local. And that's where we've really concentrated our recruitment efforts, is local from the schools. And that's twofold. One, that the workforce then reflects the community we serve. And the second part of that is when you're serving your neighbors, you're less likely to be drawn away to the Bay Area, to Sacramento, to Modesto, to work for other organizations. So that's why we've been using those recruitment efforts to get back into our local high schools, our local community colleges, the local groups and so forth, our auxiliaries and our explorer programs and so forth to make that investment. The challenge on the diversity component of that lies with the civil service. We get a list of names. We go right down the list of names. I can't tell you what the diversity is of that candidate when we hire. And that's, I think, part of the challenge on the back end of it. We've even taken that a step further this last year. We had a recruitment open house at Fire Station 2 to bring... all these local folks in and kind of walk through the process. This is how you take their test. This is how you sign up for the testing process. This is how you prepare for the physical agility exam. We had stations set up so they could carry ladders and drag the hoses and kind of show them what the job of a firefighter really entails. But at the end of the day, it didn't change the outcomes. Well, I have a suggestion. There used to be ROP programs. And there used to be a fire science ROP program. Lodi Unified had a huge program. Kids would do it. They would actually go to the firehouse for that. So we have our three by three. And Stockton Unified is looking to expand their CTE, their career pathways, because not only do they want to have college readiness, they want to have career readiness. So I have already put on the agenda CTE. I did that even before we had yesterday's presentation. But looking at... having our kids, you have the auxiliary, but using them while they're in high school as a career pathway. Let's grow our own. And if they're in at that point, and then the other thing, when we give points, I look at the MC3 program, so building trades, building trades program. If you go through their MC3 program, you get bonus points on your interview. So it's 25 is the highest you can get in points. So even if you got one more point, that puts you leaps and bounds ahead of other people in there. So I don't know if there's a way like we do support local. We give a 5%, you know, allowance for local bids. And I don't know if we could do something. I'm just trying to be creative in getting, you know, our kids into our department. in order to help diversify our department. I think that's a great idea. We'll have to work with the Human Resources Department to look at how the charter will allow for that. I know today we give preference points for veterans, so there may be an opportunity to do that as well. I think we need to give preference points for local. So I'm, and then there was one more thing, but I'll remember it. I'll go ahead and let Vice Mayor go. Thank you, Mayor. I'm glad that we're bringing up recruitment, the conversation yesterday, equity. The city manager and I literally as I was coming in here huddled around. uh... my concerns around the city's current state of diversity as it is it goes beyond your department so i want to just take a step back and let the bill because this is you know i i respect the work that you all are doing thank you for your service in all of your firefighters because i started getting text from people and you know when i speak online sometimes the police feel like oh my god he's talking about us i'm not talking about you when i'm talking about law enforcement when i talk about DEI the fire department in Stockton is doing a phenomenal job, is not the poster board for us not supporting DEI. I want to be clear on that. My concerns that came as a result of DEI was when I found out that our DEI officer was transferred to HR as an analyst, and when that name went away, when you look at national conversations around diversity, equity, inclusion, which is what that acronym stands for, and it is an acronym that... for the most part benefits white women more than anything, but that's a whole other conversation. DEI is a political dog whistle that makes black and brown people feel like they are not valued. I was approached and somebody said to me that there was no recruitment priority for diversifying the fire department and the city of Stockton as it relates to people of color. Now, let's talk about that. Sometimes our kids that come from communities like where I come from, like the people that OVP service or support, They don't see themselves there because maybe their environment doesn't allow that. Maybe their school doesn't prioritize it. Maybe their family isn't saying you should be a police officer or firefighter because that's reality, right? So sometimes there's that. When we talk about recruitment, it's not just our high schools. Does the city give the fire department the budget to go to HBCUs and recruit black? people at HBCUs. I don't know what the city has done, and that's what I've been exploring. So I just want to put context to what I'm looking at as it relates to DEI. Language may be taken off the website, positions not filled, but whatever, now there's all this stuff. And I'm getting to the bottom of that. To the mayor's point, what I do want to see is I remember growing up and one of my friend's father was a black firefighter, you know, and I was able to see him. I didn't want to do it because y'all got to run up and fire buildings. It's the smoke. I got sensitive lungs. This shit's heavy. Excuse me. The backpacks are heavy. And so I have a respect for what you do, but it just ain't for me. And to Councilwoman Padilla's point, it's not for a lot of women either. She's going to walk them comments back later. But we respect what you do. So I just want to say to the mayor's point, I do agree. I know her passion for getting kids involved, and I want to support that as a council. We have to figure out as a city how to support your department. I do at some point want to explore, and you're going to be gone, so we'll be talking to you, about how we can... as a city help get behind you with the 35,000, which I heard yesterday loud and clear from the manager. That will not go to HBCUs. That's not enough. No, that's okay. I can get to the black folks. Don't worry about it. I'll get you some HBCUs. I'm going to get you. Trust me. You ask for black, you're going to get it. What in the context of, you know. Yes, we'll help you. But I do want to reaffirm our commitment that I heard straight from the manager yesterday that the 35,000 that is for an annual recruitment program budget will be provided uh... my caveat that yes it was i hope that we're coming up with a plan as practice to go after and targets and people that may be mix up our department to look a little bit like our committee the second thing is yeah there was the uh... from what was it i remember my question you go ahead and i was there uh... so i i know the fire i mean that police department They have like a recruitment division. Does the fire department have a recruitment division? No, we are extremely lean. And so sort of how I explained yesterday is that we just have a group of folks that are very passionate about outreach that have the connections in the different communities. Either they went to those high schools or the community colleges and so forth. And those are the ones that are leading the charge, essentially, yes. And so we cover their time. If there's an event on the day they're working, we'll backfill their spot, or we'll pay them overtime on their day off to attend that event for recruitment. Yeah, because we had our Special Olympics bocce and, you know, fire. department members of the fire department came out and then there was a call so everybody had to leave but it was great to have you there when we had veterans not veterans memorial day having members of the fire department there you know being visible and out and then back to the women you know how many women are in firefighters do you know like in the county does Lodi have a woman does Tracy have a woman does Manteca, does Manteca have a fire department? Manteca does have a fire department. I don't know how many female firefighters in those organizations. I know the city of Tracy had a female recruit in our previous academy. It's not the last one but the one before. We have one female firefighter within the Stockton Fire Department. She's the first probably five, I mean she's been with the organization now a little over five years. Prior to that it's probably been ten years that we did not have any female firefighters. And that's a challenge for us here in the valley, hiring female firefighters. And adding on that, so a high school classmate of mine, teammate of mine, she was a captain in Oklahoma City. She worked her way up and she was a beast, she was an athlete. But she said the wear and tear, like on her body going out, if you're going out on a fire every day, It's very different than if you're, let's say, in Lodi Fire Department and you go out on maybe, you know, 10 a year or wherever. That our department, you showed us yesterday, even though it's on the decline, it's still 40 whatever thousand calls, you know, for service that you're having to get, don it all on and go out. And if there's a structure fire, you know, you're tasked with putting that fire out. If you're a man or a woman, you know, if you're six feet tall or you're five feet tall, you're still going to do that job. So I can imagine that it would be easier to work in a department that maybe pays more and has less work. I mean, isn't that like the California dream, get paid a lot and not have to do much for it? I don't know. I just have to... That's the challenge here in the valley. That is absolutely the challenge because the firefighter shift schedule is such that you can drive an extra 45 minutes and go to the Bay Area and receive a Bay Area salary, and their workload is considerably less compared to what we do here in the city of Stockton. Actually, that brings up a good question. Chip Carr, can you come up real quick? And I'm asking because you were at Livermore? Correct. And... Tell me about the frequency of calls there versus here. Night and day? Night and day, yeah. So I spent 20 years here with Stockton. It's all I knew as far as the fire department goes. So we're busy. We're busy. Everybody's busy. Not necessarily the case. Went over there and radically different. I mean, we will run a working structure fire here usually every other day. And that's like a legitimate working structure fire. And I would say my six months that I was at Livermore Pleasanton, they had what you would call a working structure fire probably maybe two or three of them in the six months that I was there. Six months, two or three structure fires? Yes. That's it? That's it. And pay-wise, what's the pay there versus here? Oh, it's, yeah, I don't even know, 20% or 30% higher. Okay. Okay. Do you have yours now? I think I've done all mine. Okay. Now, I love the mayor's questions because these are all really important, critical thought pieces for us as a council because as we set the direction to staff and as staff prioritizes their work, we have to look at how we make this city a better, put it in a better economic position where we're not as reliant on certain things in order to pay the bills. Like if we didn't have Measure A, we'd be in trouble right now. Like, as a city, just so the public knows, because apparently everybody's watching and writing all these stories. If we didn't have it, that's where we'd be, right? And we want to get to where Livermore, the Bay Area is, and we want to retain people. So thank you for coming back. and hopefully more people don't leave so they don't have to come back. They just stay. But in order to do that, we have to be creative. And anyway, that's a soapbox we could be on all day and we all want to get out of here. I want to point out one thing that was said yesterday as it related to promotion or advancement. We talked about the rule of one and the rule of three. That was the thing that I kind of talked about and said, oh, that's a charter problem or charter issue. I don't even know if I'm being disrespectful to anybody saying it's a problem. I think it's, you know, when I was talking to Chief McFadden some time ago, this is when I found out about that provision because I said, well, when you're going to promote your next number two or number three, are you going to just pick who you want, like who you know is going to be the best for the job? And they were like, no, we have to do the rule of one, which means whoever is the first at that list has to get the job. I go, oh, well, I don't know that that makes sense, but okay, whatever. And then now rule of three. That leaves it open to where, yeah, you can get the best person, but it could also be the person that you like the most, right? So now you have a black applicant, a Latino applicant, and a white woman or white man, because a white woman is almost the same as a black man or Latino, and a person, not to say you or you, could say, we're going to go with that one right there. That is where I'm interested in exploring what we're doing in terms of motivating, encouraging, and incentivizing our departments and providing resources to make our departments in our city reflect our committee. So that was the one in three, because you spoke on that yesterday, and I appreciated that. That's a charter thing? Or is that a bargaining unit thing? Civil service or charter, one or the other. Okay, and how do we change that? Is that the charter review committee? City attorney? If I may, there was an assignment issued from the audit committee to the charter review committee to actually explore the civil service section of the charter and recommend changes. So that's an assignment that's pending with the city manager's office to get a work plan together and get that done. And so they're doing that now? No, no. So how do we instruct, right now or later? The work plan has to be developed. It is a massive section of the charter. So they'll put together a work plan together so that that way the charter... review committee knows what to do. I'll defer to the mayor when we do that. And we, I nominated, but I selected somebody for our charter review committee. So that's one of the things that we can task them with is looking at that, but we've got to set those meetings up. Okay. So they've already been tasked with it, and that's what I mean by work plan is so we know you're going to look at this in this meeting and review this and get back to us by. So that way we're not dealing with them looking at one item for six months. They're actually working. We've got to cut. And that's why some of it we need to defer for language cleanup, and our charter offices should be providing us with those things. We'd be happy to. incorporate that into the work plan for the charter review advisory commission so timeline is that something the next 60 days 90 days six months it's with the city manager's office so i don't know yeah we would have to have it done um in order to get on the ballot uh by july because you guys just did one uh so it's like July or so and then rebuttals or you know the majority of the work really needs to be done by June so that we can get it on the ballot so we it gets voted on in like July like we're accepting all of this or no June so so last year we really bumped it right to the end of the deadline we had to hold special meetings to get it done I'd prefer not to do that Well, maybe if we can just get an email to the city council, clerk, attorney, all of us within a week about what the plan is, the timeline. If we're missing the deadline now because we have budget and everything else, when is it? Just if we can kind of get that. It's next June. I could provide a timeline for the election on when that information will be. So it would be next June? Next June. Yeah, we would have to be done by next June in order to make it to the November election. ASK FOR THE WORK PLAN FOR THE CHARTER REVIEW COMMISSION, THAT WOULD HAVE TO COME TO THE CITY MANAGER'S OFFICE. SO IF WE CAN JUST GET A PLAN, LIKE, JUST AN OUTLINE OF, LIKE, WHAT THAT TIMELINE IS WOULD BE GREAT. I'LL GET YOU THE ONE FOR THE ELECTION AND THEN... OKAY, THANKS. DO WE HAVE ANY MORE QUESTIONS FOR FIRE? OKAY, SEEING NONE, THANK YOU SO MUCH. APPRECIATE IT. OKAY, BRANDON, EXCUSE ME, MR. SAPOLVEDA. YOU LOOK LIKE YOU COULD BE ONE OF MY STUDENTS. SORRY. Thank you, Mayor. So yesterday, Brandon Sepulveda, interim budget officer. Yesterday, council requested some more information on several items. That was emailed to you earlier today, but one of the items that the mayor requested was information about the city's reserves. And I will provide some context as well as what we're estimating for this year. So the reserve policy is actually a part of the city's charter. And I wanted to set the context, so it is part of section 1903. And the language is quite broad here within the charter, but it states that council shall adopt a reserve policy intended to prudently protect the fiscal solvency of the city. And where it gets more specific is within the council policy manual. And this is chapter 5.01, the reserve and fund balance policy, specifically for the general fund. The following reserves will be, and this is, I believe, the background section of this policy, and it states the following reserves will be maintained by the city. The reserves will be categorized into two priorities. Priority one reserves will include working capital and known contingencies, and priority two reserves will include risk-based reserves. specify exactly what these reserves are so working capital as the mayor mentioned yesterday is two months or sixteen point six seven percent of operating expenditures and transfers out of the unassigned fund balance and this is a recommendation from gfoa which is the government finance officers association and this was something that came out of the city's bankruptcy i believe the city used to maintain a five per five percent reserve and it was determined that that was not adequate for the city's financial situation. And just to clarify. Yes. So the very first one, the reserve policy that it's in the charter. Yes. It takes a vote. The other policies we're going over are council policies that council decided. City attorney. So council has the authority to not have to put it out to a vote, but to make changes for the council policy as we see fit. Yes, the council policy for reserve and fund balance that he's reading from, that's a council policy. Okay, just making sure. Okay. The next section of the reserves is known contingencies and priority one, known contingencies which fund, for which fund balance must be set aside to address these contingencies. When this was established, the initial known contingencies were for funding the city hall after the eight-year lease expires. funding increased obligations resulting from the proposed changes in CalPERS assumptions, and market conditions that result in the inability to recruit and retain staff. And this is all verbatim from the policy manual. And then for the priority two, Reserves, these are additional fund balances which will be set aside for additional risk-based contingencies and I will break that down here a little bit. Do we know how much we're going to be saving by moving out of 400 East Main? Because we're paying market rate right now. I'm just throwing that out there. I believe rent is close to $40,000 a month for 400 East Main. Okay. Thank you. And so this is the general fund reserves financial presentation. This usually goes to council with final adoption on June 24th or will be going towards in that meeting. And there's a distinction here in that the top, the items above the line are what we call reserve targets. That's what the city is aiming for in terms of our reserves. The working capital is simple. It's 16% of the adopted expenses. So you'll see proposed target at end of fiscal year 25 is a little bit more than the $54 million because we had increased revenues from sales taxes of just kind of 2%. The next category is known contingencies. The budget office hasn't changed any of those items. And then the priority to risk-based reserves, there was a small change. And the reason for that is because that category is also formula driven for items such as what our total assets are based as a city. So all of our buildings, all of our vehicles, we get that number and then we adjust. So that number tends to increase year over year, usually by a small amount. And then there's a couple other items in there that make up that $90 million. So our total target is $240 million. And again, that was set by council policy. And then you can see below what we're expecting to have in our reserves at the end of 24-25 is $140 million and that's kind of the breakdown for those two categories. You can see working capital, we are aiming or close to being at our target and then known contingencies were underfunded by about 20 million and then risk-based reserves is severely underfunded from our targets. And that is what is currently in the budget book? That is what is in the budget book. Questions? Any questions on that? Okay. Oh, you were going to talk about 400 East Main? I was. Tina McCarty, Economic Development Director. I just wanted to, Brendan was accurate in the, 40,000 that is per floor per month for the 400 East Main Lease. However, that was not included in the budget. So because the lease was run out June 30th, we have extended just the one month. So that is additional funds for one floor for one month through the end of July 2025 and then we're out. So I just wanted to make sure as you're working hard to balance the budget that there's no misconception that there's additional money to cut. Thank you. Okay. So we can get back into our goals of achieving a structural balance here. I'm open to questions on what the recommendation was. I'm not sure exactly where we left off yesterday. Okay, so what council requested was to know where those, cuts were going to be and I know in subsequent slides you have per department what was asked for. That is correct. But when we really get into the capital improvement projects, those numbers get really big. So it's almost like you gave us a smorgasbord of items like to choose from. But the ones that you put per department, those are the ones we took off the table completely, correct? Correct. Those are items that will not be moving forward. IN THIS YEAR'S BUDGET. SO LIKE THE CITY CLERK WANTED WORDLY, AND THAT'S NOW OFF THE TABLE. OR, OKAY, NON-DEPARTMENTAL. I WANT TO ASK, GO BACK TO NON-DEPARTMENTAL. BECAUSE I DIDN'T KNOW IF YOU WERE GOING TO GO THROUGH EACH OF THESE OR YOU JUST WANTED US TO LOOK AT THEM? BECAUSE I PUT NOTES ALREADY ON MY PAGE TO ASK QUESTIONS. YEAH, I MEAN, I CAN GO THROUGH THEM. If you have questions specific to the department, they may be best directed towards them and what their effects, what's the impact? Since we just got this and we asked for it yesterday, I think we should go probably through each one. Okay. So to clarify, these are items that are. Can you go back to highlights first though? No, go to city manager's recommendation. That's the overall one that we had. Yes. Which said no new budget request, 4.5 million. Okay, so that's what we asked for then the specifics yesterday. Then let's go to the highlights. Because the 9.445, that's not reflected that exact number in the recommendation. No, the recommendation is to cut the non-safety total of 4.5 million. Right. Okay, and then going through each item, non-departmental. Yes. So I see a charter office evals $50,000. So that is when council then evaluates the city clerk, the city attorney, and the city manager, correct? I believe the deputy city managers can respond to that. So I will help as best I can and then Will will also step in. So yes, the charter offices that was submitted to us on a request was for the evaluations for the charter departments that the council will need to perform. Okay, so I've already pulled up and started to draft evaluation based on previous evaluations because I kept all of mine and I took the things that I liked from them and I was We'll have closed session where all that stuff will be handed out and council then will give it back and that will be compiled. But you're saying I could have used somebody for 50,000 to do it instead of me do it or am I supposed to? Because I don't recall necessarily having somebody every single time we did an evaluation. We didn't have a consultant. So I will just share that the most recent 360 evaluation that was conducted on the city manager and city attorney was outsourced. So I believe they carried that money over in case that was going to be the continuation of that practice. Okay. So we had, we have done it in house though. I can't answer that. So I don't have that information. I can do some research to see how it was done in the past. I was just here when that one was conducted. Right. I'm working on one, so I'm trying to save us 50 grand. So I'm glad it's off of there because we're going to save 50 grand right there. Go ahead. So last year a consultant or outsourced reached out to all of council and I believe all the directors and they did like a score sheet and then that report was developed and then given back to council. So that's how that worked. Yeah, we've done it both ways. I'm just saying when I was on council for eight years, we've done it both ways. So you'll be getting an email from me. Yeah, I don't see why we can't do it in-house. Okay. And then I see the next one, city council. Oh, sorry. COUNCILMEMBER HENRIQUEZ, SORRY. THANK YOU, MAYOR. JUST FOR EDUCATION FOR THE NEW COUNCILMEMBERS, I'M GLAD TO KNOW THAT WE'LL BE DOING IT IN-HOUSE, AND THE MAYOR, YOU JUST SAID THAT YOU'LL BE PICKING WHAT WAS BEST IN TERMS OF KEY QUESTIONS WE CAN USE TO EVALUATE. WHERE WOULD THAT BE HOUSED IN TERMS OF TIMELINE, WHO'S IN THE ADMINISTRATE, AND KEEP ALL THAT INFORMATION? SO WE WILL COME BACK WITH IT IN JULY. I PLAN TO, IT'LL BE A CLOSED SESSION ITEM. already talked to the city clerk about that for our July 24th I mean excuse me June 24th meeting each charter office will provide their list of accomplishments they usually do their own self-assessment as well or have in the past done a self-assessment using the exact same criteria, I mean the same evaluation form. And then that is all compiled, then we have another closed session where that information is disseminated to them talking about areas that were, you know, met or exceeded and areas that may need improvement. Great, thank you. And it would be good to know for the public, so in June when folks do see a closed session agenda item for performance evaluation, it would be for this. So for folks who can know this, this is to get insight of our employees. These four folks do work at the pleasure of the council, and in this case, three folks. So this is to assess and to further ask questions for clarity. So thank you. Yes. So did I answer your question? You did, Mayor, thank you. Okay. So Councilwoman Padilla pointed out our lobbyists that we just said wonderful things about. That's on here to be cut. I'm just out of curiosity, what is it and what do they do? Because I'm not familiar. Oh, when we were in D.C. Oh, oh, oh, oh, okay, okay. Correct? Townsend, wasn't that our guy in D.C.? Oh, okay, the person. So they, go ahead. That doesn't necessarily mean we're not going to be utilizing Townsend as our federal lobbyist. They had a cost increase to their contract, so we may not be able to use, fully utilize their services that were requested, but we may be able to rework. And also, these items are not moving forward in that we're not adding more budget, but the non-departmental department can reallocate what they do have in their budget to say, okay, we're going to move some money out of materials and supplies. pay Townsend to do more work for us. So there is... So department directors are going to have to be creative. Exactly. They have to live within their means. Exactly. If you see something on this list that you think is important, I believe it's within your authority to direct the directors of the departments to find a way to make it work. Okay. Vice Mayor? Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. What does our lobbyists do? I mean, I haven't passed this person in the hallway. I don't ever get no reports on what they do. Who are they lobbying? Is it just the federal government? Is it Sacramento? Is it Lodi? What do they do? Councilmember Blower could probably answer that. Thank you, Mayor. What federal lobbyists, they're in D.C. They're in the weeds working with those people. And what they did for us, and I will say this is the third lobbyist I've worked with, that was the City of Stockton's lobbyists, these people seemed the most dialed in that I've seen. I mean, they took us to the meetings, got all those meetings lined up, and what I was really impressed with, our lobbyist, Joseph Mello, I mean, we would go in there and the people knew him. And he was able to help, you know, guide the discussion. They have their pulse on what's going on in D.C. And I pressed my button earlier. One thing I... Wait, can I just say, I wasn't... Sure. Thank you for that. But I know what lobbyists do, and I know lobbyists, I know lobbyist firms. What I'm saying is, what has this firm done for our city? I mean, I don't know. I guess this is more of an informational or educational moment. Have we gotten anything? Like, everybody that went to One Voice, we spent a lot of money getting there. At some point, you know, I'm going to be asking, what did we get for that? You know, because that's a lot of taxpayer money to go there for a week, and then we come back and we don't get nothing. If we have a lobbyist, just like we evaluate everybody else... what what do they do or have they done and how are we evaluating that so the uh townsend was uh instrumental in setting up all of the appointments that the city of stockton was able to attend with the exception of the department of justice and shipbuilding townsend also provided transportation to and from each one of those apart uh departments uh for everyone on our Oh, so this was for one voice only. Yes, sir. Now, we do also use Townsend throughout the year for advice and consent where we are asking him about federal policies and trying to gain access to legislators. When we're going after specific grants or whatever. Thank you. So I think you answered the question that I had. This list of things that we see, so we see like Allied Services or Bay Alarm, this was a request to increase services. So if we cut this, we're not saying, oh, we're not going to use Bay Alarm, we're just saying we're not bumping Bay Alarm by 15 grand, correct? Yeah, that's correct. And I want the Vice Mayor to look at slide 160, which is City Council. Can you go to the next one? Where they... They did increase, but yeah, we're going to have to live within our means. Wait, I'm sorry, what is that? So that was the, it was a proposal for us to have additional funding for a travel allowance and. So we're getting an additional 8,300 or we're getting cut from 15,000 to 8,300? Yeah, we're not getting the 8,300 anymore. So I want to just, because we talked about that. I'm confused. I know we get 15,000 a year as discretionary. This was travel budget then. Okay. So we're cutting that. Additional travel budget. Okay. So we're not going nowhere. You can use your 15. There's still a travel budget. You requested to increase your travel budget because travel is becoming more expensive. So council will have to be travel cheaper or travel less and. Within your $15,000 means. Okay. SO GOING ON TO THE NEXT ONE, UNLESS ANYBODY HAS QUESTIONS ON THAT. GO AHEAD. YES, MAYOR. TWO THINGS. I'D BE REMISS. I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE, COUNCILMEMBER BLOWER, WAS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU WANTED TO FINISH WHEN YOU SPOKE EARLIER? NO. GREAT. THANK YOU. AND THEN SECOND, I'D BE REMISS, DEPUTY CITY MANAGER, DO YOU WANT TO GIVE MORE INSIGHT TO THE PUBLIC AFFAIRS? YOU SHOOK YOUR HEAD EARLIER WHEN INTERIM CITY MANAGER SAID THAT'S THE ONLY THING THEY DO. NO. ACM covered that, but I just want to say both lobbyists do more than just once a year. It's weekly meetings we have with both lobbyists, and they give us a rundown on all the bills that are happening. And if you know the state, as far as the state is concerned, there's thousands of bills being out there. So having that knowledge, having them break that down for us is very, very important, because then we can go back with the departments and evaluate, you know, what positions do we need to take? I mean, working with the mayor on positions that she may need to take for the council. So they do a lot of work for us, and I think they're very, very valuable. Great. Thank you. Appreciate the full context. Okay. City Clerk, I see that there was software that you wanted. There was another one that you spoke about that's not included here. Correct. So speak to Wordly first. Wordly, the increase for Wordly was because the original contract with Wordly and granted money for that was within our means, within the budget that we had that existed. It was coming out of the funds that we used to pay for, currently for ADA services to get, you know, whether it's sign language or any other services we had. We had money within that. And that estimated cost was based off of the length of the previous council's meetings, which averaged about two hours. So we did reevaluate what that cost is based off of our new length of meetings and broke it down to the increase we would need forwardly. So this would... So I just wanted to point out that, you know, we have a lot of internal institutional knowledge when it comes to A software. We have people in IT. We have Tony down the hall. I would say they're both great resources because there are programs out there that we could utilize that do not come at such a cost. And I realize we have a contract. I realize that it's what we're currently using, but. Wordly is insanely cheap. When we did the cost comparison, we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars cheaper forwardly than anything else. The other program that, of course, was, as of yesterday, granted to us would be PRA software, and that means we would be... Do you have any vacancies in your office? Well, the vacancy we have is the position that just got transferred over. We are already promoting staff in that position, and then we have the deputy positions that we'll be filling that vacancy creates. You have somebody already for that position? Yes, for the PRA. They're the person that's currently working on the PRAs that got transferred, and they have been working their tail off. Okay. Okay, thank you. City Attorney, your budget. The CEB. On Law Contract is the new software I told you about. That one is going to be a really stellar litigation tool for us. It's what most of the litigators that we use, how external are using, and it's going to help both educate and speed up the process, make it more efficient. It's also just a really good tool for, you know, research and information. The eDiscovery software is the same software that Catherine just talked about. It's just the other half of us. We put in a request for it. We were granted it, but it is intended to be used for PRA and storage and to avoid all of the costs that we've had to incur over the years because we don't have an internal software program to cover that. The Thompson Reuters contract is a just an annual contract that gets renewed. There's an increase slightly every year because there's an increase to the service as they make changes and upgrade the software. It's a legal research database tool. It's where we do all of our research from whether you're an advisory or litigator, whether it's got drafting capabilities, it's got news alerts, things like that. For our training budget, The $7,000 that you see is the $7,000 that I was granted from the last council as an educational tool. $4,000 was to be used for a mediation course. I do a lot of mediation with our outside attorneys, and it was supposed to help sort of educate and assist me so that when I go to those mediations, we can do an even harder bargaining job than we do right now. The other $3,000 was supposed to be spent on leadership. It's not in the budget and so they're just adding it in now so that it can be utilized. The west complete library subscription is just it accompanies our Thompson Reuters contract. It's just again the library portion so that we still get all of the you know, literature and materials, the inserts for the booklets, so we already have that kind of thing. And how many vacancies do you have? I have two litigation of vacancies, one advisory, which I am in the process of filling right now. Okay. And does everybody understand why I'm asking how many vacancies? Well, yeah, I'm just saying because then that's money that we're not spending on those positions, but we hope they get filled. Okay. Admin services. So on consultant ASD support, I wrote who and what. These are the vendor support that we are using right now to support us during the vacancies in the CFO office. Yes. So what we're doing is because we will not receive these funds, because as you know, it could be a... six months before we get these positions filled we are trying to scramble to see where we could find those other funding to support this so these are the individuals that are doing our forensic are auditing helping us with our budget and correct They're helping us with the payroll errors implementation, which I have been working with IT to see if I could use some of the ERP funding since it is a Tyler Mena. So we are trying to be, like you said, proactive and try to be, you know. try to find these clever ways of making it work. It is for the CFO who is in the office three days a week. So when I'm in HR two days a week, they are in ASD supporting them when I'm not in ASD. It is also Baker Tilly to provide us extra support. So yes, it is Ryland, the efficiency study, yes, they are all of those included. Okay. Labor negotiations. Labor negotiations. So right now with labor negotiations, everything is calculated on an Excel spreadsheet, right? We are really behind the times. So there is a software system that if we input all of the information, they could give us accurate, timely. costing data when we're in that negotiations table, so we do not have errors. So what we're trying to do is try to make things not on an Excel spreadsheet, have it within a system that they could use. What we have found, especially with the turnover, is we don't even know how they calculated or formed those information, and then we have to meet with the departments to make sure it's accurate. So that is why we were trying to move forward with the times to implement this. Well, I know the error caused some delay in a recent... Correct. projected budget yes okay and it happens when everything's manual right it's a human error no harm no foul I mean it wasn't malicious intent okay and then you're the next one to HR yes so we were discussing getting the fingerprints done and doing them internally and paying for the departments to offset that cost for the miscellaneous salary surveys So we are coming up with negotiations for the comp study, and we have to conduct that comp study to identify where we are out of market. For the payroll transition assistance, this is that vendor who is helping us correct all of the payroll errors, the payroll training, developing policies and procedures, and also working in the Tyler Munis system. So part of this, I'm going to try to work with IT to see if we could use their fund. The other part is just... specifically associated with payroll, so it would not be able to be incorporated into that ERP, MUNIS fund. For the recruitment and retention, this is the $1 million recruitment and retention where we were trying to, where we had those side letter agreements with all of those units other than SPOA. So SPOA is dependent on Measure A. This is for all of the other units where we're giving sign-on bonuses, paramedic, engineer promotions, and the retention program that we have. So unless we find quarters in the couch, we're not going to be able to continue giving those bonuses? Correct. So if we do not have that money, it will expire June 30th, 2025. That's why I said apply now. Oh, no, they have to be onboarded. Sorry. Okay. Okay. Any questions on that? Okay. Public works? Who's back there? Eric Alvarez? Or if Chad's back there, have Chad come out. Oh, he's gone. He's on vacation. Okay. You got to go through your list. All right, let's go through my list. All right. Let's go to the big ticket item, maintenance contract. Who's the maintenance contract with? And what do they do? Yeah, perfect. That's a good place to start. So obviously we're really concerned with some of the cuts going on here. That one in particular isn't actually, it's a contract that's awarded already. Okay, and. It's awarded already? Yeah, we have an existing contract and that's for maintenance and janitorial services in our parks. So they're increasing the cost then? It's an existing contract and this one's a little odd in that we, our baseline general fund allots for a certain amount of maintenance and janitorial services in parks. What this is, this amount that's shown here is the increase in cost that's needed. It wasn't addressed in our baseline general fund and so it's pretty much on a year to year basis. This is a big problem for us. So what's going to happen then if we don't do it because you're talking about? Well, you know, right now everyone's talking about how clean our city is and how good our parks look. And that takes a lot of work and it takes time and money. And so I don't, with this amount of cut, it's going to be problematic. You're going to see a big difference in the field. Does this include the people that we contract out for like 209 Cares and, all the others that help us with the illegal dumping throughout the city. Or is this specific for parks? This is specific for parks and janitorial services, and it's the contract with, I believe it's Seabrook. So Ex-Loo, you know, our bathrooms and things like that? Good question. Another piece of this not here is another request we had. As you know, we've been talking about XLU. You know, sometimes it's, you know, what was not on the target list to get removed, which is what wasn't approved originally, was some of these XLU bathrooms. So that's not actually on this list. It was cut before it even got here. And I'm going to plunge right to that very last one. Plunge on purpose. It is meant, yes, pun intended. Yeah, I got it. Fountain maintenance contract. Don't tell me that's the Weber point. It absolutely is. Okay, I'll write you a check. $4,400 and what is that, $2? Or what is it? $3. $3? Yeah, that's got to get done. I'm sorry. Whatever. I will find the money in couch cushions for that. That's a jewel in our main core of this stock, and that's... Yeah, because that's a non-negotiable. The public are dependent on that. I'm just saying that's... squeals that we get to hear through the windows. Okay, what on there is outside of the fountain? Okay, so we talked about the maintenance contract, the large, the big one. The other large one that we have a staff report going to council here and that's for the traffic monitoring software. And what that really is, it's the cameras. So we have 400 plus cameras out there. Every year we add cameras. So we're talking about cameras in our right-of-way on our signals. PD uses them for surveillance. This is the maintenance contract for those cameras. It includes purchasing materials, maintaining the cameras, upgrades of existing cameras that are analog going to digital. This one, a staff report is on its way to council. We might have to wait until the mid-year review on that. Yeah. The utilities, that concerns me. Electricity, what's that for? Yeah, the story on the utilities is that for years, Public Works has been absorbing the additional utility cost over the years through, to be frank, savings and position savings. So it's vacancy savings. We're really just trying to true up all the utility costs being electrical costs, water costs, gas costs. We're trying to chew that up in our baseline budget so that we can, you know. And outside of fire, you guys have the most vacancies? Is that correct? Your department has the? I don't believe we have the. Rosemary. I'm not sure where we sit. Maybe Rosemary can help me with that. Okay. And the rest of the stuff is miscellaneous increases for maintenance services. essentially. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Ms. Ferro, do you have some big ticket items? Well, not really big, but. You should have seen my first wish list. This is nothing. Oh, I'm so sorry. No, that was old. Oh, that was old? Okay, sorry. Okay. So the first two items come out of a SEPTED that we had completed. And if you're not familiar with SEPTED, that's the Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design. So we have some officers that are certified. They come out, they look at our properties, and they identify places where we could make improvements to increase the security. If you're not aware, our facilities have a lot of things that happen all different levels, from a bullet that came through one of the walls into our community center last year, to little things that are just unsheltered come in who are maybe not in their right mind and need to be escorted out of the building. So we And that happens almost on the daily, especially at our library branches. So we are always looking for ways to improve. So these dollar amounts came from the suggestions that we received during our septet. And also we're having an issue with the civic lot where our staff are Chavez Park. We've had five cars broken into recently. So we'd like to add cameras. So it includes the cost of that as well. So all different kinds of security enhancements. It could be at one facility. They recommended that we put a buzzer that locks the front doors at another. It could be cameras. Every facility has different needs, but those are for security. You have security there, though, correct? We do. We have guards, yes. Is it possible, I know, have people that walk around intermittently, or do they already do that? They do that. Okay. Okay. And then the library materials, that is for an increase. I've talked to you all about this before for two reasons. One, just materials are becoming more expensive, but also because we're buying more of those specialized multilingual books from small publishers that are more expensive. So there's an increase in our need there. And then for staff training as well. And what I want to point out about the library materials and the training specifically is that if the county is going to fund half So they will be giving us $33,580 for library materials, and they'll be giving us $5,000 for training, but that can only get used if we match that. So if we cut this, the county is going to cut their half as well, and so I wanted you to be aware of that, that we will be leaving money on the table in those bottom two. Okay. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Ms. McCarty. both of these are to true up the budget lines of actual expenditures so last year we received for our current year that we're in we received one-time funding but it was one-time funding on the budget to be evaluated every year the reality is the bills continue to come so what it would mean as far as civic That one's the toughest of the two, to be very honest, because it's the power bill. And so it's a facility that we're renting to the public, as well as using for some community events and city activities as well. Okay, city, we can probably make do and keep the temperature a little bit warmer. But when somebody rents the facility, I'm hard-pressed to ask them to put up with 80-degree temperature because we're keeping our utility bill under wraps. Well, I know we talked about the refrigerator, one of the – Yes. That was – sucking energy like it was I don't know. Yeah. You know, if we look back and we do try to trend and see what we're using and what we're spending and so when we look at this building and we trend back say three years, we kind of do this, it's a roller coaster and it's a roller coaster because we had catastrophic failure of the HVAC system back two years ago and then it was actually down for like eight months. So we had, you may, some of you, you're shaking your head at me, may recall we had some people that had rented and made, you know, this building can be rented for wedding receptions. Right? So you're planning that out a year in advance. And that summer was terrible because we had some wedding receptions that they had planned on it for a year's time. And we, Public Works, we had parts on order. It's an old, it's the, you know, I won't say it's original, but it is 50 plus years old. The HVAC system, some of the components of the system. We did an upgrade. I know what you're thinking. We did do an upgrade, but some of the components are just that old. And we had a very difficult time fixing it. I am happy to say that it is fixed and running right now, but it isn't as efficient. You've got high ceilings in that building. We do the best we can to keep doors shut, but that one's tough. What it will mean for Pixie Woods, and I just want to point out, this is less than half of the overall landscaping cost. When we... Got a new landscaping company citywide. I will say I am thrilled with the work that they're doing. They do a better job of pruning in the off-season when they should be pruning. They did drastic pruning, so in the springtime things are blooming out. I think Pixie, as far as landscaping, is the best it's looked in many years. That being said, we're paying for it. And included in our landscaping costs is also the cost of the janitorial services. So during the season, we open in May, we close the end of October. This is the contract that handles the cleaning of our restrooms. So we're open two and four days a week, depending on the exact month of the summer. So those parts of the landscaping contract I can't cut, obviously. So what we would have to cut in this amount would be the off-season preparation, pruning, and getting the park ready. Okay. Thank you. Rosemary, are you back there still? Just a quick question for you before we move on. Well, Tina, you might be able to answer it. Come back. Tina, how many budget cycles have you been through? It was my 10-year anniversary on the first. Oh, congratulations. Thank you. In years past, was there an opportunity for you to say, I want this, this, this and this and it got budgeted? I have not been through a budget cycle and I'll add my previous city before Stockton, so 27 budget cycles. It's rare that you get everything. Right? So you're prioritizing. Let's be honest. We all have to make the best decisions. You're relying on us to be experts at what we do and tell you this is, you know, this is critical and these things we would like and would be amazing. But, yeah, at the end of the day, we'll prioritize them. They're kind of like wish list items. Like if their money's in the budget, yes. Right. But we'll still provide service to this community. We will still have clean parks. It's the best of our ability. I mean, it's not like we're going off the deep end if we aren't able to do all of these things. That's true, and the only thing I would add would be some of the city-wide contracts, we saw the expenses and the cost of those services going up. So, you know, from a park standpoint, I can speak to landscaping, and I know Chris would be right behind me. And, you know, the quality of our parks and what we want to see, and some of those parks are being rented for tournaments when you're talking about, you know, soccer fields and softball parks and things. So, you know, we're always balancing those things. So, yes, indeed, we will still go on and we will still be a city We will still provide the very best services we can, but we've worked hard as well to try to share with you the information we know and put our best foot forward to give you our expertise as things we need to think about and what is the quality we're trying to provide to the community. Okay, thank you. And that was the question I was going to ask you, Rosemary, so. Okay, Brandon, you're back up. All right, so that summarizes the BR5 or the new budget requests we are not going to be moving forward with. One of the other strategies was decreasing the general fund contribution to our capital improvement plan. And this kind of goes through a couple years of how projects were funded in the past from the general fund. There are some projects that repeat. One of the big items in FY 22-27 was a contribution to New City Hall. And 23-28, it was about, well, okay. In total, it was $13 million in FY22-27. In 23-28, it was $6.4 million, $3.2 million in 24-29, and then this year it's $3.35 million. So as I mentioned, the long-range financial plan assumes a general fund contribution of $1.3 million. So we're just decreasing this $3.35 million to $1.35 million. The department will have to prioritize which of these projects they want to move forward with. We can work with the departments to reassess mid-year whether we anticipate savings through vacancy savings or other items, but that'll be something that we're going to have to look into as the year progresses. Okay, Vice Mayor? So just for clarification, are these all projects that we're not going to be funding? This is what the department asked for from the general fund Some of these projects are in progress. Okay, before we, let's put a pin in that question. Let me go back to my previous, the other question I had in mind as you were talking. And this, the manager may have to help me with this because you've learned this as you've gotten there. So the city manager, prior city manager had a discretionary fund of about $150,000 that we know has been paid for community engagement or whatever, we talked about that yesterday. This has been exhausted by the previous manager. I may be gone now without getting into because I don't even know what all we're not seeing so I'm going to just ask questions is that budget now rebudgeted in this budget or we eliminated and allocated that money other places is there a discretionary budget in the city manager's office and if so let me just ask the question there is a discretionary budget in the city manager's office give me that while you give me those numbers the other question is the manager the previous manager was granted or I don't even know how long ago it was, city attorney or somebody can help me here, has been granted the ability to write, to fund projects under $100,000 without council discretion. I'm sorry. Prior manager had the discretion of writing checks up to $100,000 without council approval, right? Okay. That was something that had been happening way before this manager. Moving forward, we're going to at some point address that and want to have reports sent to us consistently, whether it be the council or the audit committee of that. But in doing so, where does that money come from? Does that come from the general fund? And if so, is that in this budget somewhere, and can we see that number? Because as we're considering cutting departments, I'd like to see where there may be other funds or other accounts that we don't know. with that money can be put in places where we may need is so when it comes to the contracts the policy states that the city counts the city manager is able to approve contracts that are all under one hundred thousand dollars those could be funded various ways depending how that department chooses to find that department i mean that contract anything for one hundred thousand dollars in over has to come to city council for approval okay so where does that money come from so say i am HR. I need, no, not HR. I'm a public works, I need something for $60,000. Or the manager believes he needs something paid for $92,000. It depends on how, so we look at our budget at the department, and we say in this fund, we have $100,000 encumbered and set aside because, just for example, we have NeoGov. We have a NeoGov contract. We requested that within our budget. So within that budget, we have it set up in our budget and has a budget account created for that. So we use that account to pay against that contract. So what I'm understanding is we have a total amount of money available to budget for this year, and we're approving that today. But we're also being tasked with cutting $15.1 million, or $15 million, and by cutting that, There wouldn't be any other discretionary funds to use to approve, right? Because everything you're asking for right now is all assigned to stuff. So I had your same question. So coming into this being my first year budget, I'll try to explain it how I understood it easier. So the departments right now have a base budget. That base budget, it's a baseline budget. That is what they're currently using. that is what is kind of keeping the lights on and keeping everything going. That was rolled over. So now what's come to us at the city manager's office is I need this in addition to what I had last year, and that's the BR-5s. So it's any increase, as Tina just mentioned, right? We're seeing an increase in landscaping, so we need more money to cover those costs. So those are the BR-5s that came over. In addition to those that are, like, essential because the contract increased, These are also our wish list. This is what we want to provide our team. This is what we want to bring to our department. So there's various items that were brought forward to the city manager's office. We first had to go through and say, what's essential and what's not essential? What's keeping you running that you need to function and keep producing? And then what is that? It's your wish list that we have to put aside because we just cannot afford it. Then we broke it down to a next level. Then based on that, that's where we came down to the... safety and the safety portion and then this 4.5 million portion on those essential items that they still need but now what they have to do is based on the budget is you had a little bit of kind of cushion within your budget that was already existing that you didn't spend all the way last year so you need to go in there be very strategic on how you work your funds and try to find money to cover that yeah let me ask a question other way We're going through a $955 million budget, but I don't see $955 million. If I add up everything I've seen so far, I don't see $955 million. Are there any other budgets that we're not seeing or that's not being presented that are in any other fund that could be used, utilized, or reassigned, extradited, whatever the word is, to fund things that have been cut or proposed to be cut in the city? So the $996 million is the city's total budget. And within that budget are funds that are not the general fund that the council does not have discretion to use. As Dr. Lytle mentioned yesterday about, I believe he mentioned putting somebody in handcuffs. Those are the water funds. That is a significant portion, about 20% of the $996 million. Those funds cannot be used for anything other than water improvement, water delivery, improving the systems that our water rate users pay. There's also our insurance funds which was another major increase in cost, our ISFs, those are not considered discretionary so those aren't things that the council can move around. Okay, let me, I'm trying to ask the question in a very diplomatic, there go my GED again, I lost the word. Diplomatic way, let me be specific. The last city manager had a life coach. Where's the life coach budget in here? Where are the extra costs that we're writing extra checks for that we're not seeing or approving that a city manager would have a discretionary over? Are there any other budgets that I'm missing, that we're missing, that we're not seeing? Let me back up. Are there any other costs embedded in this budget proposal that are not being presented that we could evaluate as a council that we may say we don't want that to go there, we want that to go here? And if so, what are those costs? Or what are those... So, within the general fund... And I'm not trying to trip nobody up. I'm not trying to get nobody in trouble. I'm not trying to ask questions to keep us here to midnight because I've got a flight to catch. But however, while we're having departments come up and say and present that there's essential services or services that they believe that they can't provide to our community, if there are other finances... in this budget that are being allocated to things that we're not seeing i want to present it and it's getting real quiet which means i'm on the sun i i think departments have that asking you to defend brendan let me let me tell you what i'm asking you don't tell me nothing about departments i'm asking about the city manager's department that has all these other departments, are there any costs? And I don't know the answer to this, but I'm just getting the sense that... So can I help? So would you like us to open the budget book and kind of go over what may be questions that you have to oversee? What you all showed us were all the departments that are showing us what we're not going to approve for them. Do you want us to tell you how much is in the city manager's discretionary budget? Correct. Let's start there. So... It was requested that $150,000 be set aside in the city manager's discretionary budget. Okay. And so let's start with that cost. What does that $150,000 go towards? I can't answer that question. Will, do you maybe, can you help answer? Okay. While he gets the list. Okay. That may be something that the council says we don't want to approve that. We want to put that somewhere else. Okay. Okay. And then, now thank you. That's one, $150,000. Are there other... EXPENSES IN THE CITY MANAGER DEPARTMENT THAT ARE NOT PRESENTED HERE BEFORE US RIGHT NOW AS IT RELATES TO THINGS THAT COULD BE REASSIGNED TO DEPARTMENTS WHERE THEY'RE ESSENTIAL NEEDS FOR OUR COMMUNITY. AND IF SO, WHAT ARE THOSE? I WILL JUST SHARE THAT THE PREVIOUS, THE DCM WHO IS NOT HERE AND PRESENT WAS THE ONE WHO DEVELOPED IT, SO I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH DETAILS TO TELL YOU, BUT NOT THAT I AM AWARE OF BASED ON WHAT I HAD SEEN. SURE. I JUST KNOW IF WE'RE TALKING ABOUT 900, HOW MUCH YOU SAY? 996 million, that's a lot of money. And I know that the mayor, she knows the numbers better than I do, but I haven't seen $996 million yet. Well, that's because we went over the general fund. Correct. We're not going over the money that's already promised in the ISF. Other funds. Other funds. Okay, so the specific then, my request, and I won't belabor the point to extend beyond the general fund, but specific to what we're here. We're here to approve the whole budget, correct? We're not here to just approve the general fund. Okay, so with respect to what we've been presenting over the last two days, if there are things budgeted that we have not seen, I want to know what those are in the amount. So we already found $150,000. If we keep digging in this cushion, I hope we get to a couple million or something. Okay, Lori, did you still want to speak? Yeah, just a couple of points of clarification. So the discretionary contracting authority that you talk about for the city manager actually comes from our municipal code. So there's a section of the code that says contracts of $100,000 or less at or under $100,000, the manager can spend that money. There's another section that says anything over has to come to the council. The other point of clarification is that The $10,000 for the executive coach or professional coaching, that was actually a contract provision. Okay. Okay. No, thank you. Thank you, city attorney. My question specifically is where does that money come from, right? So like general fund. The general fund, correct. So when we talk about cutting $15 million from the general fund, then that means then that there's no more – There's no more extra money there to do that with, unless there are other monies that are set aside somewhere within this budget that we're not seeing here. I'm just trying to understand. So generally, the first question, general question is, what discretionary funding and what additional funding is there embedded in this budget that's not before the council that we can consider as it may relate to allocating in departments that have not been approved for funding? one hundred forty seven thousand twenty five so answer the question that everything is accounted for everything is in the budget book everything has been presented kind of an overall we didn't go into full details but yes everything has been accounted for and reported out that's general in the budget book even those that are not general fund it's just a part of a general fund that we're speaking about here But that $150,000 that we just identified is $150,000 we could cut from the city manager budget and allocate somewhere else. Correct. Okay. Is there anything else like that without going into it? Because I would feel bad if I go home with my little GED and magnifying glass and go through this whole book or run it through a chat GBT shredder. and find something that I'm not being presented to. So I'm unaware of any other discretionary but banks or budgets that you're going to find elsewhere. Okay. Or anything else in any other. Mayor, you went through it? Nothing? Except for that $150,000? No, I mean the, we have to maintain some semblance of operation. Sure. And so. I'm looking at vacancy savings. I'm looking at the 23, I mean the 24, 25 fiscal, you know, budget hoping there's some money that was unspent from that year that we can because we historically had some and I'm hoping that we can continue to historically. And that usually happens in December when we bring that mid-year budget because we've kind of, got all of those expenditures in, right? You paid for them. You could post to the GEO. You could do all that. And you could say, OK, based on what we proposed and that budget. This is what we actually spent and this is how much revenue we have left. That's why Brandon had suggested that these can be revisited in December to say right now, right, these are the cuts we have to do to take that direction to not pull into the reserves. And I get that right now we're saying where is any other kind of fund that's general fund that we could probably say, hey, let's cut that and then give $150 to the department. Oh, no, no, no, that is not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that yesterday, if I can just take all the viewers who are watching online and all the media and everybody watching and everybody in the room, I want to take us back to yesterday. We had a very healthy conversation about the fact that each of us only have $15,000 to spend within our districts with our community. And I asked could we get an increase knowing that we were coming in to vote on a $15 million deficit that we had to balance. Today we're learning that in that whole conversation, nobody said the city manager's office is going to take another $150,000. I'm ready right now to say we're going to take that $150,000 and we're going to put $25,000 of that in each of our districts so our constituents can benefit from direct service from us. So that's one thing, okay? Then that would be seven because you've got to include me. But you get how much do you get? $60,000. Okay, so even with your 60, 25 and 15 is only 40, so we're still less than the mayor. But, yeah, give the mayor an increase, too. She can get a raise. I don't care how we distribute it. We could even take 20,000 each and take an additional 530 and give her, you know the math. You're an educator. I'm like, I have a G.D. You know what I'm saying? So, like, right now, just in that exercise, I see where, you know, this manager is far more conservative in not spending all that at craft feeds and all out on fire trucks and stuff. That's something right there I could say we do a lot of direct work in our districts where that could be beneficial. Now, I don't know if there's anything else because I didn't go through that whole book. And I'll be honest, I didn't go through every single line item because it's a lot, but if there are other things. And I can share that what I have reviewed, I do not see any. Okay. And it is at your discretion to make those recommendations and changes as a board as it is general fund. So I'd make the recommendation to the council that we each take 20,000 of that 150,000 and give the mayor the five times six, which is 30, and she would have 90 discretionary and we would have 40. I think 40 is the number, right, or 25, 35. which would give us a little bit more to work within our districts. And just to note, that was spent mostly for sponsorship that we talked about. Yes, with the prior management. So there would be no tables bought unless we worked collectively together on that, which is something I've offered to do. I've offered to always put in the lion's share for that so that we can sponsor as council as opposed to sponsor by district. THE CITY MANAGER. ONE THOUSAND PERCENT. YEAH, YOU DO A GOOD JOB OF CALLING US OR FLORENCE WILL CALL US, DO YOU WANT TO GO, DO YOU WANT TO GO, AND THEN WE CAN TAKE CARE OF THAT. YEAH. OKAY, BUT THAT'S ONE THING. WE HAVE TO THEN TALK ABOUT THE TOTALITY OF EVERYTHING ELSE. BUT GO AHEAD, COUNCILWOMAN PADILLA. WAS THERE ANY ROLLOVER MONEY FROM LAST YEAR'S BUDGET, WHICH MEANS, LIKE, LAST YEAR, ASD, let's, I'm just putting it out there, they were budgeted for 100,000 but they only used 80. Was there any carryover from a department or did they? No. Are they utilizing all their money? The policy is for any unused money and the department's budget goes back into general fund, fund balance. Every, every July or calendar, school year? Any unused money goes into the fund balance. Unless a department specifically requests this is a project that we want to carry forward, those projects come before council and require council approval. Okay. So there's in our budget, quarterly budget reports, we have a section that is for carry forward requests from departments where a department can request to carry forward a project. But if they don't do that, the money goes into the general fund fund balance. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. And any money that is left, like, We had $3 million that we as a council could. We decide ultimately where it goes. But usually the city manager's office, through talking to their directors, say, oh, can we put money here, there, wherever. And that is in the quarter four report that comes to council. But we're going to receive monthly updates, yes? Yes, mayor. Okay. on where we're at with the 24-25 budget, because that's closing out, but we won't get everything in. I know it was said December, but I will tell you when I was on council, it was November that we got it. So the sooner the better. Okay. Okay. Council Member Blauer. Thank you, Mayor. I think we did a good job going through that non-safety total of the things that we're not going to be able to do. And looking through that list, it seemed like, you know, some of those things you know i know it was a wish list for the different departments some things seem more important than others some seem like a real bummer that we're not going to be able to do as time goes by i mean our situation may change where we may be able to get some funding for that is that is that true that is true my other question is i noticed that the um the safety total 4 million 923 I mean, was it arbitrary that we just decided, well, we'll give them everything on their wish list, or did we go through that list? Can you kind of tell me what items are on there? Yeah, we did go through the list. The original ask from police and fire, which is what we're considering public safety, was $10 million. Oh, gotcha. Yeah, the city manager, the deputy city managers, the budget office went in and worked with our departments as well. We worked with the chiefs to determine... What really was essential, again, is... Can I just get a couple of highlights? Like what, with that $4.9 million? So a couple things from the fire department was the telecommunications network upgrade, AT&T Ethernet services, fire suppression, backfill, and overtime. There was some money allocated for supplies. For the police department, the big ones were support services for the new animal shelter, as well as city detect software. Yesterday, the chief mentioned Celebrite, which was the new software or the software used in investigations to look into phones that are there. So that's just some of the highlights of the $4.9 million. Could you tell me what staff? Oh, sorry. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, just a couple questions. I just want to get clarity. I rewatched parts of this meeting last night. And I feel like I heard two different things just now. And again, I asked because I want to make sure that I'm not making an assumption yesterday. And I think the mayor even added to it in terms of ARPA funds that the last budget was 150 because of ARPA, but since we no longer have ARPA, it's no longer 150. Now you're telling me, I think Rosemary just said that there is 150 set aside for discretionary funding for the city managers. budget so to the vice mayor's point where's all this money coming from so i appreciate yesterday um when our interim city manager and our deputy city manager said they'll be providing us breakdowns of all that but what i'm getting is i'm getting a sense of uneasiness and just not specifics of where things are going and that's where as us being good stewards of our funds we should know this so moving forward you know i'm not saying we're gonna have all this answered in the next couple hours but I think this council, we have to, in terms of changing the culture, is really understanding where certain money is coming from. I don't like this back and forth, getting laptops, checking things, not getting clear answers, and that's the sense I'm getting now. I'm hearing two different things. It was 150 due to ARPA. We no longer have it, yet it's still set to the side. City Attorney, I know you and I, you know, I want to be able to explore just conversations of Just because we keep doing something doesn't mean it's set in stone and it should be the way. I want to be able to explore some potential policy changes in terms of being good stewards of our funds and where money's going. Just because you can doesn't mean you should, and I'm really big about, you know, if we inherited a certain amount of money and we have to use it at a certain point, I understand that, but when we see all these gaps, and I'm thankful that we have the opportunity to see what departments need. I also don't want to be on a vacancy opening, Reliance, right, I don't wanna just rely on just the fact that we have vacancies, that's not how we should operate moving forward. And I get it, at the end of the year, if you have vacancy savings, it does help at the end of the day, but we shouldn't be in a culture where we just rely on that. I also, I think discretionary funds are really important and I'm happy because we did open this conversation yesterday and I know Councilman Padilla, Vice Mayor and I were, I think the three of us were really leading with the questions and our Deputy and our Interim were answering questions and they would give us follow up but I think there's a bigger conversation we need to have. I want to get more clarity moving forward in terms of you know, the fact that we have 15,000 each and why is that? And then now all of a sudden there's a magic 150,000 that the city manager's office gets and what goes to what. We have to be very clear when it comes to expectations how specific money should go. So this whole $100,000 rule, I don't believe it. That's me as an individual. If we have to explore policy, city attorney, I would love to have that. If we have to explore that in ledge committee, I would love that support to do that, to explore what we can and should be doing moving forward because the public is watching and trust is a really important component of this council when it comes to true trust and transparency. But that is, I think it's a bigger conversation but I want to be able to explore this and I want to be able to be intentional in taking this to ledge committee to be able to understand THE PROCESS OF, IF IT'S OVER 100,000, THE ROLE OF AN INTERIM CITY MANAGER VERSUS A PERMANENT CITY MANAGER. BECAUSE IF WE HAVE FUNDS THAT, LET'S SAY, IF WE HAVE TO FUND 35,000 FOR FIRE RECRUITMENT AND, LET'S SAY, 20,000, 30,000 HAS ALREADY BEEN SPENT ON STRATEGIC ADVICE FOR ANOTHER CITY, WE HAVE TO REALLY THINK ABOUT WHAT'S IMPORTANT AND WHAT'S NOT IN OTHER AREAS SUCH AS WORDLY, OUR ADA ACCESSIBILITY, OUR PUBLIC WORKS, OUR FOUNTAIN THAT OUR MAYOR IS GRACIOUSLY GOING TO BE DONATING. BUT THESE ARE ALL THINGS THAT WE HAVE TO BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND and as stewards what's important and what's not and being held responsible to our constituents so I will be exploring this in ledge and what we can do and I'll be working with our city attorney but I still want if it means the meteor review great but I want much further clarity on how discretionary funds work because if we get stuck with 15 again and this city manager's office has 150 I'm not okay with that and and just to A point on that $100,000 mark, it used to be $75,000, and it did get increased. But I also want to point out, you know, when we talk about contracts or things like that, you know, be it out of the city manager's office or somebody else, we have consultants that work in all of our departments, all of them, that we get people to help us where – We can't do all that and I'll bring up city attorney's office specifically because I just went through the Kurt Wilson trial and we had somebody who this is their area of expertise and so we wanted to go with the best and we went outside of our office in order to make sure that we had best representation, correct? That's correct. Okay. Yeah, so I'll just kind of comment to the authority in expediting the contract. When the departments do bring contracts forward, we have to already have it in our budget. So the money isn't new money that we're asking for. We have to use our existing funds that was approved by this body to say how are we paying for it. The reason why that went into place is because how expedited we need these contracts to move, right? Well, we have to wait to another council meeting. It does delay it. There has been, I'll just say past practice, and it has been done at audit committees, ledge committees, and where I'm going to do it at the next audit committee, where you bring a report of what has been approved in the last month just to keep the city council informed of it, not to wait for your approval. So there are ways to keep the council informed without having departments to have to delay to get those approved because it can hinder services. So I just want to share that with the council. AND THOSE MONTHLY UPDATES WOULD BE GREAT AS THE MAYOR REQUESTED. ANY TYPE OF MONTHLY UPDATE IS APPRECIATED OR RATHER YOU OVER COMMUNICATE THAN UNDER COMMUNICATE AND THIS COUNCIL DOESN'T LIKE SURPRISES. SO WE APPRECIATE ALL THE HARD WORK THAT YOU'RE DOING. SO THANK YOU IN ADVANCE. THANK YOU MAYOR. YEAH, I HATE SURPRISES. YOU KNOW, I JUST HATE IT. BUT I WANT TO COMMENT ON A FEW THINGS. ONE, WAITING FOR COUNCIL MEETINGS THAT CAUSE DELAYS. we can call a special meeting with notice to the public as long as we follow those guidelines. And so I'm always available to figure that out. And I think this council, I'm sure the mayor wanted to do one I think every week or every day, I don't remember, but she wanted to do a lot of them. So I'm a fan for doing more meetings as long as we get the time to plan it out. The second part is, to my colleague's point around the city manager budget of $150,000 that was approved by the last council for the last management. We don't need to ask permission on what we do. We're the people who are going to approve the budget. I would, again, move my colleagues to disbursing $120,000 amongst us to increase our discretionary funding and $30,000 to the mayor. And then the other thing on discretionary funding, the audit committee that I'm the chair of, we did request a copy of all... contracts entered into that fell under the manager's discretion as part of our responsibility of being transparent to the public at the last audit committee meeting. And I know that we're going to get that. And so there is that. And I think we can explore policies that allow for more transparency, where if there are contracts entered into, then you know, while they have the discretion, they forward a summary report to us whether it's at a manager update during council or report to the council some other way. But I know we're going to explore that moving forward. I just wanted to say that. And I want to go on record understanding that you're saying or the representation is that there are no other buckets like that embedded in the budget anywhere where those funds could be allocated to essential services that we've said to departments we're not approving today, that there's nothing else. That is correct. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I am open to exploring the use of our discretionary funds, and I'm a city attorney. Is that under our city charter? The discretionary fund policy is another council policy. Oh, okay. All right. So I would support Mario. 2015. Thank you, Councilman Padilla. Okay. Okay, one thing we didn't discuss, there's only one thing we didn't discuss. I mean, you did go over the capital improvement projects, but there is, you know, when I look at that neighborhood traffic calming program, I know that we put 800,000, 850,000 towards that. That's still there. You're not saying this is 1.4 million. This was on top of the $850,000. Okay, just making sure because I know we made a promise that we were going to do those projects. Correct. Okay, yeah. Could you define state argumentation program, augmentation program? I believe Eric, the Director of Public Works can clarify what that entails. Oh, staff augmentation? Okay. Staff augmentation. That is, as I mentioned before, Public Works has a lot of projects. We're approaching 200. With every CIP year that we approve, we add more projects. So we're approaching 200 projects. We don't have staff capacity to efficiently do those projects. So we need a little support and that's where the staff augmentation money was coming from so that we can actually have some contract services or some additional project managers or program managers to take on some of the workload so we can basically deliver these projects on time and on budget without delay. So an outside source or outside consultant? Yeah, yeah. That's correct. That's correct. It's similar to construction management services but it's a little different. It's actually, you know, getting those people in our office. becoming part of our team so that we can actually take some of these critical projects that we have to deliver. Some of them with some timely use of funds like state and federal funded projects and put them on their lap and saying, hey, help us out. We need to get these things moving. Okay. Yeah. And I know we've mentioned this before and you do have a lot of projects. And we've asked if we can somehow have like a spreadsheet you know, dates started, what the progress is, where it's progressing. Right. So just please keep that on your radar. Absolutely. Thank you. Okay. And to point out, this is 3.35 million and according to the recommendation, it is to reduce the general fund contribution to 2.1 million. So does not leave then 1.25 million to do something up there with? Yes. So I, how are we going to determine where we're going to do that 1.25 million? Yeah, so as Brandon said, we're going to have to take this back and then we're going to evaluate. And are you going to bring it before us then to do the final? Yeah, we'll evaluate what the priorities are for us. Okay, great. Okay. Sorry, Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Just a point of information for me. Do, when we, and this is for, ASD or budget. When we liquidate assets, where does that money go? General fund or where? Somebody got it. If it's vehicles, it goes back into the ISF fund? You mean if we sell off vehicles? Or build buildings, whatever, land, whatever we own. Like if we have assets and we liquidate the arena, if we were to sell the arena, where does an asset once it's sold or? Where does that money go? I'm going to assume it would go back to the general fund. Okay. Because it would go back to that general fund of how we. Okay. This is not a test question. I'm just trying to understand because I'm trying to, I'm just wondering, I know when I first got here I asked for a list of all our assets in terms of buildings, land, all that. Do we have a plan to liquidate assets that we don't? that we currently have that we're not utilizing or have no plan to utilize? Those conversations haven't happened, but we did talk about looking at what we have, doing maybe maybe we could contract out we could issue an RFP there are companies that come to say what does the city own what is bringing in money what are we losing money on they even look at our utilities to say where can we save on utilities so we could look at issuing RFP to get a specialist to come in here to say what is the city's current status what is impacting us negatively what's encroaching on our negative or in general fund and how what our recommendations moving forward yeah I mean I think we should do that at some point soon because I I really did that at my company and when I just went through the waste I was surprised at what I was wasting and the cuts have literally turned the direction for my company and I just think as a city if we have buildings or I think we own a car wash or a car lot or something that we're not even using, like if we have stuff that we're not using, land, buildings, whatever, we should be finding out a way to liquidate that or get our money. And I was thinking about the enterprise, potential enterprise which using rent-a-car services to save the city money as opposed to buying new vehicles every time, I would be very much interested to see what those cost savings could be. And is that something that would be coming before us? Mayor, we are in the process right now of analyzing our fleet, our entire fleet and the age of it. comparing it to the program that Enterprise is proposing could save the city millions of dollars. Yeah, so wonderful. Okay, so do you need any more direction from us or are we good? Is there anything else anybody wants to contribute? So what we will need from you is directions on if you are approving recommendations any other additional recommendations you want so that the budget team can go back update the budget book for your direction and bring it back for adoption on June 24th yeah well first I'd like to thank the mayor the manager and his staff you rosemary is Brandon or Brendan Brandon Brandon you know I was saying in the back I talk real light around Brandon because we need Brandon. So we appreciate all the work that you did, you and the team and everybody in the back who helped us through this experience. This is some of our first experience going through such a huge budget, so many departments and the work that everybody did is just so important and the work that everybody's been doing with the last budget or the current budget to deliver service to our community. I just want to thank everybody for that. Again, thank you to the mayor for all the work you went into studying all this. And again, I don't know how you balance your personal, professional, all your lives, but getting us through it and your patience with all of us who have GEDs and ask questions, I appreciate that. For me, the only two things that I recall that I, well, three things that I brought up. One was the $35,000 to the fire department, which I heard the mayor and the manager say we're all in line with that, with OVP, the two FTEs and five part-time positions and figuring that out, and the $150,000 discretionary budget in the manager's office that would be dispersed, as I said earlier, to the council and mayor. But that's it. Anything else? He was going to ask a question. So we're not voting on this tonight? We will not vote until the 24th? WHEN IT COMES BACK BEFORE US, YOU WILL NEED TO EXAMINE IT AND LOOK FOR ANYTHING ELSE. BECAUSE IT IS GOING TO BE A BALANCED BUDGET. I CAN ASSURE YOU THAT THAT IS WHAT OUR GOAL IS, WHICH IS WHY WE HAVE THESE RECOMMENDATIONS UP HERE. BUT WE HAVE TO HAVE A BALANCED BUDGET. JUST TO BE CLEAR, VICE MAYOR, IT WAS, YOU'RE REALLOCATING THE $150,000 OF THE CITY MANAGER'S DISCRETIONARY BUDGET $35,000 to each council member? 20,000 to each council and 30,000 to the mayor. Yeah, that's 150. And the only other thing I want to say to the mayor's point before my colleague goes is that what you represented, because I am going to go through it, I'm going through it just being very transparent to the public. I'm going through it as somebody who's never gone through a $966 million, $996 million, six million dollars city budget alone so for any of us if you give it to. Mister how to hear and say go through it he's not going to know I'm not going to know so I what you represented was there were no other. Hidden things in there are no other buckets of money that could be somewhere that wasn't represented here that could have been allocated to departments that represented things that were not approved in their budget. So with that representation, it's a heavy burden to bear. I'm saying that that's what I understand. So thank you. But at the midpoint, we might find that we do have some funds. But we're saying tonight that there is nothing that we can say, oh, we found that six months later that we could have found today. Council Member Enriquez. THANK YOU, MAYOR. JUST TO CLARIFY, I KNOW THERE'S A LOT OF ASKS THAT WE'VE MADE. I WOULD JUST SAY, WITHIN THE WEEK, IF YOU CAN JUST LET US KNOW VIA EMAIL WHEN WE CAN EXPECT. I KNOW OUR CITY MANAGER'S OFFICE WILL BE PROVIDING THE BREAKDOWN, BUT WHEN I ASKED EARLIER ABOUT HOW ALL THE FUNDING WORKS, WHERE YOU ALL GET MONEY FROM DISCRETIONARY AND THE CITY MANAGERS, ALL THAT, IF YOU CAN BE ABLE TO PROVIDE THAT, WHETHER IT'S IN AN EMAIL, POWERPOINT, A FUTURE PRESENTATION, BUT WITHIN A WEEK, IF YOU CAN GIVE US AN IDEAL DATE OF WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE, JUST SO YOU CAN HELP EDUCATE THE ENTIRE COUNCIL, Most of us are fairly, not most of us, but fairly new council would be helpful if we can just get a date set of when, whether that's an email or a PowerPoint or however the mayor prefers would be an easier way to digest. And we do have State of the City next week. So just, I forgot to announce that to everybody at our council meeting. We do have State of the City. So, of course, you're going to be there. So don't stress yourself and not come to State of the City. He looks like he's nervous. you okay okay so that is in addition to us still moving forward I would yeah the budget team has a very limited time like we said all of this is manual right so they have very limited time so they could still move forward but you just to get clarification you want clarification on our discretionary policy and then how we implement that here at the city per department yes okay I just want to make sure great thank you Okay. Oh, and the timeline. I'm sorry. So for the timeline, they are going to be working the next two weeks because they have to post to the agenda. So can we get it for you even after this budget is approved? Just because we've already discussed it. Is it okay if after we have that, they get it posted to the agenda, then they work on that for you and your team and the council? Yeah, I'm in no rush. I think what would be helpful would be between now and the mid-year point. I think at one point, right? So that way a year from now when this council is doing this again, we at least have more context as to how all this works. So yeah, I'm in no rush. And next year we're planning to have in person pre-budget meetings with the council before we come here to the budget study session to go over it, walk you through it, and then so we can educate everyone here. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Okay, so with that, staff has enough direction? Correct, Mr. Sepulveda? Yes, Mayor. Okay, so a motion to adjourn? Motion. Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Motion. Approved. Adjourned. 450. Oh, I...