City Council Meeting April 16, 2013

0:00:52oh good evening everyone I'd like to start this evening with a somber note uh with a moment of silence in recognition of those that were injured and killed in Boston so um let the record show that everyone's here and that we will start with a moment of silence thank you very much

0:01:43um with that I would like to move on to the Pledge of Allegiance or observation of a moment of silence thank you we're moving on to item two Council staff Communications any I'm going to start with council member Bridges nothing councilmember Abelson I have several things to report

0:02:31um [Applause] excuse me here I just um first of all I wanted to mention that we have a very exciting event coming up on Saturday April 20th this coming Saturday and it's Earth Day in El Cerrito and we will be having somewhere around 30 sites operating if you're interested in

0:03:01participating and haven't yet signed up then you can just come to the community center about um 8 45 and find a site there and then go to it and then at noon we'll have a an event at the community center to welcome everybody back and um it's pretty exciting this year we have events

0:03:27such as the broom poles where we're trying to remove an invasive species of Scotch broom from the hillsides in El Cerrito we have cleanups going on in all over town and we have all ages participating from Wee Ones to um uh one woman who's going to be helping us at

0:03:50the community center who claims to be 75 years old so um there's there's a job for everybody and we're happy to try and find it for you and thanks again to all of those of you who have already signed up um then I also wanted to um mentioned that May 9th is Bike to Work

0:04:12Day and if that'll occur between 7 A.M and 9 A.M in the morning on the ilani greenway and um excuse me and that's it for announcements thank you great council member benicini great thank you I'll just add a couple to the list that councilmember Abelson has already

0:04:33commented on first we mentioned the last meeting that the one Bay Area Plan called draft plan Bay Area is out in draft form on onebayarea.org and comments are due by May 16th so it's an excellent if you go online you can comment by chapter and you can see other people's comments so

0:04:51it's actually a really nice interactive um way to kind of interact with the with the plan in the document I also wanted to mention that there is a workshop on Saturday May 20 sorry April 27th the week after Earth day fittingly which is called less toxic Pest Management

0:05:07Workshop from 10 10 AM to 12 30 and I thought it was interesting that it's called less toxic Pest Management indicating how difficult it is to be truly toxic free so that's a will be a workshop with some expert panelists also on the same day is the annual spring

0:05:23book sale at the library that's also Saturday April 27th from 10 to 4 so you can go down and get a number of used books at really good prices and last item I wanted to mention is that the weekend of May 4th and 5th is a celebration um called bringing back the natives

0:05:40where there will be various plant sales going on at participating nurseries if you go to the website you can see the list there but there's also the Native Garden Tour and when I last checked the map yesterday there were three homes featured in El Cerrito and on Sunday you

0:05:57can sign up to go and tour their yards which is really nice and they kind of give you a tour of what types of techniques they've used in terms of integrating native plants into their garden thank you okay so I have four items the first is for Council that we do have

0:06:17a the next Contra Costa County mayor's conference is Thursday May 2nd and it's in the city of Orinda and I would encourage you to come join me at that dinner unfortunately the the business the presentation feature is Dan Bornstein so Jen and I just saw him sorry but it

0:06:42would be useful for you to come especially if you're interested in serving on some of the uh item eight uh some of the regional uh groups that we talked about a good time to start lobbying um on uh June 14th uh it's a reminder I've said this last time June 14th at 7 pm at

0:07:03the El Cerrito Library we will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the library system uh in Contra Costa County and at El Cerrito also July 21st the county will be celebrating the county-wide library system in Pleasant Hill from noon to five and um finally I just wanted to bring up the

0:07:29El Cerrito historical society and Friends of the city the Cerrito theater will be presenting a fabulous historic movie um about theaters of the East Bay and that's Saturday June 15th 10 a.m to noon free at our Cerrito theater in on San Pablo Avenue um any any staff okay no oh Janet Janet yes

0:07:58I I just realized there there's one more thing I should do here and that's an ab1234 report I attended the league of California City's uh policy committee's meetings uh in Pasadena uh on April 4th and 5th and uh so I just wanted to give a brief report about that

0:08:18and um one of the most important things I heard was about the uh upcoming changes to the health care that are occurring as a repo as a result of implementation of the Affordable Health Care Act and the things that will go into effect in particular of January of next year

0:08:43so what that means for the city is that there will be some reporting requirements that take effect then um and we have to be actually have things in place now to make those reports possible and um so as I understand it we are working on doing that um but there are some important changes

0:09:06going on that do impact um cities and then we had a presentation on amending the brown act and um an update on a number of bills in in the administrative Services committee and also in the community services committee and um the um those were the the meetings that

0:09:36I attended I particularly wanted to highlight the part about the Affordable Health Care Act implementation because it has the potential to have financial implications for some agencies thank you well thank you this is a time in our agenda when we do get oral Communications from the public

0:10:00we do have a policy of limiting the world's comments to items on the consent calendar or items that are not on the regular calendar and we do limit speech to three minutes we use a light system that will help remind you if you look like you're going to take more than

0:10:21three minutes I will also assist you verbally do we have any or speakers this evening I'm Tom panis good evening mayor Lyman members of the council and City staff my name is Tom panis and I live at [address removed] in El Cerrito as you know in El Cerrito Library communities assessment was

0:10:52created in 2006 by Paige and Morris the El Cerrito new library committee has among its participants a number of experienced Librarians and the new library committee has asked three of them to review the 2006 needs assessment the purpose of the review was to provide

0:11:05suggestions regarding what was necessary to bring the needs assessment up to date the team that prepared the needs assessment included Amy Rogers Damien Hayden and Dorothy Coakley Amalia Cunningham condensed their comments into a one-page document that's attached also

0:11:17attached to Damon Hayden's particularly careful and thoughtful review of the 2006 news assessment I think you'll enjoy reading that additionally on February 1 the Contra Costa County local agency formation commission released a draft Municipal Services review of local agencies

0:11:31providing Library services in Contra Costa County this draft Municipal Services review assesses County Library services in general and includes comments about Library facilities in the county including El Cerrito relevant portions of the lafco document have also been summarized and attached

0:11:46lavco's conclusion conclusion regarding El cereito is the El Cerrito library is in poor condition and needs replacement Capital needs are unfunded the new library committee feels that the attached documents provide both a clear starting point and a scope of workflow

0:12:00for a revised needs assessment I'd also like to report some organizational news regarding the new library committee to the council and to the community we have now officially filed in Sacramento the Articles of Incorporation for the non-profit new library Foundation we're creating

0:12:15we expect the process to be completed in the next six or eight weeks I'd also like to add following up on council member it's been a senior's comment anybody who wants to grow the wheat here that came with answer I know where to find that thank you very much next speaker please

0:12:32I have no other request to speak I see someone looking like he wants to speak so if you would step forward and you can you can uh speak and then fill out a speaker card afterwards if you would like and Mr Mayor honorable Council um I'm just here uh to uh speak about a gym in

0:13:00El Cerrito you know we always think about our Parks our Creeks but the entrepreneurial training program uh my wife just completed it last year and uh so she's now has her own business here in El Cerrito in fact her pictures inside the brochure so it's a program

0:13:18that Dwayne I cannot pronounce his last name and I'll spearheaded it okay and now it's getting recognition from John Joya over in Martinez Contra Costa County and uh Jerry Brown our governor has also uh is recognizing it and what's unique about this program you know for somebody like my wife who

0:13:37uh we spent many years in the social services and when she was laid off to budget cuts gave her the opportunity and the confidence to be able to uh you know develop her own business and uh because of networking and uh uh everything else goes on you know by working with this group uh she uh hooked

0:13:58up with uh L Street High School Tech Futures they developed her web website for her we're making a donation to the high school for that uh her bookkeeper uh resides here in El Cerrito the gentleman who's riding her uh brochure resides here in El Cerrito so it's basic

0:14:14an El Cerrito based uh company okay uh and uh she's also networked with uh some of her classmates in uh bringing their products onto her website so it's a very very uh remarkable program it gets it's a gym okay that uh no other City really has to uh to uh respond you know to the

0:14:35economy Etc again her pictures inside the brochure she didn't expect that but uh and uh she did hire an attorney me former D.A and I think she's about ready to fire on me but but that's just you know in nature of being our prosecutor and uh so anyway I just want to you know

0:14:53put that into the record and uh there's another class I believe starting again and uh and Scott's been very involved with it and uh so it's just you know it's it's you know again a gym okay okay great thank you very much any other speakers um with that I'll move on to item five

0:15:15adoption of the cons consent calendar um before I uh open this up for any motions I do want to recall the public comments that Mr Miller made some time ago and highlight a few of these items there are nine items in the consent calendar tonight one of them is an Earth

0:15:34Day Proclamation another is a bike to work day Proclamation which councilmember Abelson has talked about both of those items we have a Child Abuse Prevention month Proclamation and one that I do procedurally need to discuss which is item f uh on-call engineering we do have a

0:15:56replacement resolution that does place a amount not to exceed 250 000 per consultant on the item and so those are some of the things that are on our agenda one last one that I want to emphasize we are supporting Patricia Jones and El Cerrito resident to the appointment of to the State Park

0:16:21and Recreation Commission with that I'll entertain a motion if the consent calendar consisting of items 5A through 5i noting the amendment to item 5f okay we have a motion and a second any discussion seeing none all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed or abstained uh let the record show it

0:16:43passed unanimously with that we'll move on to item 7 a uh and ordinance establishing the measure a swim center parcel tax rates for fiscal year 2013-2014.

0:17:23good evening I'm not going to attempt to pronounce your last name until I hear you pronounce it okay you need Marion Council I'm Lisa Malik Sade I am your new French director for you is to to establish a proven ordinance to establish the rates for measure a for the next fiscal year and

0:17:42that is at 38.61 for the single family residential units 2973 for the multi-family and 270 66 for the non-residential property and this is for the swim center that was actually completed in we recently completed and we also refinanced the bonds so this is we're

0:18:06keeping the rates where they've been for the last few years and so we're asking to establish those for next fiscal year great um or will any questions for staff the only question I would have is to re-emphasize that the funds that this is being collected for are restricted and

0:18:27only can be used in certain manner correct correct great any public speakers no speakers mayor no speakers bring it back to the dies for any comments all right I'll start the comments um I do want to re-emphasize we've done this uh for at least the last five years

0:18:45and at least one council member has and and I'm channeling Bill Jones at the moment at least one council member has always uh noted that we have not uh that we've maintained this at the minimum rate for the last uh seven years and we have not changed it and we are

0:19:05continuing to hold it at the minimum rate any other comments seeing none do I have a motion I move item 7A ordinance establishing to measure a swim center parcel tax rates for fiscal year 2013-14 second we've had a motion in a second uh all those in favor say aye aye

0:19:29opposed abstentions let the record show that it passed unanimously with that we'll move on to item 7A and Miss Malik Sade are you going to start us off type say it again great thank you right um mayor members of the council I'm Scott Hannan the city manager I briefly want to apologize in advance

0:20:06because I think allergies are particularly bad today in El Cerrito so I apologize if I do a little sniffling but if I may I just want to make sure that everyone understands the process that you and I talked about prior to this we are going to go through all of the

0:20:22slides and there are a number of questions in the slides and there are questions that we will take up and deliberate after public comment so when we get to those slides the last couple of slides that do have some specific I think we've got roughly 16 questions to

0:20:37go through this evening we will be taking those up after public comment but we'll obviously entertain any questions for staff for clarification prior to public comment thank you thanks and the council should feel free to um cut us off I'm going to do this with the assistant city manager and the

0:20:57finance director so we're going to move around pass it around a little bit what when we wanted excuse me what we wanted to do tonight was to follow up very quickly on the after the adoption of the Strategic plan which was at the last council meeting and Our Hope was

0:21:14to really get a high level of Direction tonight um we realized that without detailed proposed budget numbers in front of you it's it's difficult to make certain choices so we understand that but as we're starting the budget process we wanted to take a first look of how

0:21:33we're doing for this fiscal year which we haven't reported back and all things considered we're doing we're doing fine some of the things that we're concerned about for next fiscal year and then hopefully taking a first cut at how this all ties back to the Strategic

0:21:50plan so obviously since it was only past two weeks ago we've been working feverishly on trying to put this together and as the budget process goes forward we're going to continue to peel the onion and continue to try to tie back what we do as a city and how we spend our resources to the adoption of

0:22:10the Strategic plan so today our hope is while it would be nice to get direction wherever we can or at least a consensus um we understand that this is a this is meant to be a high level first discussion and we'll have the opportunity to do more meetings as we go

0:22:28forward so with that um to get started what we'll do is give an update on the year-end budget projections talk a little bit about their current and future budget challenges provide an overview of our budget and how we how we allocate it now we will talk about the Strategic plan

0:22:50and very high level how we would allocate our current budget and then as the mayor alluded we would like to spend some time on what I've called priority setting which is meant to be an exercise discussion and possible direction for us as we spend the next uh two months

0:23:10getting really into the budget show you the proposed budget schedule and then as needed talk about where we go from here so with that I would turn it over to Lisa to talk a little bit about our current budget year good evening again I'm Lisa maloxide Finance director and I'm just going to

0:23:33take you through and kind of give you a quick update on where we are with the current fiscal year and so historically we've really talked and focused the budget discussions around the general fund and we're not going to get into too much detail this evening but we do have

0:23:47a slide up that's so that gives you sort of an overview of the total Citywide budget and as you can see that about 16 million dollars closer to 17 million dollars is act of our total Citywide budget is actually made up of special funds so that represents about 35 percent of

0:24:03the city services that are being provided by these special funds so again we're not really going to talk too much this evening but as we go forward in the budget discussions we're going to be talking a little bit more about those as we go forward excuse me one of the

0:24:17special funds we just moved on correctly which which one would that be in that I believe it's probably rolled up in other funds okay thank you yeah so this slide really just sort of highlights the larger special funds but within the other funds we do have several smaller

0:24:32funds okay so turning our attention back to the general fund in this fiscal year this gives you sort of uh just a very high level summary of where we what the bond the budget that was adopted as well as as well as where we anticipate ending the current fiscal year and you can see

0:24:51we are anticipating at this point to probably end right at budget or maybe to the Good by about 157 000 I do want to point out on this slide that we are using the one-time funds of about 598 thousand dollars these were funds that were approved in the prior fiscal year

0:25:08and this was anticipated if we actually didn't receive some Redevelopment related funds and so we are actually going to need those this year to balance this year's fund so you'll see that under the one-time use of fund balance in the total revenues so looking at the general fund a little

0:25:27more closely the next slide really focuses on the revenues that are actually supporting the general fund you can see about 16 closer to 17 million dollars of those general fund revenues are made up of taxes and we're anticipating ending the year with about 62 thousand dollars more than what was

0:25:44budgeted that's actually primarily driven by some activity within our business licenses about fifty thousand dollars so it's it's slight increase but we're always happy to see a little more Revenue uh turning our attention to the next line piece for service you'll actually

0:26:00see quite a large negative and that we're anticipating to be a close to 1.1 million dollars less than what we anticipated in the budget the primary revenue there that we're not anticipating receiving is Redevelopment related funds that I mentioned on the previous slide so that's a large chunk

0:26:18of it we're also seeing a decline in our building fees so that's about 127.

0:26:25so this is it excuse me how much was that about 127 000 on building fees and the remainder is made up of just several different fees within the Departments that are not anticipated to be received and on the last line which is the interest transfers and other revenues

0:26:41you'll see we're actually projecting to end with about four hundred thousand dollars over budget and this is really made up of three prior or excuse me three primary revenues one is a repayment from the MSC for a loan that the general fund provided we actually paid for some expenses uh on behalf of

0:27:01the MSC that's them repaying the general fund we also received a one-time property tax refund as well as a reimbursement from a prior year Grant so those are the main drivers of that you'll see overall even though we have some ups and downs we actually do end the year under budget on the revenue

0:27:20side and that's primarily the Redevelopment fees that we talked about so moving to the next slide this is really focused on sorry on art on our expenditures on the general fund so as we talked about we're projecting to come in right at budget or maybe with a little bit of a balance at the end of

0:27:43the year this is the um this is the expenditure side of the general fund so you'll see we have personnel as well as our non-personnel in Personnel we are expecting to be over budget but the two the two factors in that number are really within the fire department and it's for some OES

0:28:00expenses that are charged on the expenditure side they're fully reimbursed but they show up on the revenue side so that kind of skews the number here but those are fully recovered within as a total and we also under projected some of the overtime within their budget within the fire

0:28:16budget so those are the two primary drivers on the other sort of non-personnel miscellaneous items that's just based on sort of where we are now and kind of where We've Ended the fiscal year that we're anticipating so overall we'll end probably about forty four

0:28:31thousand dollars or right at budget at the end of the fiscal year and with that I'm going to turn it back over to the city manager thank you so I wanted to go through a little bit about particularly in the general fund how we've essentially stayed balanced the last few years and we've we've

0:28:53talked about this a number of times over the past number of years we've had a combination of deferred compensation meaning employees either didn't take colas or didn't get colas that um they were entitled to and they to their credit agreed to forego those additionally

0:29:17when we were implementing certain median adjustments and salary adjustments some of the bargaining units agreed to spread those out so we have had a lot of cooperation from our employees to hold the budget together additionally beginning this year we've increased the

0:29:35employee comp contributions to Calpers are essentially pension plan that is currently only happening on the miscellaneous side and largely in the unrepresented group of people who are now paying uh four percent of their share of four percent of their pers we have also including this year used

0:29:56furloughs at times um it's something we're not crazy about but it is a way to reduce expenses and as Lisa already alluded to um we've placed a lot of emphasis particularly in public works on our use of special funds and really maximizing those funds to wherever possible take

0:30:16the pressure off of the general fund but also to provide as much Service as possible and additionally with our streets measure we were obviously able to use the streets measure as dedicated funds to free up other areas to be used for other things so we've done a lot of things to try to

0:30:37increase Service uh and maintain essentially increase service and projects and maintaining everything that we've been doing we've also relied on one-time measures of particular note which I think the council has acknowledged in the past is over the past five years we've brought in a

0:30:55little more than 12 million dollars in Grants and as we've talked about in the in the past few meetings some of the planning sorry council member of the planning some of the planning that we really that we are doing now and that the council is authorized is really

0:31:13the goal is to put in place uh what we need to go to outside funders and fund more grants particularly on Capital and transportation related Greenways open space things like that so we're we're confident that we can continue this pattern and we we really are proud I am really proud of our staff

0:31:34who have been remarkably creative and successful through all of our departments we have and at least one fiscal year used reserves to help us balance and as I'm going to talk a lot about we have done kind of very strategic hiring and we have relied uh pretty heavily on vacancies to keep keep

0:31:57the budget balanced so to follow up on the vacancy question or the vacancy issue as you can see over the last three years we have been carrying between 10 and 12 even 16 vacancies across all departments currently as of when we printed this we were around 28 vacancies below what council

0:32:25has approved now as I said we we were carrying probably 12 of those into this fiscal year so we've added on top of that some of those positions are backfilled by temporary employees by provisional employees by contractors where we where we really need to just keep providing service and

0:32:45we accounted for that in the budget but that's really not a real effective way long term to patch things together and so when we look at next year's budget we're spending a lot of time and the staff is spending a lot of time looking at how they do Service delivery

0:33:00how we staff across divisions across departments to see if there are greater efficiencies we can find but again we we have largely balanced the budget this year on the vacancies when you add in the savings that Lisa alluded to you know Personnel is we already budget 150

0:33:23000 in savings we were probably closer to 300 to 350 000 in savings to make up for where we lost other revenues so we have this growing Reliance on vacancies you know if I had to guess when we come forward with our budget next year those first 10 to 12 vacancies will probably

0:33:42just be eliminated and our total head count will drop you know why is this important um maybe we've done an uh too good a job over the last few years maintaining what we do and hopefully everyone agrees maintaining a really high level of service but over time we're finding that

0:34:01different groups of people are working more and more hours above what they're paid for that we're getting a little behind in certain areas and uh as we put our budget together we will identify where those areas are but we really may need to do a better job prioritizing how

0:34:19we spend money can I ask you a question sure um so we have no actual hiring freeze on safety right now is that correct correct okay thank you um we have I mean as a general rule I'm not a fan of sort of hiring freezes to have hiring freezes we look at every position that's vacant

0:34:41and make determinations but there is no hiring freeze in um and I'll get i'll get back to that but we have uh in certain departments including fire made decisions to hire or not hire based on overtime based on impacts as long as we can cover full Staffing so so it's really going Beyond

0:35:03going beyond that I think where we could both inside of Public Safety and outside we've tried to pick our spots as we hire obviously trying to make sure we get it right and maximizing our ability to save money but also not affect affect Services again it's getting harder in certain

0:35:30divisions what this can lead to is we're you know being a little bit less responsive it clearly can affect morale and productivity over the Long Haul to our staff's credit I think I think we're holding it together in both those areas but I'm concerned about the Long

0:35:48Haul if we're keeping if we're talking about 20 25 vacancies I mean I don't think that is sustainable at some point we're going to have to scale back what we do whether that's programs or special events we would just be stretched too thin we could look at a reduction in office

0:36:03hours but that you know obviously has an impact on customer service and something that we would rather not do and again you know the vacant positions the other concern we have is and we'll talk more about I'll just reduce maintenance of our facilities we do a good job with the

0:36:21resources we have whether that's Parks playgrounds clubhouses a community center um but I think everyone who uses them will start noticing they're getting a little dated a little wear and tear and we don't really set aside money in an organized way to do um strategic Capital Improvements to

0:36:40ensure they last longer and that leaves us open to surprises and all of a sudden having to replace the air conditioning unit or a roof or something we want to avoid that and extend their life you've seen this on the next slide you've seen this chart before I think

0:36:58it's really important in light of uh uh what you've heard about pensions and benefits the mayor already alluded to the topic at the mayor's conference this week is Dan Bornstein who is obviously going to talk about are pensions what's important that we wanted to show

0:37:18is of course we are spending a significant portion of our budget on medical and pers while Calpers pension rates are roughly flat for the next fiscal year the Calpers board is discussing significant increases in order to provide additional assurance that they're going to meet their hurdle

0:37:40rates um and it's coming very quickly I had read just before this meeting that the committee that reviews this voted it out of committee today it's going to the calipers board tomorrow the league of California cities has asked for some breathing room to organize some thoughts

0:37:54and comments but they don't anticipate they're going to get it and it's likely to be adopted tomorrow what that would do without getting too into the details which I'm not overly familiar with is rather than having sort of variable rates in the future Calpers would set a fixed rate we would get

0:38:10bumped up probably likely in the neighborhood of five percent um and then it'd be fixed at that rate for us for I want to say 30 years or 35 years but we would have that first big bump and then go from there so uh in all likelihood pers is going to become a bigger portion of the general fund and

0:38:31as we talked about last year it's been floating in this sort of 17 range of the entire general fund um currently you know as you know with Personnel at 80 of the budget we've just started to have some groups pay into purrs but because we have collective bargaining

0:38:50agreements particularly with police and fire that extend out to 2017 those groups are not paying into pers and they make up almost three quarters of the budget so if if a goal down the road is to have employees pick up more of their share of pension costs it's something that's

0:39:11going to need to be done over time but something that I assume the council wants us to think about and we'll ask about as is unfortunately normal we're projecting a medical increase of about 10 percent again next year I already alluded to the likelihood that pers rates are going to go up again

0:39:33and that employees largely are not paying into purrs again the unrepresented group which is largely management and Technical staff have increased their share to four percent this year medical benefits we are I already alluded to we think that the city's median policy

0:39:54which has been in place for a very long time is largely keeping us competitive although I I think it's fair to say that particularly in police the policy may or may not be working based on the trouble we're having recruited and retaining officers but we are looking at that and that's something

0:40:14we want to study and maybe come back and and discuss and ultimately discuss with the groups but in spite of the economy we're having we're having significant challenges there and I think it's important to note um I have put this probably in the slides in three different places but I think

0:40:31it's important to just keep raising the issue that based on the council's policy historically of trying to have employees pay median the unrepresented employees what we call control points which is what their salaries and conversation is based on have not been readjusted

0:40:51across the board since 2006 and that's something I think we we need to consider doing that doesn't mean that everyone gets a raise it may not mean anyone gets a raise but it's difficult when we look at performance and budget to determine what's the appropriate level of

0:41:10salaries and compensation for employees without knowing what our survey group and what our neighbors are doing and that's something I think we're going to push or push the council to consider shortly shortly I do want to point out as we have in the past unlike most

0:41:26cities we do not pay medical benefits after retirement and that's one large liability that we don't have and as councilmember Abelson alluded to in her comments earlier the Affordable Care Act is looming out there and we have staff following it and going to classes and doing webinars and what that

0:41:46means but it may have an impact on our medical benefits going forward in terms of who is covered under our policy and who are required to cover so in looking at next year we went with red unfortunately that it seems like every year One Way Or Another We're getting

0:42:09hit with something we didn't anticipate for some of you who are into the historic Finance jargon of how how we do budgeting a number of years ago the state implemented what's come to be known as the triple flip which is essentially a trading of property tax for sales tax

0:42:28however it it lags so because of the economy and the economic downturn we are apparently due according to our Tax Consultants for what we'd call a true up to Prior years where property taxes were lower to the tune of around six hundred thousand dollar loss in sales tax it's

0:42:46our hope that this is a one-time hit and we get back to the levels we've been at but it's something that we we have no choice but to budget for um as Lisa alluded to in her comments um under um with the loss of Redevelopment and one of the issues that we have talked

0:43:08about a number of times here is how the money Flows In and Out related to that loss and we have a series of agreements with the municipal Service Corporation to provide the economic development services we've done in the past this year as we alluded to the MSC backfilled

0:43:29the likely loss last year so between last year and this year we have had essentially a safety net of around a million dollars next year we don't have that safety net and although the ultimate disposition of our enforceable obligations what is not known now which is another way of saying

0:43:53whether or not the city ultimately decides to file litigation against the state again to try to go back and get the money we think is rightfully ours pursuant to those agreements we cannot budget for the assumption that we will prevail now should we Prevail then we

0:44:10will have you know a significant amount of money backfilled to us but unfortunately this was sort of a one-time safety net and we will be budgeting about a 585 thousand dollar loss um in uh related to that so um another topic which I'll talk more about later is that we use fund balances

0:44:36for cash flow now up until about two years ago a little less than two years ago during certainly my time here we have always had a significant amount of pooled cash that consisted of bond proceeds from streets Swim Center City Hall we've had a Redevelopment uh and additionally

0:44:58we've had Redevelopment tax increments so we've we've had a significant amount of pooled cash at any given time as we've drawn we've essentially over the last year drawn those down to zero and so when you talk about our 10 set aside of Reserves at any given time based on our cash flow

0:45:16that number could draw down to roughly zero or worse than zero additionally because of all the grants we have we're often in a situation that we're fronting the money to contractors and Consultants while we're invoicing to um get paid back for for the services it has left us in some some weeks

0:45:37feeling like you know oh my how are we going to pay the bills having said that the last two years we've done temporary anticipation notes which is pretty common for cities but the question We'll be asking later on is in addition to that should we be setting aside more funds that are not used for

0:45:53cash flow so in the event that we need them for many different reasons we have them and we know we'll have them um I mentioned the issue of a median adjustment and whether that's something we're going to talk about and I realized I've said that three times and a greater number of positions are

0:46:12likely to remain vacant than we've done in the past how many we just you know it's too early to tell and some of that will depend on you know obviously depends on budget but also the level of service that we provide and continue to provide so Switching gears a little bit

0:46:33and I've talked to a number of the council members and I and I realize I believe a number of council members actually read a few of these books at our at our suggestion um one of the things we are we are doing as staff that came out of um our sort of international City

0:46:51management conference where they were working with Jim Collins who's the author of these books we brought it back to our senior staff and our management staff and our and our technical staff and are doing monthly facilitated workshops and they're facilitated by staff and most of us have

0:47:10read read the books and why this is important is it's really introduced some common some common themes and um issues that are really relevant to the city because our goal is to be great and to be a great organization that sustains regardless of what staff are here what

0:47:32council members are here and whether or not we have a good budget error a bad budget year and what we're trying to study is staff is what do we need to do to be great and stay great and we think a lot of these their these theories that are supported by data are consistent with the

0:47:49Strategic plan if you look at the next page sort of culling through the three books I wanted to highlight four four consistent themes that we've been talking about and the first one is what is our 20 mile March and what that really gets to is what are our core services that we need to provide

0:48:07day in and day out and after you look at that and you get Beyond these constant takeaways whether it's by the state or losses that we go through we seem to go through every year how do we continue to stay on our 20-mile March which is to provide these level of services at and

0:48:26we believe we hope with an exceptional level of service how do we get the right people on the bus and in the key seats a lot of that has to do with all these vacancies we have it just gives us the opportunity to really evaluate what chairs are filled what chairs are

0:48:43filled by whom and um how can we be more efficient and we're spending a significant amount of time across all departments doing that as we've already alluded to it's time to face the brutal facts we've have state takeaways regularly we've lost Redevelopment our property taxes have

0:49:02gone down a lot of this um almost none of this has been predictable which So to that end we need to stop projecting that things are going to get better and things are going to be like they were four or five years ago when assessed values go up by six seven eight percent every year sales

0:49:20tax went up by jumps it's just you know we we just need to assume that there's sort of is a new reality and budget for it and the other thing is where do we where do we place our big bets those could be matches for grants that could be how we staff and that's why we feel the need

0:49:39that we're trying to do more of the groundwork now to figure out how do we maximize everything we do so with that I'm going to take a break and turn it to Karen um to start tying this back to the Strategic plan okay thanks Scott hello mayor and council members I'm Karen Pincus I'm the

0:50:01assistant city manager and what I'm going to talk about are the Strategic plan goals and how we're going to how we as staff are starting to really consider how we're aligning our resources to those goals so starting here on this slide these are the city council goals that were adopted

0:50:18and identified for our current fiscal year budget and these goals are what provided the overall policy framework for the budget document and you'll see that when compared to the goals that were adopted in the Strategic plan many of the same Concepts were Incorporated

0:50:32which I think is pretty consistent that we've been on the right track all along so that's good for us as a staff too to hear and great for the community to be able to project to us and listed here as mentioned here the Strategic plan goals that were adopted by the council at our last meeting and

0:50:49these goals will drive our organization in many ways but most importantly will guide us going forward into the next fiscal year as we develop our proposed budget document and what we've done is Staff has begun the work of how to translate these goals into resources how

0:51:04the budget document will be a part of the implementation plan for all the strategies that had been discussed for the next fiscal year so starting with that we did a number of exercises this chart shows the percentage that's allocated to each department as well as capital outlay for

0:51:22the entire City operating budget including the special funds and you'll note that capital outlays is largely such things as grants measure a funds Street funds things of that nature and as Lisa had discussed earlier this reflects how we've used the special funds to their full advantage and try to

0:51:40provide as much relief to the general fund where we can and these pieces here reflect within the entire operating budget there's a pretty good balance between the Departments responsible for providing services so this would be akin to the 40 I think it was 44 million

0:51:56roughly 40 this pie the the size of this pie is about 44 million dollars yes okay and this and this is essentially the same chart reflecting only the general fund and you'll notice the capital outlay isn't represented here because we haven't allocated any general fund minis for

0:52:14Capital outlay are yes this chart shows essentially the funds that are budgeted for the ongoing operations and the operational activities that the city provides so going forward with the Strategic plan what staff has attempted to do is take a first pass in this presentation is how

0:52:32we will align the goals with our budget and starting with the general fund so the next set of slides will show how staff has done our initial assessment and certainly we welcome council's feedback either during this or or after our presentation on all of these strategies and how we might further

0:52:47refine on the alignment of services and programs to the goals so we started with assigning departments and divisions that we felt were largely responsible for providing the services attached to these goals this gave us a bit of a broader perspective as to how we would then allocate the funding to

0:53:06the goals and it's important to note that we're not necessarily suggesting on this organizational chart that um while we show a division under a certain goal that it doesn't mean the department doesn't contribute to other goals for example planning is listed under the

0:53:19sense of play school but that doesn't mean they don't contribute to say the environmental sustainability goals so what but what we tried to do is kind of um give us a bit of a high level picture of where most departments allocate most of their time to show how the general

0:53:35funds represented within each of those goals so this is what we started with so it would be say 51 of their time is spent at least at least 51 percent of their time is spent in this goal right right what we did so using that chart as a guide we then allocated the general fund that funds

0:53:53each of those departments or Division and then allocated it to that goal and when we did that you know actually as a bit as you alluded to we tried to come up with a formula that also assigned some overhead for the Department's two other goals if they cross for example

0:54:06goal a exemplary Services we all provide exemplary services in each of our departments so at least that's our goal to do so but there are other divisions that might be more responsible for making sure that other departments have the ability to do that human resources

0:54:20for example is a great example of that um Karen can I ask a question here do you think it did you consider also doing the similar access exercise with the operating budget and the reason I bring that up is that one of the goals particularly goal D focused on Rehabilitation or development of public

0:54:38facilities really seems to go along with our capital outlay budget and I'm wondering if you if you guys as you're going through these exercises if you went through that as well we've started too and that's actually you know as we started with the general fund we realize

0:54:50that that's exactly correct environmental sustainability is another example of that because this is general fund only but when we count the Integrated Waste fund that piece of the pie would act would exponentially increase so that's absolutely true and that's what we will be doing going

0:55:06forward with our implementation plan so um also for example the city council your budget of about seventy thousand dollars a year was allocated across all of these funds as well and you're paid only out of general fund so um what you can also see is that this presents a bit of a

0:55:24different picture although what it does have in common is that the public state public safety goals the public safety function does take up a majority of the general fund um it's consistent with our mission it's consistent with how we currently operate and also reminds us that in order to

0:55:41allocate more funds to another goal other pieces of the pie will either shrink or grow so um it provides us a good starting point I think as we start to discuss the general fund in relation to what we can accomplish this upcoming fiscal year um as well as the outlying years

0:55:58represented in the Strategic plan so did that I'm sorry if I may just if you could toggle back to the operating fund the the five slides back um that one you know police and fire here are uh 45 of the budget and and so when you get up to the one that's done divided by goals so slide forward a

0:56:26couple of slides um you know that goalie would be about 45 not 65 and so as you say all the other slices would get larger right exactly so we're looking forward to continuing that the exercise and how we can better use our special funds in order to fulfill these goals

0:56:48I would if I could um just add a point we we essentially ran out of time on the operating budget and will and plan to do that in the budget book but the challenge really is and uh we were struggling with everyone wants to provide exemplary service everyone wants to be responsible

0:57:10for being financially sustainable everyone wants to get their toe in a lot of these things but you can only put the money in one place so because the Strategic plan was only adopted two weeks ago um you know it really if if it was a desire of the council and if we want to

0:57:27move more in the direction of gold-based budgeting which we'll come back to which we showed a few sample Pages you know it really does require essentially tearing the budget down or making decisions on who is really responsible for exemplary Services versus uh Public Safety for instance of course

0:57:47all of our Public Safety folks want to provide exemplary service but I can't be in two boxes so I mean it's it's much harder than it looks and it was just an exercise we just didn't have the time to really try to go through to make it worthwhile yes one more point on the operating

0:58:04budget as we're considering you know doing another pie with the goals on the operating budget I would be interested in knowing I was just looking through my notes to see if I had anything on this which of those special funds are sort of a long-term funds or parcel taxes things

0:58:18that we can really kind of rely on going forward versus what used to be a large part of our operating budget which were one-time bonds clearly as you're looking at that I'd be really interested in seeing which of these can really be relied upon for the near term versus those that are

0:58:33really just one-time shots that are not going to be there next year and the same is also true of Grants which we will be showing in some of these um in some of the next slides as we discuss some of the challenges that we have found when it comes to what we can do or not do

0:58:50um So based on the work we've you know we've looked at so far what we did was a bit of a self-assessment related to the strategies outlined within which each goal so on the following slides what you will see is how we listed the strategies for each goal and then we took a first

0:59:06cut at two things first whether or not this was a service or a program that we were currently providing and um and devote resources to you and that is shown in the ongoing column which is the first column and then secondly um if it isn't currently provided when

0:59:23we will expect to do so in relationship with the five-year period of the Strategic plan so either next fiscal year Midway maybe year two or year three long term you're four year five so for goal a as you can see there are several of the strategies that we do feel we're working on currently it's

0:59:39represented in the ongoing column and that will continue to provide and allocate resources to throughout the life of the Strategic plan the red dots represent either something that we aren't currently doing or that we don't have the resources at this time to do

0:59:52that we'll need to try to find those additional resources for example in goal a recruiting a talented Workforce and recruiting and retaining a talented and effective Workforce we do feel that that's what we've been continuing to do despite some of the vacancies but having said that

1:00:09looking for long term is we're implementing strategy we're cognizant that as we previously discussed there are factors such as salaries and pension benefits that it could impact our ability to recruit in the out years um the strategy on uh City programs that are and services that are inclusive of

1:00:27people with diverse backgrounds um we recognize is something we'd like to begin next year we will need to devote more resources to fulfill the schools such as reaching out in meaningful ways to different businesses I think we discussed this at the workshop like such as ethnic businesses

1:00:41that maybe not belong to the current Chamber of Commerce um or for example making sure we're providing handouts and brochures in different languages those will have costs associated with them uh for gold B Financial sustainability on the items you see that we're

1:00:58currently providing listed as ongoing items of note needing additional resources for attracting uh and maximizing opportunities for new businesses um with respect we will again the additional resources that we'll need um for that with respect to continuing to pursue opportunities for grant

1:01:19funding you know again we're doing that we feel like we're doing a good job but as we continue to try to pursue more grants it will take more staff resources to administer those grants and we're close to maxing out what we're being able to do right now um the financial plan

1:01:36to address ongoing and deferred maintenance this was alluded to earlier um particularly with respect to um to buildings we'll need to allocate additional resources to provide the full plan for our infrastructure needs we do recognize that we will need to discuss

1:01:51and look at our current fee schedule we are we might need to consider updating our cost allocation fee study and that currently we have not been able to budget for and it's also worth noting that this and some of the other goals are of course impacted by the loss of

1:02:06Redevelopment funding as far as resources that we've been able to provide and dedicate to some of these in the past Karen um just understanding what the dot system means a Green Dot means that's when we are starting some level of service so if there's two green dots I'm

1:02:23assuming that the second Green Dot means we're going to move to some higher level of service within our current resources yes and um for example exploring opportunities for public and private Partnerships um that is something that we would like to expand upon so you know again this

1:02:40was kind of a first cut at what we sort of felt was a bit of a report card for us like what's our Baseline and so when we just when you see some of those dots Green Dots in other places or red dots in other places that's what we were trying to assess what we were doing and

1:02:56how we might be able to improve upon that so again as the bottom one is also an example of that um promoting state or tracking and promoting state and federal legislation we've all done that sort of as departments when it comes to you know keeping our eye out but we certainly

1:03:12could be able to try to do you know a little bit more dedication to to such things because certainly that does absolutely impact us for example one of the things we're watching is um whether or not uh facilities there's um the legislature is considering bills to put on the ballot for constitutional

1:03:31amendments to lower the threshold from six from uh two-thirds to 55 percent for certain facilities which would make a huge difference in one of our upcoming goals and how we can find funding so goal C you can see um those items that require additional resources that are things that we want

1:03:54to do in the future um the general Plan update um after we complete the specific plan um planning for updating uh policies for historic and cultural resources and arts and cultural celebrations um and of course the city's 100 year anniversary which is in 2017 so that

1:04:13would be probably year two or three that we'll start planning for that in earnest Goldie this one is the the one that we've obviously um talked about a lot as far as struggling with additional resources clearly this reflects that we have little resources to get it dedicate

1:04:32not only to maintenance of our current infrastructure and buildings but also for planning or updating new facilities we do not have funding for major facilities such as a library public safety building or Senior Center and we will definitely need to seek additional

1:04:45Revenue to do so and uh including the facilities plan but also as we had alluded to earlier the financial plan in order to figure out how we can fund all of these things that we really want to be able to build or rehabilitate if if we find that that's more cost effective than building a new

1:05:04building um see goal e shows within our current operations we do believe that we're working on a lot of these strategies currently for public health and safety um we will show we show that we um we need to work on how to fund improvements um as far as data-driven analysis to

1:05:24Target resources and enhance safety things like staff time but also technology to be able to do so we recognize that additional resources will be necessary to explore and Implement policies um as far as Innovative and best practices promoting Public Health such

1:05:40as Wellness programs or ordinances or policies that the council may want to consider researching those and seeing what other cities and counties and the state is doing and how we can reflect what the city would like to do on our own and last but not least goal F relating

1:05:58to environmental sustainability we're working on current on initiatives currently and plan to do so for the next year as you can see um particularly with the climate action plan which will be coming to you in the very near future but additional resources will be necessary for

1:06:13continuing to provide some of these Services because in part A lot of these services that we've had funded work through grant funding so that is something that we'll have to continue to seek new funding for any future initiatives that that we would like to either continue or or begin

1:06:32okay actually at this point um before I turn it back over to the city manager if there are any questions on any of these goals or how staff maybe came to the conclusion that we did on any of of where we placed the dots um where we are either currently doing or what we might be able to do in the

1:06:50future okay great then I'd like to turn it back over to the city manager okay on on the next slide um there are three questions that we're posing and uh just to be clear these are questions we need to get through during the budget process we weren't necessarily looking for answers to all

1:07:11of these unless you care to take these on but really as we get to the slides coming up we were asking sort of for a little more specific Direction these are things that we hope we're able to address starting tonight and through the budget process and those things include what's most

1:07:30important to the council in terms of goals and strategies you obviously just passed the Strategic plan and we want to try to be consistent with that again our first cut at our are we aligning our resources to our goals and then really when we get into making choices uh what is really your uh most

1:07:52or least desirable uh way of doing that excuse me as I alluded to earlier we did a little research and just wanted to share and you can search Fort Collins budget and this will all come up and I'm sure there are others but uh this is one we we thought was particularly

1:08:11interesting they go through a process in addition to their typical standard budget which looks very much like ours of trying to essentially tear their budget down and put it back up consistent with their goals that they set out so for instance in their biennial budget they look at one of

1:08:32their goals as community and neighbor neighborhood livability and then on the next Slide the Departments go through and essentially look almost line by line as how they allocate their resources consistent to that goal and then further it flows down through sort of everything that they do

1:08:52consistent with sort of our goals strategies and then our implementation plan and which is consistent with objectives so we are not yet advocating for going this route we think there's certainly a benefit and we plan to look at um trying to ensure we focus our resources

1:09:12consistent with the council's goals but we don't know yet whether we would recommend and although we're welcome welcoming Council input on whether we really want to spend the time in the resource to try to do something like this um clearly just from the looks at their budget and budget

1:09:30model and their online tools around their budgeting they clearly have a lot more people working on this than we have in total so that's something and we obviously would need to take into account it would be a ton of work to do and we'd have to evaluate whether there's a there's a

1:09:44significant enough upside to try to get to this level of detail but I thought it was just interesting to see how it could flesh out so what we want to get into on the next slides are you know essentially four categories related to fiscal policies improved efficiencies service and

1:10:03program changes and other directives from the council they're meant to be um as much as we we tried to ask yes or no's or agree or disagrees what we're hoping for is you know is there Council consensus generally where where we think it is or are there things that the council really

1:10:22wants to make sure we consider as we go off over the next few weeks to put the budget together um and that we're not inconsistent with the council um we certainly understand that it's hard to do without having those choices laid out in front of you as I've said

1:10:37and um you know all of the budget pieces uh for next fiscal year but we again we wanted to take the opportunity to at least start the dialogue but please don't feel you have to get too hung up on it but the but the more the direction the better on the first slide

1:10:56um what we're trying to ask for is um sort of a little bit higher level um and so the first question is really the broadest is do you think the budget should be balanced now that seems obvious but like I said again at least in one year said well no maybe you can dip into reserves rather than

1:11:16making some other choices and that's what we did um we have a reserve policy that our goal is to be at least at 10 percent as high as 15 percent uh we have used the policy allows to use reserves between 10 and 15 percent we have been struggling to be between nine and ten percent the

1:11:37last two years and that's likely where we're going to finish somewhere below 10 but more than nine uh somewhere in that range so we're already struggling to be at 10 which makes the other some of these other questions that much more challenging I alluded to this earlier

1:11:53about cash flow and dedicated reserves historically we've had the ability to essentially have our reserves sitting aside as reserves but in the last two years those reserves have been used to pay bills until revenues that we receive seasonally is come in and at the end of the fiscal year

1:12:15essentially the Monies put back but at any and at certain times during the year it is being used to fund ongoing operations we do think it true it does in fact true up at the end but but we have some heartburn frankly about being so low on cash at certain times of

1:12:33the year and that's something we we really weren't accustomed to um the next question we've also touched on a little bit and we want to spend more time when we come back to you about really what are our core Services whether you call that our 20 mile March or um

1:12:50largely what's in the general fund it what is our core Services what do we do day in and day out I mean we have a tendency to talk about all the things we still want to do facilities we want to build extra projects we want to do grants we want to get but um we sort of disproportionately don't

1:13:08talk about uh maybe and maybe we need to do a better job of all the things we do every day we're an incredibly busy active City you look at any Department you look at our Recreation Department I mean everyone knows how busy that department is how many people take

1:13:21advantage of it unfortunately we also know how busy our Police Department is and everything else in in between we are just incredibly busy for a city of our size and anyone who's familiar with us would uh concur we've talked about the vacant positions and it really has become a primary

1:13:43method of balancing the budget and um all things being equal which they're not does the council think that's you know For Better or Worse that's the way we need to continue or do we need to look at other options like essentially reducing service and again are there particular vacant

1:14:03positions and this is a almost an identical question I asked a few years ago are there particular positions that the council feels you know need to be filled regardless of their impact and um you know that obviously depends on your preference and what's important to each

1:14:22of you um but that's something that I also wanted to put out there and if there is a consensus on yes we want to fill XYZ position um that's what we'll move to do obviously it's difficult um not knowing what gets pushed out the other side I mean we get that but it's

1:14:40also more helpful to know that all things being equal you want to do that do do certain things um we've we put out here that a lot of cities have reduced their office hours it's something we're not crazy about doing unless it results in more customer service or increased hours at some time

1:14:58but obviously if if we're open less there is a potential there that people would work less and that could save some money but sorry can you clarify that one you said 2 which I didn't quite understand reduction of office hours you said we don't like unless we can get

1:15:14more hours somewhere else could you just yes for instance when we made the decision it's probably almost probably more than 10 years 10 or 11 years ago to close on Fridays the actual number of hours that we're open to the public during a two-week period that we do that

1:15:31increase by 10. so when we look at close closing at certain times we're looking at is it are we providing more or less service because of it which is different than saying okay for instance we're going to close City Hall on Friday and there's no changes anywhere else that is

1:15:48just a reduction in level of service okay um I've alluded to the issue of control points or obviously and I wanted to get the council's take on at least the exercise of going out and evaluating and resetting the control points I'm assuming that ah there may or may not be

1:16:09any budget impact directly as a result of that that's more how we budget and operationally and for staff as we're doing uh staff's evaluations which are based on performance in terms of service and program changes the council has had a policy maybe it's not written down but it's been the case

1:16:31since budgets have gotten tight and it's certainly my desire is that throughout all of these hits and takeaways we have yet to lay a single person off and I want to I guess I'm asking to reaffirm that all things being equal you that is something that you want us to strive for

1:16:55um should service reductions be considered over continue Reliance on vacancies I would say less service equals less Personnel or something we've talked about in the past that we're frankly really bad at is doing less um every year we talk about doing less and every year we do more

1:17:12um it's I think it's the nature of our culture and nature of what we try to do and so every year we say okay we need to dial it down a little bit and then we go and get a grant and have a new program or we go and and just find a way um just to do more things through

1:17:31Partnerships uh or working with other cities but we seem to always find a way to not only dig ourselves out but do more and that's really a credit to our staff uh we I mentioned already the issue of health care benefits and then the following one is pensions we

1:17:53you know we have talked about this over the last number of years we've talked about it in light of our collective bargaining agreements the question is if you go back to the 2000 which was not that long ago our uh purse contribution as a city was essentially zero now it's five and a

1:18:13half million dollars and we can't ignore um the fact that uh there is a pension issue what that level is really depends on how well we're doing with all our other revenues and and the services we want we want to Pro provide um nobody I don't believe you know has a

1:18:34desire to do takeaways in El Cerrito just to do them it really leads to what can we afford what's the best way to provide service what is in line with the residents and businesses of El Cerrito what is reasonable and is what we're doing uh still reasonable okay can I make a comment on the

1:18:52pensions and sure in my day job I've been to a couple of workshops on the pension reform law and the answer to this last question is by 2018 every uh public pension in the state will be required to have the employee contribute 50 percent of the pension costs now the reason that that's delayed

1:19:13to 2018 because just is we have um collective bargaining agreements that dictate employee contributions that's the case across the state but for every new employee they have to contribute at least 50 percent of their pension unless they're already in a reciprocal pension

1:19:33plan so we will be required to do that over the next five years to at least get to at least the 50 level I think the I haven't read it in the last number of months but I I believe it's not the city has the ability to mandate it it doesn't have to but it has the tools which it

1:19:57hasn't had before to do it but that's something we can we can have we could spend a lot of time on and going through what what it means but you're you're absolutely correct in 2018 is a is a trigger point um that gives the city a lot more um uh flexibility I guess a little more of a

1:20:19stick than maybe it's had in the past having said that we've been very successful working with our employee groups I mean they understand that and uh you know our desire over time is to work with them um you know to deal with that issue I mean they they can read they they understand

1:20:36um the legislation I will say that it it's not entirely coincidental I mean measure our sunsets the year before the collective largest Collective bargain agreements expire in the year before so there are a whole lot of things we need to start focusing on between now

1:20:55and now and then one of the things you'll be considering at an upcoming meeting is the master fee schedule in the past we have at times looked at increasing the fees above inflation it appears based on our first cut it the fees we will we won't be doing that I mean maybe marginally but

1:21:18we think again this is based on our First Cut Is that we'll be able to hold our costs roughly at inflation next year so it is unlikely that we're actually going to be asking you to to do this um but it is an option to to increase our fees to try to recover more

1:21:39because obviously I mean the fees in all cases don't cover all the costs we we at times have talked about our special events um July 4th is clearly the biggest um this is not I mean whether we were to not do July 4th um it really is debatable whether not doing July 4th or other events whether

1:21:59they're Earth Day or the Martin Luther King Parade when you look at 45 million dollars in revenue and the potential of saving maybe thirty thousand dollars I think that's really a maybe a one-sided trade um all the Goodwill that we gain um I'm not sure that ever would justify

1:22:16but it certainly is a very visible way to send a message that you know the city things are tight and this is not a arguably not a core function um so again it's not an enormous impact on the general fund but it is it does cost money and again I wanted to come back to the

1:22:35issue of Reserves and should we have earmarked funds that are not used for cash flow both for just the general fund and this is something that we will work with a financial Advisory board on we think that largely what we're um if nothing else we want to work with

1:22:57them and work during next fiscal year to amend our Reserve policy and have a discussion with them and ultimately with the Council on on ways to potentially increase our reserves and additionally we've talked a lot about reinvesting into what we already have which is

1:23:14facilities Fields playgrounds and while those are all important I I don't want to overlook the fact that largely to the credit of our residents I mean we have rebuilt all of our streets we have rebuilt our Swim Center we have rebuilt we have built this building

1:23:31um it and that's why looking at all funds is really important and we have done some things very well but as we talked about with streets you know you hit this waterfall that just exponentially gets worse if you don't deal with the small things in the short term they become big things in the long

1:23:48term and but it again it's choices but if the council said you know we really need to put aside some money even if that impacts Services we would be we would work to have a plan that we would put together between now and the budget or through the fiscal year to start earmarking those funds

1:24:05based on updating some of our facility needs assessments and our studies to what is sustainable what is Affordable and and what will make the biggest bang for the buck but it is important finally in terms of schedule you adopted the Strategic plan on the second we're

1:24:25here tonight we typically would try to get the budget run the numbers um to the financial Advisory Board as soon as we can in May and give them a few weeks to look at it and provide comments and feedback prior to coming back to the council we anticipate presenting the budget and

1:24:45um getting the book ready in very early June which is consistent to what we've done in the last few years and then as needed we can free up as many of what I've put here is Monday and Tuesdays in June with the goal of getting done uh before the end of the fiscal year

1:25:01and finally in terms of next steps if the consensus out of this meeting is you know this is a good good enough feedback or if you'd like to do this again we can continue this till uh meetings in May but we will obviously need to be working on the budget and working on the book if

1:25:23we think it's relatively clear we're obviously going to roll up we've already started working on next year's budget but it's really going to be um kicking it into high gear the next two or two to three weeks to get the budget all ready for you to consider in total

1:25:39um so with that thank you and turn it back to the mayor any questions for staff I have a few go ahead councilmember um so a couple comments since it was brought up so often with the seven year uh wage fees more or less on non-sworn employees we have about 163 employees

1:26:05I guess 80 45 of those are sworn and then we have management so how many non-sworn employees are in this seven year wage freeze um and and then so that's first question and the second part is what is their retention rate been over seven years as a guess sure um

1:26:28working from the last question um with the exception of of a few areas our retention has been really minimal I mean if uh other than people retiring or maybe I said that backwards our retention rate is incredibly High um is what I meant to say and with the exception of people retiring out of here

1:26:51we typically don't lose people now having said that and I alluded to police particularly I mean we may have some issues around retention that um May relate to compensation May relate to other things and that's something we need to spend more time to look at um so working back from there I mean I

1:27:10don't have the actual we could go back and add them up but I would say in terms of unrepresented there's probably a little less than 40 with sciu there's probably another 45 or 50 so you're you know you're talking about a little less than half probably of the total working back from what I know is

1:27:30in public safety so it's probably split pretty evenly the other comment I would make though in terms of wage freeze that's just to be clear there has not been a wage freeze what I'm talking about is what we use to Benchmark where composition should be in I'm it's it's

1:27:45not we have where possible um people have certainly been reclassified over the seven years people have gotten selective Merit increases over those times where budgets allowed so I don't want to suggest that we haven't increased anybody I mean we have increased a fair number of people what

1:28:06we want to do is have the resources and the data to look at particularly as we recruit are we are we in the market are we paying a fair is our compensation fair is it reasonable we certainly don't want um folks leaving because they feel they're not being treated fairly

1:28:26um and at least I mean maybe we can't do more but at least we want to understand um how we're doing and we've put this off year after year after year of uh just going back and you know and doing a reality check um in terms of compared to Public Safety we do a check-in and true up every two

1:28:47years so um and so our biggest vacancies tend to be in place in public works um so Public Works I always see that as zordable physical kind of job we've been lucky we haven't had a lot of rain we don't have a lot of storm drain problems the past couple Winters um but how how are we doing with Public

1:29:09public works and you know are we really suffering there and and then I'll address the police in the second part um I can certainly look at the Public Works director if he'd like to take a shot um maybe more specifically than I can but I mean I think we've been okay I

1:29:24mean we've gone down really this fiscal year I mean I think up until this fiscal year public works as it were I mean it's not at its Glory Days of 35 people it's at its Frugal days but um we've had a couple of retirements um and so it's Public Works in terms of our crews I believe it's two

1:29:46people but then it's where we're feeling it the most I think is in the office where we're remember we've lost our Capital program manager we've uh eliminated the second manager position uh we um so we've had more vacancies probably in City Hall where that affects us is

1:30:04getting to all of our traffic requests dealing with uh keeping up on our capital budget you know there and there are other areas but you know again um Jerry could go into more detail if you want than I can I think that's fine um and then you know it is true that

1:30:21police has sort of always been a problem for hiring and you know we don't really know what that is we don't know if it's a medium policy I don't know if we still have a minimum college education criteria that we used to use that may have fallen by the wayside is it

1:30:37affecting overtime and that's a that's a budget issue for us and um you know is it is it our police station um you know and how how is our recruiting I guess comparing us to our neighboring cities not so much Oakland but more like and maybe not even Richmond actually but more like Hercules

1:30:58Pinole rodeo and and Albany let's say for instance and and I don't know I mean I don't know if we know these answers I don't know if applicants come in they see the station and they say no thank you um you know they look around the city and say I really love our chief I think

1:31:14I want to work for you um I don't I don't know if we know that I mean I don't know if the applicants are coming here and then turning us down or we just don't get the applicants in the first place and and maybe this is sort of a moot question but I don't know if we know that answer or not sure uh

1:31:29again uh I would welcome the chief to come up I I guess based on my conversations with her um I think it's a combination of those things um I think it's in some cases it's compensation in some cases it's wanting more opportunities in bigger departments um I think there are a lot of reasons um

1:31:50we were actually talking about it this afternoon of the need to really try to go dial into you know why uh why why do people you know why are people leaving I think the bigger problem that we're having and I think this is comparative to either cities and again Chief please feel free

1:32:12our recruitment pools are noticeably smaller and that I mean that's really a red flag for us and um you know as compared to other cities that are comparable to sort of us you think yeah yes um I think the one of my personal theories um is over the years of our collective

1:32:33bargaining agreements there are the issue for um for people depending on where you are in your career I mean a lot of the ways we do compensation maybe the compensation's okay but the salary's not so from a city perspective we pay compensation and we may argue that well we're right where we need to

1:32:54be but in terms of recruiting officers there may be things inherent in the system that's not helpful for entry-level employees but Chief I mean other things okay see I listen Okay um we know that um and then the other thing is is how can we budget for health care when we don't know

1:33:18what's being asked for asked of us for 2013 do we have anything we do know well for the Affordable Care I mean Healthcare that's that's actually what I meant right um I mean we really don't probably have too much of a clue I don't think we have um a clue yet um I think it largely kicks in in 14.

1:33:43um and and there's phases on different things um we are doing our best to try to stay up to speed on it um and it may require us to look at how we staff and and our use of part-time employees versus contract employees and that may be something we need to we need

1:33:58to consider that's I mean that's our sort of initial interpretation is that more folks may need to get medical than we provide and and then back to Calpers um you know if they're gonna have a five percent that's going to gradually we'll see that in several years down the line

1:34:18what do you anticipate the first big bump would be 15 15 16. 15. 15 16 will be the big bump I mean is that like a 21 I mean what do you I don't remember our total I'm looking at um other folks but I don't remember our total purse cost I want to say is about 30 for Public Safety and 25 for

1:34:42miscellaneous somewhere in there so I figured those numbers are going to bump by five I mean the the pers Actuarial numbers that I was looking at today are sort of putting putting the public agencies into the 35 ballpark okay okay and then and then it would fix them for

1:35:0035 years unlike now they think it provides more um consistency for us but they would essentially lock that rate in for sort of forever and and the follow-up to that is uh what happens when there's the next stock market crash if they're at a fixed rate does the fixed rate become not so

1:35:19fixed well if history is any indicator of the future they will they'll come back they will unfix it and raise them raise them again I mean the theory is that it should account for all of that I mean that there are Actuarial models should account for these ups and downs and

1:35:38rights my guess is they've said that in the past okay and so when you talk about fee increases are we talking about swim passes and building fees and just charges for services yeah and and so Lisa had mentioned that we I don't know there was like 127 000 in building feed

1:36:01could you kind of go over that again about 127 000 yeah it was about 127 000 Less in anticipated building fees on what we had budgeted is that because the reflection of the economy or do we it could be on some of the projects that we're seeing are are less smaller

1:36:21remodeling projects smaller not a lot of as many commercial projects coming in um so anyway I just thought looking at this was very ingenious that put in the Strategic goals and I mean it's pretty pretty cool I really liked it a lot and I like the red dots um but there were too many yes yes so

1:36:43thank you to the staff that's all I had for now right councilman questions for staff um I guess look I don't know I'm having trouble knowing if it's a question or a comment but um so I'll just I'll try to determine into a question since we're doing questions right now

1:36:59um and it has to do with more it's more philosophical than it is a detailed question and it has to do with the approach to doing this whole exercise um and I'll sort of so there's kind of there's the old way first of all of um doing budgeting and you you look at what you did last year and you sort

1:37:22of say okay well I had fun we think when you have five percent more money this year so we'll add five percent across the board or you say oh we're gonna have five percent less next year therefore we'll cut it all or um or we want to go into this new area so then we're gonna scrimp and Save in

1:37:41other areas and we're going to put some of that money into this new area so we do that kind of a thing so right now it looks to me like that um isn't what the approach is the approach being considered certainly is a different approach um and it's taking the information that

1:38:03we obtained through the Strategic plan process in particular the goals and sort of uh integrating that with our old approach or at least comparing or comparing it to I'm not sure which word to use there but um and then you're throwing on top of that something I like an awful lot

1:38:29um which which I suppose that was the comment I'm sorry um the um as long as it ends with a question mark yeah sorry um the um I can't find the pictures but the books that are shown here and I'm one of the people who has read some of the the books and I'm very excited about

1:38:48that and it it leads me to ask the big question of um what is it we are trying to be as a city um and are you trying to sort of take the first step in that through the implementation of our new budget and uh or am are you just sort of mentioning all of this stuff so I don't

1:39:12know if that's a good way to raise my question but um I'm sort of taking all of the sort of top level views of the various different ways of doing things that are listed here and and so can you answer that question you get there okay I actually think you you got it I mean I I don't

1:39:33think we are planning to budget drastically different than we have in the past but the difference is we really want to respect the Strategic plan and to try to build in steps to ensure that extra steps to ensure that what we're doing and how we spend our time and how

1:39:52we spend our money is consistent with really what you think it should be and so there's just an additional emphasis and this is a step towards that okay thank you just one quick question on slide 12 we went over the city-wide challenges for 2013-14 and we noted the two red numbers

1:40:111.2 million dollars um are there I assume is it correct that those are the only two known big number changes and I assume there's no known um green numbers to match up with those at all and I don't want to you know I know you're not to the point yet where you're

1:40:29putting numbers to paper and are ready to publish them but I assume that everything on that's bulleted that's shown here is all we know at this point and there's no oh we sure hope so um we sure hope there are no more big giant red numbers um I I think there are a whole bunch of

1:40:44small green ones um the the challenge is going to be to all those small green ones amount to 1.2 million dollars I doubt it okay that's it thanks uh a lot of my questions have already been asked uh one a little further into the uh salary adjustments so we give Merit

1:41:10increases up to the top of a salary range correct we could um we bracket the control points with big range but there's there's probably nobody above the midpoint so even though we have the ability to go well above what I'm talking about the control point we have really kept people

1:41:29but I'm just talking in terms of what we list the salary nut in terms of comparison so um for I know in collective bargaining agreements we have cost of living adjustments or graduated raise for the non-represented employees have we done any cost of living increases over that time yeah I

1:41:53want I don't know the exact number I want to say we've done maybe four out of the seven eight what will be eight years um and that's consistent with all the groups where we've had the ability we've done call this um but otherwise no okay I I just wanted to clarify that because it's not like

1:42:11people haven't gotten any more money in seven years no um then my last question was oh in the Paige is looking at projected for fiscal year 2013 like page four and five it would be helpful in the future to see a year to date actual rather than just projected so we could sort of have an

1:42:39idea of how we got to that projected figure at least based on a quarterly basis to do that great but I want to Echo what uh council member Bridges said I thought it was an excellent presentation well laid out and makes it very clear what the challenges we face and what decision

1:43:00some of the major decision options we have so I think staff and the three presenters yeah I want to thank staff for their presentation and find out if we have any public speakers this evening we have two speakers great thank you can you read uh read off the name of the

1:43:21first one Tom Bennis good evening mayor Lyman member of the Council on City staff my name is Tom Pettis and I live at [address removed] in El Cerrito I'd like to thank the staff the city manager the assistant city manager and the finance director for an excellent presentation

1:43:50uh the Oswego Library committee would like to provide some information regarding additional Library additional Library hour scenarios for the council's consideration our community is not being well served as well served as it might be by our library the LCR library is an important

1:44:03resource in our community for everyone from preschoolers to retirees the library is a vital connection to our schools Library support students with expanded hours our library could reach more people and offer more services such as children's and early reading programs

1:44:17job search literacy programs reference work after school resource web use by those that are not on an internet lay device reading for enjoyment and much more I have a list here of the different city-owned libraries in Contra Costa County and how many hours they provide

1:44:3335 is the base El Cerrito in the lower right hand corner there is at the base and I've got a copy of our hours there so of the city of the 18 city-owned libraries in the county 12 cities fund additional hours L3 is one of the six in the bottom one-third but don't fund

1:44:52additional hours this really ought to change it's almost embarrassing important considerations and extending libraries include uniform hours to reduce confusion also open all weekdays to reduce confusion Sunday hours our library staff tells us that that brings in a very different demographic

1:45:13morning hours good for senior citizens evening hours good for working people so the council the new library commission came up with three scenarios and asked our County Library staff to price those and the key things here are the first one there number one keeping the library

1:45:28open on Wednesdays the third line there on the right the 118 000 that's roughly what would cost to do that second scenario keeping the library open on Sunday four hours that would be twenty five thousand dollars we pay right now third option adding additional weekend

1:45:44uh sorry weekday evening hours Thursday until late there'll be two additional hours and that will cost twenty six thousand dollars so if the counselor staff would like further information on these numbers during discussion period we're most fortunate this evening to have Gail

1:45:58McFarland Deputy County librarian and Liz ruin our community library manager here in the back this evening they could address any questions if you have any concerns regarding the budget documentation provided in the council packet I'm happy to see the staff has included the

1:46:13continue the facilities assessment hopefully including a library in the ongoing activity with activities planned for the coming year midterm and long range speaking for the Historical Society I note the review and update policies on preservation of historic and

1:46:24cultural resources has activities planned for next year I'd suggest this needs to be considered an ongoing activity with activities planned for midterm and long term as well as in the coming year thank you very much for your time this evening thank you Al Miller

1:46:45l Miller [address removed] Mr Upon Us says express the issues or discuss the issues I wanted to mention very well I have nothing to add except that four hours on Sunday for twenty five thousand dollars even in the difficult straights we're in seems like a bargain to me thank you

1:47:13any other speakers I I do have a question for the librarian um that uh it does seem that the Sunday hours are remarkably less expensive uh per hour on a per hour basis than the weekday hours I'm just curious if there's a reason for that we've got a gamble we've got a bet up

1:47:37here it says so in this letter does it yeah yeah I cheated you and I both read I just want to make sure this is on hi I'm Gail mcpartlin I'm Deputy County librarian for Contra Costa County library and uh Mr Marin council members and Mr Hannon and City staff thank you

1:48:00for having us the question that was put to library Administration is if we had these different scenarios what would the relative cost be so your question was Sunday hours versus I'm sorry the Wednesday hours the option one was up yeah the Sunday hours seem to be on a per unit cost much less

1:48:22expensive than the weekday hours so here's here's what happens with that um the Sunday hours are in a county staffed differently than the weekday hours on Sundays all of the hours are staffed by regular staff Librarians Library assistants clerks Library AIDS however the difference is

1:48:47is that those are not people who are dedicated to Running of that particular Library so what happens is people volunteer to work extra hours on Sundays and it is all voluntary so that's why that Quest that that unit of measure comes up significantly different the reason that option number one the

1:49:08added hours is so much higher is that to make these staff schedules work across the entire week it does mean an increase in the overall Staffing so that is why that particular option is significantly higher does that answer your question it does thank you very much okay

1:49:31do you have any other questions for me while I'm here thank you foreign [Applause] back to council we've had a fantastic presentation this evening we do have a number of over we have the overarching questions that are on Slide 27 so I'd like to just go to slide 27

1:50:02briefly if we may uh-oh get our slide controller just walk away there we go um I just want to remind everyone what these are questions that are going to be addressed throughout the budget process and will not necessarily be fully addressed this evening but I did want to

1:50:21refresh our memories this is these are some of the questions that staff has asked us to consider as we go forward considering the 16 specific questions that we are going to address starting on slide 32 so if we could please move forward to slide 32.

1:50:40I won't be taking uh votes per se but maybe straw opinions just drop holes or so um so that we can try to get some sort of level of consensus or um at least some sense of the weight of these things as we go forward we are going to be trying to give staff guidance tonight it's it's our

1:51:03responsibility to give them guidance and I'm hoping that we can at least achieve some level of guidance even if we don't necessarily answer these questions should the ballot should the budget be balanced yes yes agree yes general fund reserves between 10 and 15 percent as the city

1:51:28manager uh presented we have a standing policy to get to 15 at the end of a rolling 10-year period so we're supposed to have a 10-year budget that presents us trying to achieve 15 percent Reserves at the end of that rolling 10-year budget um general fund reserves between 10 and 15

1:51:54percent could be used to help balance the budget so let's break this down do we want a reserve of 10 or greater uh is that a guidance we want to give it I think if you have a comment on a specific thing that that this would be we can have a dialogue here about this

1:52:17question so well well sure I actually [Music] have this please it's somewhat difficult to answer the questions because I I think that sometimes the answer has to do with the matter of um what the overall picture is looking like and then I mean if if things are pretty much say the same as they were

1:52:43the year before then I might have one answer but if things were looking like there's a change either for the better or for the worst then that might change the way I would answer these questions so that means it it's it's sort of iffy to answer the question not knowing the

1:53:05answer to that other one and and that was what the city manager said during his presentation that he understands we don't have the book in front of us to oh maybe he's definitely not asking the um questions like so I don't know what to do about the fact so so do you I mean reality I mean

1:53:21I could I could sort of suspend that reality and say um all else being equal how would I answer this question and then later on add the um the part about well the budget's coming out looking up or down or or in some areas or you know or something like that so it's not going to

1:53:44deal with that so one of the ways we could do it is that each one of us could answer the 16 questions using a scenario that we have in our head um of whether it's going to be optimistic next year or pessimistic next year so I I'm not sure I know um what your proposal is Because unless

1:54:01we pick a scenario we're never going to be able to individually answer these questions without some sort of scenario so I wonder if you have a suggestion well I would personally start with talking about um how do we feel about what's going to happen what do we think is you know do

1:54:20we think this is going to be is this still like a good year or a bad year or we feel like we have no information any of you know anything like that because um if we need to be agreeing on that to me before we answer the detail um and we could be right or wrong but we

1:54:38at least need to have a beginning point I think that agrees and I I'd be willing to state what I think about that certainly yeah I guess that falls into the category of you're optimistic and I'm pessimistic you know what my comment is yet I'm just using that as a scenario but if you know

1:54:56so then we potentially are giving conflicting uh we potentially can give a lot of uh synonymous recommendations despite what we think the future is going to be but there may be certain things that we can't give the same uh guidance on as a result of our future the council member

1:55:14bandicina you had a comment I just wanted to mention that um the way I've been thinking about these questions is for FY 2013-2014 and when I think about what that year is going to look like I go back to slide 12 where our city is already identified or are staffed to

1:55:29this point has already identified 1.2 million dollars in funds that would have gone to our general funds that are probably not going to be available compared with today it's compared with where we are in fiscal year 2012-13 so when I think about next year knowing

1:55:44that we don't know what's going to happen but also knowing that we do have staff who've been working on the budget for weeks and weeks now and that they only have one more month to put together a book less than one month for the Fab when I asked are there any green numbers

1:55:58that go with those red numbers the indication was maybe some we don't you know we don't know if they're going to add up to all the red number so I'm kind of thinking of what we know today is we're you know two months from a budget and early indications are we're a

1:56:11million and million point two down probably a worse maybe hopefully not that bad so that's the scenario I've been thinking of based on the presentation yeah similarly but we may be worse because they the property taxes may actually go down again council member uh yeah the the way I look at

1:56:28this task is you're looking for some general guidance and certainly that guidance is always going to be subject to whatever reality or changes take place so for example this question I would say it could be used if absolutely necessary and we may or may not know right now if

1:56:50it's going to be necessary and I wouldn't want to tie the hands of staff at this point based on our speculation but he needs Scott and the other staff need to have some idea of what kind of parameters they have to work with and so that's how I look at this not that whatever we say tonight is

1:57:12going to be set in stone yeah and I I also agree with that I mean when you say you know where we're at today well 2012 we're at 9 10 9 to 10 right now we're not at 10 to 15 and yes it's always been a goal to be more than that over 10 years and so you know I I think you're

1:57:31absolutely right that you know if something happens and we have to go in and be down to eight or nine again staff will come to us and then that decision gets made so but I think overall we are in worse shape council member Abelson did you want to give us your vision of the future so

1:57:49that we can move that way I think that the immediate next year future is not looking particularly good uh I'll say that for sure I think there's consensus on that so I guess we didn't disagree after all I didn't think we would but um then um if and I agree with what councilmember

1:58:10Bridges just said that if we don't have a choice then we will but I I think that overall what we're probably going to be looking at is a year where we have to be really careful about expenditures and at the same time I think that talking to the um the books and the the thoughts that

1:58:35are presented in the books good to Great and the other books in that series what they're they're talking a lot about and what I think we need to um think about as we go through this or in any other exercise is are there ways that we can change the way we do things that will

1:58:54make this a better place um and take us from good to great in the process even in the face of of the economics of our landscape being poor so so I'm gonna that's not one of these questions it's not I completely agree I completely agree with all of you because my answers to both of these were maybe

1:59:16when I was at home I wrote down maybe um so actually going backwards um we all said yes maybe a little too quickly because really these first two questions are do we want the reserves at 10 and potentially not have a balanced budget when it first comes to us or do

1:59:33we want the budgets to be at 10 and balanced or do we want the budget to be um balanced and potentially below 10 percent so those are some of these these two questions go hand in hand and for me uh councilman Wilson you and I are on the same line you know maybe now is the

1:59:51time to act on certain goals and strategies to be well positioned for a future upturn in the economy and so maybe balancing the budget isn't necessarily the best strategy I think there was a slide the manager gave us that you know was uh where do we invest our resources to be

2:00:12best positioned um so to read taking these two questions in tandem and I guess I'd like to get some sense of of uh consensus maybe together uh what these two what guidance we would like to give staff on these two items yeah I I'd like a clarification here because

2:00:32by law we're required to have a balanced budget meaning that our revenue and expenses are equal let me explain my concept because you your idea of balance is different than my idea of balance and I'm new back on the council so maybe you need to educate me but to me if you take

2:00:51money out of reserves that becomes revenue and that's part of the balancing right so we are required to have a balanced budget so when I said the budget should be balanced it has to be then the question is do we are we willing to take money out of reserves in order to create that balance right

2:01:10okay um and I I think I might have a little bit slightly different take on what we should be doing and I I wrote down a whole list of things I thought of of you know terrible things that might happen and where we might want to have some cash on hand um lawsuits unexpected Capital needs those

2:01:32are the two things that I know have put cities in in a lot of trouble when they haven't had money available and on the upside the nice thing about having cash on hand is that we could potentially as a council decide there's something really interesting coming about maybe

2:01:46um maybe we have this off the grid event and we decide we want to take a little bit of money and fund some sort of special economic development kitchen or something like that then it would be nice to have a set of money that's just kind of un uh untethered to anything

2:02:00during the year that maybe we use for a pilot project or some specific goal that we want to meet that comes up some some specific opportunity that we would have to pass by if we didn't have those dedicate that dedicated cash flow so when I read these two I I always read

2:02:14The Reserve policy as we don't want to go below 10 unless it's an emergency situation and during the recession that was viewed as this is something really really horrible that's happening and we need to use this Reserve because this is an extraordinary circumstance when I was

2:02:29reading through the presentation my view of where we are what really spoke to me was facing brutal facts and Scott kind of mentioned earlier we shouldn't be expecting a huge upturn in the economy I think the idea has been that we're going to steadily grow you know the GDP is that whatever it's

2:02:45projected for this year 2.2 percent or something along those lines so I think that we should behave as though this is our budget and next year maybe we'll grow by two percent maybe the next year will grow by two percent but we but I think the question is do we want to have cash on hand and

2:03:01if we want to have cash on hand when do we want to start doing that so that's what I've been thinking and I've been thinking that that's this year so so I I'm gonna council member Friedman basically was saying balance should be a balanced budget potentially let below is 10

2:03:18percent if I listen to you council member benassini it's balance should be balanced and the reserve fund should be above 10 yes thoughts no consensus around 10 I mean we're not going to get to 15 this year no no but but do we want it above 10 or below 10 or at 10. we're not at 10 now I mean

2:03:41around 10. and what can I say I'm going to add around it I'm in and I guess I'm sorry but I there's there's something different this year from last year that um has the potential to provide us it provides us with opportunities to make new kinds of decisions um and that is that we have a lot of

2:04:06vacancies okay so that gives us an opportunity to do something in a different way to be determined um I'm not saying what that way should be for at this exact moment but what I'm saying is that we could for example um come up with a new Department the department of

2:04:33um wonderful ideas or something that would figure out a new way to provide services or say for example a grant to do grant writing a thing that we've historically done really well to go out and do a whole bunch more of that in a way that works somehow in this crummy economy and

2:04:55in fact bring in um enough reserves so I'm not so sure you know depending on how we answer that it may mean that we can actually increase our Reserves um not in the in you know over by the end of the year by a combination of things that we would change about how we

2:05:18do our operation and we have the luxury right now of having all of those vacant positions um to do it with you know if we didn't just replace those positions but use them in a new way that could perhaps do something so um I I see that I guess the question to me here is really

2:05:44um are we gonna reduce expenses in order to do that the to keep reserves up this year I think that's the real question behind this question and I think that the answer may actually be that let's try really hard to figure out a way to do things especially with those

2:06:04vacant positions in a in a way that is um in one way you could say more frugal but I think of it as more creative and more compact that will produce better results so that we actually perhaps can begin to up our Reserve level without reducing the quality of services that we

2:06:28provide to our city so that's sort of a very long answer but I think that's how I feel about it yes I hope you will um I hope you will re-emphasize that when we start talking about vacancies but I think the direction here is a balanced budget at 10 percent um is essentially the guidance that

2:06:46we're trying to give you with a 10 Reserve um speaking to the reserves this is more of a policy issue reserves should be used for cash flow is it and or or dedicated Reserves Scott I mean should it be touchable or Untouchables and that's the way I thought this question right the question

2:07:09is should we have reserves that are not used for this for cash flow purposes I mean we're not asking you to tell us how much but yeah and we asked the question more directly and further down in this um to me I think it's fine as long as it's clear it's going to be replaced because

2:07:26when we do an anticipation note there's a cost to it essentially we'd be self issuing an anticipation note right if we dipped into the reserves for cash flow in theory I I mean because I mean where we actually are borrowing more than we have in reserves so it's it's the effect

2:07:50of the timing and it's the effect of how much money you have so I don't see in the foreseeable future that reserves are going to replace the likely need for anticipation notes that's why most cities do it because in order to do that you know our reserves would need to go

2:08:08from plus or minus 3 million to over 6 million um that's oh that's a whole lot of that's a whole lot more money set aside and and what uh what's the cost of those anticipation notes I don't remember off the top my head but they're very low interest in there for

2:08:26short term it was about 25 000 to 30 000 I think last year okay so to me the the question is uh how much do we lose if we take money out of our reserves if say it's in the local agency investment fund or wherever it is that's pretty minimal probably because return is so little but yeah the way

2:08:50that what the increase need for anticipation notes on what that cost is but it seems like we're not talking about large numbers at this point there's a lot of interest in this topic on the Fab and they're going to have a presentation I think at their next meeting or the one after about what a

2:09:08lot of cities have rainy day funds where they just keep money and they'll they'll borrow money and they will pay to borrow money in order to have that money on hand just in case of any sort of emergency that might come up or opportunity I guess on the positive side

2:09:23um so I think the Fab is going to have a lot if if we ask them to look at this they will they are going to happily look at it and there's a lot of interest on the members part of how of not being at a zero balance like the idea that an organization that has a 45 million

2:09:38dollar budget every year has a zero balance is I think I think kind of odd um and and I think it's it it it may oh it's not odd but you know it's just the nature of the time that we don't have any bond reserves it didn't need to happen or we didn't have any bond proceeds so

2:09:56I'm I'm I'm leaning towards let's let's consider um coming up with a way to actually have an Untouchable set of money and that amount of money can be determined based on what are the think kinds of things we might want to cover with this that would actually be untouchable

2:10:13I think also if it helps in working your way through these I mean what we're really trying to get at is relative importance I mean yes or no's would be nice but but all things being equal when we're putting the budget together is it more important to you to maintain

2:10:27services or maintain reserves I mean that's that's ultimately what we're we're getting at I mean we can um get at what those numbers should be I I mean I will say I mean on from a a sort of personal opinion at large that was certainly influenced by the books um the level of reserves that we have is

2:10:49probably too low and and similar to I won't speak to anyone else's home checking account but there are certain things that if you don't pay yourself first you're just not going to do and so if um there may be trade-offs which we can point out to getting to 10 or 11 or or

2:11:08more which we would share with you this is but if the direction is nine ish versus ten we're going to give you nine ish because it's easier I mean because I mean I think the direction is 10 at the moment um and I I think uh having been on the the liaison to the

2:11:31financial Advisory board when they discussed the reserve uh before um I I was operating under the belief that our Reserve was untouched um so I understand that you're asking us to say hey do we want to reserve do we want an Untouchable Reserve versus services and I'm

2:11:54given the uncertainties in our world and the ability for bad things to happen as we witnessed just recently in Boston I'm afraid we're going to have to have a cost or for having some ability to be responsive to whether it's forensics analysis for a large family

2:12:20murder or something else or earthquake response or whatever so I I'm I think I think I I hear that the financial Advisory Board may be coming forward and giving us some good advice on this but I I would person I would prefer that we decide to go below 10 percent

2:12:39the council does and that it's untouchable I don't know I mean I think council member engelsen you and I have been on the council and had this discussion before and I think we've gone back and forth as to our position on this but um I think we're we're closer in in

2:12:57thought than before the thought that I have it on is first there's no such there's really no such thing as untouchable um because it is no matter what the council can make a decision to change it so I don't really think about it that way I think about it more as

2:13:20um what do we have to do to touch it is is being the criteria and um the um and I really get it and I actually agree with you I guess there again but the I think that the the point is the council has to make a decision it's not something that we do just because we

2:13:44needed some more cash so we could pay our bills sooner and avoid the interest rate right for paying light or something you know that that which would be done that which I am assuming is that I know as a thing done at a stop level because it's never come to the council

2:14:01before right um so if that were to we could say that if that were to occur it needs to come to the council so that we're completely aware that we are in that position each and every time it would theoretically happen those are the kinds I think kinds of things that make more sense to

2:14:22me rather than saying Untouchable which makes Untouchable was by staff essentially obviously we can without counsel action yes yeah um I I agree that 10 is too low you know I'm on the government Finance Officers Association and I know their guidelines are significantly higher and recommended

2:14:47in my financial controller tells me 50 is a good to have six months of operating for contingencies we're not going to get there any time in our terms on the council but um our opportunities for increasing Revenue in the short term are not good long-term fixes include Economic

2:15:09Development leading to more property tax and sales tax turnover of our housing stock which has been very slow there's very low inventory so even though prices are going up we don't get the benefit of that for a while um uh you know there's there's people under Prop 13 whose taxes will not go up until

2:15:32they die Etc so there's a lot of long-term uh opportunities but short term very few opportunities so I appreciate the staff's entrepreneurial Spirit of looking for other people's money we can bring into this city for projects hence all the planning right um so I think we don't have a lot of

2:15:56options in terms of increasing Revenue with this coming fiscal year probably the next few and we have the challenges of increasing Health costs and and Calpers cost so we're going to have to make a lot of hard decisions but I think to go under that 10 percent is really not responsible given what

2:16:17we've been talking about here moving down to the fourth one on this question budget should identify our core services our first priority in shortfalls for additional programs based on the conversation we've had and I'm going to put a straw person forward that suggests that

2:16:33um indeed we do want to have the core Services funded and and served and if there is we want the programs that are not Mission critical to be identified as potential programs that we would consider to reduce I'm going to go back to a Jim Collins concept [Music]

2:16:58making list of things we don't do anymore not a to-do list but a don't do list and if if we have a don't do list of things that are not core mission that are are how we are going to meet our shortfalls that would be something that I think this question or this concept

2:17:20gets to that idea so my star person is that the budget should identify the core services and identify services that potentially are not core that's my straw thought to respond to this idea councilmember Friedman sounds good my only thought when I was reading it was I

2:17:41want to keep we've spent all this time on a strategic plan I want to keep thinking of our goals so not spending this or that amount of money on a service but spending this that amount of money to achieve a goal and sort of continue to look back on how we're achieving the goal

2:17:58before we figure out whether or not it and if we're not achieving the goal what can we do to achieve it and how can we do the most economical manner so when I was looking at this I was kind of thinking less this much money poor service but this much money to achieve a

2:18:10goal and and measure it as we go but yes generally agree agree with you mayor um I would ask a question about core Services where have we defined that it certainly was was in my mind and I in my mind it was similar to what councilmember banasini said which is our

2:18:34our strategies our whole strategic plan has potentially identified what we feel as core services so they're you know they're it's it's we have to somewhere along the line we have to assume that staff is going to be implementing the Strategic plan so usually we do our

2:18:51budget by Department are we is the plan to do it that way again okay so I would expect to see then a section if we did this a section in each Department's sub budget that would say what the um the core services are and the um first choice for shortfalls or if any could there was just

2:19:21absolutely no way to make any some reason why that is so is that would be the sort of thing you would do yes I'm not sure I mean I haven't figured out exactly where it would be but conceptually it would be we would try to take a first cut at sort of what circle

2:19:37is core and then what sort of hovers around that that um we may really want to do but may not be able to do and then bring that sort of back to you and how do you how would you integrate that into this this item that the fact that we have so many um empty vacant positions

2:20:01um that based on the retirements I forget what the number is but it's what is it now 27.

2:20:11how how would you integrate that that into this or would you well I think obviously the I mean the vacancies and what we elect to fill um or not or what we recommend to fill um will drive a lot of that because again as we've said you know over the years repeatedly it's essentially comes

2:20:35down to the people I mean there's just not much variable anything left in the budget and Scott when when you're thinking about that what I'm really looking for is one of our goals that I know we're all thinking about I'm sure is ensure the Public's health and safety

2:20:49so if we need to allocate more money to that for whatever reason I want it I want to know how are we not achieving that with our current resources how are we not achieving that goal and why would adding this or that person or staff or or sorry or um software whatever it is

2:21:05how would that better help us achieve that goal not just we need we're you know we have these vacancies let's let's fill them but more tying it all back to the goals can I just make a comment that this is the most fun thing about city council I for anybody who's out there who's

2:21:24getting a little bit bored I mean I have a job where when we are not hired for things people get fired we're like oh we are not doing that well that's how the market tells us we're not doing it well and so we ebb and flow with our staffing based on the demand but government is so

2:21:39interesting and difficult that we all have to sit here and try to figure out what do people want and how are we serving them we have to come up with metrics it's so in the private sector you get the feedback immediately your revenues go down people don't want your

2:21:50product um or vice versa your revenues go up and you hire more people so this is actually I know this is a long night but this is one of the more fun things about being on the city council little shot in the arm for our next slide and I will I will uh let everyone know

2:22:05that we've been on this item two hours we started this hour this item at 7 22.

2:22:10we took 30 minutes for that first slide um so I want to make sure that we uh you know I think we will pick up because I think some of the concepts we've covered in this first slide will carry over to some other of some of the other slides but I just wanted to do a time check and

2:22:27make sure everybody knew where we were in this particular item as much fun as we're having um slide 33 please so here we are uh we just sort of talked about some of these items on the first slide we talked about vacancies and I believe both council members Abelson and

2:22:46Benson have said the same thing essentially that vacancies really the value vacancies need to be evaluated with respect to the achieving our core um core services or or uh strategic goals um how should we tackle this slide can we do all four of them at once no actually the fourth one is on its own

2:23:09concept right uh how about let's take tackle the first two together um if I made the first one the way I was thinking about this was looking at the chart and how many vacancies we've been carrying is let's kind of face the fact of where we are today and also be honest

2:23:31with our staff about what you know holding vacancies open in departments I feel like holds out a certain hope to them that one day they're going to get some help and if and if I think it's time that we kind of stop holding that out and look at the money we have and

2:23:45get rid of some of the vacancies that are no longer they're no longer on the near-term future so I said no to that question and and interestingly enough I think I circled yes but I also said consider permanent changes in Staffing um which is potentially the same thing

2:24:06uh so in other words if we were to drop 10 positions and keep four vacant um that might be a way to balance the budget um so so that so I had a comparable response to that one I kind of looked at this as needing to do a cost benefit analysis on each position and by benefit I don't mean

2:24:31just Financial benefit certainly but benefit to the community and to the citizens and our goals yeah exactly so I surprisingly enough so this is the place where there's an opportunity to implement some change and to really say maybe we ought not to do business as

2:24:52usual business as usual would be to either eliminate the position or fill the position looking at this is an opportunity um even though it's in bad circumstances there's still an opportunity to implement change uh in the way we staff um and that is a major opportunity and

2:25:18um so we should take advantage of that and really do our very best I know it won't be easy because we actually do have a short time frame unless you can figure out a proposal that um could say we're going to leave those positions vacant for X months while we come up

2:25:40with a more where we while we have time to think out what our strategy would be for redeploying the workload in some different way um and so I would see that as what I would hope to see because I know that you're talking about it I mean I know that you're talking about it

2:26:06at a conceptual level and I know this is the only way I could see it happening easily here um and so that's why I think that the answer to those is that that needs to all be linked together um consumerials and I'm gonna try and try and um expand on your thought potentially using

2:26:32some of the other presentation when you had some questions during the presentation your thought was um you were excited about potentially looking at the budget on a goal-based per basis and your one of your questions was you know is this new is this all new are we looking at things new

2:26:53um and and I think that your comments here are to that sense so let's not be close-minded about this opportunity to implement our goals and strategies in a whole new way um and I generally support that I mean that's we put a lot of effort into the Strategic plan and if there is a better

2:27:18way to implement our communities um statement of their of their goals um then that's certainly something that I'd love to have staff consider um having said that I also believe we have to to look at the bitter facts and the facts are that you know to to to show 190 positions and the

2:27:44revenue that's necessary for 190 positions is is uh is a challenge and that's that's so I I completely agree with you we could be at 183 positions and of those 183 positions 13 of them are all new Scopes or all new functionaries or all new ideas um so I I definitely support both ideas

2:28:09councilmember bridges any thoughts on the first one I think we just ended up doing the first one yeah I think that we can be creative and and probably eliminate some of these positions because I don't I don't think it makes sense to have them vacant year after year and I think we're probably

2:28:24already we've already adapted and we've become creative already in some of those positions I have a lot of concern over Public Safety um so when you address the second question the particular vacancies um you know I know that there are departments that probably are currently

2:28:42doing things differently than we do now and maybe they're there's culture change and maybe we do some of this already you know things like you know reporting some crimes online and not having officers take calls for certain types of events you know whether it be I don't know

2:29:00property crime or whatever it is I guess there's criteria that cities have now that we we probably do calls on but you know I have a concern over that so I'm going to start the next one um are there particular vacations go ahead um I like what council member Abelson is saying but the reality is we

2:29:22don't have the money to be playing with Physicians because our budget for this fiscal year is basically close to balanced on a 163 figure so we don't have like 27 positions to be creatively using the money I I like your concept though but we have to look at the

2:29:41reality that about the vacant positions yeah I'm saying those vacant positions but if we if you if you we don't have the money but those are positions that we were just recently vacated a number of them so right so about six I mean the ones I think that are not as much that were in

2:30:02the police department right no I'm as I said we carried we've been carrying around 12. so those are the ones that are I think you're all referring to as is there a point in carrying things for four years five years Beyond um but there are new ones the year the retirement correct program we offered

2:30:22correct that's what I'm talking about that's largely why we have the vacancies that we have not and not entirely but largely just to get really clear on this we have a 45 million budget and 163 people so the idea would be that right now we're spending some of that budget on

2:30:39contracts and temps so what you're thinking is in the future we might convert those contracted temp jobs into a creative Innovative new type of you know filling one of the vacancies we currently have that I think that's how we're bridging these two concepts that

2:30:55yes we only have 163 people and we have this amount of money and we don't think that money is going to grow next year so how can we fill anything but we can the only way to fill it is to convert contracts and temps into city employees well both um if we have more money people retired

2:31:12and left throughout the year so it's not it's not right all these people left on July 1st so it's not one to one I think in some cases and we've made this case to Council in the past um that there are things we can do more efficiently and more cost effectively if

2:31:29we bring it in-house there are other things that maybe we can make the dollar going further um by using contractors there's there's trade-offs um and I think we're looking at all of that um I think I um foreign councilmember Abelson is going is while we have no expectation we're going to be

2:31:52at 190 next year there are opportunities for positions we would we would likely fund and as I said there are a number of these positions which are filled through different means other than full-time permanent staff so there's not a one-to-one savings we are trying to

2:32:11spend more time both in public safety and in City Hall and the community center to really look at all of our processes what can we do more online what can we do with more technology what can we do by departments that have traditionally focused on their what they do and say

2:32:29well maybe we are in the process of retraining people to work across departments and looking at it more functionally how do we better serve our customers and everyone or many people have been given the charge of don't worry about which department they sit in let's think

2:32:46about are there areas even with these vacancies that we have a little more capacity a little more flexibility than other areas where we just don't have any flexibility and before we make recommendations to fill positions have we explored every conceivable way of

2:33:02doing things from a process point of view differently so I think there are opportunities um you know but I so I sort of agree with both of you and that the truth or the recommendation license somewhere in the middle but we're not that obviously will depend on all the Reds and all the

2:33:19greens um so I'm not certain that I can sit here and say what vacant positions I want to promote but I can I can tell you that in looking through the strategies that staff put red dots on um that and so it may not be people or it may be new people do it with new processes

2:33:49um for me I I would prefer to answer this question by saying I think staff has highlighted the the strategies that we should be filling those vacancies to help those strategies as opposed to filling pre-existing positions in Pre that were may have been that may

2:34:12presumably 12 of these positions were created six years ago under a structure that no longer even exists and so I'm sure that the vacancies have rotated around and that's not completely true but I'd much rather identify the services or sorry the strategies that we that will fulfill our

2:34:33goals and and see what positions need to be filled to fulfill those strategies then say we should hire another permit processing person now that permanent processing person may fulfill one of our goals so it may be to fill a position that's currently vacant one of the comments um that I wrote down

2:34:53when during the presentation was under you know goal B on page 22 and that was you know the comments about grants you know the fact that you know we we have 12 million dollars that have come to us which is sort of a remarkable amount of money um through grants so one of the

2:35:11positions should definitely go to hire you know maybe two or three more melodies or you know our our best grant writers right because we get a lot of bang for our buck and that goes under our sustainability there are a lot of other people that do grants and I don't know

2:35:25who who with their names I don't mean to offend anybody but yeah it's part of the cost benefit analysis Financial Financial sustainability I mean it certainly is a goal absolutely yeah agreed okay uh reduction of and in this case office hours to be precise you're talking about

2:35:48um hours that we provide services here at City Hall or the community center um reduction of service hours or office hours should be considered I initially felt strongly about this one but I'm interested in hearing what other people thought when I read this one I

2:36:06always come back to the view of many of the view the outside have of Americans which is we want to have everything and not pay for it and this one when I read it is kind of like do we want at some point when we get to when our backs against the wall and we have this

2:36:22decision between whatever it is holding reserves for an emergency that everybody acknowledges is below what many other entities have as reserves versus keeping our hours the same I I I've come down on the side of considering reducing hours and being honest with our residents and

2:36:39you know just saying we unless we can find new Revenue sources this is the kind of service we're going to have and it doesn't mean you know even though offices aren't open well actually it will have an impact on the number of times people can come to the community

2:36:53center or have classes but I view this as another honesty moment of we have to we have to put this on the table and consider it well I think one of my when you look at this I mean you talk about private sector I mean we all we all look at this and you know if if I

2:37:10have you know x amount of appointments between eight and nine that aren't getting filled they're gonna eliminate the eight to nine and maybe more people are wanting appointments with us you know between six and eight because they're coming home from work at that

2:37:22time of day and you know sometimes we have to flex those things and if you know we're keeping the pool open and there's only two lap swimmers you know from five six or six to seven or whatever it is and it's certain times a year certain times a month of the month

2:37:37um then you know maybe maybe we need to think about that it that that's only that's only sensical any other comments yeah um I I have mixed thoughts about the hours and part of it is that are it isn't reducing the hours it's what what is I need to kind of know what's going on behind it uh because if

2:38:03we're reducing the um the hours that were open to the public yet nothing else has changed besides that then that doesn't really have any positive value to me but if we're um we're keeping I mean but on the if we're keeping something open and no one's showing up much then I I question why

2:38:27we're open so so I it really does depend to me on those kinds of details and so I guess one way I might compare it is if this were that the the business World say um probably you would know Rebecca the answer to that question right whether or not to have the be open hours more

2:38:51because because right exactly this would tell you right exactly yeah so we can pretend Market signals yeah we we could pretend like we are a business and think about it look at it that way and and that would be something that staff would need to do in their analysis of it and if it makes

2:39:11sense based on um the effectiveness of those hours to close and I would say yes but if it's if it's a um it just is so doing it for show it doesn't really uh do much for me to you know make everyone's to make the public I don't like making the public suffer I would

2:39:32only do it it pretend like we're poorer than we are I would only do it to balance the budget yeah councilmember Friedman um I agree with most everything my colleagues have said have said and I think that there's some savings that are illusory because the if you limit the time when people

2:39:50can come in and get permits if they need a permit they're going to come in and get the permit and the real work is processing that permit sending inspectors out etc etc so we're not saving the amount of staff time and energy that's required to serve the public we may be increasing the duration

2:40:08of how soon the inspector is going to get to your house by a week or two weeks or a month and then what councilwoman Bridges said I think is really true we have to look at usage and patterns of public interaction with our facilities with our staff at the counter to

2:40:28determine it so I wouldn't give a blanket answer to this again it's uh you know doing an analysis of where there might be savings and where the savings are just symbolic I think assistant city manager pinkos is going to chuckle when I give my response I think the guidance

2:40:45is that we needed data driven decision um and I also would say that the hours need to be reduced strategically to achieve to allow to achieve the goals that we're trying to and uh reduce budget but they shouldn't be reduced just to save the budget if if we're not achieving uh continue to

2:41:07achieve the goals that we want control points median adjustments to control points if I understand the request from the city manager he would like to be able to budget to go out and get refresh the control points so that we know where we stand with our employees

2:41:30I believe that's what your request was there's no budget impact to doing to doing this I mean there's no we do it in the house there's no okay you do it in-house so there's no payroll or cost to do the the activity no do you really need us to yes because the reason is I

2:41:48mean we what I'm trying to avoid is if we go through the effort of doing this and bring you it's done by Council resolution so that's how the control points are set so I don't we don't want to go through the trouble of going through that whole process and then coming here and saying well we don't

2:42:04want to touch the control points and this would be for unrepresented and SEIU or Justin they're in they're currently in a bargaining agreement yeah uh council member Friedman um I I would defer to the city manager if you think this is going to be useful for your uh Personnel decisions going

2:42:30forward then yeah I'm fine with doing it I mean if if you think it's a useful tool um I think it makes sense however we might not like the answer we get is what I'm thinking and I just want to acknowledge that I'm pretty comfortable we won't like the answer we we won't actually

2:42:55staff won't like the what we do with the answer we get how's that um councilmember Bridges well that's why I asked how many non-sworn employees I want I want to know what I knew this was coming up and I wanted to know how many people this affected 40 yeah 14 well 40

2:43:10to 80 Maybe no the 40 the answer you got was 40 in this class 45 in SEIU around there and I also that's why I asked a question about the retention of yeah over time I agree I've worked in government for a number of years the medians or any salary guidelines survey you do is never

2:43:32going down ever so that's a given you need you know it's going up so that's what you're saying we might not like the answer but again if the city manager thinks this is useful to get this information that's fine I know in my agency um we haven't adjusted our salary

2:43:51guidelines in a while in the way that I know we don't have to is hardly anybody's leaving to take a job where they're making more money so that's something to keep in mind also guidances that uh you should probably seek to update your control points since they haven't been updated in over uh

2:44:11seven or eight years slide 34 please through a numerical scale at me and I I got really flustered by this one um so we are averaging about 30 minutes of slide we would have about an hour left just so that people are at home understand they can go pop some popcorn

2:44:37foreign should only be considered as a last resort in order to balance the budget and meet goals and strategies council member uh yeah benassine we'll start with um I had a hard time with the slide as well out of all of out of all four I was ranking them all very high this one to

2:45:00me um I I didn't rank as high as the others only very slightly I I think is a statement for many organizations this is not a correct statement um that at that every year your organization should think about what they're doing and then do exactly what we're doing with this book process is

2:45:17who's on the bus were they in the right seat and really think about it and it might it might turn out that times have changed over however many years it was since you had a particular person doing a particular type of service and you might need somebody who has a different

2:45:29skill and it's not um anything to do with that you know particular person it's just that something is has changed so in but on the other hand I know we have such a tight staff here and they are multi-disciplinary and many of them do many different types of jobs

2:45:47um but as I was looking at this in general I ranked the slightly below the other three in terms of priority councilmember Bridges I actually rated it pretty high because I kind of like what you said council member vanessini said is we already have a fairly slim staff

2:46:09and I don't think we tolerate any Slackers and everybody's multitasking and I mean if we had a position because we were doing something very differently in a person that was in that position couldn't function and yes you know that's sort of a different commentary but overall high priority for

2:46:33me so um and this is where I struggled I mean to me this was my priority issue it's more of a functional issue yeah this is where I struggle with with priority high priority or low priority is like I don't know I had a hard time with this council member Abelson um well

2:46:50the answer I would give to this is that I would assume before we think about this issue in implementing implementing it we would have looked at the issue of how do we want to align uh what it is we're doing uh in other words what what who should be doing what we so we would have resolved that and so

2:47:15we've got people organized the way we want them and then I would say that we definitely I mean it really would pain me to lay off people to balance the budget after we went through that other process um because during that other process we might have we should we should have all

2:47:35of the right people uh my hope would be after that other process is we have the right people on the bus and in the right seats so that means that we're really when we get to this point reducing um the essence of what we need for our operation and that means that we will suffer a lot

2:47:56in eliminating these people I don't know if that was clear it doesn't look like it was okay I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you for some clarification if we um if we do redefine the seats on the bus and there is a existing employee whose seat doesn't make it on the bus

2:48:22would you lay that person off as part of the budget process that's what is part of the budget process but as a part of of the reorganization the organization yeah so it's the budget wouldn't be the justification for the layoff the reorganization would be the justification for the lab okay thank you

2:48:40councilman Friedman um I pretty much agree with what the council member Abelson just said I understood it and I think it makes sense that the question is the function and the utility right the individual in order to accomplish our goals and that should be the determining Factor not

2:48:59some arbitrary where we have to cut the workforce by 10 or 5 percent because then our goals are thrown out the window more or less and so I think we all sort of agree this is a tool that shouldn't be used to be to balance the budget per se um and and so like council member

2:49:20benicini it's a tool I ranked with lower um desire to use it or lower priority because it's not um it's it's layoffs should we we shouldn't be in a position to resort to layoffs to balance the budget but there may be other reasons to change our staff structure stated well

2:49:46uh service reductions should be considered over continued Reliance on vacancies okay council member Ableton I can feel you I can feel you wanted to say something first of all I have to say that service reductions I'm not sure what it exactly means in this context

2:50:05but I'm assuming that it means uh where that means that we've got these unfilled vacant positions that just so we just sort of carry on the books um and is that what we're talking about here not necessarily um you we've talked about looking at the data for instance

2:50:29um just I will pick on the rec department for the moment um if people are if two people are swimming at between these hours doesn't make more sense to close the pool for two months then keep a position open somewhere else we have what I'm really trying to get at

2:50:52is through our our years of struggling with the budget we have never scaled back anything so okay so now I know what okay I understand better what it is so I think that there are some services that we provide and I'm thinking of seniors actually although I think

2:51:15um and a lot they use a lot of Volunteers in Senior Services um so I'm not sure what the numbers are but I I think that they're not um their fees do not cover their costs as I remember nor do they come close is that correct correct okay doing better this year what it's doing better better

2:51:36this year okay but I know that there is a discrepancy so so they do it does cost money to provide those Services um so I think that we need to consider whether you know how um the value of the services and there are different kinds of value and one of the value is for people who

2:51:58you know take up um and I know that we only we run the service but we don't I don't I don't know how we I don't know what our funding level is but looking at the Alzheimer's respite program that we run uh for example well that's a service that's really critical

2:52:17to people who receive it and um let's say that it's um you know it's it's an expensive service I I would um not choose to cut that as a first choice over one that um maybe is even a little more productive but not but semi-productive but yet the um the need for that kind of services

2:52:45and is vital it's it's like um I don't know what to use as an example how to make chocolate chip cookies let's say something like that that is you know we can all probably do better without so so one of the one ways to read this would be you are giving guidance that we

2:53:06should keep our services at where they are and keep a position vacant to do that that I think that's the way the essence of this question um is that you maintain the services that we've been maintaining that we've been doing at the expense of filling a seat on the bus

2:53:31I think when Scott gave this when he went covered this in the presentation it was due less with less was sort of it is it time facing brutal facts is it time to do less with less well I what I was talking about is um sort of looking at the the um what the things are the positions and

2:53:58saying that some of them are more essential services to a residence say than others even though they might on the surface look less productive and that we need to take that into consideration when figuring out what seats we have on the bus yes councilmember Bridges well you know

2:54:25many years ago and I was on park and rec commission we had a guy here chilled with roll Who had most of our services at least in the community services area had to pay for themselves if they didn't then they were eliminated or the fees went up so much that they

2:54:42had to be self-sustaining and I I think sometimes you know I think what Janet said correct you know I might consider closing the pool for two hours if there's only two lap swimmers but I probably wouldn't consider changing even though there's only two people that come to respite it's sort of

2:55:01a quality of life um it's something that we don't offer I mean we don't want to send our pool swimmers to Albany but if it's raining and you know we don't have people that swim on rainy days they can go to Albany I mean those Services might not be missed because someone else is there not

2:55:19that I'm encouraging that but I kind of understand what you're saying I think it depends on what they are and I think Services some service reductions probably could be considered but again I think this is probably another way we have to measure it the way I've been hearing and what I've

2:55:37been thinking is if there are alternatives to something we're providing that's either cheaper for the way we do it or there's an alternative somebody can go swim elsewhere they can learn to cook chocolate chip cookies elsewhere then that should definitely be considered but when I viewed this one I

2:55:50was really starting to think about like for example I've had two car two vehicle crimes since I've lived here over the last eight years and both times a police officer came you know I had a license plate stolen and a police officer came left his service on the patrol to do

2:56:04that and took my report and that was great service I didn't have to do anything on the other hand could we have provided that an equivalent level of service with me doing a little bit more work myself and actually I might have been happy to do because I had to wait a

2:56:18little while until they got there so maybe I would have been happy to just kind of report it and be on my way and not meet with a wonderful gentleman who came so I when I look at this I think we should think about what we're providing what is core to our seven goals am I

2:56:32still do I still feel safe knowing that the police have this on file and that you know the report was properly filed and I got to go get a new license plate because I had the that police report in hand I got the same sort of service and maybe we could have done it without taking

2:56:45somebody off of Patrol in order to come to my house to do that so when I viewed this one I was really thinking again yes this is a high priority let's figure out if there's ways that we can either provide things more cheaply in-house and still meet our goals um agree with what's been said some of

2:57:02our services are as needed you know when you need a police officer when you need a firefighter uh I know they do proactive crime prevention and safety work also but so there's no way to give a blanket answer we have to look at each situation individually and see where

2:57:20there are possible reductions that don't cut into what we see is the core of the what we provide for our citizens I guess my request would be that it's something that staff identifies places services that can be reduced and bring them to us so that we can make sure that we're helping you

2:57:43evaluate which Services need to be reduced but I think service reductions that have the the potential service reductions that we've talked about tonight are ones that should be considered and if you can use data to justify it um or but they're but data is not going

2:58:02to be it because as council member ivelson has eloquently put there's quality that has to be factored in at some point alternatives to reduce the city's cost of health care benefits should be evaluated including greater employee contributions should be considered

2:58:19I'm going to put a straw concept out there my employer recently did a whole bunch of uh changes that drove my cost up slightly and so I it I think um many employers are and I think that's appropriate for us as an employer to be looking at ways to cap our health care

2:58:45costs so I would be interested to see what the city can find out about how we can potentially cap our costs I'm going to turn to the health care provider expensive health care worker I actually asked I actually yeah I'm the one I'm reaping all these things yeah sure 20 raises every year so

2:59:11um I wish so one of the things I approached is you know I know what we pay I know that we what we offer I know Kaiser is sort of where we offer and then we do compensation for other plans and I asked to actually asked what our copay was because that's sort of a

2:59:27really big deal nowadays deductibles are really high my son has a really good high-paying job and he has to meet a two thousand dollar deductible every year that means basically he's a young healthy kid who is really getting no health insurance except for basically

2:59:43catastrophic you know he goes in for a stitch or a puncture wound on his foot and you know everything's out of pocket our copay right now I think is ten dollars which is sort of on the Kaiser scale on the lower rate of office visits honestly a lot of my patients pay 25 and

3:00:0250 and the the creative thing you talk about creativity the creative thing that's helping happen in the healthcare industry is and you see this bombarded every day on TV and radio is you can get care without having an appointment nowadays you can get an email and I write

3:00:21prescriptions over email every day and you can do it over the phone I mean there are so many things that can be done without appointments nowadays that you know it doesn't really hurt the employee and it's appropriate in many many ways you know if someone's had X Y or Z and and

3:00:39she or he knows what what this is and it's a bladder infection or whatever you talk to me on the phone and I say yeah I think you're right do you want to come in no I don't I'm in San Francisco um you know I'm caught in traffic yada yada yada give me the prescription I'm

3:00:56okay with that but if you're not better and you know two three days you got to come in I mean there the health care industry is sort of changing how we practice because of co-pays and um and I think that you know we could probably I think we have to pay attention to this

3:01:12and you know although I have no issue with the health care changes that are about to happen in 2014 I think we're all hearing that it's going to affect all of us our our rates are all going to go up because of it and and that's not necessarily a bad thing because we have

3:01:30to fix a system that's really really broken right now but I think that we really need to consider this because we saw we saw how this has changed over the years the expenses and it's it's not unique to the city of El Cerrito it's all workplaces and I think the private

3:01:46sector has really answered this question with increasing payment on employees backs sadly councilmember Friedman I can smell your response oh no okay council member oh I think it would be it it would behoove our one of our goals which is achieving long-term Financial State

3:02:11sustainability to share these costs with the employees and hopefully at a better as things if we get fixed and do a Calpers rate or as things improve a bit we might have more space to make salary adjustments which are fully within our control as opposed to the other part of

3:02:27compensation which employees don't even quite view as part of their compensation because they don't know how much we're paying for these things um so it would be I think it as part of our financial as part of our as part of our achieve long-term Financial sustainability this is definitely an

3:02:41area to explore and I listed it as a very high priority I guess what I'm thinking that we could um when it says alternatives to reduce the health care benefit should be evaluated I I think that we should look at because we have our own plan if I remember right so it's not just um who who's going to

3:03:05pay what between the employer and the employee it's what are we paying for um should I so I definitely think that's a good thing to be evaluating and um I would actually hope that we would do so on a um a periodic basis I'm not sure what the period is but you know whatever makes

3:03:23sense because things are changing in the um the way things are being I mean I'm I'm every so often I pay a different rate for a copay and I you know like what they do with my glasses and all that changes and you know all that stuff changes so you know it makes sense to me

3:03:42that we would look at it that way and I think that we should um have an opportunity for uh for people to have a Cadillac system as we have been known to call it here with the understanding that they might have to pay a lot for that Cadillac system and then we should also also have a more

3:04:06economical model where they don't have to pay but get pretty good service great thank you councilman and I think that that's the big the beginning of it but I think that we will be seeing employees paying um more from I mean I'm not sure that we'll even be participating in all that

3:04:27decision depending on what happens but councilmember Friedman um my short answer is yes and that is also for me yes employee benefit contributions to pensions should increase over time I viewed this one as another high priority with the caveat contingent upon our ability to recruit and return and

3:04:54retain a talented and effective Workforce okay thank you I agree with that okay agreed agreed um yes I that's well stated slide 35 that one was uh 20 minutes we're accelerating um additional fee increases to cover actual operating costs above inflation for programs should be considered and as a

3:05:27starting point this is the rate of change not overcharging right because all of our charges right now are currently under market value uh maybe some of our business some of our building fees may not be but but it I'm thinking of our recreational fees are probably and certainly our senior

3:05:50subsidies are all below uh Market rates so this was additional fee increases to cover actual operating costs above inflation we're not talking about charging above the actual cost um councilmember Friedman would you like to go first on this one yeah um yes they should be considered

3:06:13again as we discussed look at usage rate looks at look at what's fair Etc I agree in the past we've done a good job of showing what are what's our competition and will we lose quote-unquote market share by increasing fees so continue to do that but you but yes consider above inflation

3:06:32council member Abelson um I actually thought it was not true over time anyway that we were charging sometimes we were charging above market rate because I can remember lowering our prices and swimming um yeah so sometimes it's one way sometimes it's actually the other

3:06:53um so um so I would say yes we should consider it when appropriate but it's not always appropriate and um we need to think take that into account also okay councilman Bridges yes so I'm going to put one caveat on this um having served on park and rec which is where

3:07:18some number of the fees are and having heard comments from our um families that are trying to do building permits I I definitely think our fees should go up I think our fees can consider a an increase although the city manager did propose that the rates will go up you

3:07:39know based on inflation this year I would support an increase above inflation for certain services that have a high demand and not for those that are potentially going to drive away somebody who is Seeking a permit or a drive away somebody who is potentially using our

3:07:56services on fixed income like seniors so I think it has to be selective but yes we should be looking at some of our services going up hopefully all special events should continue as in the past um notably July 4th um I'm gonna I've had comments from some people on the

3:08:21um human relations uh commission say that potentially our parade that goes down San Pablo Avenue for Mountain Martin Luther King to find out if we can get you know bicycle cops from Richmond to help us with that so I'm going to say that maybe we should be looking at

3:08:43um some of these events then find out if there are ways for us to um change the revenue structure the cost structure so I'm going to float that out there as the balloon that we all take Hot Shots Out uh council member Bridges so I'm not exactly sure how many events

3:09:06besides Fourth of July Martin Luther King try safety day Earth Day National Night Out National Night Out oh yeah that definitely brings up some money so but that's a that's probably yeah it's six like probably a half dozen they're smaller ones but yeah Street Place

3:09:29I I don't know what that number is is it a hundred thousand 150 I would be guessing it's I'm reasonably certain it's less than a hundred thousand yeah I I think I think of things very differently I think of National Night Out is you know something that's really important for Public

3:09:47Safety I think it's good for neighborhood networking I just see so many positives of that I would never consider cutting that but Fourth of July I mean how hard would it be to try to figure out some way to charge attendance I mean I I don't know I have I have mixed emotions about

3:10:08some of this and I know that in the big scheme of our budget it's not a lot a lot of money um I don't know Council memory Olsen um I I think it's always a good idea to consider new ways in doing events um in some cases I suppose that might even in especially in good years mean

3:10:36increasing things but the idea of looking at are can we reduce our expenses without uh increasing all right you know without reducing the quality of the event is always a good thing that I think we should always be doing with these events but um having said that I don't see any events

3:11:00that we do that I would want to consider getting rid of I don't think they cost that much um by the way Fourth of July all vendors including the non-profit once get charged a fee yes I know you have a wonderful they are not um they are you know there's a lot of

3:11:18people paying money to be there um so um the um so I would say that we should not it's not a big source of money and what bothers me for example about eliminating the Fourth of July is what would be happening to those people if we didn't have Fourth of July would the

3:11:42kids be out with the firecrackers and all that stuff yeah would they be starting fires you know um one fire would you know that's more than the whole cost of the event and it's not a lot of money I mean no no it's not councilmember benestine the only thing I would add is that this is

3:12:02one of our key on goals see we have deep in a sense of place and Community identity I feel like the special events are really key to community identity and kind of community cohesiveness and they're not a lot of money and I would strike the section that says should

3:12:14continue as in the past as Janet was saying earlier and that is you know this is like the difference between having a wedding at the palace if you're really rich you're having a wedding in Golden Gate Park you can still have an event and make it special and bring together

3:12:26community and maybe just try to cut costs or come up with ways to have some of the booth folks pay a little bit more but it is such a small amount of money and I feel like it really um goes to one of our key goals Community identity um I basically agree on the the Martin

3:12:44Luther King Parade um this might not be popular but I think it's one of the funkiest parades of it or marches I've ever participated in and I'm not sure we need to do it because the amount of the populace that actually comes out to see it is minimal you can go a whole three or four blocks and

3:13:04nobody's there watching so we would save a lot of money if we marched around the track at the high school we wouldn't need to stop traffic have all the police so I've been a lot of marches a lot of parades and I'm not sure that we need to do that in the same way and could save

3:13:23some money I don't want to end the event the parade I don't know so I think the direction is um that special events are part of our place making goal and special events need to be reevaluated um you know how how we are investing our funds in those special events

3:13:48so I don't know if you need any more Direction than that additional funds should be earmarked for a restricted Reserve fund um if you could remind us what you're actually asking for uh Scott I appreciate it well I think you already covered this up up front on the first

3:14:04slide you know essentially how you want us to think about reserves when we put the budget together okay I mean I mean the quest I mean the specific question is you know in addition to what we have should we force ourselves to put extra money aside and it sounded like the consensus was

3:14:24you know it's difficult to make that decision unless we know what we're giving up to get that it comes my bridges so I have a comment about this you know Fab is oftentimes looking for direction from us and assignments if you will so they were going to look at this or are

3:14:43they considering it or do they need direction from they want to know if the council is I think they're going to talk about it but it would if they had a task which is tell us whether tell us what other cities do tell us what you think is an appropriate level how much should

3:14:57it be dedicated should it be restricted subject to city council approval to unrestricted so this is like a rainy day fund or whatever I I'd like to see that happen so I think the guidance is that the financial Advisory Board should come back and um give us their opinion on the value of

3:15:21the restricted Reserve fund is that the is that what I'm hearing the guidance is so they may come back and say restricted Reserve fund might be seven percent of your reserve fund right so right so I guess what I'd like to hear that they may come back and say it

3:15:36should be 10 of your 15 Target so that so I I guess what I'm wanting to make sure is the financial Advisory Board gets some clear guidance and what I'm hearing council member Bridges suggest and I'd like to see some nods is that we'd like the financial Advisory Board

3:15:52to give us guidance on what portion of the reserve fund should be restricted for Council Direction only if I could maybe tailor that a little differently certainly um I would hate to have sort of the inadvertently have the Fab at odds with either the staff or the council I mean

3:16:13my I guess what what I would say it a little differently is I think the staff would would suggest or recommend that it's a good time to re-look at our Reserve policies including a restricted fund and that we would work with the financial Advisory Board to craft

3:16:29either a recommendation that what we have is fine or changes to it but get I certainly get the Fab input and blessing but um I don't I don't want to it sounds almost like you know staff is going to sit on the outside watching that and I mean I think I think we have opinions on

3:16:48what we should do and I think the Fab is a great sounding board and um and should be involved in that recommendation but I think we could I think we could do that together and reach a consensus if not I mean we can say that and that's fine okay with that thank you is the the you're the liaison

3:17:05financial advisor board um do we have consensus that that's what that's I see nods okay moving on to the last of the 16 questions additional funds should be earmarked for dedicated facility repair fund and this is I know I asked this question of the city manager

3:17:23you're looking for a special fund because it certainly wouldn't be coming out of the reserve fund correct it would not be coming out of reserve and this special fund would be accumulating funds over time so that we could have the funds available for that air conditioner that blows out or

3:17:43building a rebuilding a uh uh the damaged uh clubhouse is that is that the kind of idea that this would be yes I think minimally what we're looking for is if there's all things being equal that and all the things we've discussed tonight um and the fact that we've talked about

3:18:04this issue and the Strategic plan it goes to this issue minimally we would want direction to develop um a plan develop a financial plan and develop a capital Improvement plan that that would go together that we would bring back to you to essentially adopt the plan and fund

3:18:27the plan in the short term it's really is it does it count is there does the council feel that we need to start putting money aside and if so do you want to see that next fiscal year we'll work on how much money we think that should be but is it even if it's a minimal investment it

3:18:48gets the ball rolling so next fiscal year I'm going to open my presentation to slide 24. and say boy there are a lot of red dots on this slide so for me this is a pretty clear yes uh council member Friedman yes absolutely we've been talking about that back in my previous

3:19:10opinion 14 years ago could not now when us too uh councilmember Abelson um I guess I I have a question about it if if I might um why why I I don't remember hearing a lot about this concept in this subject area um repeatedly and so I'm wondering why this year is something different no I I

3:19:40actually do think it's just been a combination of the lack of it no I I think we have pointed out every year that the general fund is making no contribution to Capital um and uh when you take that and then the council's sort of strategic planning process it seems to be a priority to

3:20:01make reinvestment in our own infrastructure a bigger priority than it's been it's not to say we have like I said we've done very good targeted stuff but um you know we're just concerned that we're not reinvesting and we're going to have more larger problems develop as a result

3:20:21and it also goes to are there things we can do with our facilities to make them more attractive to rent out and therefore be able to charge more where people aren't looking at the bathrooms and going you want how much um you know it's it's again I think we have

3:20:38facilities that could be competitive with other facilities that people are looking for birthdays occasions and things but I think our facilities probably need a little more attention to make us be able to charge competitively so to me that's actually a little bit

3:20:57different than what this is saying and maybe that's what I'm reacting to the it's the word um facility repair fund is the thing that's I don't remember hearing I mean Capital Improvements yes I know we've got a big program on that but the this to me looks like it's something

3:21:15different maybe it's just this wording I don't know is that is it I'm just reading the wording we have no money earmarked for our our own facilities other than day-to-day maintenance needs that come up something breaks we fix it some you know small scale stuff but replacing

3:21:34you know art is a facility air conditioned is um does the roof need to be replaced um has it not been painted in 10 years has I mean just it's a whole host of things does the tile need to be replaced does the flooring need to be replaced there's just a whole list of Capital

3:21:52Improvements that we're not doing so what I'm reading so we have had projects over the year that like one year we painted the uh uh clubhouses but uh 2001 wow um that was wow anyway um so there have been things like that done but this to me is what this means to me and maybe that's what I'm not

3:22:20seeing right is this means to me that we just set aside money and don't really say what we're using it for but it's like in in case the roof leaks or something so what are we doing here yeah if I may we it's our opportunity to give guidance and what I heard the city manager say

3:22:40because I would like to we've spent three hours on this item and we have five minutes left in this meeting um I would like to give guidance that they should come back with a financing plan and capital Improvement plan that reinvests in our existing assets and I

3:22:57think that's what you said during your presentation and I think that would be more towards your point which is it it needs to be both improvements and repairs um in our existing assets so I'd like to make that as a our guidance on this item if if you're willing to because I do

3:23:14agree repair is such a shallow word for what we're talking about so it's reinvesting in our Capital assets and our existing assets thank you or just maintaining our Capital assets so did it right so but but we'll get everybody was saying that I think no I think it's it's both I

3:23:40mean some of our buildings need yeah right or they need to be um seismically updated or accessibility updated or aesthetically updated I mean it's all it's all different things yeah it's maintenance and Improvement of our and it could be Sports Fields I mean it

3:23:58doesn't have to be just structures so yeah um with that I'd like to move on to slide 37 for this question the first bullet here is actually a question um and given that we've done I actually had a much more comprehensive discussion tonight that I already envisioned which

3:24:20is good um thoughts on should the city council discuss the priorities at an additional Workshop I don't think so I I think I think the guidance we've given is worthy of a budget book and we can discuss this topics in in context of a budget that comes forward so the risk of getting a

3:24:42glare from new mayor alignment one we didn't discuss at all that we might I don't think we need another session on it but we had a couple people here with regard to a proposal on the library um it's my just not not knowing too much more about it other than what they

3:24:56showed in their presentation it it may be worthwhile for staff to consider examining whether or not these the estimates they put together are correct and make sense and um consider within the context of our goals whether or not it would be important or would help us

3:25:11deepen a sense of place and Community identity by extending Library hours on I was interested in the Sunday time but I think that that's up to staff's discretion of winter when are there more needs for Library hours and I'd just like to see that um considered in the context of the

3:25:26broader budget I can I can support that actually not glare you certainly the Sunday hours that are half the cost of the weekday hours so that certainly would be something that I would support in keeping with the public speakers that spoke on this item any other so in the

3:25:44context of this bullet any other short thoughts remarks about the budget or can we um looking forward to the next time yeah have staff bring forward a budget I'm fine with that okay Phil fine with that yeah that was gonna be my question got enough guidance okay great all right thank you for three

3:26:13hours on that that is actually I think council member benestini said it what well earlier this is really what we are here to do and so this was an important component for us to take up um item item eight is Council liaison reports I'm going to start with council member

3:26:38Friedman past Bridges yes design review board met on April 3rd and um heard a conceptual review for a Sprint Wireless facility at 6 500 block it's actually a slight increase in size and and a pre-existing antenna so 60 Fair did I not say Fairmont I'm sorry 60 it's late what

3:27:05time is it 6 500 block of Fairmont it's pre-existing and it's actually behind um it there was some conjecture I think it's behind Bed Bath and Beyond and between the buildings that face Fairmont so you really can't see it from anywhere in the plaza or the street for that

3:27:22matter can I get a motion to extend five minutes I move the weeks in for five minutes second I have a motion in a second can we agree that it's an i i okay we've extended five minutes council member Bridges were you done yes that's all councilmember Abelson um yes my report is on the Environmental

3:27:42Quality committee and um they met on April the 8th 9th rather and um considered an interesting bill on used mattress recovery and res used mattress recovery and recycling act SB 254 by Hancock and took a position of support on it it's a really interesting bill that would um we it wasn't our

3:28:11consent calendar I'm sorry that's right I'm sorry I'm sorry it still is it still is an interesting build yes exactly well let me just okay I won't tell you sorry okay and uh the uh climate action plan we also looked at on that committee and um the um I think the other things maybe

3:28:33already got the the there's another opportunity as was mentioned in the um the Bay Area plan uh is coming before Contra Costa Transportation Authority on its meeting um tomorrow actually and uh the public is welcome at 6 p.m at 299 Oak Inn Pleasant in Pleasant Hill

3:29:02wall excuse me Walnut Creek we moved that's it okay great and that's that's probably not all you have though no that no it was oh okay you're in luck council member just won the Planning Commission met and they approved the negative Declaration on the eir for the climate action plan and I

3:29:23already talked about what what Fab did during their meeting more to come on their um progress great um human relations met on April 3rd they discussed some project ideas one of the things they would like to do is fundraise for the MLK and Fourth of July celebrations

3:29:43um so they would like to help us um they are they like the idea of Street play the joint effort with uh with Richmond to reinforce the community across those boundary lines and budget this year they have requested a budget of four thousand dollars which I believe

3:30:00is maybe fifteen hundred dollars more than what they've had in the past so they can do more with the 25th Annual Martin Luther King celebration next January April 4th I did go to the Contra Costa mayor's conference it was a presentation by Steve Weir our elections

3:30:21officer who is retiring and uh I did bring back a report on the last couple he presented some very interesting facts about elections and I did bring back a report and provide that to the city manager so if you're interested you can when you meet with the city manager you

3:30:39can take a glance at that really quickly I do want to encourage every anyone who's interested in participating in larger regional office offices to attend the May 2nd Contra Costa mayor's conference on April 8th the tree committee met without me so I do not have anything to report

3:30:59on April 10th I attended the green Corridor meeting this is a collection of cities along San Pablo Avenue from Hayward to Hercules that are collaborating to on green initiatives the meeting focused on should the green corridor or exist going forward or should it combine with other entities

3:31:24we did not make a decision we had a long discussion and we will be taking that up again sometime in the next month at our next meeting April 11th I attended the waste management meeting and at that meeting we did approve the we certified the plastic bag ban eir

3:31:48and so that is now available for us to take action upon uh following any public Outreach we have to the businesses and we also move forward with the term sheet uh as you guys instructed me to I did vote on moving forward with the term sheet with Republic Services so that is

3:32:09something that's moving forward as well um the eir on the plastic bag ordinance so it's written specifying how they would be banned or do we have flexibility about how we might then use it in in our own City in adopting an ordinance of our own the it did analyze

3:32:33some specific things like a minimum of a nickel fee for one-time use bags we can charge a greater value but the sequel did analyze a nickel so we wouldn't be able to go below a nickel for example I there is a ordinance that is coming forward that ordinance was reviewed by

3:32:53the eqc 18 months ago or almost 24 months ago so there is an ordinance that's going to be coming back to us we can within certain guidelines and ranges tweak that ordinance a little bit certainly as it relates to a regional ordinance it would be wise for us to minimize the differences so that

3:33:15somebody who's in on one side of the street buying something at the natural Grocer in Richmond isn't experiencing something completely different when they walk across the street and buy something in El Cerrito so that's smart with that it is 10 35 and I will conclude adjourn this meeting