Regular City Council Meeting May 20, 2025

0:00:24recording in progress the May 20th regular city council meeting is called to order at 6:00 p.m will the city clerk please call the role mayor Weisinger present mayor Prominto council member Katsanis present council member Moyama present council member Saltzman we have a quorum all right the

0:00:51first item on the agenda is consideration under AB 2449 city clerk do we have any requests we do not have any requests all right please join me in the pledge of allegiance or a moment of silence i pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the

0:01:09republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all the next item on the agenda is teleconference and public comment instructions from our city clerk thank you mayor this hybrid meeting provides an option to participate in person or

0:01:28via Zoom with closed captionings available meetings of the city council are subject to the Brown Act and are held for the purpose of conducting city business the Brown Act also ensures the public's right to be heard and while the city council is not able to respond your

0:01:42comments directly your comments will be heard prior to the city council taking action for members of the public who wish to provide oral testimony the mayor will announce the time for public comment on each applicable item public comments will only be taken in person

0:01:57and a request to speak can be submitted to the city clerk by completing a speaker card the council's adopted rules of order and procedure specify that public speakers address the city council in an orderly and respectful manner prece their comments with their name and

0:02:12city of residents and be respectful of time limits with that said that concludes my instructions mayor all right the next item on the agenda is council staff communications city Manager do we have any staff communications certainly yes your honor hello everyone i'm Karen

0:02:28Pinkis city manager i wanted to um let everyone know that this city council uh was part of the spirit of global collaboration on May 12th when the city hosted a delegation from the National Association of Towns and Villages of Japan this was facilitated by the International City County Management

0:02:46Association ICMA and it underscored the vital role of learning from peer communities around the world to improve emergency preparedness during this visit the city council welcomed the local government officials from across Japan highlighting the steps that Elserto is

0:03:03taking in critical areas for wildfire safety and emergency preparedness to improve community resilience as you all know for a city of our size in the San Francisco Bay area we are unique in that we own uh we operate our own dedicated fire department so that we maintain a

0:03:19proactive stance on fire prevention which is crucial here in our part of the world especially given the potential threat of Diablo winds that can sweep through the area so Fire Chief Eric Sailors I want to give a shout out to him he provided the delegation with an

0:03:32in-depth presentation on the Elserto Fire Department our strategies and then we led them on a tour of the Elsarto fire station across the street this allowed the delegation a firsthand look to understand Elsarto's commitment to constant training mutual aid participation across California and the

0:03:48empowerment of our residents through our C program so we will have pictures and uh more of an announcement and a press release that will go out in my city manager update next week but I just want to thank the city council i want to thank the fire department for being

0:04:02wonderful hosts and our and the rest of our staff i want to specifically thank uh will provost for helping uh coordinate with the Japanese delegation uh contact this exemplifies the power of local governments connecting across borders to share best practices and

0:04:17innovative solutions and I was very proud to be a member of the Elserino community that day and again thank you all city council and they did give a gift that uh of a stationary set that will reside in the and fans look in the city hall and fans for all of the council members pretty hot today so

0:04:37thank you your honor that's all I have all right thank you madam city manager um as far as mayor I'm sorry we didn't get to the council i It's It's hot i'm hot everybody does anyone have any announcements today council member and then we'll come down to this side okay

0:04:51uh I just want to let people know that on June 7th we have the summer kickoff festival and Maker Hall over at Hana Gardens and the city hall parking lot and that will go from 11 to 300 p.m thank you any any other announcement announcement on this side all right um

0:05:09for mayoral announcements on May the 16th I signed the following letters pursuant to the city's adopted legislative platform support of SB63 regarding transportation funding support of AB 382 regarding school zone speed limits support of AB 650 regarding the regional housing needs allocation

0:05:28timeline support of AB 1026 regarding the post entitlement process for electrical corporations for housing developments support of SB456 regarding exemption of muralists from contractor's license and requirements and support of SB239 regarding subsidiary bodies to

0:05:46meet remotely without location notification or in-person quorum requirements these letters are available on the city's website on the city council page under state legislative platform in addition on May 14th as the mayor I authorized my name to be added to a joint letter of support at the

0:06:03request of Council Member Motyama requesting a $30 million state budget appropriation for the Bay Area Housing Authority Finance I'm sorry Bay Area Housing Finance Authority and I just want to thank you Council Member Motyama for all the work that you do on Abag it

0:06:18wasn't a very hard decision whether to support because I know that you work with them so much on housing so thank you so much for that i also wanted to acknowledge our de I'm sorry assistant city manager Will Provos he and I went to Elsto High School today for their um

0:06:34what was it Will it was like a work day or a career fair there you go i mean it was so many different work fair same thing um we had we had our Elserto PD out um Confire which is not our fire department but Confire was out it was a great day to talk to students and they

0:06:50were pretty shocked someone actually said "We have a black mayor." Yes you do and they said "And you have a a rainbow flag?" "Yes I do." "And you're the Mville?" "Yes I am." "And you went to this school?" I said "I absolutely did but I'm pretty old." And they said

0:07:03"You're not that old." I said "Thank you." Um so thank you Will for that and I also wanted to address we received a couple of um letters in regards to bringing back Zoom comments or hybrid public meetings um for the city council i just want to remind folks back in

0:07:20February after we had our city council retreat we did establish an ad hoc committee between myself council member Motyama along with staff which is generally um our city clerk Holly um representing staff as well as sometimes our city manager so we are working to

0:07:34actually revamp the entire council rules and participation and procedures so that goes beyond Zoom comments but a lot of other things that that um guide how we run our meetings but I just want to remind folks if anyone is out there telling you that they're working on

0:07:49bringing back Zoom comments and they're not Mayor Carolyn Weissinger or Council Member Motyama then they are telling you inaccuracies um bringing back Zoom comments is actually at the will of the mayor it's part of it's part of the rules of participation so I said as

0:08:04mayor in February that I would like to make sure that we had um firm guard rails around our participation that protects everyone in the room so that means all of our citizens that come that means everyone that's sitting on the deis that means all of our staff that

0:08:18comes we want to make sure that this is a safe place for everyone to speak their mind but also to be in participation so once we have completed that work on the ad hoc committee then I as the mayor will go into consideration of whether or not we're able to go back to hybrid

0:08:30meetings but I just want to reiterate and let people know this is at the will of the mayor so that's something that I am currently considering as far as hybrid meetings and that is the end of my announcements the next item is oral communications from the public now is

0:08:46the time for members of the public who wish to provide public comments regarding matters not on the agenda consent items and presentation items request to speak can be submitted to city clerk by completing a speaker card public comments will be taken in person only please remember to identify

0:09:01yourself and your city of residence at the beginning of your comments city clerk please proceed thank you mayor we have a total of 12 speakers the first speaker is Elaine Fielding followed by Lynn Watkins and city clerk can we adjust the time there for to two minutes per person yes we may

0:09:21thank you okay elaine Fielding followed by Lynn Watkins madame Mayor city councilors my name is Elaine Fielding and I live on Richmond Street and I want to speak about Richmond Street the goal of the Richmond Street project which we can all agree on is to make the

0:10:03street safer but how is that defined by the city with a project that will spend 11 million of taxpayers dollars we expect the city to base their planning on good data the city plans to remove 50% of parking to make way for bicycle lanes which we're told are necessary because

0:10:25Richmond Street is unsafe for cyclists yet police records indicate that there have been no bicycle accidents on the street between the year 2013 and 2024 are we trying to improve on zero accidents the city doesn't appear to be using data indicating Richmond Street's current

0:10:50level of safety such as numbers of collisions speeding violations etc or the numbers their proposed improvements are designed to achieve without these kind of data how would we measure success we have we have asked the city to point us to a case study where a project like

0:11:12this has been shown to be successful in an environment similar to Richmond Street we haven't seen one yet what we do know about a similar situation in San Mato where the wishes of the residents were overridden by the city now to try to reserve to reverse the harm done to

0:11:31its residents San Mateo plans to eliminate bike lanes at a cost of $2 million unnecessary changes that cause hardship and which cannot be justified by good data should be removed for the from the plan for Richmond Street the input of the street's actual residents

0:11:50was ignored in the planning but we ask what we ask for is simply to make the intersection safe for pedestrians and cyclists which is all that is that may be needed to slow traffic and increase safety for all thank you next speaker is Lynn Watkins followed by Mark Mesc and let me just

0:12:18try to get the public timer clock working before you start thank you hi I'm Lynn Watkins and I live in Elserto on Richmond Street i'm here to speak up for safety for all on Richmond Street and against the proposed project that would take away um parking in in service of the bicycle

0:13:14lane um there are many reasons that I have for being against this proposal but I'll just speak to one of them tonight please consider a likely possibility of something that could happen if 50% of the parking is taken away on our street um let's say Betty no longer has any

0:13:35parking in front of her house betty comes home from the grocery store and she's got all kinds of groceries in her car and she can't park on her side of the street she has to park across the street which happens to be in the middle of the block so Betty has to gather all her

0:13:53groceries uh oh I forgot to say Betty also has her child in the car and the stroller so Betty has to get her groceries or the baby whichever you choose walk a half a block to the corner wait for the traffic to stop cross the street go the other half block to her

0:14:13house put stuff in her house and reverse that course numerous times so what does she do does she leave the baby unattended in the car or does she leave the baby unattended in the house this is a very realistic possibility of something that could happen how do you think Betty will get

0:14:35everything in her house safely having to go back and forth um the very likely possibility is that Betty will choose to jaywalk which is a really popular alternative which is not safe so I urge you to think about how the proposed plan does not increase safety for all on Richmond Street not in

0:14:58any way and it doesn't make it safe for Betty it doesn't make it safe for small children for the elderly for disabled or anyone else who lives on that street so I urge you to please come up with a much more reasonable Thank you for your comments thank you next speaker is Mark Mespek followed by

0:15:20Terren Sims good evening council my name is Mark Mespel i'm a resident here in Elino you can go okay I can go now good evening council my name is Mark Maspelt i'm a resident here in El Certo i want to express my concern about the Richmond Street improvement project this

0:15:49weekend I had the opportunity to speak with 17 of our neighbors on Everett Street about the proposed Richmond Street project they were unaware of the project some of them are here this evening one Richmond Street homeowners and residents will lose street parking

0:16:07of 50% from Hill Street to Moer Lane where will the cars park on Elm Street on Everett the second issue Richmond Street will become an S curve chicane roadway bike lanes for eight blocks which will catch drivers offguard they'll try to navigate the curves we'll have to see what happens

0:16:34with that three Richmond Street is already a shared roadway with bicycle markings that alert drivers that bicyclists can occupy the lane which I'm one of the bike assist i've ridden my bike here all my life in El Certo i've grown up here richmond Street is a wonderful street to

0:16:54ride a bike up and down on and it's safe we have bike routes we have bike boulevards and we need to be proud of the Aloney Greenway for bikes and pedestrians to move safely from Elm to Fairmont let's listen to the homeowners on Richmond Street and we could try to give the

0:17:20parking back to them and revise the plan to take the time keep the shared road bike way with the bikers it's marked it's evident it's a shared road bike rate currently on Richmond Street thank you for your comments thank you next speaker is Terara Sims followed by

0:17:43Serenda Candell good evening council my name is Terrence Sims i'm a resident Elserto i'm also I also live on Richmond Street i am a real estate broker and I wanted to address the the dynamics of the city and the possible market changes if you add the bike lane to Richmond Street um there's

0:18:20a dynamic to Elserto which is what makes Elserto Elserto um and based on research and based on just experience in the in the real estate market of Elserto Elserto is a high demand low inventory and there's a reason for that because the residence that makes the city the

0:18:39city now when you um add a bike lane you change the dynamic of the city which is possible that you change the dynamic and and when you change the dynamics of the market that cannot be beneficial for the city now when you adding a bike lane something that the residents that makes the city the city

0:19:00when you do something like that you're pushing them out and so I want the council to consider that and I also want the council to consider that there is a bike lane on Moser which is which is a a main intersection that that leads to San Pablo which is also a main intersection

0:19:16so there's really no need to add it to Richmond that's my comments thank you next speaker is Serinda Kandall followed by Henry Simons uh thank you uh so today I want to raise the issue which uh recently happened uh to my house house last week so it is on the corn honestly so my name is Sandra

0:19:50Kandel the res of also so my house is on the corner of Portola and the Rismont and like um um the incident like happened last week like the crash happened and which um at the end like ended up hitting my house um one car and actually like what happened is that like

0:20:11one car hit another car he ran away like just hit and run and the the the who got heated like just came and hit my house at the chimney and like I would imagine in like how how like big damage it would be if it had eaten like any other places than the chimney okay and um and

0:20:31honestly I have seen like so many accidents on this intersections because like people are driving way too fast like on this riskman street and the another thing there is so this corner is next to the moer lane on the moer lane there is a traffic light and people are

0:20:46always trying to cross the red light and they're speeding up like me maybe they mostly I have seen the car driving at the speed of like at least 3540 there just to cross the moer and They don't even like on the intersections it's not four-way stop just two-way stop like

0:21:04only on the portoola side there's a stop sign but there is no stop sign on the ris and like th those who stop at the portola side they think like I have seen a lot you know I have seen a lot so they think like it's a allway stop they just stop the car and then like start moving

0:21:19like to cross the street and then another car coming in a very high speed and the crash happened and like minor crash I have seen a lot and this is a major crash that just happened last And I have the pictures with me if you if I can show it to somebody here i don't know it's my first time here i

0:21:34don't know like how can I submit the pictures but I can submit the pictures as well thank you for your comments yeah and uh I want to mention one more okay so sorry can you please can you please give your address to uh the city clerk and we will have staff contact you thank

0:21:49you okay next speaker is Henry Simons followed by Janet Byron good evening council members uh my name is Henry Simons i'm a principal government and community relations representative for BART i want to thank council member Saltzman for introducing consent item 7F a resolution urging

0:22:12support for state legislation to preserve public transit service levels um whether use transit or not everyone benefits from cleaner air reduce traffic congestion and increase access to jobs and education um at BART we're focused on improving the customer experience by

0:22:28making it safer and cleaner we've installed fairgates at 32 of our 50 stations including both Elserto stations uh crime is down 17% from 23 to 204 uh and was down an additional 23% in the first quarter of 2025 we're also running all brand new trains we've increased our cleaning frequency um

0:22:48these improvements are being noticed our rider satisfaction is at its highest level in 10 years um but we also face some serious issues we face a 379 million deficit in fiscal year 2027 um and we're doing what we can to control costs we have the lowest costs per

0:23:05passenger mile in one of the lowest costs per passenger mile in the country and we've instituted a hiring freeze were running shorter trains and locking in lower electricity rates to eliminate a $35 million deficit in fiscal year 2026 um work from home has hit transit

0:23:24agencies in the Bay Area hard our fair revenue of le revenue is less than half what what it was projected to be before the pandemic and our funding model is outdated um we serve our diverse East Bay community 67% of our riders are people of color and 44% do not own a

0:23:40vehicle our outdated funding model relied on these riders to pay for most of our operations even though BART service benefits everyone in the Bay Area and if additional funding is not secured BART will be forced to make devastating service cuts like no service on weekends or after 900 p.m and running

0:23:59just 500 trains a week compared to 4,200 low-inccome thank you for your comments thank you thanks for your support next speaker is Janet Byron followed by Andrew Raphael hello I'm Janet Byron i'm with Elserto Richmond Annex Walk and Roll and I'm an Elserto resident i'm here to strongly

0:24:22support item 7G on the consent calendar which adopts a resolution committing to achieve compliance with MTC's transit oriented communities policy and accepts a $270,000 grant to support zoning density around the Elserto BART stations elserto is blessed with two BART stations which

0:24:42serve as regional transit hubs with connections to trains and buses that take people around the bay the East Bay and beyond it's exciting that the city is working to encourage more highdensity housing steps away from our regional transit hubs i also strongly support

0:24:59item 7F on the consent calendar council member Saltzman's resolution for Elserto support state and regional efforts that bolster funding for public transit affordable reliable transit is critical to get people out of their cars and around town by other means likewise the Richmond Streets complete

0:25:22streets improvement project with numerous traffic calming measures and bike lanes north of Moer is a key component of the city's comprehensive efforts to create a network a network of safe and welcoming streets for all users including those on foot and bikes elserto's climate action and adaptation

0:25:43plan notes that fully half of the city's greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation primarily the personal automobile and that vehicle miles traveled is going up everything the council does to support transit oriented development public transit and um such

0:26:04as approving these two measures on the consent calendar tonight um as well as um traffic calming measures and things like bike lanes that make the streets safer around town um take closer to achieving our climate goals thank you next speaker is Andrew Raphael followed

0:26:22by Ryan Laauo hello council my name is Andrew Rafield i live on the 1300 block of Richmond Street with my family and I'm here to voice my support for the city's proposed improvements to our street we walk or bike or drive in our neighborhood every day and oftentimes if we are going to

0:26:45school or a local park or community center the most direct route takes us right along Richmond Street i really do enjoy walking and biking with my family in the city but I also make a living doing statistical risk analysis so I am acutely aware of the specific risks that

0:27:01we face on our city city streets for instance I'm aware that once my children learn to swim the number one greatest risk to their lives will be the six to 7,000 cars that pass our house every day i'm also aware that a thousand of those cars will be traveling faster than 31

0:27:18miles per hour and that reducing their speed just down to this post posted speed limit would double a pedestrian's chance of survival in the case of a collision i'm aware that if I am killed while riding my bicycle on the street there is a 30% chance that a vehicle was

0:27:35attempting to overtake my position from behind and that providing dedicated space for me on the roadway reduces the chance of that collision occurring by up to 50% these appro improvements along with the others proposed by the city will make Richmond Street safer for all

0:27:51who use it and I am not here as a single issue cycling advocate my family has two cars one of which is often parked on the street in front of our house we will probably be inconvenienced at times but that small inconvenience is a price that we should all be willing to pay for a

0:28:09city that empowers our community and our children to travel safely on our streets with that I'd like to give my support and thanks to this council for their continued dedication to this project thanks for your time next speaker is Ryan Laauo followed by Buddy Akasich

0:28:29good evening Mayor and Council um my name is Ryan Lao external affairs representative at AC Transit uh really want to thank the um mayor and council for uh entertaining uh Council Member Saltzman's um item to support uh Bay Area Transit Agencies so uh you've heard

0:28:48what BART's impacts are uh AC Transit is is uh facing a similar um situation where uh over the next four years we're looking at about $226 million deficit um we're in the process of really trying to tighten our belts and um improve our revenue um conditions so we've limited

0:29:09um uh our spending to only essential um items we've uh put in hiring controls for mission critical um positions only uh we've renegotiated certain contracts to get better um better rates on par transit service um we've also um tried to control the kinds of revenues that we

0:29:29have in our control including um actually bringing up to um current our affairs uh which will actually go into effect July 1 um we'll have some communications coming uh right around Memorial Day on that um we're also in the process of really trying to um meet the needs of our riders in the

0:29:49post-pandemic era so we're um really uh redesigning our service around um how the way people use the the service now um we also have one of the most comprehensive zero mission programs in the country but all of that could be at risk um if we don't find additional

0:30:05dollars um you know uh not only will all of those things go away but we'll be looking at um pandemic level service um which I don't think serves the community that we we both serve so um really hope that you will support um uh I keep wanting to call you Director Saltz

0:30:24Council Member Saltzman's um item and I look forward to um seeing what happens thank you next speaker is Buddy Akasich followed by Linda Kaine good evening Elsto City Council buddy activist your next door neighbor Hana Gardens for around five years now i'm going to ask you to remember where I

0:31:00left off the last time I was here last week i think you remember the scenario where Mallerie had you know we brought Mallerie in took a bow and Mallerie planted all these succulents of the entryway you remember that okay and and at the end of that presentation I'm not going to tell you

0:31:20that it was paranoid but it was i said "Who would do a thing like that and why?" And and I got to admit I thought it was some nefarious Well what what actually happened was um I received a phone call voicemail and the person that left the voicemail told me that his name was

0:31:44Steve Pre Steve Pri P ree and that he was staff liaison to the urban forest committee and also the arborist for the city of Elserto and he wanted to meet with me having to do with this garden so when we met my perception is overall Steve Priest's presentation was

0:32:09consiliatory and apologetic said that he'd gotten word that that you know that that plantings there needed to be bay friendly they needed to be native species it it required preparatory paperwork preparatory paperwork is not my middle name and we we did what we did

0:32:33and Mallerie said I you know we we did it and and he said that I'm going to cut to the chase here please give me the time to say these things he said that he would begin planting in in that plot on June the 1st planting new species that were attractive to butterflies for your

0:32:54comments our time has concluded and to hummingbirds we support that more next time next speaker is Linda Kaine followed by Michael McDulle Doo thank you for letting me address you mayor and council members oh gosh everybody has a lot to say and I'm trying to be much shorter than I was in

0:33:20my letter so I live I'm a resident of Elserto for 31 years i live on Everett Street between Cororamatso Middle School and Richmond Street and I'm very concerned about the proposal for Richmond Street project even though I did attend at least one of the public meetings I didn't feel like my posted

0:33:37got looked at my feedback anyway so here's some of the problems i expect problems with parking the Richmond Street project will remove half the parking for a large part of Richmond Street that will cause spillover onto nearby streets like Elm and my street ever also it will mean that half the

0:33:54residents of the street on either the east or the west depending what block won't be able to park on their street and this will be a disadvantage for disabled people and elderly people and as another person mentioned people with children it's it's going to be just a

0:34:09difficulty and they'll be more likely jaywalking due the day due to the daylighting which we're doing all throughout I guess the state it's not just um losing parking because of the next street over but also we're already losing 20 feet at each end of our street

0:34:24so there's already less parking even if they were only using 46% of whatever it is on Richmond you know they're using a lot of the parking on my street um and when Cor Matzo School gets out let me watch my time when Cororomatso School gets out at 3 p.m it's very congested

0:34:41there's kids walking there's parents coming in cars there's big buses coming through and know if we just add all the cars parking who can't get onto Richmond Street and the moms and dads who are coming on Richmond Street it just adds to the chaos okay also problems with

0:34:56driving i don't think it's a good idea to have the zigzag route through town and it's just going to be harder for everyone to learn to use and um I don't want the extended street construction because I've already suffered through that on San Pablo Avenue for the last

0:35:11two years and it's driving me crazy then okay why do we need Richmond Street from bicycles thank you for your comments okay thanks next speaker is Michael McDougall followed by Pamela W hello council um thank you for your time i'm my one of my desires to you is to always bring um

0:35:30information that like it's hard to have an opinion about um so I'd like to speak about item 7H on the consent calendar our contract with SSP data so this is a relatively large contract and I'm broadly supportive of it but one of the things that is in the bill is um all of

0:35:48the details of our contract with SSB but we've been in relationship with this IT provider since 2006 and there's no indication that we've considered a different IT provider or or considered rebidding our services and I think that for anything over say $50,000 or $45,000

0:36:07as a city it should be our job to you know talk to three different providers now it's very possible that the city has done this but it's not in the bill for me to know and I would just encourage you um you know while you're thinking about this item to maybe think about how

0:36:23our process going forward for large bills like this might include taking the contract to multiple providers now it's going to be expensive to change IP providers because they have an ongoing relationship with us but it's going to be hard to negotiate with them for the

0:36:37best possible price if they think that we are never going to consider a different IT provider thank you next up is Pamela W followed by Lewis Chico are you going to tell me when I can start oh my name is Pamela W um I live above the Delordi BART station and I have two

0:37:10issues my first issue is street sweeping i would like the council to do something about people who have people park in front of their houses because they can't get their street street swept every month I go through this where different neighbors will park in front of your

0:37:26house but they won't park in front of their house the cities of Albany Berkeley San Francisco have like even parking on one week and then the following week they have so even one week out on on the other side of the street i wish Elsto could institute something like that also by the Delorti

0:37:43and Plaza BART stations the week that the city's supposed to do street sweeping they don't get clean because there are cars parked there on the weekend even though the BART station is free second uh because I live over by the Del Nordy BART station on San Pavl Avenue as

0:37:59they're doing the new they have now got new parking in front of one of the the first of two new apartment buildings there is no signage you go two blocks we are only allowed to park four hours in front of our house my question is are you guys going to put some limited

0:38:16parking in front of I guess that new store is called Basics Basics uh because I see cars when I leave in the morning to do volunteer work I come back at 2:00 in the afternoon the same cars are parked there so I was just wondering if you could look into street sweeping so

0:38:32that everybody can that the taxes I'm paying for street sweeping so I can have it done and also when are you going to put the signage so that people don't park there all day and I'm done thank you last speaker is Lewis Chico hello i am Lewis Chico oh as a person

0:38:52who has worked on measure BB uh now vice president of telegraph for people as well as member and leadership of Berkeley Urban Studies Association at UC Berkeley i'm here to discuss on the Richmond Safe Streets each okay so first to educate you all uh I mean to give you

0:39:08a little micro lesson and we have a thing called car diets car diets are things like bike lanes or things Please make sure you're speaking directly into the mic car diets are things such as bike lanes or things that support pedestrians as a whole bike lanes are a

0:39:22part of car diets car diet it's discourage uh discourage cars from running fast or moving fast it would prevent people from going through stop signs moving through lanes very quickly and as a part of that bike lanes are a part of this as a person who worked on measure BB better Berkeley which worked

0:39:36on instituting bike lanes we saw a reduction in on crimes when it came to pedestrians being hit by cars pedestrians having encounters of cars or bike lanes in general being hit by cars as well this was down by 50% it also discourages cars from being bought or you as well so in general it's a very

0:39:53safe decision to have cars being instituted uh having bike lanes being instituted around places as it discourages cars from being bought or used otherwise as well as a reduction in terms of parking as well we see many carers who once parked in streets like that now opt for bikes or or other forms

0:40:09of transportation like public or or uh servicewide aid and as a part of this bike lanes are a critical institutional part of this so as uh as a person who somewhat worked on issues such as these I am here to support her bike lanes being instituted as it if you were for

0:40:27example to jaywalk or move around or have children around cars will be more weary because they are afraid of bike aches and they're afraid of bike lanes moving around imagine yourself driving you see a bike lane you automatically know there's a biker around be cautious

0:40:40it discourages bikes it discourages cars from moving past the speed lim as a whole as well as it support uh Rebecca's institution as well thank you and support this institution as well for a better alto mayor that concludes our comments all right thank you so much to everyone the

0:40:55next item on the agenda is presentations and we do have a presentation on the Kalpers pension cost updates can we please have the presentation good evening this is um Mike Meyer with NHA Advisors can can you hear me okay yes wonderful um as I mentioned I'm Mike

0:41:32Meyer uh good evening honorable mayor and city council members um I am a VP with NHA advisors and manager of pension group we've been working with the city since about 2018 at various times doing u educational workshops and helping the city implement some cost management

0:41:49strategies the purpose of tonight's presentation is to provide a quick update on the city's Kalper situation and look at some um strategies for consideration moving forward so if we could just go to the background slide please uh next slide please thank you um so tonight we're going to focus on the

0:42:13$89 million debt that the city has with Kalpers this debt is known as the unfunded acred liability or UAL um we will define that term on the next slide um there's two plans that the city has the safety plan uh with 63 million of unfunded liability and the miscellaneous

0:42:32plan with 26 million so a bit uh more heavily weighted towards the safety plans uh one piece of good news is that Kalpers did beat their investment returns target last fiscal year they earned 9.5% so we do expect the city's UAL to drop to 85 million when those uh

0:42:50new actuarial reports come out this fall the city did set up a section 115 trust a couple years back uh so we will talk about uh ways in which the city can use that moving forward um it's good that I think this is good timing for assessing the city's current uh situation with

0:43:09Kalpers but as we'll also talk about this is a year when Kalpers is meeting uh all summer to discuss their various assumptions and the results of that are going to be released this fall so it will be um a good time later this fall to reassess these as well as things will

0:43:25be evolving next slide please so the city like all Kalpers members makes two types of payments each year the first being the normal cost which is the cost to keep up with current employees um in a perfect world this is the only cost you would ever pay however in reality um Kalpers has not met its

0:43:48assumptions and so when they don't meet their assumptions there's what's called a an unfunded accured liability that develops and this is really the shortfall between what the city needs to have in assets to be fully funded so that's shown in the blue bar on the

0:44:02right it's 253 million uh compared to what you actually have in assets which is 164 million so that gap or shortfall right there is 89 million it's a large number so they don't require their members to pay the UAL back all at once but similar to a a mortgage or or a car

0:44:22loan they amortize that debt over a period of time and charge the city 6.8% interest next slide please so why why are we talking about unfunded liabilities if we were to rewind 25 years ago there was no such thing as unfunded liabilities and that's mostly because the stock market was

0:44:44earning double-digit returns and retirement plans were overfunded there was almost there was too much money in the account however over the last 20 years or so uh Kalpers has not met its investment return goals so if you look at that box on the top right there in

0:45:00blue you can look at the five 10 and 20 year and 30-year averages uh most of it ranges between six and 7% which is a relatively healthy um number but it is a lot lower than what they thought they were going to earn 20 years ago when they were expecting 8 and a quarter

0:45:18percent so that's a quite a big differential there um over the course of the last um 10 to 15 years they've been changing their assumptions so the number one uh most critical assumption is their assumed rate of investment returns this is what they think they'll earn in the

0:45:34marketplace each year it's also known as their discount rate and that's come down several times from eight and a quarter uh and it's currently at 6.8% other assumption changes that have been driving UAL's higher include inflation going up mortality rates with people living longer and then lastly on

0:45:54the bottom right there that last bullet um it used to be the case that Kalpers would amortize this debt over 30 years which means it would be a lower annual payment but they've actually compressed those payments um inside of 20 years so it's a bit more of a a burden on the

0:46:10budget and then just lastly want to call out in in orange there at the bottom of the slide uh once every four years Kalpers meets uh it's about a six-month process it's called their asset liability management study to figure out if those assumptions they're using are

0:46:27still uh prudent and so this fall probably around October they're going to release their new assumptions and that'll be a good time uh to really project out what that is going to do to the city's budget next slide please this is a chart that just shows how volatile uh annual returns can be from

0:46:47Kalpers uh this goes back uh all the way back to 2005 you can see the worst year was in ' 09 during the great recession where they lost negative 23.6% they had a really good year in 21 where they earned 21.3% uh but just important really to point out that every year Kalpers ends the

0:47:08year with their returns it's a direct impact on the city's budget a couple years later so it's a bit hard to react to uh this volatility sometimes u but if they miss their investment goal it means that there's going to be an increase in the U and that hits the budget about two

0:47:25or three years later so they do give you a little time to prepare if they do beat their target it's a it's a benefit to you where the UAO gets reduced next slide please this is a graphic from the Kalpers website and it's really representative of of all of the members

0:47:45in the state that are within Kalpers and it just helps to um communicate how retirement benefits get funded for your employees and for all employees under Kalpers across the state um about 55% of those benefits get funded from investment earnings on the assets about

0:48:05a third of it gets paid for by employers such as the city of Elserto and other other Kalpers members and then employees the members pay about 11 cents of that total and I think one takeaway uh one thing we wanted to point out on this graphic is that if you would have looked

0:48:22at this graphic prior to the great recession you would have seen that 70% uh was made up of investment earnings and employers were only needing to kick in about 20% and so as Kalpers has not met their goals it means that more is put onto employers like the city of

0:48:43Elserto and that that middle part of the dollar has grown significantly over the last 15 years next slide please uh last slide in this kind of background section again uh the U is a bit uh more heavily weighted towards the safety plans given that the city does have both fire and police it's about 63

0:49:05million and then the miscellaneous plan is 26 million helpful to note that new employees that were hired after 2013 are part of the PEPAR retirement plans these are slightly lower benefit levels and more coste effective for the city but it's very important to note as we've

0:49:24highlighted in bold there at the bottom that the the pepper plans are not going to solve this U challenge that you're facing uh just like every other agency out there 98 to 99% of the UA is attributable to the classic plan so preper plans and that's a challenge

0:49:41that's really developed over the last uh 20 years next slide please next slide slide 11 is a seven-year history of the city's UAL the U shown in the gray bars so if you look back at 2018 it was at about 67 million and the funded ratio uh so the assets that you have

0:50:06with Kalpers divided by the uh act uh total liability was 66% you can see that it dropped a lot in 2021 all the way down to 58 million and that's because in 21 Kalpers had a really good year with their returns but you look at the very next year in 2022 that gray bar bounces back up to 85

0:50:30million that's because they lost negative 7.5% and it's bounced around kind of that mid 80 million level the last few years and you could see the funded ratios out to the right side um we in orange there 67.7% i would say this is pretty much in line with other agencies i think the

0:50:52average statewide is around 70% uh but I think slightly over 70% for a lot of cities who don't have both fire and police and probably more like mid60s to high 60s for uh agencies that are sim similar to Elserto so pretty much right in line there and because the city also

0:51:10has a 115 trust now so you also have extra assets that you've saved um that are dedicated to pension we also show there in teal what the effective funded ratio is when you take into account uh that those assets next slide please this is um probably one of the more important uh slides in the

0:51:35presentation from a budget and a long-term planning perspective and it just goes to show how uh challenging paying back this debt has been for all agencies across the state so this is these are the annual payments that Elserto has been making each year that Kalpers is charging you and then it's

0:51:54also projecting out what those payments look like um over the next 20 years through 2046 so if you look back at 2018 the city was paying about $3 million a year this fiscal year in 2025 you're paying seven million and then it starts to creep above nine million uh in the

0:52:13next few years and then starts to drop off we wanted to just give you an idea of what could happen if if Kalpers were to lower the discount rate again uh so in the in the dark blue it's another million a year if they were to um reduce that that target rate of return down

0:52:32from 6.8 to 6.5 and we're not saying that they are going to do that we're just giving you an idea of how uh quickly these costs could escalate if they do make uh changes one uh probably one big question is you know why does this repayment shape look the way it does why isn't it level each year like a

0:52:52normal mortgage and that's because this $89 million of of U debt is really comprised of about 30 to 40 different uh layers of this debt and each layer has a different term so some some of that debt is advertised over five years some over seven some over 20 and when you stack

0:53:12them all together you get this shape and this is a shape that pretty much every uh Kalpers member is facing statewide so really really the most challenging years are over the next 10 to 10 to 12 years uh next slide please so the next the last few slides we're just going to

0:53:31talk high level about cost management strategies and what the city has been doing over the last um couple of years the number one uh strategy is just prepaying the UAL early in the fiscal year instead of uh spacing out the payments monthly you do get a nice discount for doing this and this is a

0:53:49strategy the city already does uh secondly negotiations and cost sharing the third option in teal there is what's known as a fresh start uh with Kalpers this is an option that is not very popular but it is an option it it basically requires you to pay the debt off sooner over a shorter period the

0:54:09downside is that it does mean that your annual payments are significantly higher and for that reason uh a lot of agencies uh do not go that route i would say the by far the most common strategy is to take reserves or surplus and just pay extra so you can do this in two

0:54:26different ways uh one is paying directly to Kalpers uh through what's known as a additional discretionary payment or ADP and then the second one is using a separate trust uh which is called a section 115 trust where you set money aside you invest that money and then you

0:54:45pull money out of that trust when you need it down the road to help offset the burden uh on the general fund next slide please next slide so a little bit the the city went through a process over the last uh few years I know of of educating uh council um finance committee and

0:55:08created a 115 trust in the spring of 25 uh there's about 1.4 million of assets in there uh it's managed by PARs uh in their moderately conservative investment portfolio so we wanted to look at what um you know how how those assets can grow over the next 10 years uh what kind of deposits

0:55:31the city might be able to make over the next couple years and how you can really use that trust once you get to those challenging years and and start withdrawing funds from that trust if needed so that you can mit mitigate the impact on the general fund so next slide

0:55:46please so this is just a a graphic as to how the city can use the 115 trust those those blue bars are the same U payments that we looked at on the prior chart that's what you will owe to Kalpers uh we do assume here that in purple over the next couple years that you're able

0:56:08to get in a little bit more money into that trust uh 1.5 million over two years based on this um just hypothetical analysis and then if you look at those shaded blue bars from 2029 to 35 that's where the city could actually start withdrawing money from the trust to help

0:56:28reduce the burden on the general fund and really keep the payments paid being paid by the general fund at a more predictable level which will be helpful for budgeting and that's shown in the orange line there 8.9 million um of course if the city can find resources to

0:56:46increase the size of that 115 trust then you'll only be able to reduce uh this orange line here and bring down that that burden on the general fund next slide please uh this is just a a very similar hypothetical example but we wanted to look at a a more pessimistic scenario

0:57:06where Kalpers does reduce the discount rate and drive the city's U up to 94 million those blue bars get a bit higher they're going to they're projected to go above the 10 a.5 million mark and if that happens if you were wanting to keep the you know the impact on the general

0:57:24fund at a more manageable level it means that you'd have to put more money into that 115 trust over the next few years so again not saying that the city has to do that nor that um the city's U is going up but that just theoretically is um would be helpful if if those mountain

0:57:43if those spikes in payments get higher and higher it's going to be wise to try to funnel more money into that 115 trust and and proactively get ahead of that next slide please uh just some numbers behind the charts if there's any questions I could come back to this and I think we could

0:58:01go to the uh conclusion slide uh again the city has been uh proactive over the last few years with prepaying the UA starting that 115 trust and and getting that built to moderate levels hopefully the city can continue to find resources to build it to higher levels um I think

0:58:21annually it's it's always good to kind of reassess the Kalper situation given that this is by far the largest debt that are that is on almost every city's uh balance sheet right now this year in particular i think it will be good uh later this year in in the fall or winter

0:58:38of 25 uh to also reassess again because there's going to be a lot of changes and some of these numbers and some of these charts are going to look a little different and so heading into the ne next budget cycle it's going to be uh really important to to look at this

0:58:52again with that I will um open it up to any questions any questions from council okay start with council member Motama and then go to to SE thank you mayor um thank you for the presentation uh I would like to get more detail about the fresh start amortization and I was also

0:59:14wondering that if we were to go that route would we then be shield shielded from any kind of variance in the CalPres return if we elect to do the amortization yes uh maybe we can flip and I apologize I'm not screen sharing so I think it's slide 12 if we can go back to the chart

0:59:35with the the bars uh tw 12 yes this one so let me just get back to the uh Zoom here hold on sorry okay so you're still hearing me correct yes okay yeah so the fresh start I don't I don't have the fresh start numbers uh in front of me but you would most likely looking at this chart

1:00:04instead of paying you know 8 million and 26 and then going up to 9 and a half and then dropping down you would probably start right off the bat paying around nine between 9 and 10 million um and then it would be a level payment for the next call it 10 to 15 years so it would

1:00:22be a shorter term uh we could definitely come back and work with staff and show you that but it does require uh a significant amount of more um money over the next couple years so the one downside with the fresh start is that you once you do it you can never go back

1:00:39to your old schedule so it does um it does lock you in so this is why it's it's not very um common that agencies do a fresh start but I will say a lot of agencies will do what's called a soft fresh start which is where you internally budget for that higher amount

1:00:58and if you can find that extra money you can actually you know just directly send it to Kalpers as an ADP or put it in the trust so it's more of an internal strategy but you aren't locking yourself into that higher payment um schedule and uh the the one I think the second part

1:01:16of your question it doesn't it will level out this current kind of peak peak repayment peak and then drop off um but it won't insulate you from future kind of UL fluctuations so every year Kalpers has let's say a down year they will layer in a new piece of debt on top of

1:01:37whatever shape you have um so you really can never protect against what what will happen in the future thank you council member Sawson i know you first thank you for this presentation it was really helpful and I know you can't predict the future but you know seeing this 6.5% discount rate

1:02:00and seeing over the years how Kalpers has continued to change the discount rate how likely do you think that is is that a number they're talking about publicly is it possible it's somewhere in the middle of the current discount rate is it possible they go lower like

1:02:166% discount rate what what's what are you hearing right now yeah you know I um I have not heard I think it's a little preliminary um I think maybe this summertime once Kalpers gets through some more meetings we might uh have a better idea i think as when they talked about this last time they

1:02:38talked about reducing the discount rate four years ago um there was a lot of push back by by members and so they didn't end up moving it as far as they wanted um it naturally triggered a slight reduction because they had a really good year in 21 so there's actually some other um mechanisms that

1:02:58lower the discount rate when they have a good year i don't you know I don't think they'd be coming down below a 6.5 um you know again this is more for planning um you know it's I think a month ago when we were month and a half ago we were working on this presentation

1:03:14the one scenario we had in was a 0% year this year for Kalpers because the stock market was down 15% we talked to Kalpers they were at zero so that would have been a big increase in the city's UAL and all of a sudden four weeks later we're probably they're meeting their

1:03:32goal if not they might actually be a little higher which is good news um crossing our fingers but it's been more volatile than normal and so um again it's I think our message is you know it's already a challenging repayment shape but it's always good to plan for

1:03:50even some maybe more pessimistic scenarios and and given that this the city has a 115 trust now you know putting money into that rainy day fund is only going to prepare the city for any unknowns down the road and um there is flexibility in how you can use that trust um you know you can use it during

1:04:08challenging budget years to make your annual payments if needed uh you could always send that money to Kalpers to do an ADP so uh there is quite a bit of flexibility there uh if you can build that up to more meaningful levels thank you um and just want to say and

1:04:24I'll get to more comments on this when we discuss the budget but seeing the charts on page 17 and 18 I mean they tell me that we need to probably be more aggressive with putting money into the section 115 trust to be able to you know meet the needs we're going to have over

1:04:43the coming years um to ensure we're not you know we'll still be stuck with a big bill but that we'll have the funds available to pay for that and not have to take it from our city services so um thank you this was really helpful all right Council Member Council Member

1:05:00Cassanis yeah I um I have a list of questions that literally are about 50 of them and I'm I'm not going to ask you 50 questions i'll ask you maybe a couple but I would ask would you be willing to entertain my questions perhaps by email or offline somewhere so I don't take up hours here

1:05:19you know I'm having trouble hearing the the question it's a little bit uh muffled yeah I'll repeat it i um I have a list of 50 questions that I wrote up as I read through your your um PowerPoint prior to your presentation can you hear me now no no it's on it's on yep one two testing

1:05:43can't hear me right it's what we I can hear the volume it's just very muffled so there all the other speakers it was uh quite clear coming in but some reason switch mics is this better i think so okay so what I was saying is I before your presentation I read through your

1:05:58slides and wrote up my questions and I had about 50 of them and I'm not going to ask you those 50 questions now but I will ask may I email them to you and have some discussion with you later and um you know a lot a lot of them I've scratched off the list as you've talked

1:06:11but if you don't mind a followup not I'm not getting anything oh wow okay if I go back a little bit is that better testing any better i think that might be better okay all right well I will only ask a few questions and I have lots but I will try to follow up with you later and ask other questions

1:06:33if you don't mind and do it offline yeah I I think I heard you'll follow up and that's to Yeah I'd be happy to to answer those questions i don't know what's happening yeah with that with those mics okay well I'll give you one one question now this better um my understanding is that the section

1:06:53115 trust the return was 3 point something roughly 3.5% and given that the Kalpers return is significantly higher than that possibly double that I'm assuming they have a similar risk profile what is they do not okay that's part of my question and what would be aside from being able to use that 115

1:07:18trust money in those peak years what is the advantage of giving up some of the return that you would get with Kalpers and their expertise in investing in order to invest it ourselves in a 115 it just it strikes me that that money is more efficiently deposited with Kalpers

1:07:38and let them get the higher returns than are trying to do it ourselves and taking on additional risk yeah so I about 60% of that came through but I'm pretty sure I got the full gist of the question um for the first off the city's uh section 115 provider is PARS

1:07:57they are the largest 115 provider out there they offer five different portfolios based on risk tolerance so the city's been in um one of the bottom two in terms of risk level so a quite a conservative allocation um and that's you know we aren't investment adviserss

1:08:13but that's likely due to the fact that the city was just getting it going um if you wanted to uh have more of an allocation similar to Kalpers which is what a lot of folks do uh there's more balanced portfolios that have more of an equal waiting between stocks and bonds

1:08:30almost every 115 provider out there beat Kalpers last year uh that had a similar allocation in the portfolio so I think it is something that if the city were to continue uh you know building that portfolio you know sitting down to talk about what is the risk tolerance and if

1:08:48you if you are trying to um have a similar portfolio to Kalpers there are options within pars kind of the you know the third and fourth ones I would say on the risk tolerance spectrum um are are more similar to the allocations at Kalpers of course you do have the choice

1:09:05of directly paying it down with Kalpers you do get a credit of 6.8% which is the interest rate they believe they'll earn in the marketplace u but of course that if they don't earn 6.8 they're going to just add extra U so it's you know both ways are prudent ways of you know it's

1:09:24it's investing your money in something that you otherwise would not in the general fund because it's restricted it just works in different ways so yeah you can do a direct pay down to Kalpers and car you know reduce your payments associated with the UAL u you know the

1:09:40115 trust it's used just in a different way and you can dip into that in the years when you need it u so there there's more flexibility there i would say if if the city I know the city's faced some uh economic challenges over the last uh several years and so liquidity is probably uh important you

1:09:58know having reserves that you can dip into during uh you know challenging years so I think for that reason the 115 trust at least as one component is is helpful um of course you could always take that money from the trust and do an ADP um I think if you were to build find

1:10:16extra resources beyond uh maybe something you feel comfortable with in the 115 you can always do ADPs as well as kind of part of a hybrid approach but both are options at the city's disposal uh but you aren't you aren't guaranteed that 6.8% i I just want to say with the

1:10:33ADP Kalpers will make sure that you uh pay for it if they only earn 3% in the terms in the in the sense that they're going to add even more UL okay just following up a little bit so right now in our 115 trust am I correct we're getting about three and a half percent

1:10:57but but that was that was last year's return so again it's just like any you know portfolio out there it's going to move with the market but it is in a a fairly conservative portfolio and had we done an ADP we would have had closer to six or seven is that correct

1:11:17you would have got It depends when you made the ADP yeah okay all right well given the sound challenges I won't ask more but I will follow up with you yeah yeah okay mayor Pro Tim thank you Mayor um thank you for uh this uh presentation it's uh very educational

1:11:40and I hope uh uh our listeners at home um you know look at this closely and know that uh uh as as a member of the council back in 2018 i was uh uh this was something that we really needed to do and it shows that uh we are in the right direction of having this 115 trust

1:12:03um I would like in the future to make sure that uh uh we add more funds into the 115 trust so whether it's a ADP um you know we'll have to look at that and we'll look at uh uh so some of the other options so uh looking at that all cities are going through the same thing on the

1:12:26airboard we were discussing uh you know have uh uh kalpers as well uh they're uh you know uh some agencies are doing quite fine uh but uh you know most cities are uh in the same situation so uh looking at the options that we have and looking at the next 10 to 15 years

1:12:51it's important for uh this council to look at what all of our options are um and to make more of a dent uh in the near future so um I thank you for this presentation and uh I think this is uh something very non nonsense and practical uh that uh all of us need to

1:13:12look at and all cities are um definitely looking at this now um I think that uh with uh the uh what's been going on now this is a wait and see of what's going on at the federal level so we have to be ultra cautious as well right now with the markets it's uh we just don't know

1:13:34where it's going to go so uh um something that uh I'm very concerned about is the discount rate reduction as well so um the importance of uh uh putting more money in the 115 trust is uh something that I personally would like to make sure that we look at closely

1:13:56thank you thank you Mayor Pro Tim and I I won't say a whole bunch but I want to do thank you Michael for this presentation you know being on this council for the last two and a half years I've had to learn a lot in a very short time about our unfunded liabilities and it and while I've

1:14:11learned a lot about increasing the amount that we're putting in the section 115 your presentation really did a lot to show how we got here why we are here um and what we're going to be doing over the next 20 years to actually get this fund down and I know we're going to

1:14:23discuss this more on another one of our items so I won't say any more than that um but given that no other questions thank you Crystal thank you Michael and Michael maybe we will see you soon or maybe not thank you all right and with that the next item on the agenda is the adoption of the

1:14:44consent calendar which includes the following items approval of minutes financial advisory board recommendation lgbtqia+ Pride Month proclamation recognition of the fifth anniversary of the death of George Floyd proclamation monthly dispersement and check register

1:15:02report for April 2025 resolution of support for state and federal funding for Bay Area Public Transit acceptance of transit oriented communities TLC grant and related scope of work from Metropolitan Transportation Commission MTC approve spending authority for the

1:15:19SSP data in in an amount not to ex exceed $178,000 in fiscal year 2425 and also just as a note item 7D has representatives here to speak um virtually and accept the proclamation which will occur after approval of the consent calendar are there any questions or requests from the council to pull

1:15:42items from the consent calendar council member Salsman I I want to pull item B okay my pen is not working council member Motama um I also want That's further 7B i have a few questions on 7 sorry uh I have questions on 7E uh a 7F and 7H and what was the first one you

1:16:10said B also b also okay um council member Kasanis i am also B i'd like to suggest a one word change to C so I don't know if that means having to pull it or not and E and G okay council member yes you should pull the item if you would like to suggest a change okay so I want to make Oh mayor

1:16:36okay so I have B C E F G and H i am also going to pull D all right so let's go ahead and start with item 7B i know council member Salsman had the first question on 7B i just know there are members of the FAB here so I wanted to hear from them because and and this is something I I

1:17:01brought up last time we had um one of our committees or commission make a recommendation of the council it'd be really helpful if in the recommendation there's some background information so I was able to hear some from staff but I'd love to hear from you but in the future

1:17:14for recommendations it's really helpful since we're not at your meetings if we can hear where the recommendation is coming from so I just wanted to see if any of the members wanted to shed some light on it good afternoon mayor good afternoon council members and everyone here my

1:17:48name is Kimberly White and the chairperson of the financial advisory board so the uh the financial advisory board um made a recommendation that the council set aside 2% of the operating budget for items that come up midyear unanticipated items one-time items or

1:18:12items that are not known what we and this is not a new idea several years ago we made a recommendation to set aside $1 million so the idea behind that is is intended to really address the recurring issue of upward pressure on the UN restricted reserves during mid year and

1:18:38to begin to address items that are foreseeable earlier in the year at um during the adopted budget and setting aside um a 2% of the budget for those unforeseen items or those things that come up that were not known when you originally adopted the budget in practical terms the

1:19:00recommendation gives the council and staff more a more disciplined and proactive approach toward uh one-time needs without further eroding the reserves and it also aligns basic financial practices where budgeting is within we recognize all items that were fully known in

1:19:23June and then um but then there are some items that cannot be reasonably anticipated and that's what this reserve is for um while I understand that the C council may have other priorities I hope you'll consider the um this recommendation is a responsible approach to budgeting that

1:19:44reflects our fiduci fiduciary responsibilities and I'll address any more questions if you Well let's first ask Council Member Otama okay and then we'll come to you Council Member Kasan thank you um thank you for your background on this item um Chair White um I do have a question but

1:20:04where did how did you come to 2% 2% we thought was a reasonable amount to to to address without um a major impact on services and so if you look at our budget and say and I'm not I don't have the number in my head but say it's a $45 million budget we're talking less than a million dollars and

1:20:29I remember last year we were able to to make those adjustments and then even with fiscal year 26 without um without significant impact to the to the chairperson white could I remind you to speak into the mic yes thank you okay and during the discussion about the 2%

1:20:48was there any discussion about um a reserve study um or a a reserve study for facilities and equipment as another me means to kind of map out where where we need more money in the coming years well we weren't able to with the time that we have available we meet just once

1:21:08a month and we just recently got a quorum of people so that we would be able to have subcommittees and right now the subcommittee is working on the assignment from the city on procurement and one of our members spoke a bit about it earlier today but that's what our

1:21:24focus has been so we have not had the capability of having a subcommittee do that investigation or evaluation um I I wouldn't I expect you guys to do analysis but just discussion about other ways of approaching like what we need and what amount that might be well um

1:21:43that that's I think what I was trying to address we didn't have the capability of making a determination on what the city's uh high priority needs are we don't have that information available at our fingertips so that would require for us to establish a subcommittee to do

1:21:59that evaluation thank you and um I have a question for uh board member McDougall hello i'm I'm Mike McDougall yes um I noticed that you were the no vote on this item and I just wanted to hear what your concerns were in in voting no on this item if you're willing to share

1:22:26uh sure i I thought that setting aside a 2% reserve fund for one-time purchases was uh sort of an odd direction to go we have a 17% reserve and to me this really seemed like we were setting up a 19% reserve with 2% of it reserved for things that different departments would

1:22:48have to say were one-time purchases um and that didn't make sense to me as a direction to go to be brief but I also you know I'm only one of of five people and so I think that you should seriously consider what the other four members of of the uh board were were thinking thank

1:23:07you very much okay Council Member Cassan I have sort of a question and a comment I guess i uh I had the same question that council member Motyama had wondering about the no vote and just were curious and the other my other concern is I I've heard it often said that when things are receive in a file

1:23:28that city council members don't even look at it that there's no feedback things don't get implemented essentially just gets received and filed and ignored and and that concerns me particularly when something is finance related and fabulated and this is sort of I guess a

1:23:43question to us as a council how how we can address that if someone if a committee or board comes to us with something that is received and filed but there's potentially an action behind it such as agreeing to agreeing or disagreeing with with the 2% h how do we

1:23:59go about not simply receiving filing but actually addressing that issue and that concerns me not just for FAB but for all the boards and commissions i hear this over and over again that they they do their reports and they submit them and they received and filed and then that's

1:24:10the last they see of it and I certainly experienced that while I was on FAB so I'm just kind of looking for some solution that we can take action i I know I don't know if this constitutes being on the agenda or not we can deal with it today or whether it's something

1:24:22that needs to be set for a future agenda and more formally addressed yes you can thank you mayor um I think this this this is the forum so when something comes up that we feel is actionable you can pull it from the agenda and say "I move to do whatever."

1:24:40And that will be an action um or have us discuss it's it's or sorry no just can't move to do correct consent thank you but we can discuss it and and and ask for it to come back as an issue we can't move to have a vote that so we can't vote on it yeah because the staff would have to

1:25:00do some work for us in order to bring it back as an item right yeah so um when an item is agendized as report and receive and file um it's not set up for um for any action by the city council other than to receive the report and so members of the public who may have while

1:25:18they would know that the subject matter was on the agenda they wouldn't necessarily understand that there was a proposed policy being be change being considered as part of the item so the idea would be if council wanted to give make a policy change as a result of

1:25:32something that was in a report uh council could give direction um to prepare th that proposed uh uh policy change and and it would come back on a future agenda thank you is that helpful this is this is this is how we have discussion because we just for everybody's reminder

1:25:50brown act we don't sit around and talk about this anywhere else so this this is this is our venue to discuss and my question would be for the city attorney and I don't if especially with something like this I think that sometimes they're coming with items that are part of their

1:26:05work plans am I correct so sometimes the accountability is when we're actually receiving presentations about the updates or the how far they have gotten on their work plans i think that in instance of something like this it is a more like what council member Motyama

1:26:18said and what the city attorney has alluded to so I think every item every time that we get one of these they're different but the accountability measures are there it's just up to the council to act on them and I would if I may mayor I would also add that uh according to the guidelines

1:26:34that the council passed if a advisory body has a recommendation that is a part of their work plan then it appears on the consent calendar purposely so that it can be received by the public um or it can be seen by the public received by the council and discussed during this

1:26:50forum as council member Modiama indicated if there is a recommendation outside the work plan it is provided as a public comment to the city council and that is to address the actually what you had had t uh referred to earlier where um some boards and commissions were not

1:27:06feeling that their recommendations were being appropriately heard by the council appropriately viewed by the public and so council made that change so that it would come onto a council agenda so that the public could see it and read it and understand it and then if if pulled by

1:27:20the council that the council could talk about it and then if the council decided to give direction to staff either usually by a motion I would say to move uh and to direct staff to uh to come back with this recommendation on the next agenda that would be the appropriate time to do it would be right

1:27:37now did that answer the the question yes i would like to make that motion then i'd like to make a motion that the FAB recommendation come before the council for further discussion and potentially a vote i think that that would be more of an item that we would consider to put on a

1:27:56future agenda correct yeah that's what I'm expecting just that's what I'm asking for and that can be done by motion okay i I make a motion to have this this item i'm not sure lettering number was um put on a future city council agenda is that the correct Anyone have a second

1:28:16looks like the motion fails for lack of a second am I correct on that city attorney that is correct okay any other questions comments yes go ahead sorry I'm talking a lot thank you mayor um I think it's really important to include any kind of discussion like this with the budget i

1:28:37think you know having a separate recommendation that travels separately from our budget discussion would be detrimental and I think that is because we have talked about this kind of differential between operating expenses and uh revenue and I've mentioned this multiple times and we've

1:28:58tried to do it so what I don't want to have happen is we bring it up we we think "Oh this is a good idea but then in practice it really hamstrings us to do what we need to do." So that is my concern about bringing it separately and that's why I didn't second you uh I want

1:29:15it to be as part of the budget discussion i think that's the appropriate place for it to be clear I'm not opining on whether it's a good idea or a bad idea my concern is having something come out come out of boards and commissions and simply disappeared and not being addressed you know like it

1:29:28just a more formal process for actually responding to them empowering the people that sit on these boards and commissions and hearing their voice any other questions so then I'm going to skip over C and D because those are both proclamations so we'll hear those f last

1:29:44and we'll go on into item E monthly dispersement and check register report for April 2025 is it just me i think so thank you mayor okay so I do have uh just a couple of questions uh on the check register one is 92782 badge frame or chart uh I call this out because I keep seeing this uh

1:30:15uh in the check register and I was wondering why we keep paying for an org chart good evening council i'm Paul Keith your chief of police um so we used a company called Badge Frame to create our large organization chart that's on the wall of the Ill Street Police Department um but

1:30:35every time we add a new employee we need to get a new label made so um we do periodically do new orders with badge frame to get uh consist graphically consistent labels made to add to the order chart as we add new employees okay thank you sure thank you and then okay I have a question on 92788

1:31:00uh CPPG grant writing and legislation i was wondering where we were with the grants and were we covering the costs of this through grants at least to break even because that's a concern of mine uh when we brought on a grant writer that they should at least cover their cost

1:31:22yes I'm just pulling up the information now okay so um right now um we have uh four grants that are submitted and pending i don't know if you'd like to know the details right now i can share them with the public sure okay uh so the first is the assistance to firefighters

1:31:43grant through FEMA this is for uh radio in our fire department that is for uh just under a million at 947,000 that was submitted in December 2024 we also have another grant pending um through the US forest service through the community wildfire defense grant for

1:32:031.5 million that was submitted in March of this year the third one is the sustainable transportation planning grant through Calrans for for bike and ped um improvements over Cerrito Creek that's for 265,000 and that was submitted this past January uh and the last one is flood

1:32:25mitigation assistance uh through FEMA for uh 405,000 and that was uh submitted in February um we do have uh three in progress grant applications right now um including the coastal conserv conserancy grant um that is for the HNA fuels or hillside natural area uh fields

1:32:49mitigation uh there is no minimum or maximum to that and so we are uh working with our grant writers and staff and determining what our ask will be we also are going for a grant through Caloes and FEMA for the Cerrito Cerrito Creek flood mitigation study um that is for

1:33:08$45,000 um through the hazard mitigation grant program um and last but not least uh we are also looking at the environmental enhancement and mitigation program uh for a project to be determined for up to 70 $750,000 um so in terms of the uh contract with CPPG as the council may

1:33:31remember we first started off with just grants only um starting in August 2022 um and then added legislative lobbying services in October 2023 um so I I can report that yes we have received more ingrain than what we have paid for um and acknowledging there has been some

1:33:53changes at the at the federal level that have really drastically um impacted uh the result of some of our grants as well as our earmark requests both state and federally but we are confident and positive that we will have some good luck in the next months um and hopefully

1:34:12we'll be able to provide you all with some positive news thank you welcome i I have also Yes go ahead i I have a few questions too just for the sake of the public to know how this process works at least for me i think council member Motyama does something similar is I go

1:34:29through the line items and then mark ones that look unusual or I'm just sort of curious about you know what is this a lot of times they're abbreviations and wondering what this means or what it goes to so I present those questions to the city manager um did these late Monday night and then

1:34:46she passes them out to different department heads and gets answers and the I get the answers back so I had I don't know 30 or so questions maybe not quite that many 20 and most of them all my questions were pretty much answered there are some there are some that I

1:35:02think that other people may see and be still curious about so even though I already know the answer I'm going to go ahead and repeat the question so that it's more public and I'm not going to go through all 20 or 30 of mine but some of the ones that kind of stood out most I

1:35:14will mention or ask about um one was 92753 which is Max Elso Church facility there was a $2,94 payment and my question was what is this expense is it reoccurring is it monthly and how does it and does it and if so how does it relate to the recently purchased church

1:35:34on San Pablo yes so MAC 5 is the firm that we contracted with to do a needs assessment on the property to determine whether or not the buildings were still usable um and if so what repairs or work would need to be done to make the buildings of usable for for the public

1:35:52and uh we did find that and will I believe you're here i think it was about a million dollars uh just to make the buildings usable which is very much out of our budget range and certainly that would just make them usable it wouldn't put them into a place where we could

1:36:08transform them into anything um and so the staff is looking to demolish both buildings is there is there a timeline for that demolition um that was one of the one-time items that was on the original list and we prioritized others so we will that the timeline will

1:36:26probably be extended out okay um ju just again going back to this process so people know that when I send my questions to the city manager that is part of the public record so if anybody wants to retrieve them there they are there and her responses are there too so

1:36:43if you feel shorted by my not going through all my questions you can get them if you want them um so going on I also had a question about the California Public Policy Group and just wondering I'm not sure if if this is answerable but what percentage of our monthly

1:36:56$6,500 fee goes towards grant writing versus advocacy work and I don't know if that's can be divided up or not but I'm just sort of curious i can actually look that up if you go on to another question I can I can look that up all right thank you another question I had was number

1:37:1692836 and 92837 um there's a mileage and reimbursement payment made to someone named Jigy Dadul i hope I'm saying his name correctly and I was curious about that because it was about $4,300 or so for about two months of mileage and food and I was kind of curious who was

1:37:36getting that i did get an answer but I'll go ahead and pose it publicly and let police chief Keith address that good evening again it's me Paul Keith your chief of police uh so Mr doul is one of our police recruits he commutes from the Alto area to the academy back and forth

1:37:54each day um so as such he is eligible for reimbursement and lunch expenses thank you thank you yeah actually I I Googled his name trying to figure out who he was and he doesn't have much of an internet presence which I guess is good good for police officers but thank

1:38:10you for that answer and then my last one I'll ask is 92911 Dixon Resources Unlimited Parking Management Plan and I recall a few months ago that council approved a 200,000 or so 200 I forget the exact number 230 something like that contract for a parking management plan around the

1:38:32Elsto Plaza BART station and I was wondering if that $40,000 payment was part of that contract yes yes that is correct that is for the parking management action plan and the invoice referenced site visits documentation data collection and review strateg strategy development and staff meetings

1:38:50we're just pretty much kicking that whole process off so there'll be other correct large payments to them until he Yes max it out all right that's all for me oh council member Katanas regarding your question um for CPPG so as you know the monthly retainer is 6,500 um for

1:39:08this fiscal year it's broken out $4,000 for grant writing and 2500 for lobbying services thank you welcome all right thank you on to item F resolution of support for state and federal funding for Bay Area Public Transit council member Salsman you were not Oh that was me okay

1:39:31sorry okay uh thank you Mayor um my question is just given the May revise from the governor's budget office or governor um what is the impact of that and is there any update to our request through this resolution positive or negative because of the revise yes thank you so for the

1:39:52for the public uh council member Modyama is referring to SB63 which authorizes a regional sales tax ballot measure for public transit and infrastructure it's also called as the Connect Bay Area Act um and the bill calls for a half cent um half cent sales tax except for San

1:40:11Francisco that may go up to 1 cent um and this bill is currently in the suspense file with the Senate Appropriations Committee um it's being evaluated for fiscal impact um and it will be heard on May 23rd so to your point regarding the May revise which was just uh released by the governor last

1:40:30week um right now preliminarily in speaking with our uh lobbyist uh the May revise really has little impact at this point to SP63 as it relates to the because it's a regional um proposed regional measure it's not statewide and so it hasn't been determined yet um

1:40:50whether the state will reimburse mte for any costs um so right now um we don't know at this point but we will certainly let you all know if there is a impact thank you all right any other questions for Yes there's two parts of the resolution and I just want to be clear because that's

1:41:12SB63 is se separate but there was a budget request which is mentioned in the resolution and it's true it's not and the governors may revise but we also know that the revise is one point and then the legislature goes and cuts it up all different ways so the request I

1:41:28think is is still there that there's an urgent need that can't really wait for the regional measures so the hope is still that there will be some funding to bridge the gap all right so now we're on to six I'm sorry 7G acceptance of TEC grant and related scope of

1:41:49work i did not have council member three questions on on page 58 it stated that Elserto received $9.78 million in one Bay Area grant funding that is partially for quote aloney greenway bike and pedestrian improvements so I'm I'm curious how much of that 9 roughly 8

1:42:12million has gone towards the greenway and are there funds that are coming from that that um that 9.8 20 million that still remain to be applied towards the greenway and I say that out of concern about the the state of the greenway and repairs that are needed and just

1:42:25wondering if that's if there's funding there funding that's not been used yet from that 9.8 million that could be applied towards repairs of the greenway and safety issues and lighting enhancements and wondering what plans are in place for that good evening mayor council members iette

1:42:41Ortiz the city's public works director and I can respond to that question and uh council member Katanis um the amount that was uh for the Aloney Greenway was about um $3.47 million and it was for the Aloney it's a long project name but I'll say it all it's the Aloney Greenway BART

1:43:01station area access safety and placemaking improvements project and that was completed back in 2020 and it included improving and widening the the path the looney path next to the two BART stations so from cutting to hill and from central to Fairmont so um uh that included adding lighting uh

1:43:23addressing maintenance needs in terms of pavement and also improving the landscaping and adding amenities creating those many plazas that you see like on Central on the north side and and Fairmont on the north side as well as Hill Street and it also included um

1:43:41improving the pedestrian crossings on those streets um adding colored pavement treatments bulbouts and the flashing um lights so that um yeah so the project was completed in 2020 and then in terms of that uh grant source the one bay area grant source it is for capital

1:43:59improvements uh like I said we did address maintenance needs as part of those capital improvements but the that funding is not for like regular operations and maintenance um we continue to look for grants to address both maintenance and improvements um as along the Aloney uh we currently are

1:44:16addressing one of the more uh prioritized repairs on the Looney near Eureka and that's um we're using the city's measure J return to source funds there and we're designing that project and hope to complete that this this summer and then we also secured additional design funding for the Aloney

1:44:37north of Knots which is the last trail of the segment that has not been uh renovated um and so we did secure design fund funding from the west contraosta transportation commission subregional transportation mitigation program and then in terms of just overall cities

1:44:54facilities city facilities um and infrastructure maintenance that's part of a you know a cross department with finance looking at how the city's going to address our deferred maintenance and hope to provide more information to the council as part of our bianual budget

1:45:08process okay thank you two two other questions related to the the same item um one one that concerns me well both concern me um we are asked to to respond to the request for a proposal RFP by May 21st and agree to the MTC's TOC policy as I read through the packet I couldn't find

1:45:32the policy and my understanding is this is going to come to council later in the summer and I I feel uncomfortable agreeing to support a policy not knowing what the policy specifics are and being able to read the policy and I understand there is a time pressure given I think

1:45:50the day our date we need to respond is May 21st and I I just don't know how to grapple with that how can we respond to um a policy that we don't have and hello council members uh Jeff Valentine senior planner with the city uh so the agenda bill did include the TOC policy in a number of different

1:46:12links i'm happy to point that out in the agenda bill there was uh the resolution that the MTC board adopted that here's uh MTC resolution 4530 in 2022 it's here on the the first page of the agenda bill there's a hyperlink to it it's the second paragraph under background um so that is

1:46:34that is where they adopted this policy in addition there's a number of web pages that uh are provided as links through this document as well as uh the agenda bill did attempt to summarize the TOC policy so I don't know if you had specific questions or I I did not see

1:46:49that i I printed out so I guess maybe that's part of the problem is I I print out the packet and I was slipping through the packet trying to find the policy and had heard that it's going to come before council in the summer and I thought well that's slightly backwards

1:47:01gotcha and um one other clarification the the May 21st date the RFP so that was actually an RFP that MTC put out for consultants to provide responses to for consultants to be selected for jurisdictions to work with so that's not a deadline for the city to respond to

1:47:21okay all right and then perhaps this question is for you as well i my last concern is that um as as I read it my understanding was that there's that part of the the policy is to encourage or require actually development of empty parcels that are not already designated for particular

1:47:44housing projects to have a density minimum density of 75 dwelling units per acre and an average maximum of of 100 units per acre with if they're within a half a mile from BART and just by chance I happen to live a half a mile from BART but I'm up almost on Arlington up the

1:48:02hill so as I thought about it I thought a half a mile you know is not the close circle around Bart it extends pretty far and I just kind of wondered I can't imagine you know a 75 i mean a typical urban development is somewhere between eight and 20 units per acre and a 100 is

1:48:22bordering high density and something that's you know four five six stories tall and I have a hard time imagining something that's four five or six stories tall anywhere up the hill in Elsarto and all the headaches that will come from that but also as I read this

1:48:36it seems like if we're accepting this policy and agreeing to it we're obligating ourselves to do that if and I just that that troubles me and concerns me i'm wondering if I'm not reading it and understanding it correctly and how do you mitigate that that fact that risk

1:48:50of committing ourselves to a five-story building up the hill yeah absolutely no those are very valid concerns i have a few different responses uh number one of which is uh these minimums and maximums they're averages so it doesn't have to apply to each individual parcel and to

1:49:06clarify it applies to all parcels for the residential densities that do not have any housing units that are also not on the city's housing element opportunity sites um and so one approach the city is exploring uh and what we've done in our grant applications we've

1:49:21included funds for economic feasibility analysis for two main purposes one to make sure that these densities are economically viable and that the market would demand them um and two to also explore the possibility of uh moving more of the density in our San Pablo

1:49:37Avenue specific plan area uh because most of those sites are already in the specific plan area so if we can already focus more more of that density there and sort of alleviate and not put as much density in the single family uh parcels which are which are fewer um

1:49:51since there there are many much fewer uh vacant lots in the single family neighborhoods um that is one approach we would explore with this uh in addition what this is doing is this is saying uh we're accepting these funds to then work with the consultant what we'd be doing

1:50:06is having the consultant work with us to suit our needs and any future policy or any docu uh thing that that would need to be approved would need to go to planning commission city council and would be uh ample uh community outreach as well as I read it the I read a

1:50:22minimum of 75 not an average but a minimum of 75 and an average of 100 is that not correct an an average minimum if that makes sense so say say you have you know I read average the wording actually said average maximum well let's back up here so say we have just keep it simple like five parcels

1:50:42okay uh one of those parcels you could require a minimum of say 20 units per acre as long as on the other parcels you're increasing the minimum to more than 75 such that the average of all of those parcels the minimum is at 75 if that makes sense and what you're saying

1:50:58makes sense that's just not how I read it i read that the minimum was 75 and that the maximum average was 100 and that may just be you know am I missing something or it's just not worded clearly but what you said is absolutely clear okay um Okay um and are you not concerned

1:51:18that accepting the money to ties your hands into developments that may not be in the best interest of the city i think what the way we're viewing this is that uh the OBG funds are are quite substantial so were there almost 10 million in the recent uh past and we

1:51:36would really have the potential to really lose out in a big way on those funds and so we we we don't want to lose out on the opportunity and in addition through this grant that you know the MTC is paying for us to kind of bring us into compliance and look at how we can

1:51:49sort of make uh make sort of follow their address their requirements but at the same time do it in the way that sort of works for Elserto and makes sense again as I read it I read the grant to be 270 I believe thousand and I thought "Wow that's that's that's not much money

1:52:05and it's a huge trade-off for 270,000."

1:52:08But what you're saying is that sort of opens the door to 10 million or so i'm not sure if I'm interpreting that oh well yeah so what the grant funds are doing are uh allowing us to hire a consultant to adopt the policy documents to increase the densities to address the

1:52:24requirements for TOC the grant funds or the Oback funds are all of the the circulation improvements uh that Avette was describing um that's much much more than the 270 for this particular a lotment is that right absolutely absolutely and in terms of uh the grant

1:52:39monies we we reached out to a number of a couple of consultants to make sure that that was a good amount of money to really address dress our needs and I'll just add legally that this grant can't compel the city council to undertake that zoning um that it has there there

1:52:55not only are there multiple procedural steps that would have to occur before the city council could actually make those policy changes the the grant itself can't compel legally compel the council to make those changes i would add though that this is considering our

1:53:12our housing element our climate goals and the way that the state and MTC are are moving in the direction that they are um this is something that we're going to have to address it some way and to be able to have the grant funding to do this work uh would otherwise we we're

1:53:30going to have to do this work anyway so it's either going to be paid for by grant funds which is what our hope is or we're going to have to find the money elsewhere that's right and if I can just put those various pieces together so a couple questions so you are correct this

1:53:43uh my name is Melanie Mincson i'm the city's community development director um these these grant funds which as uh Jeff Valentina said is also going to be through working with a consultant that MTC ends up actually doing the administration for but that's the the

1:53:57value of it un is required as to be compliant to access the other millions of dollars of funds that you've seen that is the transportation funds that are discretionary to meet the policy goals of the region and MTC so that's one piece so one is for the professional

1:54:13services the other is actually for the the types of projects that we've used the $9 million for in the past so to be eligible to apply for OAG the one Bay Area grant program or other funds they've said or other so that's one piece I wanted to clarify um and then

1:54:27the other as city manager Pinto just said um much of what's required is consistent with um philosophically with building more housing um near our BART stations as uh as Jeff was saying we have some concerns ourselves with the specific metrics potentially that have been

1:54:48required and um one of the things that we're able to do is like Jeff said try to figure out what's best for the city that's consistent with all of our goals while we're also furthering the goals of um the zoning one of those uh things that you'll hear us speak about is we're

1:55:04not sure about the feasibility or the the the unique characteristics of El Certo and the market it could require a certain thing it doesn't mean it gets built and this is a challenge that we have with several things so we're going to be trying to kind of with the

1:55:17consultant help and with strategic economics who's also through a different grant working with us where is this right for us where it's not how can we tailor it in a way that's right to meet all of our goals but also actually results in things in shovels in the

1:55:28ground um and we're not sure the one-sizefits-all is exactly right and then lastly to build on what city attorney um Woodruff said this doesn't commit us to these policies the planning commission so as we do the engagement the planning commission will review and

1:55:43recommend and then you would city council would ultimately adopt the policy so this is just getting us to do the leg work to figure out what that is so thank you you're welcome all right so final item and I'm going to encourage my council members and I don't do this very often but we have a very

1:56:00very long agenda tonight we actually have a council rule it says we have to be out of here by 11:00 i'm going to apologize in advance to our guests that we have i should have put them at the top they are in a different time zone and it is very very late for them right

1:56:12now so please when we go into item H please make it succinct and remind us that this is the reason why our city manager sets aside time with us every week to answer questions before we get to the day item H I don't even remember who pulled item H okay go really fast i

1:56:31know people are staying up late to to be in our meeting so um on 7H I have a quick question about the IT expenses that these expenses are through 2027 and I was wondering if we are paying for them all in this year's budget or are they prrated uh over the course of the

1:56:49the three years and then how do we treat this expense i can answer that and council me council member I'm Eric G your IT managers uh they operated and spread over uh the several years because uh some of them are software it's like subscription so we are paying for the years uh expensing

1:57:09it for the years that we are using it so uh we have a um fund that is like being it fund being moved to it to kind of like prepay this this is how we are going be paying for this thing okay and to uh and then did we do an RFP for this or this uh just uh some other type of

1:57:29procurement uh we leverage uh government I mean uh contracting vehicles and ask for three quotes uh like the dock trace one that uh the council has approved uh a year or two ago and we had like quote from SSP we have a quote from SHI and then a company called AVA enterprise and

1:57:47so uh that's how we try to like get the best price for the city thank you thank you Council Member Motyama you're you're great all right so let's move on to item we'll do item C first and that is the LGBTQIA plus proclamation and I know council member Cassanis you had a

1:58:04question on that item yep i just have one comment or one request um in the third paragraph it reads "There continues to be some opposition against people from this community meaning the LGBTQ I plus community." I was struck by the word some and I felt like that's minimizes it minimizes it so

1:58:24I asked that the word sum be deleted just remove one word i can be agreeable to that i don't even have to look at the proclamation um do we need to amend it before we complete consent calendar city clerk i think that you could just um mention in your motion okay that amendment thank you so much

1:58:43and did anyone else want to speak on this proclamation before we go on all right and I I did want to speak specifically to it and I'm I'm excited for another year of celebrating pride in El Certo i always start these comments by honoring council member I'm sorry

1:58:58mayor pin um pro Tim Kinto um because Elsto was the first city to raise the pride flag in 2013 and I don't know was that your first year on council or maybe you had only been a few years of human relations commission so I knew that you were somewhere in there Gabe um and so

1:59:12I've always been proud to be in El Certo a city that talks so much about the diversity of our city um and as mayor and as a proud black lesbian who spent decades organizing advocating and loving within the LGBT LGBTQIA plus community it is my deep honor to lead this year's

1:59:27proclamation of June as Pride Month in our city pride is very personal for me for a lot of reasons that many people already know it's rooted in countless marches that I've walked in the young people I've mentored the elders whose stories I've uplifted the spaces that

1:59:41I've carved out so that queer and trans people especially those of us who are black and brown and bold can show up fully and freely it's the mother who pulled me out of the Oakland Pride parade to tell me she didn't accept her son until he had died it's it's even

1:59:55standing between youth and guns in the San Francisco Pride Parade it is all of those things from the front lines of protest to the halls of policy i have fought not just for visibility but for lasting change in Elserto pride is not performative it is principled it means

2:00:10protecting trans youth from political violence it means affirming our LGBTQIA elders with care and respect it means ensuring our city's policies reflect the values of inclusion equity and joy this proclamation is not a final word it's a promise a promise to keep building a

2:00:26city where liberation isn't just celebrated in June but lived every day of the year and I want to remind everyone that this proclamation does include our flag raising which will be happening here at city hall on June 2nd i just read our email will that the executive director of SF Pride will be

2:00:41coming to speak um we'll be having some other fun guests and I have another secret guest that I'm still trying to get to come out so I hope that you all can join us at 4 PM on June 2nd as we raise the pride flag that's it for items oh go ahead somebody said something i just want to

2:00:58clarify there was a there there was a change to that proclamation um so I'd suggest at this point so because you had pulled almost every item from consent um I was waiting to see to to jump in to just suggest that if you had if there were no changes you could just take the

2:01:15whole consent calendar together since there's a change to that proclamation I'd recommend a separate motion and action on that okay and then you can approve the the balance of the consent calendar i'd like to make a motion to approve with the amended suggestions the

2:01:28LGBTQ proclamation everybody wants a second but I heard Salsman all in favor please say I i i any opposed any abstensions so that item does pass all right to move the balance of the consent calendar we still have one more oh we do oh yeah we do we still have 7D oh sorry all right so 7D is the

2:01:48recognition of the fifth anniversary of the death of George Floyd and I wanted to give a little context context around that um because when I came to the council I'm sure council member Motyama and council member Kinto recall the city was actually raising the Black Lives

2:02:04Matter flag during um Black History Month and I made a very passionate statement about how we really needed to change that because it was limiting Black History Month to the death of black people we want to celebrate the whole community and celebrate life so that was when we started raising the

2:02:21Pan-African flag um but I I happen to be and I am the leazison for the human rights commission um in one of their meetings where they said they wanted to figure out when we could where we could stick in um flying the Black Lives Matter flag again and I said well it

2:02:35just so happens that the anniversary of the death of George Floyd is coming up and I am that's a it's a complicated a complicated statement to make one of the only bright spots to what unfortunately happened to George Floyd is that I met some of my family members um I met

2:02:51George's brother Fonus and his wife Kea who have become now some of my closest cousins i've been able to work with them across our nation and the work that they are doing to um try and pass the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act um and working with the former or deceased

2:03:08member of our Congress Sheila Jackson Lee who works so passionately to try and get that item passed also with our local congress members so Congress member Nancy Pelosi is a supporter of the bill our congress member um John Gear Mindy is a supporter and it's just amazing to

2:03:23see the work that they have done considering the tragedy that they endured and I know I bring them up a lot of times when we talk about our law enforcement because it was Kea who was the one that said "Carolyn we don't hate police officers but we do hate what the

2:03:36criminal justice system did to George."

2:03:39And so I'm I'm honored to have them here on think on Zoom they might be asleep now because we are g we are getting ready this weekend to actually commemorate the fifth anniversary of the death of George Floyd i'll be joining them in Houston um to commemorate that

2:03:54and so I'm I'm happy I'll be able to take this this proclamation with me but I believe and they believe that we are the only city that's going to be flying a flag in in commemoration of his honor and really honoring his life i hope that I know the HRC has supported this

2:04:10proclamation we hope that this will be something that will be ongoing so that we can now have a new reason to fly the Black Lives Matter flag um I do want to in invite Fonus and Orita up to the virtual stage if they would like to make some remarks i have so many other things

2:04:24that I wrote down to say but again I told y'all to be succinct i'mma be succinct too it doesn't really take a whole bunch kea can you hear us yes I can hear you guys thank you thank you thank you so much can you see us both um they cannot see us there you are okay so on behalf of the

2:04:49fillus and keto institute for social change we would like to say thank you so much to the city of Elsa's Mayor Weissinger and council members thank you so much for the honoring the fifth anniversary of the death of George Floyd um it's not honoring only honoring George's life but

2:05:06the commitment that every community has made in regards to reaffirming the ongoing work that's required to ensure that the legacy continues on so thank you so much and you know we hope that God continues to bless your work yes ma'am and uh thank you so much uh Mayor

2:05:24Carolyn uh West this is a privilege and uh this is a blessing just to be able to have this stage from the beginning but uh I just want to let everybody know that it's good evening and uh it's an honor to be here speaking with you all today uh I just want to be able to thank

2:05:41you uh on behalf of uh George Floyd's family and uh my brother's legacy that it continues to be able to go on in life and I want to be able to make sure people of color have the opportunity to be able to walk around and uh be in fear of their life i thank y'all so much

2:06:01thank you and and Fonus we are matching i have on my my packfish i'mma stand up so people can say I I have George on my on my heart thank you all so much are we going to take like a virtual picture like we did before we're going to stand up okay to pass the proclamation first oh we have to prize

2:06:17the proclamation okay we have to pass the consent calendar first okay i'll move to pass the consent count the balance of the consent items uh other than 7C second all in fa I'm sorry we have a motion from council member Motyama a second by council member Salsman to pass the the consent

2:06:35counselor minus item C all in favor please say I i i any opposed any abstensions now we can take a virtual picture and and yes everyone I will be taking this with me to Houston this weekend yes thank you that is awesome see up baby excellent thank you everybody

2:07:17thank you thank you god bless all right now we're back to the hard stuff okay the next item on the agenda is annual public hearing on vacancies recruitment and retention efforts may we please have the staff report should we take a listen you know Okay you know what let's take a f a five

2:08:14minute break um a couple of our council members need to go take care of some things so powder their noses so five minute break everyone you're welcome already something is It's come from my chair it's like a whole bunch of black foam ground up reminds me investigate that let me know

2:13:48all right thank you so much for returning to the day as council member Motyama and that was the last hold out i didn't know if you were going to make it but you did all right so annual public hearing on vacancies recruitment and retention can May we please have the

2:14:03staff report yes thank you mayor uh good evening mayor and city council my name is Shannon Bassie i'm the human resources manager with the city uh tonight we have a receive and file report information only uh regarding a new bill um that is regarding AB2561 um this presentation will cover

2:14:23status of the city of El Certo's vacancies uh recruitment and retention efforts um this is our first year that we are doing this annual report so um if you have any feedback at the end please let us know so we can improve the process moving forward um but I will be

2:14:39doing a brief overview presentation uh regarding this new bill um which requires public agencies to report out this information so like I said uh AB2561 requires public agencies um including the city to hold at least one public hearing per year to discuss vacancies recruitment and

2:15:02retention efforts um like I said this presentation is forformational purposes only uh to discuss the city's legal obligation under the new law which took effect January 1st 2025 um the goal is to address issues of job vacancies uh which adversely affect service delivery and employee workload

2:15:22um which just to expand on that a little bit more uh leading to burnout and increased turnover um which can negatively impact service delivery um so the uh the the bill did want to call out that in local government this is a significant problem if it does meet a certain threshold so we'll get into

2:15:42that in a little bit further in the presentation shannon just a reminder to your presentation slides we just covered that slide and we'll be moving on to this one which is workforce uh information uh so this is just an overview of the city's total budgeted FTE i do want to note that as of January

2:16:011st 2024 the city's FTE was 163.8 that is excluding five council member positions um and then at the end of the year December 31st 2024 the number remained the same at 163.8 FTE in that chart there there is a breakdown of all of our bargaining groups um and their FTE totals again

2:16:23these are total budgeted positions not necessarily actual people filling position at positions at this moment or as a look back from last year so for the police employees association also known as pea they have a total of 48 FTE the service employees international union local 1021 also

2:16:45known as SEIU have a total of 45.5 FTE our management confidential employee group has a total of 31.8 FTE and a side note this group is not a uh bargaining group um and represented but it is an employee group that the city recognizes uh through a resolution uh then we have

2:17:05United Professional Firefighters Local 10 uh 1230 which has an FTE of 37 and a half and lastly our public safety management association uh also known as PSMA for a total of 9 FTE and I really just wanted to call out that um these employees and the FTE totals really play a role with our

2:17:27service delivery and represent our service uh represent our employees that provide those services next is just an overview which everyone should be fairly familiar with of what all of our departments um do so city manager's office primarily covers administration communications city clerk

2:17:47services human resources and IT services community development planning is over planning building housing economic development sustainable transportation we have our finance department which oversees uh broad areas of budget accounting and payroll and then we have our fire department which

2:18:06provides fire prevention services operations EMS and uh code enforcement uh then we have our police department which provides patrol and traffic services field operations crime prevention and investigations we have our public works department which oversees engineering

2:18:23recycling and maintenance uh and streets and then lastly our recreation department which oversees our parks senior child care services um aquatics and recreational programs um of course these departments do much much more but those are some highlevel um overview

2:18:42categories and then next uh we'll start to get into the nuts and bolts of what this report um you know is showing for a look back of the calendar year 2024 so all of this data just to reiterate is a look back on last year uh 2024 this chart um is a breakdown of the vacancies

2:19:02at the beginning of each month so you can see January through December the vacancies are varying there uh depending on um recruitment and retention efforts for that month there's some other data there that might be helpful just with the number of separations the number of

2:19:17new hires promotions and all of that is uh compared and um analyzed against our total number of budgeted FTEEs and so you see that last line there of percentage of vacancies broken down by each month um again those numbers uh fluctuated throughout the year but um

2:19:36over to the left hand side you can see that there was an average of 10% uh vacancy rate for each month um our highest vacancy rate uh month was at 12% and then our lowest was at 9% and I did just want to pause here that with this new bill the threshold for um for a concerning vacancy rate is 20% so

2:20:01we did um have a relatively average vacancy rate and not in a concerning state um in the eyes of this new legislative bill uh this chart is an annual um average breakdown of vacancies by bargaining units so as I just um described all of our bargaining units um this is in order of vacancy percentage

2:20:24from highest to lowest uh so the police employees association association pea had 14% vacancy percentage for the entire annual average um SEIU was at 12% our management confidential group was at 8% and our uh United uh local 1230 firefighters were at 5% and PSMA was at

2:20:450% uh this slide is a snapshot of our recruitment process um and the steps that are involved from start to finish of when a vacancy is approved all the way to when an employee is um has started their position so to briefly overview uh cover these steps uh once a

2:21:07vacancy is approved then the recruitment is opened um HR then works with the department to advertise uh those vacancies on various platforms and outreach uh then uh the testing interview stage uh is started from that uh next step once the interviews conclude then an eligibility list is

2:21:26established and usually sent to the department to then do final um round interviews from there a top candidate is selected and a offer is made and the background process uh begins and then once the individual completes the background process uh there is a formal

2:21:43offer letter um initiated and a start date and then the new hire will start their orientation these are just some recruitment statistics that might be helpful also with um all of this information so for 2024 calendar year the total number of vacancies filled uh

2:22:04reached 21 uh the average number of calendar calendar days uh to fill a vacancy was 67 and again that's from the time the job posting was opened to the time the formal offer was made um and just as a some uh context for this uh the background process does vary by

2:22:25department and also position especially in the sworn categories so uh that's why that number could be a little bit higher from the average that it does take for a sworn personnel to be started uh and complete the background process um and then the number of vacancies filled by a

2:22:42eligibility list last year was one new recruitments opened was a total of 12 and then our promotional recruitments um totaled about seven so this um new legal um bill did require cities to take a look at hiring issues that uh might be present within the agency and so um at

2:23:08the city of Elserto we identified some obstacles looking back on 2024 and those uh broad categories we concluded were competitive salaries so finding that some classification salaries were under market um as shown through the compensation study another obstacle was

2:23:26that applicants were not understanding the process um or were expecting a quicker process um and then the last obstacle we identified was applicants having a hard time in the background process whether that was certain requirements that they needed to meet um or maybe just for whatever reason they

2:23:46just were not able to complete the background process so looking at these obstacles a little bit further um HR is always looking at ways that we can improve um and overcome some of these obstacles um there's been a lot of work done through negotiations and working with our employee groups uh

2:24:08to apply salary market adjustments through that classing comp study results um that's very necessary to remain competitive in the job applicant pool and recruit top talent um we also looked at the communication process from HR to the hiring department and ultimately to

2:24:26the applicant and just um providing some additional details in those job postings uh about the timeline when interviews might take place just so the applicant has a timeline that is realistic and so that they remain um interested in the position and also to align expectations

2:24:45um and then lastly lastly the one of the solutions was to improve um continuously improve recruitment branding for the city highlight why the city is um an employer of choice um and one of the ways that that's um being done is we have our recruitment videos posted on

2:25:04our website especially on HR's page where there are highlights of all the great services and employee uh work that is done on an everyday basis sorry about that got my pages a little bit mixed up here um but this uh slide did explore some other recruitment goals and strategies

2:25:40that the city has just to again overcome those obstacles and um improve our vacancy rate um so one of those things would be to continuously examine um and expand the applicant network uh reaching diverse community groups and again attracting top talent so some of the

2:25:58ways that we um are strategizing to do that is uh navigating and networking through trade schools community colleges universities uh various cultural interest groups community organizations and various professional networks um so we hope that through word of mouth and

2:26:15in those networks we can spread um word that we are looking for uh certain positions that are especially hard to recruit for um another uh strategy is streamlining the recruitment process um and trying to decrease the number of days that it takes to fill a position um

2:26:32and that is a continuous uh improvement process looking at ways that we can do that um another ongoing effort is monitoring our salary and benefit uh package uh against our comparative agencies and uh aiming to remain competitive again so we can recruit top talent um and our last strategy is

2:26:54really working with departments to train and promote uh within where possible so that is something that you saw on a previous slide we were able to have several uh vacancies filled through promotion so that was really nice to see again this is uh some helpful retention statistics so um with the

2:27:15number of vacancies that were created in 2024 was 27 um there were no new budgeted positions that were approved in 2024 so that stays at zero internal promotions totaled 12 um our internal transfers were zero and our number of vacancies that were created by retirements were five

2:27:37the number of vacancies created by involuntary separation were five and then lastly uh vacancies created by voluntary separation totaled nine and that concludes the report and I'm open for any questions and then this is a public hearing for comment later okay so first are there any questions from

2:27:58the council all right then the public hearing is now opened as required by AB 2561 we will first give our bargaining units an opportunity to speak any units who wish to speak we ask that you keep your comments under five minutes city Clerk can you please announce and call

2:28:18up any representatives who have requested to speak yes I have a formal request from uh SEIU but I also see our colleagues from local 12:30 and the police employees association in the room okay so who likes to be first to come up first i could be a teacher and start volunting

2:28:41people do you want me to wait for the timer i don't think I'll be five minutes but you won't be subjected to the timer thank you per state law thank you uh good evening mayor and council members my name is Gary Williams i'm a firefighter paramedic for the city of Elsto as well

2:29:04as our local 1230 representative i'm just here real quickly to talk about our paramedics i am one of them and in uh the three well the three engines that you have at your service with 51 52 and 55 at all times you will have at least one paramedic and what we can do on calls

2:29:25for example I can start an IV i can give drugs and we could potentially save someone's life with those kinds of skills uh we currently have nine par captain paramedics we have five engineer paramedics and we have two uh firefighter paramedics and on the line personnel we have 30 so just a little

2:29:47bit over half are paramedics uh the number specifically the nine captain paramedics is a slight concern because in about five maybe 10 years a lot of those captains will be retired and we will need to maintain adequate paramedic levels and the way things like for example I'll

2:30:09give an example of today uh sometimes we don't have ambulances quite ready uh we ran a medical emergency and we had to wait for an ambulance to get here it took them about 20 minutes from Oakland so the other calls today we were good we had I think two more medical calls but

2:30:25they were local so they were there within five minutes or even at one time before us so it's a crapshoot sometimes i don't have specific numbers but there are times and it seems to happen more often where we are waiting long periods for an ambulance so keeping paramedics

2:30:40are vital and it's something that we do every day uh going back to two of our previous recruitment uh or applications and the numbers that we had for people who applied uh in July of 22 we had uh a hiring process where 24 paramedics applied i don't have any further

2:31:02information that I was able to get from the city about how many uh proceeded but I do have numbers from November of 23 uh which was our previous hiring process we had 18 paramedics apply two of those individuals were able to make it to the aura board boards and only one accepted

2:31:21the interviews unfortunately we are not or we're not unique a paramedic there's a paramedic shortage and just an issue I think all over generally in the Bay Area and it's something that at least from 1230s vantage point because we have multiple jurisdictions that we represent

2:31:36this is not something that's uncommon uh that's all I had to share was just to give you guys some information about the recruitment and a potential ongoing problem that we may face one day thank you thank you pa or SEIU good evening mayor uh members of the council uh my name is Eddie Nodal i am

2:32:05the uh I work at the corporation yard i'm I work in the maintenance division u management assistant there um I'm also um the chapter president for SEIU 1021 here in El Certo representing um our members here in Elsarto full-time and part-time we're about 60 members and um

2:32:23we work at various sites we work here at city hall our members work at the community center various child care centers here in Elserto uh the recycling center the courtyard those are our work sites um we are currently uh we have about five to five five to six vacant

2:32:40positions here in the city mostly in our building department that would be our permit techs uh here at the front counter at city hall building inspectors I believe we have one custodial position vacant uh we met with human resources earlier this week and um we are

2:32:55optimistic that they have a plan to get those positions hired um currently those positions are contracted out so um we are optimistic that maybe by the end of this year if not next year those positions will be reinstated with uh union members um so increasing our count

2:33:12as you saw in Shannon's presentation we're about 12% um um and that's we're the second um with the most vacancies the second bargaining group with the most vacancies and um thank you for listening to us and um and working with us and we appreciate all all your support thank you thank you

2:33:35last but not least PA i'm going to reiterate PA's comments they said that they do not have a comment at this time but that they appreciate the opportunity thank you so much city clerk now is the time for members of the public who wish to provide a public comment regarding

2:33:57this item request to speak can be submitted to the city clerk by completing a speaker card public comments will be taken in person only please remember to identify yourself and your city of residence at the beginning of your comments city clerk please proceed mayor we have no comments from

2:34:14the public okay thank you do I have a motion to close the public hearing some moved second all right so motion by Mayor Pro Tim Kinto and second by council member Motyama all in favor please say I i any opposed any abstensions so the hearing is now closed and this is a receive and file so thank

2:34:34you so much for all of our union members thank you to our staff and now that we're out of the hearing I just want to say I think this is the first time Eddie has spoken before me as the mayor and it's it was just the most coolest thing that ever happened that's my classmate

2:34:46y'all i was just I didn't want to do it during the hearing i feel I had to still be reserved all right the next item is presentation of 2025 cost allocation user fee study and public hearing and approval of fiscal year 2526 master fee schedule may we please have the staff

2:35:05report just updating the public we're just working through some technical difficulties and we should have the presentation up shortly okay thank you for your patience we can't even Okay there we go sorry about that um Crystal Re finance director um today we have the

2:38:552025 um user fee study results and the public hearing and approval of the fiscal year 2526 master fee schedule um here with us tonight is Tony Thrasher principal consultant with WLDAN um the city uh contracted with Willbdan to conduct a cost allocation study and a

2:39:10user fee study to determine the total costs of different city operations and the cost of providing the programs and services listed in the master fee schedule for our user fee study to update our master fee schedule with the exception of business license taxes which are regulated by the city's

2:39:27municipal code and with that I will turn it over to Tony thank you thank you mayor and council i'm Tony Thrasher with Willland Financial the project manager for the user fee study uh I was also the project manager for the previous fee study that was performed uh years ago uh

2:39:43so anticipation getting into this and I believe so rather than turn around I have the presentation here uh so I'm just going to keep going i'll read from here right sound good sure it gets anticipation i'll just kind of get started right so we're talking about user fees these are operational costs

2:40:14provided services right uh that provide for a private benefit with limited to no community benefit for the most part we're going to talk about some areas where there is some community benefit perceived and where you typically do have subsidization and we would recommend you continue those sort of

2:40:30practices as well uh but under kind of the guidelines of what we're talking about under state law right it requires that use of the of the services be voluntary either through a service request or through a compliance need right and that your fees can be set up

2:40:46to the reasonable full cost providing those services uh fee levels are adopted through council action in a public hearing uh so that's what we're bringing uh here tonight uh to kind of the suggested fee recommendations for adoption consideration it's also important to

2:41:02note what we don't include uh so impact fees utility rates taxes they are not included as part of this study these are purely the operational costs provided services right let's go ahead and go to the next slide so why update your user fees well the there's two big reasons

2:41:20right one make sure you're in compliance with state law the other is most of most all the costs that are involved with providing the services are in your general fund so if you are subsidizing the cost of your services it impacts your general fund's ability to fund

2:41:35those services right uh any private specific benefits that are subsidized those costs still exist and so they need to be made up by other unobligated dollars in your general fund so it can reduce your ability to fund community benefits general benefits uh council

2:41:49initiatives public safety things of that nature that you might want to do uh sustained uh you know I I'll say sustained underfunding of services we've seen in some cities result in some issues with uh you know uh delays in services being provided right understaffing things of that nature

2:42:07don't see that here um but we just always want to raise those alarms just to say if you are subsidizing know that it's kind of an action you take to know that you're going to have to fund those services through other means right uh of course it's always important for you to

2:42:20know what your cost of providing those services are so you can make you know conscious decision policy of where you want that cost recovery to be and of course under state law make sure you know what the cost is so you can then determine a fee up to that oh excuse me

2:42:33i just wanted to remind you to speak closer into the microphone okay thank you feel like I'm going to eat the microphone thank you though uh so primary objectives of the fee study uh we're starting off with determining the full cost for all your services that starts off with a review of the fee

2:42:51schedules with all the departments to ensure uh that it reflects how services provided now as well as moving forward uh for at least the next five years which is we'll get to the end of it but that's a typical cycle of a fee study for a city so that staff isn't have

2:43:06having to look at it on an annual basis because it takes it does take their time to kind of go through this process so we sit with your departments sit uh via it virtual for the most part go over the fee schedules identify changes they want to make addition of new fees removal of

2:43:21obsolete fees uh and changes to the schedule modifications to the structures to ensure they do reflect those services and how they're provided and then using fully burden hourly rates calculate the full cost of service based off of reasonable time estimates for what it

2:43:34takes for all direct staff to provide those services once we know what that full cost is we can then compare it to the current fee to see where your current subsidy levels are talk about uh you know policy where you typically want to go with cost recovery what other

2:43:47cities do right um what is kind of industry norms in those areas uh make sure that we kind of are in line with what your kind of policy goals uh would be and then of course maintaining compliance with state law right making sure that uh all fees are at or under

2:44:02that full cost requirement because you'll see in there are some fees that go down uh so making sure that those are adjusted as well so this is a city-wide master fees uh schedule so and study so the scope of the study is all the departments they're pretty much all

2:44:18included within this process uh so I won't read them off there but yeah everyone's involved and goes through it everyone's invol every department's involved at some point in providing some fee service for the most part uh or they're indirectly involved through overhead factors such as like human

2:44:31resources yourselves right um and those factors so what sort of data do we use in the process i'm sorry i'm going through on my own are you good okay i apologize i feel like I'm pressing it there but she's of course doing it uh so what sort of data we use since these are

2:44:48operational cost provided services it is your budget information your org uh structure salaries and benefits of staff uh we include central service overhead as I mentioned it's through the cost allocation plan which identifies the central functions of the city and then

2:45:04uses data sets to allocate those costs out to the operating units they support so think of human resources again where they allocate out based off of full-time equivalents and salaries and benefits so the more people the more salaries and benefits a department or fund has the

2:45:18bigger allocation you'll get of them all those central functions are allocated within the plan to give a reasonable allocation to each department and fund right so that everyone gets their fair share and then we uh reduce the total number of working hours to account for

2:45:33when staff is actually uh on the job able to provide services so 280 goes down to 1650 that's our productive or billable hours and then we calculate the fully burn hourly rates and overheads based off all of that and combine that with the time estimates for what it

2:45:48takes to provide services to get us to a full cost calculation uh for all fees so as you can imagine we're using a lot of different data sets we're talking about the fee schedules every part of this process has to be done uh with staff right u we can't take information back

2:46:03in a hole and then produce results everything has to go through the departments uh we unfortunately always take too much of their time so I appreciate how much effort that they do uh in getting this to fruition but every city's fee schedule and full cost needs to reflect their individual watermark of

2:46:19what it takes to provide service and so we want to make sure that that's reflective in the end results oh summary steps of the study i went over this a bit so I'll go through it quick right uh so we start off with model development we collect information to calculate uh the overhead and hourly

2:46:35rates uh for all city staff so then we can meet with the departments to revise the schedules to go over any changes modifications to the schedule adding new fees remove obsolete fees uh to get to a point where the schedule's good and then we collect time information for what it

2:46:50takes to provide services to get to the full cost calculations compare those to the current fees to identify subsidies come up with suggested fees we bring forward to you all uh in between there we're developing the report that's also part of the agenda documents you'll

2:47:05notice there are over 500 user fees right so there's a lot of fees that cities have and this encompasses all of them right so uh within there you have individual full cost calculations current subsidies suggested fee recommendations and fee changes that are all individual to each and every fee

2:47:24right so they're all in there and of course the end result of this is the public hearing uh for consideration for adoption now this is just meant to illustrate kind of what I've already talked a little bit about um but what goes into the fully burn hourly rate salaries and

2:47:40benefits uh services and supply costs or the budgeted costs of the departments themselves indirect support through this uh the cost allocation plan as well as any other system maintenance costs internal service fund costs all that goes into the support structure of the

2:47:56employee providing services and is part of their fully burden hourly rate so all those costs divided by productive hours uh my equation there looks a little weird but the whole point is all those costs are in there divided by productive hours to get to a fully burden hourly

2:48:10rate for providing service that can be used along with time estimates to get to a full cost calculation now it's important to note even though you see a fee that say on planning schedule it doesn't just mean that planning staff's working on it directly right um so there's positions

2:48:27that are involved with providing the service directly and indirectly indirectly we're including them through the cost allocation plan right so we'll see city clerks in there right a lot of that effort is typically through the cost allocation plan but if there are

2:48:40noticing requirements as part of a fee there might be direct time involved as well right so that reflects their direct cost in there it's also cross-dep departmental so again if you just see a planning fee it means there could be building planning engineering fire right

2:48:54a number of departments involved with that service unless they have their own fee to collect that cost right so fees are cross departmental even if you see them on a single uh schedule for one department now I'm going to go through these are summaries of what's in the

2:49:12report again over 500 fees so this is meant to be that kind of summary of what the analysis found and the recommendations in the report uh so for citywide services that bucket includes printing u reproduction uh documents subpoena notary so that list that's kind

2:49:29of on there uh it was a timebased cost analysis that's going to be fairly consistent i'll call it out when it's not now the suggested fee changes are an increase to 11 fees one fee would decrease seven new fees would be added 12 would remain as currently set and the

2:49:44average fee change would be an increase of 38% so that's looking at all the changes and averaging that together to get to an average change now for business license timebased cost analysis that found the current fees are below the cost of providing service and so the suggestion

2:50:01is an increase to two fees two new fees would be added one fee would remain as currently set the average fee change would be an increase of 11% for planning uh the analysis found a little redundant here right most current fees are underfunding the cost providing

2:50:17services uh so there is a suggested increase to 70 fees 17 fees would decrease uh 15 fees remain as currently set one new fee would be added and the average fee change would be an increase of 16% for building there's two parts to this uh there they have a lot of flat

2:50:36fees so the mechanical electrical plumbing fees as well as some uh operational permits that are based on a flat basis for providing service those are all time based uh within this study and so there's a suggested increase to 120 fees for there uh 81 fees would decrease 40 fees remain as currently set

2:50:55so the average fee change would be a decrease of 1% for flat fees so it stays fairly neutral it's more of an adjustment right to get the fees in line with current costs and then the other part is building permits uh so the calculation of a building permit is based off of the valuation of the

2:51:11project itself so as the valuation is um greater or based off of the construction type will dictate the amount of project valuation it also is a good measure of how much support is also being provided by staff so that's how that fees determined that program is operating at

2:51:2797% cost recovery and so the suggestion is just to increase it by yeah around 3% to get to that full cost uh recovery minor change there for public works uh we did find that the current fees are set below the full cost uh so this one has the bigger increases on it so the

2:51:45suggestion is an increase to 75 fees 15 fees would decrease one new fee would be added eight fees would remain as currently set the average fee change would be an increase of 51% to recover full costs for those for fire uh that one also it so the word verbiage on here is to

2:52:06illustrate that there are fees going up and down right so they're not completely in line and so the suggested changes are an increase to 61 fees 12 fees would decrease 14 fees remain as currently set one new fee would be added and the average change would be an increase of

2:52:2035% and for police the suggestion is an increase to 49 fees 20 fees would decrease 10 fees would remain as currently set and the average fee change would be an increase of 15% now for recreation they are the different one so they fall under a different category for most of their

2:52:44services under Prop 26 uh there is a market aspect to the services they provide there's also a much stronger argument for community benefits that are in there as well these are typically subsidized to some degree uh for a lot of these uh so uh under you know Prop 26

2:53:01use of government owned property those can be set based off market factors we do a cost analysis to to identify where the cost recovery is though for the department which is uh currently around 51% cost recovery which is actually better than what we typically see the

2:53:16average that we usually see is around 20 to 40% uh postcoid uh so you're you're in a better place and so the adjustments that are being suggested uh by staff on that is an increase to 105 fees which sounds like a lot right but let me get to the end so four fees would decrease

2:53:33two new fees would be added uh all the remaining fees on there would remain is currently set so the average fee change is 3% so if we kind of look at what changes it's more of uh smaller changes as well as some changes to some programs uh that staff's recommending and I've gotten to the end

2:53:51so to kind of try to wrap this up right in general standard is for like development type services individuals or groups who receive a private benefit for service should pay 100% of the full cost so your general fund is not having to subsidize those services right so allow

2:54:04those tax dollars to go towards general community benefits but I've never worked with the city that doesn't subsidize our fees to some degree most notably community services recreation those areas right so whenever you're kind of making a a decision on where to uh

2:54:21typically subsidize those are usually the the primary focuses there uh to go for those areas uh but it is ultimately up to you all on where to set fees cities aren't required to charge user fees but it will impact your general fund if you don't get recovery right we

2:54:36do recommend the city utilize an inflator on years in which you don't do a study it can happen in a number of different ways one is to use most common is to use CPI because it's typically a smaller reasonable amount but you could also use average update the salaries and

2:54:50benefits and let that run through uh so there's a number of ways to do that uh and then a comprehensive analysis is recommended every five years that concludes my presentation i'm here to answer any questions as well as staff and the departments all right any questions from council

2:55:06okay Council Member Motama thank you Mayor um I have a question about the 51% cost recovery for recreation uh I remember that we had a presentation on cost recovery before and I believe it was higher so I just wanted to understand what changed so I can answer to what um our study and

2:55:28the differences that typically lie and then I'll pass it on to staff so we're talking fully burdened cost recovery so we're including all those overhead costs central service costs goes into it it does add quite a bit onto there in appendix uh A of our report where we do

2:55:45have those percentages for what the indirect allocations are on that and just because trying to find it here there we go so for like recreation just the indirect overhead from central services adds an additional 30% on top so that contributes quite a bit to that

2:56:04and uh the my second question is you know we have these strange fees for things like a circus and I don't know the last time that Also had a circus and I was kind of wondering you know administratively isn't this a lot of work to have these kinds of fees that we

2:56:20don't really use i believe you are referring to circuses and amusements that are in the business license tax portion the business license tax is a it is indeed a tax and so it was enacted I believe in 1988 it is an an ordinance and the formula is completely separate

2:56:38from this fee study and in order to change anything about the business license tax ordinance it would require a vote of the people that's why it's still why it's still there okay but we could have a circus you never know was thinking that we were the circus case for a circus we are the

2:56:57circus thank you right that was it council member okay council member Ganes I have a question this relates to a conversation I had with the the fire chief um a week or so ago and I I shared a story where I I had a medical emergency and I went to a a neighboring

2:57:17town and went to their fire department as the closest place I could go get care and required that I get in an ambulance and be taken to the the hospital and this was 20 years ago but they advised me to not give them give them my name so that I wouldn't get a bill and this led

2:57:33to a discussion about people who are fearful of getting some sort of bill may be hesitant to engage something that's costly you know if it's a medical issue that's obviously concerning that they're afraid to call for help because they don't want to pay for the ambulance and

2:57:46I'm just wondering is that part of the that type of thing part of the fire fees that you brought up and then how how does that fit in when you consider that a fee may actually change someone's behavior in a way that may be detrimental to them right so there are

2:58:00we'll speak from a development standpoint um there are work without a permit citations it so you know typically it's like twice the fees that would have been charged and then you're also charged the fees now right and if you're not up to code then you have to demo that and do it again so um there's

2:58:17enforcement actions code enforcement's included in this as well that some of the new fees in there have to do with that as well uh but when you're there's certain um it it really depends on the city so when we're talking about medical uh that takes on different forms for

2:58:31different cities different jurisdictions who's providing it uh it can be based off certain policies about collecting uh private information so for that I I wouldn't answer specifically to those sort of cases but in fees in general um I don't know if you want to speak on

2:58:44that at all or if I you know same thing also can apply to someone's house they may want to not get a permit for something because they're afraid of what it's going to cost and then the result is shabby work good evening mayor council i'm Eric S your fire chief i'll just address um one

2:59:01question that you asked um for the fees the fire department does not and will not charge an EMS fee for service which is what you may see in other agencies around us they will charge a fee for EMS service this agency does not now and it's not added to our new fee schedule

2:59:20and we don't have any intention of doing that so it's not something you'll experience in Elsto and the reason is so that people are not hesitant to use the service then is that there's multiple reasons but yeah we definitely don't want to discourage people from asking

2:59:35for help when they need help and that is an unintended consequence for charging people when they dial 911 and I can also add that this was um a recommendation of the state auditor when we were uh in the when we were um uh part of the highway program as part of their recommendations

2:59:53to explore this option for um looking at a fee and we did an analysis which is all on our web page when we uh submitted this to the state auditor and it wasn't the unintended consequence was a big one but also that it would not make enough money to make a difference

3:00:10thank you both thank you any other questions from council all right so the public hearing is now open now is the time for members of the public who wish to provide public comments regarding this item request to speak can be submitted to the city clerk by completing a speaker card public

3:00:27comments will be taken in person only please remember to identify yourself and your city of residence at the beginning of your comments city clerk please proceed mayor we do not have any members of the public that wish to speak okay do I have a motion to close the public

3:00:41hearing so move and a second second all right so motion by Mayor Pro Tim Kinto and seconded by council member Cassanis all in favor please say I i any opposed any abstensions so the public hearing is now closed yes it's closed all right so on to the next item i was making sure that there

3:01:06was not another action here approve oh we have to approve the item right okay all right so do I have an item a motion to approve the item move to approve the resolution can I have a second a motion by council member Motyama seconded by C May Pro Tim Kinto all in

3:01:23favor please say I i any opposed any abstensions the fee study does pass thank you all so much for your attention to this item um the next item is consideration of fiscal year 2425 one time oh yes that's right one time uses of general fund balance may we please

3:01:43have the staff report okay i'm dehydrated and all right there we go great all right um thank you mayor and council i'm Karen Pinkis city manager assisted by finance director and city treasurer Crystal Rees and we also do have uh some staff here to be able to answer questions um this

3:02:27is a uh part two of the discussion that started on April 15th with the city council to discuss the potential use of the discretionary fund balance to address one-time expenditure needs including vehicles equipment and time-sensitive projects um the city council reviewed the proposed

3:02:44expenditures and discussed priorities and directed us to come back with options using $1 million of the discretionary total so starting off um this is um adjacent to the budget process because this may or may not necessarily um affect this fiscal year or next fiscal year um but it is a

3:03:04direct impact to moving forward with our general fund balance as you'll see in a moment um and as you'll see as you can see oh do you go back um one yes um we will be um providing our midcycle update and uh for formal adoption of the second year of a bianial budget uh the uh count city council and

3:03:28financial advisory board will receive uh a budget addendum uh that will outline all of the uh um the budget for fiscal year 26 uh we had discussed the general fund with the council already this will also include all of the special funds and so we will provide that again uh

3:03:46this Thursday so that you'll have an additional week to be able to look at that prior to our presentation on the first June meeting and a potential adoption on the second June meeting or as long as the council would like to discuss the budget as long as it is uh

3:04:01adopted by June 30th next so the general fund balance uh we you have seen this chart many times um the last time you saw this was in our general fund update for the third quarter um this is as of uh May 6th so as you see the projected ending fund balance which is at a 40% reserve ratio

3:04:23is $21.8 million uh we do expect to use fund balance of $1 million this year to create um a discretionary fund which discretionary meaning that this is the amount of money that we have in the general fund balance that is above the 17% minimum and um for unassigned fund

3:04:46balance and the 13% minimum for the EDRF along with the section 115 trust all those three together um are in our general fund so this was the list that we provided to you on the 15th it has been updated because we have received more uh clear cost estimates for the pool

3:05:09replaster and again we have our um uh our recreation director is on the call and he can answer some questions about that um these are the uh amounts that are estimated uh to to be considered for all of the various one-time expenditures this is by no means a comprehensive list

3:05:27this is a list of the higher priorities that rose to the top in discussion with all of our um our departments particularly the ones that are more urgent including the swim center pool replaster which we'll talk about in a second um the top four on that list are

3:05:44the ones that were discussed mainly with the council and that we know that we are um going to be proposing to you tonight the others uh on the list are also still out there they still need to be taken care of and it is the hope that whatever the council decides this evening we are

3:06:03still trying to get grant money and looking for grants for any of these um items is particularly the H&A uh which we do have uh grants out as well as looking for some of those uh types of funding so what we are looking at is the oh sorry just one more thing uh the reason

3:06:22that you know as we discussed on April 15th the reason that we have separated these out of the operating budget is that because the budget as we are right now uh with the fiscal year 26 of second year of our budget is very finely balanced for operating and that's mostly

3:06:42personnel as you know and some professional all of our professional services these a lot of these are items that over the past several years even prior years uh some have been deferred some have been um unplanned for uh and something like the swim center where even though it's reached the end of its

3:07:01useful life largely um it has become more urgent because of what's happening there right now so all of these items are things that will need to be addressed and keeping them um out of the operating budget so that the city council can prioritize and then put one-time uh funding toward these onetime

3:07:20expenditures uh is more clear as far as how they're being um paid for so to start with the swim center and again um I don't know Chris if if you wanted to jump in here and talk about this a little bit more um so you can describe the pictures there show the crack that is currently in the pool and

3:07:42that it is uh set aside right now from uh from swimmers being able to be there and that the um all of the full scope of what this means and I think we have talked about this a little bit and I'll turn it over to Chris is when you do a major repair or a major remodel type

3:07:59project that of course will kick in different types of ADA accessibility requirements and building code requirements path of travel requirements that we will need to address uh not just the crack in the pool so I'll turn it over to you Chris thank you uh good evening council

3:08:18members uh I'm Chris Jones your recreation director i think um the city manager summarized things pretty well but I'm happy to any uh questions about more details uh I would just say that um we do have an option our designers believe of a replaster only at this time

3:08:37for the pool plaster that's like the uh photos that you see on the left which would cost $400,000 however the condition of the deck where you can see significant rusting and and cracking will likely become a concern um very soon uh we are um visited by the Contracasta Health

3:08:59Department uh we get inspections annually and um sometimes more if if a complaint is made and so we do feel that uh you know this full project will need to be done sooner or later and when we start to touch the deck then we not only have to replace the deck itself but we

3:09:18have to ensure that the uh path of travel starting in the parking lot going through the the gate into the swim center is fully ADA compliant um this is a requirement of the California Building Code and the Americans with Disabilities Act um as well as we have to bring up

3:09:40the number of exits or egress uh to the current standard right now we essentially have one uh exit we have an additional emergency exit from the um splash park but for a variety of reasons it's not really considered a full exit um and the California building code now

3:10:01requires uh as many as four exits so that is essentially the scope of the $3.4 million project and you can see there that if we did the full project it would take up to five months to do and of course we would do that during a time where it would be essentially downtime or or the lesser

3:10:24lower season uh for the pool because of any estimated revenue loss that we would be able to try to offset thanks Chris thank you okay next uh the fire engine and SCBA which stands for self-contained breathing apparatus replacement um and the chief can uh talk a little bit

3:10:46further um and as you can see the quote uh for the fire engine replacement is at 1.6 million um the quote for the SBCA is at 400,000 however that is not due until 2028 but that means that we do have to start thinking about that now in order to start setting aside some money um it

3:11:05will take 2 years at least to be able once we order if we ordered the fire truck tomorrow we would probably it would probably take at least two years um and you can speak a little bit further chief if you will about uh the quote and what we would be able to do um

3:11:22with the funding thank you once again i'm Eric S your fire chief we'll talk about the fire engine uh really quick so our last quote was $1.6 billion and um I say that roughly because we know that prices may be changing based on material availability um that includes equipment

3:11:40fire engines have a life cycle of 15 years that's a national standard primarily because of safety standards where they're trying to increase uh fire engines to have updated equipment like seat belts if you go back 20 years ago they're trying to keep firefighters safe

3:11:55um but it also has a massive fiscal impact because as a fire fire engine gets that old all the seals and equipment start to wear out and you start paying a lot of money for maintenance just to keep an old fire engine on the road and our hills and steep turns in Elserto uh do a lot of

3:12:12wear and tear on our engines so for this quote fire engines are bought in three phases you go through a formal quote where you spec everything out it usually takes about 30 days um and then they will start ordering the equipment nothing is due until the chassis arrives

3:12:27and they start to assemble it so if we ordered now in 2025 the chassis would re would get here in mid 2026 that's when we would owe roughly half of the cost of the formal quote that would be about $800,000 right now on the 1.6 million then they'll start building the chassis

3:12:46and the rest of the fire engine that will take about another year and then you're due the final amount so when you're looking at this $1.6 million don't think of that we're asking for that today that's something that we have to look forward to in 2026 and 2027 if

3:13:01we order the fire engine now while that is going on we will be continuing to maintain our oral fire engine so you'll be looking at double costs um that's the brief explanation on the fire engine the SCBAs are a different matter altogether they are mandated a 15-year life cycle

3:13:18and that is due in 2028 and I want to bring this to you let you know that right now our quote is at about $400,000 we know that price may change but uh that is not an option for us to delay because those bottles have to be retired by law so we have to start putting money

3:13:37aside and planning for that now we have applied for grants for both of these and did not make the paper cut when it came to the competition across the nation for other agencies looking for these same pieces of equipment do I have any questions any any details I can fill in

3:13:58thanks Chief all right thank you so what we would uh propose with any funding that would go toward the fire engine and this equipment would be uh deposited in our vehicle uh and equipment replacement fund for the fire department so that we would be able to maintain that

3:14:11separately so the service delivery study is not as exciting as fixing a pool or or um uh ordering a fire engine but it is an investment in our professional services to provide the council and the staff with options uh for long-term operational savings so this is

3:14:32essentially part three of some of the big studies that were we discussed again during the state auditor report as well as um within our internal um uh finance and uh city manager department moving forward on how we can try to address our about $1 million structural deficit um

3:14:53the first two studies of course being the class and compensation study as well as the just recently completed and thank you adopted user fee study uh so the service delivery study would review operations it would review all of the departments our service levels it would

3:15:09look at the organization as a whole it would develop recommendations for improvement and uh look at cost savings i want to assure our staff our public our council that if you have seen the movie Office Space this is not that this will not be the Bobs coming in and

3:15:25asking people what they do all day this will be a review by professionals in the field um and they will take a look at everything we do in our organization and make recommendations um we did an RFP and uh actually we are in the process of selecting a firm right now uh and we

3:15:44would bring that contract back to the city council and the estimated cost is about $120,000 and the timeline would be six to eight months that we would probably start within uh the next couple of months or so if the council approves us and then finally the term of the

3:16:02night section 115 trust so as you know uh this is used for this may be used for our UL payments as well as our normal pension costs you saw in a presentation to the city council earlier today um the trust holds $1.4 million of assets and the cost smoothing scenario that was um

3:16:22two the two uh cost smoothing scenarios that were outlined by NHA advisers uh one of them certainly both of them talked about how higher contribution would would bring higher returns and a higher a better smoothing level uh the city council could also consider um and

3:16:40perhaps that could be something that the financial advisory board considers when they do their annual review of our investment policies um but currently there's no question and I and in listening to the discussion uh from the council earlier that um an increased uh

3:16:57contribution to the section 115 trust would help us uh pay dividends so um there are different scenarios we do have a surplus per our comprehensive financial policy any surplus does have a uh the the we call it the waterfall policy where we would be required to uh

3:17:15deposit some money uh use of fund balance as we would be proposing or suggesting tonight and then a new idea um that came to us in discussing with NHA adviserss is as we were reviewing this and and preparing for this council meeting and this discussion with you

3:17:32tonight um recognizing that the emergency disaster and relief fund the EDRF is currently overfunded so the comprehensive financial policy requires a 17% minimum for the unassigned fund balance and a 13% minimum for the EDRF when the council um placed the initial

3:17:55deposit in the EDRF a few years ago the policy was for three months worth of payroll which was at $9 million 13% of the current general fund expenditures is $6.99 million so it is overfunded if you um if you if you calculate out um it would appear to be in about seven or eight years Crystal I

3:18:21think we figured that it would meet the the the general fund expenditures would rise to the level of 13% would be $9 million that's probably about seven or eight years out from now um so any reduction in that would obviously shorten that time frame however um we

3:18:39could this could be an option for the city council to consider funding the section 115 trust using some of the overfunds of the nine of the EDRF so that the general fund balance aotment could go straight to the projects so we came up with three options and then at

3:19:02the request of a couple of you a fourth option which is now in uh in the presentation tonight so the council had discussed $1 million in one-time appropriations and this was the scenario that staff came up with that would cover these four top priorities um the swim

3:19:21center pool replaster as Chris indicated uh if we simply did just the replster as a as an urgent repair it would be about 400,000 so contingencies and other items we would we would look at probably at least a half a million dollars would go to the swim center pool rip plaster that

3:19:40does not get us of course to the full um cost of the entire project but if we phase it we might be able to um do that in you know do that separately or do that over a couple of years or we could consider other options including borrowing or financing uh we will

3:19:57continue to review that um this investment scenario looks at about $180,000 in the fire engine and equipment replacement that is not um where we would like to be but considering the other items that we were trying to uh smooth this out a bit um the section 115 trust could be at

3:20:17$200,000 and the service delivery study at $120,000 for a total general fund appropriation of 1 million i do want to pause here and say these four scenarios are what staff came up with based on our priorities and what we were looking at however if the council tonight wants to

3:20:34get out its calculators and mix this up any way you want that is completely fine we were just offering these and our reasoning behind it but it is ultimately up to the council to determine exactly what you would like to put where if anything so I just want to start just

3:20:52before we continue i just want to make sure that it's clear that these scenarios are only suggestions and that the council can um move things around if it would like to so scenario two we thought that we would take a look to see if we added another $500,000 to the million that was

3:21:10suggested by council what that might look like this is again a suggestion that gets us a little bit farther with all of these items we would remain at $500,000 for the swim center pool however this 400,000 of the 500,000 in addition would go to the fire engine that gets us the majority of our um uh

3:21:30way toward our down first down payment it would increase the section 115 trust by 300 to $300,000 the service delivery study remains at 120 so that's a $ 1.5 million option if the council were so inclined scenario three would include the EDRF transfer and this one we kept

3:21:50it at the 1.5 to see how this would shake out we would suggest you know going to the bottom if you see a transfer of a million dollars if you recall from the earlier presentation they were suggesting a $ 1.5 million uh deposit into the section 115 trust over three years this would be and again we

3:22:11just started with a million dollars it could be lower it could be bigger but this could be again uh getting us a majority of the way there and then going back to the other three items you could increase the swim center pool replaster to $780,000 anything in addition to the

3:22:27replster would go toward the full scope of the project $600,000 for the fire engine that gets us even closer to the down payment and the service delivery study remaining at 120 and then scenario four thank you Council Member Saltzman for suggesting this um would go back to a $1 million in

3:22:47onetime appropriations and this is how we looked at shaking it out um again a million dollars if was uh would be transferred from the trust or any um amount that the council wished we would keep the pool plaster at 500 we would add uh 200 to the um uh fire engine and

3:23:06equipment replacement and do the service delivery study so again these are totally open for discussion we were just trying to again smooth it out as best we could um but um of course we would entertain any other questions or if the council has any other um items that they

3:23:25would want to consider or any other any any funding scenario uh staff is completely open to that that is why we did not bring you a potential resolution tonight we would um love a motion or a direction from the council on this and then once the council makes their

3:23:41decision we would bring back a resolution to do the formal appropriation next slide so the again the key highlights um uh 2.1 million is projected discretionary funds available for for next fiscal year that would continue to keep our um general fund reserve at the minimum requirements we

3:24:03prioritize the investments of the swim center the fire engine the service delivery study and the section 115 trust you saw scenarios one and two were of 1 million or 1.5 million scenario three and we forgot to add another bullet sorry about that for uh scenario four

3:24:18would propose one or 1.5 million in one-time funding and a transfer of 1 million to from the EDRF to the section 115 trust and all scenarios are projected to maintain and exceed our minimum reserve requirements that would total no less than 30% of our general fund expenditures again the minimum is

3:24:3817% for unassigned and 13% for the EDRF this would keep the um 1 million or 1.5 million from the general fund would still give us a a significant amount of money that would be um still considered discretionary and 1 million or any amount that the council desired uh

3:24:59transfer from the EDRF if you transferred a million dollars it would remain at 8 million which is still significantly above the 13% minimum and I believe that's oh the forecast excuse me i'm going to let Crystal talk about this one hello Crystal Rams finance director

3:25:19um so yes so this is what our um fund balance general fund fund balance forecast would look like with the 1.5 million in the onetime appropriations and and then this was the scenario three um the fund balance projection of the 1.5 and one-time appropriations and then

3:25:39the transfer of the 1 million um from the EDRF to the section 115 so the in including the um transfer of 1 million doesn't reduce the um the fund balance it just um transfers it and I would note for both of the forecasts that this would be just this moment in time and the extended years uh

3:26:01so 26 27 28 29 um that all would changes depending on how we end this fiscal year so right now as you see uh we are we are expecting to be in a deficit um because of the one-time uses of fund balance that have already been approved by the council to the tune of $1 million

3:26:21about one what is that $1,93,000 um if we end the year better than that then that will change the whole it would flow through all of this um we did both of these scenarios using a $ 1.5 million um uh scenario however if uh if the council decided on a million dollars you could subtract or

3:26:41add uh $500,000 throughout the forecast to see what that would look like but all of these forecastes will forecasts will change in a month and a half when we end the year yeah and I'll just add to that um that's one of the main reasons that we want to do the service delivery

3:26:56studies because we know we have um we have changes to make and we want to make those changes and present meaningful changes um that we can address the structural deficit and start saving for um deferred maintenance and things like this okay so I want to kind of structure

3:27:11the way that we have this conversation so first let's take questions about the presentation because we do still need to also come to a consensus on how we would like to direct staff so does first anyone have any questions about the presentation council member Cassanis I I

3:27:27have a Yeah I do have a question you mentioned the possibility of borrowing to finance either the I guess fire engine or pool whatever needs to be financed one question I have is if we do draw down reserves where are we in terms of elevating our borrowing costs now

3:27:47obviously having the reserves makes us a more a less risky client and it should lower our borrowing cost if we go from if we drop the EDFR EDRF by a million would that have an impact on our ability to borrow or the fees the interest rate we'd have to pay to borrow

3:28:07well we have several options uh first and foremost we wouldn't necessarily have to if we were to finance with an outside lender we would likely look at our not just our general fund but measure H measure H is also contributing right now actually the design process is being

3:28:24funded by measure H so that is a dedicated source of revenue and so that would be you that's that's a dedicated source of revenue better than a general fund um but other options are that we do have indeed fund balances in other of our own funds um if we went to an

3:28:41outside lender uh we would be charged an interest rate if we were to look at fund balances or other um putting some pieces together throughout some of our special funds in addition to our general fund we might be able to borrow from ourselves if you will that wouldn't include an

3:28:58interest rate or outside lender so once we know the real what we're looking at the design the real scope of the project and then of course where the bids are that would be something that we're we're all uh looking at really closely right now okay okay any other questions from the

3:29:16council okay so we do have three scenarios in front of us do first four I'm sorry four scenarios in front of us does anyone want to have a conversation about which ones that they think we should go with or did they have any alternatives that they would like to propose

3:29:35council member I'll go with Saw Smith first and then Mayor Putin thank you it's probably pretty obvious because I had asked staff to put together scenario four that that that's where I'm leaning at this point though I want to hear from everybody else i think you know at our when we last

3:29:52discussed this I thought the suggestion of putting you know a couple hundred thousand into the section 15 trust was an okay move but after the presentation tonight um showing what happens with a change to the discount rate which even if that doesn't happen this year it's probably

3:30:10going to happen sometime in the next five years certainly in the next 10 years based on what Kalpers has been doing so we know at some point the discount rate will change and we're going to have a lot more that we owe and our payments are going to go up so we I

3:30:26think we need to be preparing now um so I I think considering we have an overfunded EDRF it makes sense for that to be the transfer and to transfer it to somewhere that helps us with the overall budget in the future because I understand wanting to be overfunded but

3:30:44this also kind of helps us even though it's only can be spent on pension we're going to have pension costs we know that that's going to happen so that's why I'm leaning towards this and and I'm leaning towards this and I asked for this instead of scenario three because I I

3:30:58still think about a million of funds um from the fund balance is what makes sense and 1.5 is just too much considering the huge amount of uncertainty moving forward in the next year in the coming year so that's where I'm at at this point okay and before Mayor Pro Tim can you all put back up

3:31:20since it's not in the packet scenario 4 just so that we can Thank you so much go ahead Mayor Pro Tim okay uh thank you for showing scenario four um I agree with uh what my colleague just mentioned um I however like scenario three uh where we're making a dent uh by

3:31:42transferring um into the 115 trust uh a million dollars we truly do need to make that dent uh you know everything is up in the air what is going to what's going on with Kalpers and what's going on in the federal government and and and most likely you know we we will have to uh um

3:32:05you know put in more money for this so um I agree with uh Council Member Salsman in that um I do however like scenario three uh because it is 2.5 million in onetime appropriations and that includes the edr of transfer um we have to make a dent with uh that pool so uh looking at the

3:32:31photo of the pool it it it this is a major job and um uh looking at my former mayor from years ago he went on the cheap on that uh swimming pool and now we're paying the price if we spent a little more money uh back in the day uh we wouldn't have this problem but he

3:32:50went on the cheap on this so and I remember we had a full discussion on that and uh uh and that's why we had that other measure that paid for uh the the prior problems of that pool so and uh the the area including the locker rooms as well so um that that's where I

3:33:10stand um you know I've been saying for many many years now we need to uh put more money on the 115 trust and I stand by that and I continue to stand by that thank you any other council members have a member thank you mayor um so I am you know I like scenario four with a little

3:33:37bit of change um but more than the scenario I do have longer term concerns so um you know I went to the California Policy C Center's local fiscal health dashboard which is what has replaced uh the state auditor's dashboard for uh fiscal health for cities and you know

3:34:00they're really looking pointing to you know 30% as a minimum uh for a healthy fund reserve and given that and looking at what we know we have to pay for and given any un you know the unlikelihood of of a real change in revenue I feel like we're going to be drawing down a

3:34:24little bit of reserve every year to make these uh to pay for these things that we know we have to do i mean we have to pay for the fire engine we have to pay for the the SCBA equipment um we have to redo the pool so it's not like it's a secret of what's out there that we need

3:34:44to do my concern is you know we're we're going to draw down and fall below that 30% 2029 you know 28 29 um so you know I would like to keep us to a million i'm very neutral on fire engine gets more or swim center gets more um my feeling about the fire equipment

3:35:14is that if we don't need to put money down for a year I would rather leave that out and and and put that towards the pool with the understanding that we'll just draw the funds from the reserve at the time that we put that down payment on the fire truck because we'll know if we got any grants we'll

3:35:32have a little more runway to see if we have grants so um I would be okay with spending the million but not more than that from the as a draw against the general fund appropriation um and then on the EDRF side I would be I would recommend putting in the 1.5 and that is because we got a

3:35:57presentation today that said you know in that um Kalpers's presentation it showed what would happen if we put 1.5 and then what would happen if we put in the 3 million and the 3 million plus but if you look at the benefit of that the benefit's almost the same for that

3:36:15amount so if you put in the two 1.5 now then whatever we are doing and have to spend at least that part of our future budget will be taken care of and I think that's important i think we were really you know and pat some of us on the back our our we put the $9 million in there

3:36:38we could have put in the half but we were pretty adamant that that $9 million we had it we're gonna put the whole thing in and because stuff will happen and here's stuff um stuff is happening all the time but um so you know granted it is overfunded but the 15 putting in a

3:37:00115 keeps the fund whole in a in a way that's different from using the fund appropriation so that's why I would like to have us invest the 1.5 in the section 115 trust and you know say okay we're ready for when that spike comes in the payment regardless if it's the you know

3:37:22what happens with the market the return whatever we are we have some uh real cushion you know based on you know again it's all based on today's numbers but we'll have that cushion in there so we won't be trying to figure that out when the crisis comes we'll be we're

3:37:42ready for that we got these other crises like the pool and the fire engine but that at least one thing we can put to bed and be done with it for now i mean next year everybody in town sells their house for double and then we have extra money then that's we can deal with that

3:38:01as you know when that happens but you know G kind of given where things are right now I I really am reluctant to uh you know not have more of a bull work so you know and this kind of goes back to that 2% discussion with the FAB I think you know rather than have like a

3:38:212% or whatever I think you know we have to have lots of choices here and I think for me the best choice would be to redirect some of that EDRF the 1.5 into the section 115 trust because that is going to make a concrete difference based on the the projections that we saw

3:38:39today thank you Council to be clear you're suggesting sort of flipping the two you're not suggesting adding another 500,000 from the EDF to make the withdrawal from the EDF EDRF sorry more than 1 million so taking 1.5 from EDRF and put it into the section 115 trust okay that crosses

3:39:03off one thing that we need to look out for the total the total being 3 million no 2.5 i don't want to go above a million in the general appropriations okay okay well go ahead Councilman i I first of all thank council member Salsman for the envisioning scenario 4 and I like

3:39:27that and I also like council member Motyama's tweaks to it and I would definitely be supportive of that and um I also think that we have an opportunity you know if revenue comes in higher than you know initially projected we have an opportunity to to revisit it in a month

3:39:45or two and say it looks like there's this little bit extra and we can put that into the fire truck or wherever so I I support um council members Montyama's adapted version of number four scenario five scenario five well well I'm going to propose a scenario six so don't get excited because I am very

3:40:04very concerned the pool is the biggest money maker in this city and you we all I think I'm on record how I feel about maintenance i don't want us to be caught out there in the summertime or whatever time of year it is where we're thinking we're getting a lot of money in from the community

3:40:20center and we're not because the pool either the pool is shut down or the pool has hurt someone and now we are in a position where we have to worry about that so my scenario number six would be similar to council member Motyama yes putting more than the 1 million into the

3:40:35section 115 it would actually be putting the putting 1.2 two one 1,250,000 into the section 115 and then keeping the 780,000 or I guess in this case it would be 750,000 for the swimming pool swimming uh swim center pool replaster because I and please remind me I'm sorry I told you I'm hot

3:40:56up here we said we have a little bit more time for the fire engine correct that that is that that's what we said yes oh you don't have to come up here that that was an easy yes okay um so that's that that is that is my proposal of scenario six and we can take that in any

3:41:15direction that we want i just don't want us to be caught out there and not have done have gone cheap like Mayor Pro Tim said on the pool one more time when that's something that's going to take us into the future yes i I don't I'm I'm not opposed to that i just I don't have a good enough sense

3:41:32about the difference it makes to have like 500 versus 700 versus you know it's so the full project is so much bigger than that so like what and if you can't answer that today maybe it's at the next meeting i think it'd be very helpful to know what does that get us more or is

3:41:51the money going to just sit there because they can't use it in this first phase of the project and they'll save it for later i yeah I just would you have Chris would you have any thoughts on that um I I well I think the most straightforward answer is if if the council was interested in borrowing um

3:42:14then uh the amount you know those amounts of borrowing you know would come into play versus how much money the we could be provided up front yes interesting yes go ahead Chris while while you're there I have a question with with the pool does it involve closing doing the repairs does it

3:42:35involve closing the pool for three months or whatever it is or or can it be done incrementally a little bit here a little bit there and maybe the pool be kept open or not closed as long the full project would um conservatively speaking could take up to five months um if we

3:42:54did the the pool plaster only um that could cut that timeline in half or or even more and um uh so that's the timeline there and because the full project involves the path of travel uh that path of travel goes in front of the small pool and so you know operating the

3:43:15small pool during construction um we would have to see how that lines up with the contractor's proposed um schedule because if we dictated how they did that to maximize usage of the small pool it could ultimately increase the the price of the project um and then if

3:43:33I could go back to Council Member Saltzman's question um if we go beyond the reclaster portion of the project that automatically kicks in pretty much everything else the ADA requirements and the um egress requirements thank you i mean given that I Yeah I I don't know what throwing a couple

3:43:57hundred more thousand does because it sounds like at that point we need a couple million not a couple hundred thousand so I don't know if it's useful I'm supportive but if we the money is just going to sit there and wait till we can borrow and do something else I I

3:44:11guess I'm less inclined mot yes um thank you i have a question for uh our recreation director as well um if we do the pool replaster and pay you know the 400,000 plus whatever else you know the say the the half million do we have to redo any of that when we do the pool deck

3:44:37uh so we did ask the designer that question the answer is uh likely not um it would depend you know ultimately on design reviews and and things of that nature likely not however the biggest risk I guess is that when we go to replace the deck we'll have this brand

3:44:57new sparkling plaster and the construction uh dust and other mess could ruin that sheen you know after you know only a year or two and so that's one of the biggest things they said that happened recently uh in the city of conquered and it was very upsetting to the pool

3:45:17patrons but that that would be pro at this point that's the biggest risk that we know about I guess wouldn't some kind of insurance cover that on the part of the contractor well so again according to the designer you know they'll of course do everything they can and we can specify what

3:45:38precautions they need to take um but uh stuff happens and if they do all that stuff and you know you know maybe it's very windy and so uh overnight some tarps come up and some dust gets underneath you know um there might be some things out of their control that we

3:45:57couldn't hold them accountable for okay but uh going back to uh Council Member Saltzman's point it's 500 or it's 3.4 for pretty much essentially yes and then you know and then it would just be dependent on the city's on the you know there's multiple funding scenarios uh if we were looking

3:46:20at borrowing capacity you know additional money so that we have to borrow less could be advantageous but you know those options need to be um more vetted thank you council members I don't mean to sound flippant but does this impact the cost allocation study and we have to

3:46:40pay all this for the pool and the fees go up to $20 or whatever they need to go up to certainly uh revenue will likely be impacted for a project like this you know once in 20 year uh project is is kind of just uh comes with the territory unfortunately with the pool because the

3:47:00plaster just naturally fails and um you know the rust that's that's occurring on the deck it's just over years of shifting and some cracks water gets in there and affects affects the rebar um so yes revenue could be but of course we would look into any number of scenarios

3:47:20you know perhaps working with uh nearby pools to move programs um or something of that nature we would certainly look into all those options i heard you sigh were you about to say something Council Member Motama before I said something okay not side thank you it was probably just the fan okay so

3:47:41before we go into public comment um have are we settled then on scenario number five i know this is not a vote but it is a consensus my my preference okay so first let's go into public comment now is the time for members of the public who wish to provide public comments

3:48:00regarding this item request to speak can be submitted to the city clerk by completing a speaker card public comments will be taken in person only so please remember to identify yourself and your city of residence at the beginning of your comments city clerk please

3:48:13proceed mayor we do not have any requests to speak from the public all right do we have a motion to provide staff direction make that motion okay do we have What is your motion the whole motion do which one are you adopting scenario scenario five so to clarify can you go back to

3:48:34would it be it's 1.5 into the section and then 1 million to the general fund as shown here or did you have any other well that's a curveball adjustments I think that it is that's shown here as shown here that would certainly be easiest don't give more options please

3:48:53no more options okay do we have a second second that all right in favor please say I I any opposed opposed any abstension all right so yes staff we are directed with scenario number five thank you so much thank you so much all right on to the next item which is city

3:49:13council local and regional leazison assignments does anyone have any reports we'll start over here and then we'll get to you right before me Mayor Proin council member Sisman just quickly I wasn't able to go to the West County AC Transit briefing but I that I went to

3:49:29the Oakland one instead because I couldn't make this one and it was uh very informative thank you Council Member Moyama okay on May 7th um we had our ad hoc subcommittee meeting number two and also on our on the 7th I had attended the JPA Tom Bates Field um meeting and uh we

3:49:54talked about uh the construction progress there so uh the pedestrian walkway is completed all the traffic circles are done and the sewer lines are in and the construction will start on the fieldhouse and bathrooms and the additional pickle ball courts on in September of this year and that

3:50:15construction will last about 14 to 15 months so if you use that field they'll be moving the parking from where it is now to uh further west um and there should be adequate parking on May 8th we had our ad hoc subcommittee meeting number three uh to talk about uh further

3:50:35about the public comments and looking at the council administrative procedures um and then on May 14th I attended the ABGC housing committee meeting and on um May 15th I attended the ABAG executive board meeting um where we discussed uh strategic planning for for Abag and uh

3:51:00talking about the budget which will be uh discussed and ratified at the general assembly on June 20th so which will be attended by mayor we think all right council member you have Okay i attended the full design review board meeting and also the urban forest committee meeting i've made a habit of

3:51:21going to the full meetings not just popping in but actually sitting for the whole thing and I have give them given both groups the option of booting me out if they feel like they don't want me there or if I'm getting in the way or directing things but for now it seems to

3:51:33be working out okay um I continue to have my what I call office hours or coffee hour at the Elsto Natural Foods on Saturdays i did not do it this last Saturday because I was off camping but I moved that Saturday to next Saturday so that continues to be um about two to

3:51:50three times a month depending on the month and that's it for me thank you Mayor Pro Tim thank you Mayor um I did attend uh the public safety committee meeting and uh they're working on their work plan for the future um also attended the Bay Area Air District meeting uh the following week I did

3:52:13attend the Bay Area Air District meeting uh stationary source committee um one thing that I'm concerned about is the closure of the possibility of closure of one of the refineries uh that's a Valero refinery in Benicia and um our concern is that we did not plan on having any of

3:52:36these uh you know uh close um we're going to have a problem because we're people still need to fly people still need to uh you know we have a Valero plant they send 50 million gallons of no uh g barrels of oil to uh the air force base and they plan on expanding the air

3:52:59force base in the future uh so uh we truly have a problem because we're going to see higher gas prices you see gas prices now uh push into $6 when the summer season starts uh it'll be more than that and there's a recent newspaper article about uh uh in the LA Times and

3:53:19the local papers here about uh the near future having $8 a gallon so um just want to let you know that the airboard we're very very serious about making sure that we continue to have uh refining done here locally we cannot have it done outside of the country because that will cause uh higher gas

3:53:41prices and we don't want to have another war about oil so um you know we need more pragmatic leadership uh regarding that i know we're going through the transition right now but uh we need to get there but uh you know people still need to fly they're still experimenting

3:53:59on hydrogen planes and that's going to take decades so uh you know the future super train uh will uh will help but uh the federal level they uh don't support that so um I did attend the MCE executive committee meeting uh and the board meeting last week and I'll be

3:54:20attending the uh uh tech committee meeting um uh in a couple weeks um I will be missing the flag raising ceremony because I'll be in Sacramento for a hydrogen conference and I'll be representing the airboard and will be speaking at that conference so forgive me i I you know I'd rather be here in

3:54:42Elsar thank you all right so on May 7th I did attend the ad hoc meeting with um council member Motyama around our council proceedings or procedures i also attended the JPA meeting because my calendar told me to but then I saw Council Member Motama and I was like why

3:54:57am I here but I did attend it um on June on the 8th we did have our second ad hoc committee meeting um as well as I attended the League of California's LGBTQ um local officials meeting on the 12th we had our meeting here with the Japanese delegation um I also on the

3:55:1713th attended the HRC commission meeting where we approved tonight's resolutions on the 16th I attended the green empowerment zone which is the committee through the county that's chaired by our supervisor John July and our congressman John Gira Mendy and on the 14th I

3:55:35believe it is I can't remember at this point which day it was but I did attend the AC Transit state of transit meeting and I want to thank Ryan for joining us here today to speak more on that and on the 20th as I said today we I did attend the career fair with Will and we had a

3:55:48great great time and talked to a lot of kids who say they are interested in working in local government we shall see down the line um finally we are going to adjourn tonight's meeting in honor of former former district 5 contraosta supervisor Federal Glover who passed

3:56:04away on May 18th supervisor Glover was a devoted husband father grandfather and public service born and raised in Pittsburgh California supervisor Glover lived in district 5 all of his life after attending San Francisco State University he began working for local

3:56:19industries such as Pasco and Dowo Chemical he was elected to the Pittsburgh City Council in 1996 and served as mayor from 1998 to 1999 he was the first African-American to be elected to the Contracasta board of supervisors in 2000 serving for 24 years including

3:56:37as chair five times and retired in 2024 he is one of the longest serv serving supervisors in the history of our state he also served on many regional boards and regional and local boards including MTC commission supervisor Glover was committed to reinforcing a sense of

3:56:54community by building bridges of trust inclusion and cooperation among the diverse elements of district 5 he believed that a strong community values the uniqueness of different interest groups and diverse religious traditions and that a strong community also recognizes their inter interdependency

3:57:10janice Glover his wife of 47 years said in a statement that over two decades Federal Glover served the people of Contracasta County with distinction and his legacy is one of unwavering commitment to justice equity and service he believed deep deeply in the power of

3:57:26community and worked tirelessly to uplift and unite the people who he was honored to represent as a family we are heartbroken by this loss after 47 years of marriage I grieve alongside our children Ted Glover and Cararissa Dorton our grandchildren and the extended

3:57:43Glover family the family will share information with the public as those arrangements are made for a memorial on behalf of the city of Elserto I want to send our deepest cons condolences to the Glover family his friends and colleagues and all that knew him and admire him and

3:57:58as a fellow black elected official I thank him for the work that he did break breaking boundaries and breaking glass ceilings here in Contracasta County with that the time is now 9:58 p.m the next regularly scheduled city council meeting is Tuesday June 3rd 2025 at 6 PM thank

3:58:15you all and have a safe night all right