| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:00.03 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Good evening and welcome to the Special City Council meeting of Tuesday, May 24, 2016. Lily, could we have the roll call, please? |
| 00:00:10.93 | Unknown | Councilmember Theodorus. |
| 00:00:11.96 | Councilmember (likely Ray) | Present. |
| 00:00:12.64 | Unknown | Consummate Weiner. |
| 00:00:13.82 | Councilmember (likely Ray) | President. |
| 00:00:14.48 | Unknown | Chancellor Pfeiffer? Here. Vice Mayor Withey? |
| 00:00:17.70 | Councilmember (likely Ray) | HERE. |
| 00:00:18.09 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:00:18.26 | Unknown | Mayor Hoffman. |
| 00:00:18.96 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Present. Could we please have Christopher Holbrook lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? |
| 00:00:31.18 | Michael Graunick | Yes. |
| 00:00:32.03 | Unknown | to the flag. |
| 00:00:33.38 | Michael Graunick | Thank you. |
| 00:00:33.55 | Unknown | of the United States of America. Thank you. and to the Republic for which it stands. you Thank you. to God. It is so. and justice for all. |
| 00:00:47.42 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Excellent, thank you very much. Um... We had no closed session. |
| 00:00:50.18 | Unknown | We are. |
| 00:00:53.14 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | tonight so there will be no closed session announcements nor will there be public comment on closed session May I have a motion for approval of the agenda? |
| 00:01:02.65 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | in your stomach. |
| 00:01:03.90 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Second. |
| 00:01:04.76 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | All in favor? Aye. |
| 00:01:04.98 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | favor aye |
| 00:01:06.62 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Moving right along to our business item 1A, Introduction of the Fiscal Year 2016-2018 Budget by Melanie Purcell, our Administrative Services Director. |
| 00:01:20.95 | Adam Politzer | Good evening. Thank you very much for the opportunity to present to you the fiscal year 2016 through fiscal year 2018 draft, budget, and resource allocation. This covers next fiscal year and a plan for the following fiscal year. Our agenda today, just to quickly go over, will be to cover the citywide summary of all funds, so what the entire budget holds, specific funds, THE GENERAL FUNDS |
| 00:01:46.68 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Oh, I'm so sorry. Do we have a hard copy of this? It's coming. Oh, thank you. Okay. We had a lot of time. |
| 00:01:48.71 | Adam Politzer | It's coming. Oh, thank you. We had a log jam. Small technical difficulties. So they are in route, I apologize. We'll be going through the other funds, other non-general funds. Then we'll dive into the general fund revenues. The department expenditures, the capital improvement program, our summary and outlook, including fund balance, the discussion items that were provided to Council in the packet, itemizing those things that the finance committee discussed, and some that had consensus, some that did not, and they're separated by those that were included in the budget and those that were not included in the proposed budget. And then we'll discuss the next steps, answer any questions that you have, or find out if there's additional information needed. We are not asking specifically for council to take action this evening. However, feedback is greatly appreciated. And we'd like to know any particular direction if there's consensus by the council on direction for any of the specific discussion items. So moving forward. Our approach this year was really building on last year and the prior commitment that the organization has had to high quality and full service. The current level of services is adequately funded, stable. The budget is structurally balanced. The reserve balances are sufficient based on risk analysis and mitigating strategies, making sure that we have enough put aside for future activities or any issues that we don't anticipate. We're looking to improve and continue to maintain the infrastructure, emphasizing our long-term asset management. The city has put a great deal into the ground and has taken great strides in ensuring financing so that we can continue that capital investment. We want to ensure that not only are we putting the investment, as I say, in the ground, but we're maintaining it for the long term. We're looking at long-term planning. and continually assessing everything that we do. make sure that it's efficient and effective, in every way possible. This is just a breakdown of the fiscal year 17. So that would be starting July 1, revenues and transfers in. As always, the general fund represents 50% of the budget. The next largest would be the capital projects and the enterprise fund. Enterprise funds include sewer, Martin Luther King complex, parking, and Old City Hall. The special revenue funds are a much smaller amount, but also include some of our other areas, gas tax, construction impact, likewise. our expenditures and transfers out. Again, general fund's the largest. Excuse me, the second largest at this time is the largest capital plan. The capital project funds, including both sewer fund and general capital funds, are close behind. You'll see going into 18 that the general fund surpasses the capital project funds. That's showing that we start completing some of these major projects that are on the table. Majority of the COP funds will be expended by the end of FY17, so June 30 of 2017. And much of the sewer funds will also be expended. |
| 00:05:15.49 | Adam Politzer | What we've shown here is expenditures by category so that we can look at it a little differently. We tend to think in terms of funds because that's how our operations are structured. But we also look at how we spend money. We spend it on personnel. It's a government is a high service function, so therefore it is heavily dependent on people. We have salaries toward the bottom, benefits, the total. total budget going in adopted budget. For FY16-17, or excuse me, 15-16, the current year was $39,026,777. We're proposing for FY16-17, $34,642. $642,743. That is a reduction of $4 million. That is many adjustments associated with the realization of the COPs, certificates of participation that were issued in January for a slightly different amount than originally budgeted, and also the completion of Robin Sweeney Park and other activities in the sewer fund. Proposed for FY 2017-18 is $27,997,491. |
| 00:06:23.97 | Adam Politzer | This is a graphic presentation, so you can see salary and wages do make up the majority of the budget. um, of the organization's expenditures. closely followed by operations. Operations in the capital improvement fund is where majority of those projects are housed. So you see significant amounts in the original budget for the current year and also going into next year. So the drastic decrease going into 17-18 is the completion of a number of capital projects. Similarly, you'll see in FY15-16, there were furniture fixtures and equipment. That was a change in accounting practice into capital. operations is what we call it. |
| 00:07:11.22 | Adam Politzer | Going through our special revenue funds, we've emphasized these because these are operating funds, though they are restricted in use. Tideland funds is showing a small drawdown of fund balance. All other funds are operating even, with the small exception of an increase to the gas tax. That would be intentional to build up over the next couple of years, in addition to the existing fund balance, which we will get to later in the presentation, in order to draw down in future so that we can do a little more contribution to streets projects in FY18. So that is intentional to increase that. The total change to fund balance is a negative 12,443. |
| 00:08:01.58 | Adam Politzer | On the general fund revenues, We're using a relatively low increase this year. recognizing that the economy, while it has been recovering the last few years, is not showing rapid growth by any stretch, and there are some signs of constraint on the horizon. We want to maintain the city's practice of conservative forecasting. The one exception is our realization of additional taxes and transit occupancy, or TOT taxes. We have seen a considerable increase over the current year. The adopted budget was $1.4 million. We actually amended that to $1.6 million at the mid-year for this year. So we're proposing to go to $1,650,000 for next year. Other significant changes under development fees. We've seen, again, a nice increase in activity in building, planning, and zoning, with some engineering activity as well, going up substantially. Concurrent with that is also a proposal to update the master fee schedule. We have a number of items that are not included on our master fee schedule that are included in our neighboring communities. And we have, through a comparison study, have found that our building fees, in fact, are somewhat less than our neighbors. Thank you. that are included in our neighboring communities. And we have, through a comparison study, have found that our building fees, in fact, are somewhat less than our neighbors. So we're proposing a modest increase that accounts for less than half of the dollar value of that increase. |
| 00:09:28.92 | Adam Politzer | Again, intergovernmental is seeing a drop. It looks like a much larger percentage, but it is a relatively small dollar amount. And that's on our recapture. |
| 00:09:40.46 | Adam Politzer | transfers are going up predominantly from the parking fund. |
| 00:09:47.70 | Adam Politzer | In general fund expenditures, there's a couple of items I want to draw note to that we will go into more detail later on. We have a number of areas that are shifting around and some changes in structure. But one of the most notable changes here is in the shift of unfunded liability for the pension obligations. I'm recommending that we actually shift that from the operating departments to non-departmental in order to ensure that it is recognized as a fixed cost. That is not something that we have the option to not pay. So if we were to slash payroll and we were to base our payment on payroll, we would might be inadvertently underfunding and find ourself in a bind. So rather than lead into that possibility, we've moved all of those into the non-departmental. And I'll go into detail later on on how I've structured that based on feedback from the finance committee in order to have a little more comfortable way to see that. |
| 00:10:43.39 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Melanie, do you want us to ask questions while you go, or do you want us to wait until the end? |
| 00:10:48.64 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:10:48.65 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | I'll see you next time. |
| 00:10:48.69 | Adam Politzer | We can ask questions as we go. Each section might be a little easier, this being the overview. If there's something specific, please let me know. |
| 00:10:55.47 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | you |
| 00:10:55.52 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:10:55.56 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. Thank you. I just had a clarification about moving from the operation to the non-departmental. So typically we have paid that as part of the operations figure. Yes. And you're saying that represents what? Just the unfunded? The unfunded liability. |
| 00:11:16.31 | Adam Politzer | The unpunited liability that is required by CalPERS each year, as John Bartel went into some detail, there's a certain amount, and it's a dollar amount that they fix, and traditionally throughout the country, the practice has been to convert that to a percentage. Given the changes in CalPERS and given the emphasis in trying to ensure that we actually are paying down, I'd like to move it to non-departmental so it remains a fixed dollar amount cost rather than being distributed as a percentage. Okay. |
| 00:11:31.08 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:11:42.77 | Adam Politzer | And I have some detail on exactly how I'm calculating that later on so that I can explain to you. |
| 00:11:47.84 | Councilmember Theodorus | So you will break down that non departmental number. Okay. |
| 00:11:50.45 | Adam Politzer | Yes. It is one of the discussion items on you. Back to work. So it makes it a little more difficult to compare FY15-16 to FY16-17, but if you look at 16-17 to 17-18, you can see a little more closely the patterns of growth, and it is very nominal. Thank you. |
| 00:12:15.53 | Adam Politzer | General fund expenditures by category, again, this is where you see some of that differentiation, but you can see a little more closely how things grow over time. We run from a $14,883,470 FY15-16 original budget to $15,714,257.16-17, $16,000, $80,000, and $406,000. $406 for FY17-18. Again, there are some structural changes in here and accounting changes that I want to walk you through as we go. when we get to those sections, they're all included in the discussion items so that they can be itemized. |
| 00:12:57.80 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | And the hard copies are coming because usually I take notes while they're |
| 00:13:00.03 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, take notes. |
| 00:13:01.65 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 00:13:01.97 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:13:02.03 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | It's hard because I, okay, thanks. Copy or wrestling. Sorry. |
| 00:13:07.05 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Um, Melanie, since we don't have hard copies, the slide before this where you showed |
| 00:13:07.06 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Melanie, can you? |
| 00:13:07.98 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:13:12.38 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | What number is that? Can you tell what you're looking at? |
| 00:13:17.32 | Adam Politzer | I don't have the page number. |
| 00:13:17.80 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:13:17.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:13:17.98 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:13:18.83 | Unknown | Okay, that's right. |
| 00:13:19.40 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:13:19.42 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 00:13:19.45 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | MOTIVATED. |
| 00:13:20.14 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | We'll just write the titles down. |
| 00:13:23.21 | Adam Politzer | And we can go back through any of them as the details come up. |
| 00:13:28.76 | Adam Politzer | Again, this is the graphic showing largest to smallest again. The general fund being the general operations. While there are some dedicated funds within here, for example, a transfer from traffic safety, the majority of it is tax-supported or business operations-supported. So it is a service function, as you see in the salaries and benefits. being the predominant portion of the general fund. I just want to jump into the departments. Do you have any questions on the overall picture at this time? |
| 00:14:01.55 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | So that you mean the prior graph that you just showed yeah, and thank you. That's very nice That's a very nice graph that shows all the breakdowns and there of everything. I just wanted to clarify so 2015 to 16 We're looking at salaries and weight rages wages at 6 million and then benefits and |
| 00:14:22.83 | Unknown | might be easier here. |
| 00:14:27.12 | Adam Politzer | You can see it's 6.3 million. Okay. In FY16-17 to 6-5, 6-6, and FY17-18, and then benefits at the top. Again, this is a little bit misleading because of the change in reporting, but I can break down exactly how that change affects it. |
| 00:14:36.52 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:14:36.55 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:14:43.84 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Well, the nice thing about this is that it also tells us what it's it speaks to the question that I had sent about what percentage of general fund expenditures are spent on salary wages, pension benefit, you know, all that. So that that is what I'm interested. |
| 00:14:54.32 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:14:54.34 | Adam Politzer | Yes. |
| 00:14:55.64 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:14:55.69 | Adam Politzer | Bye. |
| 00:14:55.89 | Unknown | to |
| 00:14:57.36 | Adam Politzer | All that. |
| 00:15:00.36 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Yeah. |
| 00:15:00.90 | Adam Politzer | And as I receive the questions from you, I am working on them. Not all of them was I able to turn around immediately. That's fine. They'll be coming this week. Okay, jumping into the police department, just real quick, highlights they have, as occurred this fiscal year, internal promotions through the ranks. They had five promotions. And they did eliminate a captain position, creating a second lieutenant. So it's a little... lower base, like I've been aware, a little more diverse spread of duties in the department. The proposed changes for police include reclassification of parking enforcement officer to include community service duties, service officer duties. That's intended to create more crime scene support and citizen interaction support. So that is a job description change. That comes also, it ties in closely to hiring an additional public parking enforcement officer, CSO, which is offset by revenues. That is included in the proposed budget, as is also an additional part-time police officer. We've seen great success with our current part-time reserve and would like to expand that, as, utilizing part-time emergency services planner. Currently, all of our emergency service management is done by one of our sergeants and also Lieutenant Frost. That puts an inordinate demand on the department as those activities increase. It also, frankly, puts us in a little bit weaker position when it comes to recapturing grant and reimbursement from FEMA. One must be able to point to dedicated emergency management. Online reporting is included as well in the operating budget for police. The chief is looking to reinstitute the Citizens Police Academy. Finance Committee discussed and reviewed potential use of body cameras. With there not being a significant demand or outcry for those, those were not included at this point, not recommended for inclusion. However, license plate readers, which automatically track vehicle behavior and provide for alerts, are being recommended on a pilot basis. This is the proposed police budget. including salaries, wages, benefits, professional services. You see professional services includes slight increase. That is part of the online reporting, as well as a reflection of the dispatch contract that was understated in the original adopted budget for FY15-16. We addressed that in the mid-year amendment. So while that looks like a very large increase, it's not an increase of our actual operations. |
| 00:17:37.22 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:17:37.27 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:17:37.30 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:17:38.95 | Adam Politzer | And I should note that the department heads are also here if there are very specific questions that I can answer, or we can take down those questions and get back with you. |
| 00:17:49.65 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | I don't know. Did you want me to ask a question about this? Please. |
| 00:17:49.74 | Adam Politzer | in. THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:17:54.29 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | I just want to... Thank you. It seems like we're at the end of this section, so. Yes. So can you tell me... Um, under the benefits you know, line. that's going down by about 300,000. But the salaries are going up. If I'm looking and I'm always comparing between 15, 16 to 17, 18, so I'm jumping ahead. Thank you. |
| 00:18:12.28 | Adam Politzer | Right. And what you're seeing is a huge decrease because the majority of the unfunded liability for the police fund, police plan, is actually for retired employees. Okay. So it's not included in here. Is it included somewhere else in the budget? It's included in the non-departmental. |
| 00:18:12.96 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | And what should we do? |
| 00:18:18.32 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | All right. I hope. |
| 00:18:24.58 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Okay. Is it included somewhere else in the budget? |
| 00:18:29.77 | Adam Politzer | Okay. |
| 00:18:30.58 | Councilmember Theodorus | Well, yeah, I can follow up on that. Um, but why this year such a that's a fairly dramatic number of decrease we understand it is. |
| 00:18:37.81 | Adam Politzer | It is actually, I'm basing this on and frankly open for discussion on whether or not we want to restate in an amendment for FY15-16 whether we want to restate the budget. But the reason for doing so is kind of to time this with the changes in GASB-68 as well as the city enabling its trust in the last year and really taking a concentrated effort to manage those pension liabilities. So this allows us a little more. a little more, excuse me, trans-obvious action when we go to make management decisions regarding positions, but also to recognize if we want to make additional payments to the trusts and recognizing how much we're actually paying that is not negotiable. So I guess that's the key. When you deal with the unfunded liability it is a fixed amount and so for example we have four vacancies in the police department if we base it entirely on payroll we will underfund that payment we will have to make it up so rather than have it be a product of payroll we put it in the non-department non-department as a fixed cost the idea is is kind of capturing all of these actions and activities within a similar timeframe so that's why I'm proposing it right now there's a golden opportunity |
| 00:19:59.96 | Councilmember Theodorus | if I follow you, so that number wouldn't have necessarily decreased that much. Some of that's been moved. It's been moved. It has gone up. Yes, as John had noted, it did go up. |
| 00:20:05.41 | Adam Politzer | It's been moved. It has gone up. Yes. As John had noted, it did go up. |
| 00:20:09.43 | Councilmember Theodorus | Okay. |
| 00:20:12.04 | Adam Politzer | Okay. So it is actually, and I hate to say it, it's toward the tail end, but I've got quite a few slides specific to how this is calculated, so you can see that. And again, I'm very much interested in hearing council's feedback on the possibility of restating the FY15-16 budget so that we would actually amend it to look the same way. And then you'd have a cleaner history. Any other questions on PD? |
| 00:20:41.20 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Guess my only comment is I think the goal to share with the public the percentage of benefits and and and salary and and um Yeah. you know, wages with respect to as a percentage of operating budget. And so if we're moving... I understand we're moving some of that into the non-departmental for retirees, etc. So it just means we're just going to have to, you know, go different places to tally the numbers, I guess. |
| 00:21:15.58 | Councilmember Theodorus | May I? It's more of a comment, but just short. On this type of thing, these major, which is a major item, maybe we could footnote them even on these summary pages. The other thing is it would be helpful on some of these to show percentage increase or decrease, because every time I look at that, I'm doing the numbers in my head. It would be nice to see the percentages, whether they moved up or down. |
| 00:21:27.37 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:21:34.09 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | That'd be great. |
| 00:21:42.33 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Melanie, just for clarification here so that people are not confused. In this restating that you're doing, if you roll it all up, the non-departmental is still in the general fund, right? Yes. So if you roll it up to the general fund, it's all there. It is. It's just how you've decided to present it. |
| 00:21:57.16 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 00:22:01.55 | Adam Politzer | IT IS. It's how you distribute it across employees, or whether you distribute it across employees. |
| 00:22:10.15 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | you want our comments on that now or later? |
| 00:22:12.52 | Adam Politzer | I think actually it might be beneficial for us to go through the exercises, seeing how I calculated it, because I did take into advice from the finance committee how to structure So I've actually split the UAL, the unfunded liability, between active employees and retirees. So that in addressing one of the concerns that was brought up about whether or not it How much is retirement? How much are people who aren't here and how much of it is are people who are here? So the people who are here, their unfunded liability is rolled into this. But the others is not. Thank you. |
| 00:22:42.57 | Unknown | Okay. |
| 00:22:42.82 | Adam Politzer | and and for police because the majority just over 81% of their unfunded liability is attached to retired people. That's why you see such a difference in the police department. It's not near as large a difference when you start to look at miscellaneous. |
| 00:23:01.57 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:23:02.19 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | So if I was to look at this and looking at salaries and wages for 15 and 16, is it that with these numbers, 84% of, oh wait, no, this is police. Okay, I'll wait, I'll wait till you're done. |
| 00:23:18.26 | Adam Politzer | It will actually, I hope, make a lot more sense as we get into there. |
| 00:23:21.80 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | 84% of the police budget is going to their salaries. But anyway, I went the whole general fund view |
| 00:23:29.35 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, and as we went through earlier, you can see it a little bit more clearly here. I will get you the percentages as well as I was asked for the actual breakdown by benefit category. I just don't have that ready for you yet. But you can see that benefits did go up significantly across the general fund. as well as salaries, $400,000 in salaries and wages. That does include the proposed new positions as well. And we have those itemized for you. With public works, Mr. Goldman's itemized the strategic plan update here, including beautification projects, the certificates of participation. projects looking at asset inventory, South City limits to ferry landing that's on the list of capital projects as well. Cass Gidley, Marina Rehab, Climate Action Plan, these were all part of the strategic plan, so he's itemized where those are at. Proposed changes in public works, which are significant, are creating a capital improvement program team, looking at a way to dedicate resources for construction management. recognizing we have a huge amount, an absolutely huge amount of capital investments planned over the next few years, as well as a long-term commitment with Measure O for at least 10 years in capital infrastructure, the need to ensure that those projects are being managed closely, efficiently, and effectively. So that team includes shifting one full-time employee from the general fund to the capital improvement fund, and then utilizing contract consultants for other specific projects. We would look to backfill that position, the division manager position within the general fund, with a lead, excuse me, a foreman. As I refer to here, somebody to lead the landscape maintenance team for enhanced maintenance. Along with all this capital infrastructure is the need to maintain it and to ensure that it meets the standards of the community. So that is also included. broken out here Department of Public Works on the top by their specific divisions this does include all funds so as you can see the general capital improvements fund has a large jump of both projects as well as the staff the sewer capital projects fund was the creation that you approved at the mid-year budget showing the bond worked to be done and then the sewer division total is actually in the sewer operating fund And again, below, this is across all funds for salaries, benefits. And again, you see in operations where we house capital, a very large amount going on. And that includes the sewer bonds as well as the COPs and Measure O and all the other activities related to capital. What I have here so that we have clarity on this is that there is a large spike in the capital improvement fund in particular and the sewer capital fund in FY15-16. That is in order to appropriate the funds for contracting purposes. As we get into later under the capital plan, you'll see that I've tried to spread those out so that it's easier to manage the expectations of when construction and design are actually taking place. Those are more of cash flow or actual activity. This is the actual appropriation. So some of these dollars will fall to fund balance and need to be appropriated in the following year as those bills come due. |
| 00:27:08.87 | Adam Politzer | Any questions on public works? Not yet. Okay. Community development. They have several major projects on their horizon, including the general plan update. They have held task force and kept the council updated They are recommending a holistic general plan update, kind of speeding up the process, doing, rather than itemizing it out by specific elements, doing it as a comprehensive update in the process of distributing a request for qualifications to select a consultant in front of the council. What's been on the plan for several years but is hot to trot right now is the permit tracking software. This is designed to create much greater efficiencies in the department as well as accountability for paperwork and documentation, streamlining our process and allowing customers and citizens to be able to see where projects are as they go rather than having to call or come to the counter all those things to verify where something is in the process, it allows them to check electronically. Probably the most important part of this is it does not require plans to pass from person to person. It allows them to be done concurrently with all the various reviews that are required by ordinance and law. Looking at the short term rental regulations, that's still on consideration. The department is proposing to upgrade its current vacant associate planner to a senior planner position. We have included this in the budget to assist with the complex projects and the general plan update. Not included in the budget, there was not consensus on the approach, but definitely consensus on the concern, is increasing efforts in building inspection and code enforcement efforts. At one point, we were proposing to include an additional full-time position that was not included in the budget at this time. |
| 00:29:04.57 | Adam Politzer | The community development has two specific divisions, planning and building. You can see the totals at the bottom. They have |
| 00:29:13.43 | Adam Politzer | There is a reduction in professional services to reflect the expiration of the short-term rental enforcement, as well as some other adjustments in historical plan review. Thank you. There is an increase in building to reflect additional activity that is reflected as well in the increased revenues. |
| 00:29:33.27 | Unknown | you Thank you. |
| 00:29:33.63 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:29:33.96 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:29:40.06 | Adam Politzer | any particular questions on community development? |
| 00:29:46.40 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, okay. Administration and finance. Part of the strategic plan included taking a long-term operational plan for the MLK property that has been well underway with comprehensive facility condition assessment and the issuance of the certificates of participation. We're currently in selection for a design-slash-construction management consultant to fulfill those, and later on in the budget discussion, Thank you. or a design-slash-construction management consultant to fulfill those. And later on in the budget discussion, we have included a small use of fund balance to take care of items that were not included in the condition assessment, and I'll explain specifically what those are and why they weren't included and why it would be appropriate to use fund balance to preserve that asset. |
| 00:30:33.43 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | If we have a question about the loan forgiveness for the MLK property is now a good time. Thank you. |
| 00:30:39.96 | Adam Politzer | Actually, I have a detailed slide on exactly how that's going to be. I'm glad you brought that up. I'll hold the question. The MLK loan is structured as direction from the Finance Committee and the Council. We have restructured the loan. |
| 00:30:41.01 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | on exactly how that's going to be. I'm glad you brought that in. I'll hold the question. |
| 00:30:50.34 | Adam Politzer | from an interest-only ongoing payment with no sunset to have a level payment, as close as possible, process to sunset and be paid off at the same time as the certificates of participation. So at the end of fiscal year 2030, both the COPs and the loan from the general fund to MLK will be paid off. We are implementing the IT strategic plan. Was there a question? |
| 00:31:15.72 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Oh, I just wanted to clarify, you said originally it was structured as the payments were interest only? Yes, ma'am. And okay, and with no sunset? Correct. Okay, good. And now you've changed it to, so that it will end? Has a finite expiration of 2030. |
| 00:31:34.12 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:31:34.13 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 00:31:35.03 | Adam Politzer | you |
| 00:31:35.11 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 00:31:35.18 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:31:35.21 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 00:31:35.24 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:31:35.26 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 00:31:35.30 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:31:38.40 | Adam Politzer | The implementation of the IT strategic master plan is included in the Capital Improvement Fund, General Capital Improvement Fund, and includes updating infrastructure as well as permitting and tracking software and some other end-of-life software that needs to be updated, including document management and the website. We're looking to restructure the finance manager position to an administrative analyst to reflect some of the support needs that we have in terms of internal controls, supporting the capital improvements program, reporting efforts, and looking at cost allocation. So that is a cost savings. |
| 00:32:18.29 | Adam Politzer | under administration and finance relatively flat. I should note in administration and finance, you have moved from having a contract administrative services director to an employee Um, So that would be me. And in information technology, there is a slight increase in professional services to assist with support and implementation of that IT strategic plan. So we ensure responsiveness. |
| 00:32:50.66 | Adam Politzer | The biggest change in information technology you'll notice under furniture fixtures and equipment, FFE, includes a large drop. That is the movement of the IT strategic master plan to the capital improvement, general capital improvement fund is approved in the mid-year budget amendment. And that's really to reflect that that is a capital project and is very much a capital investment in infrastructure. Thank you. Any questions on admin, finance, and IT? |
| 00:33:20.70 | Adam Politzer | Note, human resources is also included under here. They're not called out specifically, but they are part of administration and finance. |
| 00:33:34.11 | Adam Politzer | the library has quite a plan ahead for FY 1617 and 1718. This includes some of the items that they have had on their strategic plan, a prioritization timetable for looking at the Americans with Disabilities ADA, excuse me, remediation, including the stacks, and looking at how to make those more accessible. Also looking at other remodeling activities, this pretty heavily emphasizes and focuses on that in terms of their strategic plan activities. They do have a number of other operating improvements that they are making over the next few years. Those are in the library's video presentation actually online on the city's website. The director itemizes those very clearly. |
| 00:34:24.65 | Adam Politzer | As you know, the library is actually seeing a small drop in expenses. |
| 00:34:33.04 | Adam Politzer | and then going back up. |
| 00:34:39.03 | Adam Politzer | recreation. they've been working very hard on dunphy park working with the neighborhoods they'll also then be getting involved in southview and other park projects the age friendly initiative has been making great strides and is included in this year's budget recommendation and Robin Sweeney is expected to be completed the end of June. They are not proposing any changes to their organizational operating structure. |
| 00:35:15.08 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | We have a question about one of those topics. Should we ask it now? Sure. Specifically? So Rob and Sweeney completed end of June. So it's my understanding it's not just the playground. It's the whole park with the walkway and everything, correct? |
| 00:35:29.37 | Adam Politzer | Just be right. |
| 00:35:29.40 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Just. Perfect. Thank you. |
| 00:35:31.02 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:35:34.60 | Adam Politzer | Any other questions on recreation? |
| 00:35:40.41 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:35:40.44 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:35:40.57 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:35:42.65 | Councilmember Theodorus | I take it same issue on the benefits. The benefits go down and the total expenditures go down for each department. But that's because it's all being moved to non departmental. |
| 00:35:51.63 | Adam Politzer | Correct, and I've actually itemized it as one of the discussion items rather than doing a non-departmental budget presentation. I can get you a non-departmental presentation as well. |
| 00:35:59.20 | Councilmember Theodorus | And if we do stick with this, I would like to have notes so that we know what the real changes are. Yes. Because it all looks like it's going down where it may be flat or up. |
| 00:36:05.53 | Adam Politzer | Yes. |
| 00:36:05.97 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:36:06.02 | Unknown | is. |
| 00:36:06.56 | Adam Politzer | THE FAMILY. |
| 00:36:25.24 | Adam Politzer | With the capital improvement plan you see that we have the ADA program continuing. These are the requirements of the settlement at this point. All future ADA, all future capital projects will include as part of them compliance with the statute requirements. But these are those specifically identified in the settlement. The Mary Sears Park as well will be looking to finalize |
| 00:36:40.89 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 00:36:52.76 | Adam Politzer | During the next fiscal year. The ADA transition plan is the plan itself, which will be, which we were actually in draft form at this time looking through. That will then go for community input and then we'll define what other barriers and things we'll address in future projects. Is there a question? |
| 00:37:14.05 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | So the numbers we're looking at, it says traffic trans projects. So those are not... We're not seeing any gray areas where it's bleeding into the park designs or anything like that, correct? No. |
| 00:37:30.28 | Adam Politzer | OK? |
| 00:37:30.55 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 00:37:34.28 | Adam Politzer | General plan update, this shows a condensed version. Not quite three years, but looking to start it this fall, finish up by fiscal year 1920. Increasing the estimates have ranged from 600,000 to close to a million. It is our expectation that because it is not a full rewrite, we should be able to keep it on the lower end of that. The total will be $750,000 at this time. |
| 00:38:03.15 | Councilmember Theodorus | You just said a million, but I see 700,000. |
| 00:38:03.27 | Adam Politzer | Yes, sir. Yes, we're expecting to get it in under 750. I mean, just to give you context of where that number came from, estimates have ranged from 600,000 to over a million. |
| 00:38:22.25 | Adam Politzer | These are the building and waterfront projects that are proposed. We've postponed the city hall meeting room for at least two years, looking to redesign and bring that forward when it's more immediate in terms of priority. Turney Street Gangway. As has been discussed a few times, the City Civic Center Landscape Beautification Project is broken out now into two sections. One is for design, taking the SWA plan and actually creating biddable design specs and updating it for any changes since its original inception, and then putting aside $400,000 for actual implementation over a four-year period. Again, those $400,000 will be refined as the plans and specs are finalized. Then the city hall waterproofing, and this is where there's been a lot of conversation. At one point, these two projects, beautification and city hall painting, were combined. In order to clarify things, we've broken them apart so that it's understood the city hall waterproofing and painting are actual structural needs. Waterproofing for FY16-17 includes eaves and gutters to prevent further water damage to the building, and then the painting and sealing in the second year to continue that process. The corp yard facilities, there is some work to at least get it to maintain it in an appropriate fashion and then at some point bring into future discussions the long term plan for that facility. ADA buildings and waterfront at this moment, that has not been identified as a specific project. However, it is Tidelands Fund, so it is somewhat restricted to strictly waterfront property or Tidelands-eligible activities. We'll be bringing further details before those funds can be touched. The MLK facilities improvement, those are the certificates of participation dollars. I am recommending bringing that into the Capital Improvements Program Fund, the General Capital Improvements Fund, in order to separate the expenditure of those proceeds from the debt service payments, which are made in the MLK fund itself. So it's an accounting transaction to move them between the two funds. The wave attenuator has been in place and should be finalized in the coming fiscal year. any questions on this area? |
| 00:40:43.53 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | So, um, I guess we'll hold our questions regarding, um, like I'm looking at the tourney street gangway and I, I, I have a lot of concerns about that, but I think in terms of prioritization and keeping it up there, it's more a council conversation and not clarification with you. But I'm assuming that that includes, I mean, if we touch that, I mean, it triggers all sorts of ADA of a DA you know things and because initially this was budgeted for like 25 grand which was just you know |
| 00:41:17.26 | Adam Politzer | I won't speak to that. The current year budget was $75,000. |
| 00:41:20.94 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Yeah, I'm talking about a couple years ago. Anyway, I'm not a fan of this particular topic. I mean, the gangway. So anyway, we'll can hold that. |
| 00:41:24.64 | Adam Politzer | Anyway. |
| 00:41:29.78 | Adam Politzer | If there's information that we can provide, please let us know. Okay, thank you. |
| 00:41:32.77 | Councilmember Theodorus | And the City Hall meeting room was moved out of this two-year budget into the next two-year budget. Yes, into. |
| 00:41:35.78 | Adam Politzer | Was moved out, yes. Yes, into FY17, 18, 19 at the earliest, and then we'll obviously get into a discussion about the priority where that falls. Obviously, as an employer, we're required to provide certain spaces, and as you probably know, the meeting space in City Hall is at an all-time premium, so there is some demand. |
| 00:41:50.19 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 00:41:55.50 | Councilmember Theodorus | So by moving it there, it's not a subject for tonight's discussion. |
| 00:41:58.57 | Adam Politzer | It's the capital improvement plan itself is always a subject for conversation. What we're kind of asking for is feedback on where things fall in this plan as well as the specific two-year budget. We are proposing that it be pushed out because we felt that other items based on feedback from council and the finance committee really had a higher priority. |
| 00:42:01.19 | Councilmember Theodorus | Yeah. We're coming. |
| 00:42:24.34 | Adam Politzer | Information technology. We're looking at the license plate readers that I mentioned earlier under the police department. Those are proposed for $125,000. That is actually three locations, six cameras, and those are automatic readers of license plate information that then trigger alerts if something suspicious should trigger up. It also provides evidence and ability to do research and crime activities. The IT strategic plan infrastructure, that is specific what was brought forward to you in November in the IT master plan. We are moving up some of those activities from the multi-year approach into the proposed budget. We brought forward some at the mid-year, but recognizing we've had some issues with servers and switches already starting to fail, that it's imperative that we go ahead and get that done as soon as possible. So we'd like to finish up most of that, and then the rest would go into more of a lower level of needing to repair and replace in the infrastructure, but we definitely need to step up that infrastructure repair. The permitting tracking software is included for $200,000. We're in the process of getting more firm quotes on that. Website, we have been notified that that is, the current version that we are on, is likely to be unsupported before the end of the calendar year, so that we would like to make sure that we are on track to have that ready for replacement and update. It's really nice to get applauded for the quality of our website. We want to make sure that we retain that in every way. Similarly, the document management is at end of life and needs to be updated as well. Looking out a little bit, you'll notice nearly all of these items are actually heading into the end of life. So with IET, we look at about a five-year lifespan on much of the smaller software packages. The finance system is actually several versions behind right now, but we're in the process of evaluating our vendor relationships to determine whether or not we will want to invest that at this time in the future year. |
| 00:44:28.27 | Adam Politzer | So. Are there any questions on IT? |
| 00:44:31.95 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | The only question I had is what we had discussed earlier, which may be a question is the clarification about leases, you know, that they're going to be purchasing, you know, you can have cost savings with leases because the rate of technology, you know, upgrades is so quick. You turn around and you have something new software. |
| 00:44:50.50 | Adam Politzer | You turn around and you have something new. For the majority of the software that we're using, for the software side of the house, it's really looking at cloud versus server-based. And we are definitely doing that each time. One of the things that we are, similar to the conversation we had about the financial accounting system, which has been purchased by another vendor, is that we do not have the cloud-based. So therefore, it's not automatically updated. And they're starting to drop their support for the older systems. And so we have to have an evaluation of, Certainly in future, what do we do or do we update now? On the hardware side of the house, what we are doing as part of the IT strategic plan infrastructure is actually updating the servers that we have so that we have instantaneous virtual servers. Rather than going to the hard boxes, we have the ability to adapt much faster without the cost. So that's all been incorporated into that approach. Leasing isn't necessarily a venue that works well for this or a mechanism that works well in this area. Simply because it does move so fast, people aren't able to provide it. Changing with the technology and allowing us to get a little more cutting edge so that we're not held hostage when something breaks is really the focus here. So going to the virtual servers is critical, having updated switches that are able to work with modern equipment, not just our equipment, but also elsewhere in the county because we are highly connected with the rest of the county and the state. |
| 00:46:20.41 | Councilmember Theodorus | at least on the license plate readers and the permitting tracking software, there'll be significant maintenance fees associated with them. Where are they reflected? Those are actually, |
| 00:46:29.20 | Adam Politzer | Those are actually reflected in operations and I believe the license plate readers are at about $12,000 a year. So it's actually quite nominal. And I do not have good numbers yet on the permitting tracking for operations. |
| 00:46:42.02 | Councilmember Theodorus | If we get into discussions on any of those numbers, we'll be able to pull out the maintenance numbers so that we can see the total cost. |
| 00:46:48.35 | Adam Politzer | Yes. |
| 00:46:48.57 | Councilmember Theodorus | be great. |
| 00:46:48.89 | Adam Politzer | And those are actually included under professional services in those departments line-ups. Again, permitting and tracking software, I do not have a maintenance number yet. With the expectation we wouldn't be paying it in the first year, but we will probably be looking to have something in the future years. |
| 00:47:08.65 | Adam Politzer | Okay, these are the parks improvements. You'll notice the blue ones. Those are certificate of participation. I should have noted earlier under the MLK improvements, those were also colored in blue. That's to denote certificate of participation. Vena del Mar Plaza, there are a few improvements that we're looking to have in the second year of the proposed budget to finish up that particular project. The small park improvements, this is seed money that's been used to kick off improvements in some of the smaller neighborhood parks. We're kind of putting that on hold a little bit to focus on the huge amount of parks projects that we have going on right this moment. Looking at Cypress Ridge is the removal of that vegetation for fire concerns every other year. That's something that needs to be just recognized and planned for. I've broken out Southview Park looking at 10% for design and then spreading the construction over two years. This is an example of where in the budget itself it has the entire $1,150,000 in the single fiscal year, FY16-17, but the actual expenditures and activity are anticipated to spread over three years. We appropriate it entirely in the first year one because it is available as a certificate of participation but secondly to ensure that we're able to fully encumber contracts as those bids are led. Dunphy Park similar though obviously much more will be completed in FY 16-17. |
| 00:48:38.80 | Adam Politzer | Any questions on these? |
| 00:48:44.10 | Adam Politzer | Looking at our right-of-way projects, Caledonia Streetscape is on the table. Looking at the bridgeway medians, this is kind of a little twist from past projects. We have had ongoing maintenance. There was a study done some years ago, I believe, that allowed recommended removal of the trees, changing some of the plantings in there to reflect that those beds are not really designed for tree planting. Rather than jump into a huge comprehensive project immediately, we're looking to put funding in for cleanup of those areas and then go into a full design and project overhaul of the medians in later years. So this reflects $175,000 for a larger project in outlying years and $40,000 a year for the years leading up to that. And the intent to build on the cleanup for then what goes in afterwards. Want to note real quickly, you see several of these items replacing the waste cans, enhanced landscape maintenance, and the water conservation improvement are all listed as operating. Those are areas that we moved into. The general fund operations. And that's one of the discussion items I included for you, we're moving $50,000. from the General Capital Improvement Fund, because these are ongoing maintenance activities. We've moved that into the Public Works Maintenance Budget in the General Fund, and added $20,000 to reflect the increased infrastructure to maintain |
| 00:50:16.81 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | So just to clarify, because I'm, as you know, Melanie, later I'm, I'm hoping we can find money for immediate beautification of the, the medians in the far North and a bridgeway. So you're saying the 20th, it, when I look at operating, operating, operating, do all three of those lines represent 20 K or is it all four? The total is 50,000. Is 20 K. Okay. Oh, |
| 00:50:40.65 | Adam Politzer | The total is 50,000. The total is $50,000. $50,000, plus we added an additional $20. So there's a total of $70,000 specific to maintenance, increased maintenance. |
| 00:50:53.04 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Increased maintenance. Thank you. So we could potentially look to those funds for the beautification for the Northern bridgeway median strip. |
| 00:51:03.15 | Adam Politzer | These are not restricted in any way. |
| 00:51:04.92 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Okay, so we could, okay, thanks. |
| 00:51:07.60 | Councilmember Theodorus | and on the Bridgeway Median Trees Maintenance, What is the current expenditure on this? Is this additional or is this in lieu of? |
| 00:51:16.95 | Adam Politzer | This is actually a continuation of prior budgets at the $40,000 level. |
| 00:51:23.18 | Councilmember Theodorus | And how about California? So that's a continuation. The Caledonia streetscape is that similar? |
| 00:51:27.77 | Adam Politzer | Is that similar? Yes. And I will defer to Mr. Goldman when it's time, but this has had an ongoing plan that has not been initiated because there's still design. being finalized on that but that particular project should wrap up at some point And that's to reflect the declining expenditure once we get it kicked off and then be able to finish up. Okay. Okay, storm drain. looking at the Marin ship, finishing up that project. ongoing storm drain replacement. shoreline riprap replacement, these are things that while they might be considered operating, they are significant. And individually as projects, they're actually quite significant as well. Wanted to continue their highlighting. The Dunphy Park storm drain is being funded by Tidal Ends Fund as a transfer to the general capital improvement fund. But that project needs to be complete as well, coinciding with the Dunphy Park. It is not part of the Dunphy Park project, however. The annual, the storm drain master plan is intended to give us a roadmap then for future annual storm drain CIP. So you see the placeholders of $400,000 annually in prior budgets, that's been as high as a million dollars and other CIP plans, excuse me, capital improvement plans. The intent is to have that storm drain master plan completed this year. so that we have a roadmap. So when we come back to have this conversation next year, those numbers will probably change somewhat in the outlying years to reflect what the plan actually says needs to be done first and when, and how much it really will it cost. The Coloma storm drain outfall will be completed in FY 17-18. |
| 00:53:16.21 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | So I remember that at one point Public Works mentioned, I think it was a McStop, new regulations around storm drains that could total like a million a year or something. When, is that up or in the budget somewhere? Is it? No. When does it kick in? |
| 00:53:29.44 | Unknown | thing. |
| 00:53:36.54 | Adam Politzer | When does it kick in? We have to get the storm drain master plan done to reflect those regulations so that we actually know what the, rather than just throwing a million dollars at the capital improvement plan, is being able to say exactly what projects and how much those projects are and where they fall into our compliance with the law. |
| 00:53:53.89 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Because that was the original catalyst for Measure O, the sales tax increase was the storm during, the impression was that the regulations were kicking in immediately and we would need a million a year. |
| 00:54:05.45 | Adam Politzer | They are kicking in and we have to have a plan of response. |
| 00:54:10.32 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | So in other words, if we do the plan, the 240K, so are we looking at a million needed next year? Or is that something we should project in the budget? |
| 00:54:24.30 | Adam Politzer | I am not projecting it in FY16, 17, or 17, 18, because I don't know the dollar amount, and I don't want to put other things at risk without having a better handle. That's why I'm saying as we go into 17, 18, 19, 19, 20 going forward, that $400,000 could likely be each. In the past, that has had a placeholder of a million dollars. That's the same line item. What will most likely happen is at the end of this year, as we head into the FY17 budget process, we will then again discuss the results of the storm drain master plan and how that affects plans for Measure O and the placeholders for the CIP. but I don't want to speculate on dollar amounts without more information. |
| 00:55:06.84 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Okay, well, because I know the presentation, and maybe Jonathan can speak to this later, but I know the presentation gave Council an estimate of a million a year. |
| 00:55:18.25 | Adam Politzer | Yes, that was included in the last budget. |
| 00:55:18.41 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Yes. So that's because I didn't see it. |
| 00:55:23.07 | Adam Politzer | I'm putting it in at four hundred thousand dollars just simply because that recognizing and that's why I'm disclosing to you that that is a placeholder |
| 00:55:30.72 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | So that could go up quite a bit. Yes. And Thank you. Okay, do we have sewer? Have we already covered? It's coming. |
| 00:55:40.94 | Adam Politzer | Have we already covered? It's coming. Okay, thanks. Anyone else on Stormdream? Sidewalks, plans and boardwalks. We've got the sidewalk repair program. Again, that could at some point move into operating, but for now we wanted to ensure that it was highlighted. The stairs program, these are funds that were transferred during the current fiscal year, and the project is not completed, so we will be completing it. |
| 00:55:51.46 | Unknown | time. |
| 00:56:05.28 | Adam Politzer | early into the next fiscal year. So in future... You'll notice though, there's zeros right there. that will move to the STAIRS fund. should funds become available in the stairs fund, then we will continue doing projects in the stairs fund directly. But right now we are using up the last of those available funds. |
| 00:56:25.04 | Adam Politzer | Transportation. As noted in the last budget document, in the last two year plan particularly, there is a heavy investment in street repairs. Thank you. The street program pretty much is the first three line items. Street repair program, road-based repair, patching, striping, maintenance, a little further down, concrete streets. Those are all ongoing investment into the streets infrastructure of the community. Traffic signal upgrades, that includes, again, coinciding with street improvements. Gate 6, Road Signal, Modset is a grant. Safe Routes to Schools is also a grant. Should be noted that part of these are funded from gas tax, traffic safety, and other transfers. They're small amounts, but they do contribute to our ability to invest in our streets. The South City Limits to Richardson, that is a project that apparently had been discussed at one time. We wanted to get it on the radar. The intent is to go after our grant to fund this. So these are our placeholders. It was simply a breakout of when that might occur should the grant become available. Okay. |
| 00:57:38.66 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 00:57:38.68 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | So, um, Melanie, I have a question about this. Um, uh, I have serious concerns about pursuing the grant for this and, and the plan that's, um, being pursued. So when will we be discussing this? as something to be removed. |
| 00:58:04.65 | Adam Politzer | when there's actually some money behind it. |
| 00:58:07.97 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Well, no, I mean, it takes staff time to create grants. Right, to actually go for the grants. And go for the grants, and I just don't want to spend staff time. I'd rather see staff time spent repairing sewers than doing this, which is, I mean, there's been really no transparency on this. |
| 00:58:10.37 | Adam Politzer | to create grants and go for the grants. |
| 00:58:24.88 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | I think Adam has a comment on it. It's going to be agendized, right? That's right. |
| 00:58:28.66 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, the mayor has it right that when this item was discussed at a previous council meeting, Councilmember Pfeiffer requested that this come back as a future agenda item. So that's what the agenda setting committee will do. So it'll come back, I would imagine, before we reach the end of July, if not sooner. |
| 00:58:48.26 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Well in the in the agenda item would be about whether or not we pursue the grant and and if it and if we don't then it comes out |
| 00:58:48.31 | Adam Politzer | Well, |
| 00:58:55.53 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Yeah, I understand that. I mean, I understand the logic on that. I guess my concern is just having that in the budget is something that I just oppose. And so we'll talk about that maybe later. But, you know. Mm-hmm. |
| 00:59:15.53 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Maybe we can put an asterisk on that. Certainly. Thank you. |
| 00:59:18.55 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Well, you know, it's staff time, it's project, and you know, |
| 00:59:22.11 | Adam Politzer | Well, at this point there are no expenditures expected and again it will be coming back to you before it goes for a grant application. |
| 00:59:30.14 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:59:31.52 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | OK, and then the crosswalk is something that I'm working with Jonathan on in terms of getting some specs on that. |
| 00:59:47.39 | Adam Politzer | That'll be coming back to Council in the current fiscal year |
| 00:59:52.80 | Councilmember Theodorus | Thank you. |
| 00:59:53.01 | Adam Politzer | Okay. |
| 00:59:53.17 | Councilmember Theodorus | Okay, two things. One is I do support the mayor's recommendation, maybe put in an asterisk so that no one's misled because the whole public looks at it. We understand this. And secondly, you mentioned earlier when on the revenues on gas tax, I think it was around $140,000 you talked about spending here. But at the state level, gas tax has dropped significantly. So we're probably going to get much less in gas tax. Has that been taken into account? |
| 00:59:53.60 | Unknown | you |
| 00:59:53.66 | Adam Politzer | Two things. One is I... |
| 01:00:06.81 | Unknown | you |
| 01:00:17.51 | Adam Politzer | Right now it's a fairly nominal amount. So one of the things that we'll go through as we look at the fund balances is I have, to the degree possible, removed any use of fund balances. So whatever fund balances are there, with the exception of parking and MLK, and those are for very specific reasons, is not being taken. So we're trying to live within whatever estimated revenues are there so that we have the ability to adjust as those happen. |
| 01:00:46.40 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | So with respect to the gas tax, I recall we talked about this and you had mentioned that there would be a 86,000, I mean 168,000, 100,000 for street maintenance, 65 for street improvement in the general capital projects fund. But then you said there would be 86,000 that would be just in the budget. Is that correct? No. Okay. |
| 01:01:11.19 | Adam Politzer | The $168,000 is the estimated revenue that's assuming no increase. $165,000 is the estimated expenditures, $65,000 of which is a transfer to the general capital improvement fund. The $86,000 you're referring to is the fund balance. |
| 01:01:22.31 | Unknown | Yeah. |
| 01:01:26.97 | Adam Politzer | and that is being left alone. |
| 01:01:27.34 | Unknown | as being |
| 01:01:29.09 | Adam Politzer | It actually contributed to $3,000. In future years, we may recommend using some of that. I believe I've recommended $22,000 to be used in FY18 for streets projects. Thank you. |
| 01:01:44.72 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Okay. |
| 01:01:47.01 | Adam Politzer | So it's specifically trying to recognize that we do have some flat revenues and not to get too crazy on spending down our fund balances in that area. |
| 01:01:47.67 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 01:02:00.63 | Adam Politzer | Okay, sewer fund. That's brought up. Melon. |
| 01:02:02.25 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Melanie, before you carry on. Yes, sir. Something that I don't know whether we ever discussed it in the Finance Committee. I've sort of lost track of that. Was the calcitis project. I may have mispronounced. The Portuguese stone thing. Yes, yes. |
| 01:02:03.87 | Adam Politzer | Yes, sir. |
| 01:02:28.05 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Yeah, from, things are called calcitas, the stones, you know, from Qashqash. And the, you know, we have put in projects where, |
| 01:02:29.25 | Unknown | Thank you. of stones. |
| 01:02:43.22 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | we don't anticipate spending any money, but we need to sort of reserve the project into that. Did that get lost in the works or did we just, what did we decide to do with that? |
| 01:02:50.14 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:02:50.18 | Adam Politzer | MMM. |
| 01:02:50.45 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:02:56.50 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 01:02:56.52 | Adam Politzer | Actually, to be honest, I'm still working with Jonathan to refine a dollar amount so that I can have a placeholder that's at least within the ballpark. That will come as part of the resolution to you. I will add it in, but it will show revenues of donations and expenditures equal to those. I just need to get the dollar amount refined. So it hasn't been dropped. It's just not on the paper at this moment |
| 01:03:14.90 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. And if I can just add, we did talk about it at the finance committee with exactly what you just suggested, that there would be dollars based on donations to offset the dollars for expenses. So it would be a wash. But as Melanie just stated, the... the proposal that we received, I think each of the council members received a letter from Mike Kelly several meetings back, that had suggested that it was a $50,000 project, which the finance committee and staff recognized was probably not an all in number. So rather than putting that into the budget with nothing, we felt that we needed a little bit more time to define the cost. But as Melanie is suggesting, by the time this comes back to you, maybe even by the 14th, you know, that there'll be a number and an estimate offset by revenues through donations. |
| 01:04:16.39 | Adam Politzer | Looking at the sewer fund. This is a tentative breakdown. Obviously, I'll be refining this based on year-end numbers. But looking at urgent repairs, which is a primary function of the sewer bond issue, the Gate 5 Road, Nevada Street, Santa Rosa Bridgeway, and then Humboldt Avenue is actually a combination of grant and streets and sewer funds. So only a portion of that 265 is actually reflected in here. And then there will be kind of a pause. We are actually due for a rate study in fiscal year 19, and then come back to visit Beach Street. And the tentative number for that is $2 million. There were previous discussions about other projects as we went into the bond and in looking at the actual cost to do the gate five improvements, the recommendation is to do those with the majority of the bond funds and get that urgent work done. |
| 01:05:19.74 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 01:05:22.22 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | So should I have questions about the time frame of some of these projects? Is this a good time to ask those questions? Sure. So I'm looking at this and so what I'm seeing is that Gate 5 Road, those expenditures will occur 16 to 17 and will be finished. That project will be finished. |
| 01:05:52.09 | Adam Politzer | My understanding is it'll be pretty close too. That may bleed over into 17, 18. |
| 01:05:56.49 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Okay, and then the same with Nevada, Santa Rosa, and Bridgeway. |
| 01:06:02.18 | Adam Politzer | The smaller projects I would anticipate being finished within the fiscal year. Okay. I'm going to be honest, part of the approach, and I should have stated this earlier, is really evaluating the capital improvement plan to look at when we can get work done. because as has been mentioned several times, there's a little bit of frustration on what is the actual timing. How much can we actually do, and when can people expect work to be done? This is one of those areas that's a little grayer, but we are trying to refine that expectation so that we can be clear and then update you frequently on how things are going. |
| 01:06:15.26 | Unknown | Um, |
| 01:06:39.12 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | So, and I'm sure you mentioned this, but I missed it. Urgent One Project. Thank you. |
| 01:06:45.50 | Adam Politzer | The bond provided for urgent repairs, there's a number of repairs that we don't know the specific projects. They kind of go boom and we've got to jump in and repair them. They were not specifically enough put aside in the rate study to do that. So when the bonds were issued, some of the bond was set aside for that purpose. That is another area where I do anticipate perhaps taking some forward into 17-18 so that we have that option to use them. But the idea of the bonds was to use the money quickly. |
| 01:07:15.77 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | What does TFCA stand for? |
| 01:07:20.85 | Adam Politzer | I'm going to defer on the acronym. |
| 01:07:30.89 | Jonathon Goldman | Jonathan Goldman, your public works director. TFCA is transportation fund for clean air. As you may remember, we were awarded a grant for improvements that to some extent have already been designed and fit, as Melanie indicated, into repair of Humboldt Avenue that the sewer enterprise is responsible for because some of the pavement there was damaged during the construction of the spinnaker anchor project and then since I'm up here just to clarify |
| 01:07:56.46 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:08:08.61 | Jonathon Goldman | We actually have the Urgent One project is already under construction. Team Gelati was awarded a contract to do that work. They've been working in Old Town for several weeks already and Miller Avenue and Spencer. And then the Gate 5 Road project is currently out to bid. We have a pre-bid meeting tomorrow. We're continuing to work with our designer to try to reduce the cost of that project with the idea being that every dollar that we can conserve from the bond proceeds gives us the dollars that Melanie was alluding to to allow us to respond to short-term emergency |
| 01:08:08.66 | Unknown | Uh, uh. |
| 01:08:59.99 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 01:09:07.10 | Adam Politzer | Okay, just to clarify, we've talked quite a bit about how do we define the measure of our projects, and we've gone back and forth within finance trying to determine the best way to modify our accounting system to let us do this easily, and we think we have a solution, so that should be underway. If you look at your line item detail, you'll see this Department 420 cropped up in the... capital general capital improvement fund that's what we're looking to create as the measure o department and that way we can split out funding between measure o and other areas if that's the source for the project so these are the itemized proposed projects come you'll notice that traffic traffic signal upgrades in particular that is only a portion of the total work that is done so only a portion of that is being paid for measure. What I did try to do is kind of move as much as possible total projects into Measure O to make it easier to track. |
| 01:10:03.04 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:10:04.37 | Adam Politzer | That's nice. |
| 01:10:08.93 | Adam Politzer | Okay, as we mentioned, fund balances. You'll notice the general fund fund balance. I'm going to just go over that briefly. We do have more detail in just a few minutes. But the general fund fund balance is staying pretty much the same. over the two years and actually all three years. We're not proposing any significant changes to that at this time. Similarly, traffic safety, and traffic safety being an area that we have recurring revenues that you do not hold fund balance except for significant projects. So $249 is actually a reasonable amount. The general obligation bonds, that is the required retention for that area. Construction impact fees, we are using a little bit of that in the current fiscal year. and then proposing to not use more fund balance going forward. County Measure A actually also includes receivables, so you'll notice that that has a negative at this time. As we clear out those receivables, I do anticipate being able to have that go back to zero balance. Employee benefits, that is one of the holding places for our obligations, unfunded obligations regarding OPEB and pension. The Tidelands Fund, again, this is an area where we have an unearned revenue, that is the loan in which as we get rent payments we give a credit back that actually shows an expense. So it's kind of a convoluted accounting thing, but the actual cash in there is $1.3 million. So as I mentioned, trying to keep this fairly stable and steady without much use of fund balance, not much volatility. Okay. The general fund fund balance, as we've talked about a few times, it is actually very healthy. expected at the end of 16, based on the mid-year amendment and the audit, we're looking at a $4.1 million liquid balance. Notice on the first slide it had $10 million, almost $10.5 million. We have unspendable, that is the loan from MLK. As that gets spent down or paid off, that will drop out. It will not make a difference to our actual financial position, but it will change that $10 million into the $4 million over time. So that represents a 26.6% fund balance. That is of our expenditures, our general operating expenditures. Our policy requirements are that we have... 5% set aside for budget stabilization, $771,999, or 5%. 10% shortfall reserve policy of $1.5 million. Plus the Disaster Assistance Fund, this was established, I believe, in 2008, without a specific percentage or transfer policy. It has built up slightly over time and then remained basically interest earnings as its contribution. It represents about 6.27% of operations, $968,708. That means the minimum fund balance for the general fund is 21.27%, or just shy of $3.3 million. That is what, by policy, you have set as the minimum threshold. That means that going into FY17, we have approximately $822,608, or 5.3% available net of that policy. This will come up, I'm sure, as we get into conversations about capital and funding of pension obligations. I have to be perfectly honest, I do not recommend using the whole 800,000. We are looking at a relatively stagnant economy and recognizing that that could do bad things, even to the most conservative of revenues, being a good economist. I tend to be a little pessimistic when it comes to revenues. My comfort level is such that I would not recommend using all of that. Some portion of it certainly is a reasonable opportunity, provided it is for one-time only uses. Okay. |
| 01:14:12.95 | Adam Politzer | Okay, these are further fund balance projections. Again, you'll see that most of them heading into going forward are relatively stable. The general capital projects is the use of projects that have already been transferred over, funds that have already been transferred over. So those will be carry forwards from FY15-16 into FY16-17 and spent out. So that's why you see the draw down of fund balance. I'm not sure. And then as you look at FY18, you'll see very little use of fund balance. Here's where I mentioned the $86,000 going at the end of this fiscal year. $3,000 additional in gas tax. leaving us at 89,000, then heading into FY18 is when I recommend using the 22,000 towards streets projects. For the MLK rental property, as I'll discuss in a little bit under the discussion items, I'm recommending the use of $55,000, and that is specifically for projects that need to be done that are not included in the condition assessment or in the certificates of participation. So that is a very planned use for the purposes of maintaining and improving our revenue generating facility. Similarly in parking that's in recognition of the contribution for how much of the general plan update is actually going to revolve around congestion management and traffic parking activities which have a huge impact on the system and on the city. The sewer construction, again, we have already recognized the bonds in the sewer construction fund. And so those will carry forward whatever's unused into the next fiscal year and be spent out next year. |
| 01:15:57.50 | Adam Politzer | Okay, the big fun part. Can we go back? |
| 01:15:59.52 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Can we go back one? explain a little bit more about the parking. June of 15 is 3.198 |
| 01:16:06.41 | Adam Politzer | can't be. |
| 01:16:10.90 | Unknown | THROUGH THEM. |
| 01:16:12.85 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | out. Just tell me that line, I'm not following that line. Okay, 3.2 million is the end of last year. Sorry, did we see a drop in the parking revenues? |
| 01:16:17.76 | Adam Politzer | Okay. Did we see a drop in the parking room? There was some appropriation made in the budget for FY15-16. Current year, I believe that was towards capital because we bought a lot of equipment this year. So that was part of the budget, the actual original adopted budget, and we carried it through. We did see a little bit of constraint on revenue, but not at this time a huge chunk. So I'm actually... Estimating revenue increase with the parking enforcement officer, but not a large chunk beyond that. I'm recommending using the $126,000 toward the $125,000 contribution. of the general plan update. |
| 01:16:59.46 | Adam Politzer | Madam Mayor, can I just also remind the council that under parking |
| 01:17:00.68 | Adam Politzer | Awesome. |
| 01:17:04.64 | Adam Politzer | Last year we had proposed, I believe, $250,000 for bike parking revenue. And obviously that was based on an estimate and we only generated roughly $150,000 in that neighborhood. So that was one of the significant changes from last year. This year we are working with Saucerda Plus with a more conservative revenue projection for bike parking. But bike parking is also connected to the parking figures. |
| 01:17:39.61 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Okay, thanks. Tom? |
| 01:17:40.75 | Adam Politzer | I'm not. |
| 01:17:40.89 | Councilmember Theodorus | that subject. If you go way back, you talked about when you talked about revenues in and you said fines and forfeitures were down 45,000. I was just surprised by that projecting because again, the parking enforcement officer with bicycle issues. What was the cause of that? That was a seemed like a 10% reduction. |
| 01:17:59.50 | Adam Politzer | It's actually a reflection what I'm seeing in the current fiscal year. So it's been an overall trend decline. So rather than maintain that at the higher level, I feel much more comfortable with having a lower estimate. If we come in high, great. From the parking enforcement officer, we tend to see the increase actually in meter fees. People see the parking enforcement officer, they pay the meters a lot faster. |
| 01:18:23.45 | Councilmember Theodorus | Is there a short answer that you'd know about why it's been trending down? |
| 01:18:27.53 | Adam Politzer | I don't have an explanation for this, it's just what the actual receipts are showing. |
| 01:18:30.60 | Councilmember Theodorus | Thank you. |
| 01:18:31.70 | Adam Politzer | I would suggest that part of the reason why we went with the new smart meters was to help people avoid getting tickets. We're not in the business of getting tickets. We actually don't want to give tickets. So the smart meters have the ability for people to pay by phone and pay by credit card, so they're not sitting there with only three quarters in their pocket and only taking a risk of how long they're going to be at Poggio or one of the other sites. So I think part of the conservative assumption is that we'll have increased parking revenues on the meters and decreased citations. But until we're out there, we don't know. Speculating a little bit. |
| 01:19:10.65 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 01:19:10.90 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:19:10.93 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. Okay, jumping into the discussion items. These are the items that we really had detailed conversations with the finance committee about. It had consensus and the Finance Committee was very comfortable. and others not so much but these are the items that we specifically included in the draft budget but wanted to bring to your attention in order to focus our conversation. The idea of this budget was really to have a status quo budget and then have discussion on everything beyond that. Obviously, the entire budget is open for your discussion and your review because it's up to your approval, but these are the items that we wanted to make sure were brought to your attention. These are the funding areas related specifically to other agencies or activities that support the community at large either via the via the city organization or via other organizations they include cars funding through age friendly for twenty two thousand dollars The Historical Society, this is the docent program at $15,000 a year. Sister cities, this is not money given to sister cities, but rather money spent by the city in support of visits that are conducted through the sister city program. And that's $2,500. Okay. Business, excuse me, JPA, the CATV consulting, that is the production of our meetings and all of our online video streaming, $25,000. The business hospitality committee, $30,000. The chamber kiosk that was originally discussed as part of the congestion management plan and program, so that is $11,000. Business Advisory Committee does not have direct funding associated with it, but has historically and brings forward recommendations for specific activities to be funded. And the business development is not attached to a specific committee, but is instead designed for the council to be able to fund activities helping new or existing businesses in the community, and that is $10,000. Any questions on these particular areas? |
| 01:21:16.42 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | You mentioned historical society. Oh, the visitor center. So this is the descent program. Okay. |
| 01:21:24.38 | Councilmember Theodorus | May I just so I'm clear some of these items are new or increased and some are just flat correct? |
| 01:21:30.64 | Adam Politzer | They're actually all flat with the exception of the business development. |
| 01:21:35.99 | Councilmember Theodorus | And does that include all the discussion items beyond? There's a number of pages of that. |
| 01:21:40.50 | Adam Politzer | There's many pages. |
| 01:21:41.00 | Councilmember Theodorus | Right. Thank you. Thank you. You said they're all flat or they said they... |
| 01:21:44.21 | Adam Politzer | No, this particular page is flat with the exception of the business development. |
| 01:21:46.30 | Councilmember Theodorus | With you. IT'S PART OF THE It'd be good if you're going to go through them. It'd be helpful to know what, you know, increase, decrease, brand new. |
| 01:21:51.74 | Adam Politzer | which is... The majority of them will be changes, so we'll go through that specifically. The CARS funding actually is a reduction, a slight reduction from current year. I believe it's $26,000 this year. |
| 01:22:05.32 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | It was a grant last year, right? |
| 01:22:07.45 | Adam Politzer | Partially grant funded, I believe it was $15,000, and then $9,000 from the city. So it is an increase of city funds. Thank you. There's several areas funded there. |
| 01:22:16.96 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Speaking of cars, is there a reason why we don't just project that cost to the other years as put a placeholder for the other years as well for that? Thank you. |
| 01:22:26.99 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 01:22:27.01 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 01:22:27.04 | Adam Politzer | funding. |
| 01:22:27.71 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | These are the things that we can do. |
| 01:22:28.07 | Adam Politzer | Dr. Curie |
| 01:22:28.54 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 01:22:28.71 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | I'm not sure. |
| 01:22:28.94 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 01:22:28.96 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 01:22:29.22 | Adam Politzer | In both fiscal years. |
| 01:22:29.98 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 01:22:30.02 | Adam Politzer | Okay. |
| 01:22:31.07 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | So even though we don't see it for 17, 18, and 18, 19, it's assumed that it carries over. Yes. |
| 01:22:31.09 | Adam Politzer | So, maybe. |
| 01:22:38.23 | Adam Politzer | Yes, because they are included in the draft budget there are soon for both years |
| 01:22:42.46 | Councilmember Theodorus | Man, just following on that question, I'm a little confused why some of these items would be called out, even though they've been going year to year, and other things that are in the budget aren't called out, and they go year to year. What's the distinction? These were. |
| 01:22:53.47 | Adam Politzer | These were specifically discussed by the Finance Committee. That's why they were brought. Yeah. |
| 01:23:00.60 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Melanie, the CARS funding, the issue on that is it's a reimbursement program or it's a reimbursement line item. Is that they have a grant proposal and |
| 01:23:13.39 | Adam Politzer | Yeah, I can answer the question, and I think you will hear from several people in the audience during public comment. But the idea is that if they were not to receive any funds in kind or support, this is what they would want the city to reimburse as their expenses. For the most part, it's my understanding that this is for their coordinator. But again, as they get donations and grants then the total cost could go down but right now this is the all-in cost that that Aid Friendly is asking from the city |
| 01:23:14.09 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | I can answer the question. |
| 01:23:47.16 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Okay, thanks. |
| 01:23:53.73 | Adam Politzer | They also included, as I mentioned earlier, as a master fee schedule update, the estimate of that is $50,000. So when I indicated there was approximately $170,000 increase in these types of revenues, $50,000 would be attributable. more or less, to increasing some of these fees. And that is a guesstimate, I'll be perfectly honest. But it is intended to bring us pretty much in line with our neighbors. |
| 01:24:19.43 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Is there a way we could get maybe a table or something that it shows that comparison with the other cities? Because, you know, I feel reticent to increase fees in this economy, and it would help to understand the benchmark that staff is doing to justify that. |
| 01:24:27.46 | Unknown | is. |
| 01:24:45.16 | Adam Politzer | The Finance Committee had the same concerns, and what we agreed to from staff's perspective is that in the first quarter of the new fiscal year is to bring a report to the council with the tables and with all this information. And in some cases, you will lower the fees, and in other cases, you may recommend increasing the fees. So we felt comfortable that if we include this in the in the budget as long as we address this issue in the first quarter then it won't have any effect on the projected revenues |
| 01:25:17.38 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | So I understand the logic on that, but I think what I'm being asked to do here is make a judgment call on that placeholder. So if we could get just the comparison for other cities right now, just that I could have something to look at to understand, because the research has already been done because you wouldn't be proposing this if you hadn't already done that. So it shouldn't be a heavy lift. And I'd like to just look at that. |
| 01:25:36.85 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:25:41.35 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 01:25:41.40 | Yolanda Young | Thank you. |
| 01:25:41.42 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 01:25:41.44 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:25:44.05 | Yolanda Young | Sure. |
| 01:25:44.88 | Councilmember Theodorus | I'm a little confused by it because it talks about increasing the fees And yet there's a cost of $50,000. So I'm not quite sure why we would increase fees and cost us money. |
| 01:25:51.80 | Adam Politzer | and make sure That's the impact if we don't do it. It's $50,000 in revenues has been included. It should be a negative so that you can see a revenue. |
| 01:26:03.78 | Councilmember Theodorus | That would be a decrease in revenue. I mean... |
| 01:26:03.81 | Adam Politzer | That would be it. If we cut it, if we don't do it, it's a decrease in revenue. |
| 01:26:09.60 | Councilmember Theodorus | we don't do it. |
| 01:26:10.78 | Adam Politzer | Yes, you're correct. That should have a negative so that it could show that it's an offset. |
| 01:26:14.43 | Councilmember Theodorus | If we if we increase it, then right. Mount |
| 01:26:18.07 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Melanie, just to clarify, you have presumed a fee increase in the budget, increasing revenues by $50,000. Correct. So if we decided not to do the master fee schedule, we would have a cost to the budget of $50,000. |
| 01:26:27.62 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:26:27.66 | Unknown | Correct. |
| 01:26:34.27 | Unknown | Okay. Thank you. |
| 01:26:35.22 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 01:26:35.25 | Unknown | Mm-hmm. |
| 01:26:39.39 | Adam Politzer | The next one might be a little easier to follow because I've broken it out into two separate conversations here. But as I mentioned, the parking enforcement officer is being proposed for the police department to increase coverage during peak traffic seasons and in the neighborhoods, as well as to expand our capacity in serving citizens at crime scenes and in reporting operations. The cost of a parking enforcement officer is $83,817. That then is offset by approximately $130,000 in parking revenues. So both of those items, both the revenues of $130,000 and the parking enforcement officer cost of $83,817 are included in the budget. |
| 01:27:25.96 | Adam Politzer | Also included in the budget are part-time. Sorry, Millie? |
| 01:27:25.98 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | also include Sorry. I have a couple questions on these, and these next three, I believe, are all police department. Correct. So we might have some further follow-up questions with the chief sitting back there. I see him in the back row trying to hide. So with regard to the parking enforcement officer, this is a full-time employee. Is that right? Correct. Okay. So when we were talking about this in finance committee, you also had another number that was the 83,000 is, and I'm gonna ask this for every employee that we come to that's proposed, that we had a cost for their salary, but then we also had a cost for the pension and benefits. Yes, and actually, |
| 01:27:59.48 | Unknown | . |
| 01:27:59.51 | Unknown | . |
| 01:28:07.15 | Adam Politzer | Yes, and actually several slides out right as we get to the end of this, I've broken out every single position that's discussed as well as the alternates and a five-year projection. |
| 01:28:12.96 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | as well as the- Good, very good, thank you. And then so, So I'll ask some follow-up questions, I guess, when we get to those slides. But with regard to these three positions, Chief, I mean, I remember, and I watched your video online, by the way. And by the way, I meant to mention this earlier when we started, but all of the department heads did short videos from 5 to 10 minutes that are posted online, and if you Google draft fiscal year 2016-2018 budget, you'll see those videos, and they explain in very good detail, all the department heads did a great job of talking about their budgets and what their proposals were. So if anybody wants to do some follow-up, it's a good detail. All the department has did a great job of talking about their budgets and what their proposals were. So if anybody wants to do some follow-up, it's a great way to understand the minutiae |
| 01:28:42.68 | Unknown | RIGHT. |
| 01:29:01.48 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Or at least the general minutiae of the department's budgets. So, Chief. um, With regard to these three positions, Can you just give us a brief snapshot? Because you changed around a little bit of your... your manning that has been approved in past years and And I like the way that you did that. So I see that you have the parking enforcement officer that's also a revenue generating position. And then I like the way that you did the two part time officers on the next page. So can you just give us a, am I asking too much? Can you just give us a really brief? Okay, thanks. |
| 01:29:37.49 | John Rohrabacher (Police Chief) | Thanks. Thank you. I'm happy to do it, I don't know about brief, but I'll try. |
| 01:29:40.61 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | I'm going to be a little bit. Okay. |
| 01:29:41.25 | John Rohrabacher (Police Chief) | So my name is John Rohrabacher. I'm your chief of police. And... |
| 01:29:41.37 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:29:44.57 | John Rohrabacher (Police Chief) | So the approach that we took this year was to look at ways to increase service to the community without increasing the cost to the extent of hiring full-time additional police officers. And as you probably have heard over the years, we had a reduction in police officers way back when, and we, with the support of this council, have two positions been restored over the last couple years, but we would like to do a few things that would help with service to the community. One is the addition of a parking enforcement officer. That would bring us to a total of four. That would give us a lot of coverage throughout the week to take care of parking matters, but also to assist the officers with some basic crime scene work, take some police reports, cold reports where there's no suspect, but people would like to have a report, low-level misdemeanor type crimes. And we think there's a significant benefit there at a big cost savings. The other two are this. The council has already, a few years ago, approved a $35,000 allocation for one part-time police officer. And that has worked very well for us. And so we're asking for a second allocation of $35,000 for a second part-time officer. And again, for people, clarification, there's no benefits to that. That's strictly the hourly cost of having that police officer. And then the second for this year, but the third overall, is a part-time emergency services planner. We're asking for $25,000 for that because the time spent now is all spent by our sworn officers, sergeant, lieutenant, and others, and we would rather those positions be spent, the time they spend on that be spent on other things that are more appropriate to their position. That's pretty short. |
| 01:31:45.38 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | That's great. Thanks. you Yes. |
| 01:31:47.63 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Oh, I have. Yeah. Just a couple follow up questions. So I know that the rental bike parking revenue covered one officer, part time officer, I think during the summer. Is it the summer months part time? Is that is my memory serves me correctly? |
| 01:32:10.42 | John Rohrabacher (Police Chief) | I don't think I understand the question. Are you asking if we did that last year? |
| 01:32:13.68 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Well, I guess I haven't gotten to the question yet. The question depends on the answer of that, because I just want to understand if what I'm seeing here is the current part-time officer who is being funded by the rental bike parking fees, now being shifted to a you know you know a city line and not funded Or if we're adding someone in addition to the current officer who is funded by the Thank you. you bike rental parking fees. |
| 01:32:54.08 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | I don't think any officers were funded by the. No. Yeah. |
| 01:32:57.81 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Well, perhaps it wasn't an officer. Perhaps it was, I mean, I remember you made a presentation to us, and you said that the rental bike parking revenue was covering enforcement of bicycles. Maybe it wasn't an officer, but it was someone enforcing this. you |
| 01:33:23.02 | John Rohrabacher (Police Chief) | I can take that. |
| 01:33:23.31 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | I can take that. Thank you. I'll go back and it's okay. I'll ask the video. I've got that editing tool at home. |
| 01:33:25.75 | John Rohrabacher (Police Chief) | No, it's okay. I have an answer. |
| 01:33:27.04 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:33:27.07 | John Rohrabacher (Police Chief) | See ya. |
| 01:33:27.37 | Unknown | I've been. |
| 01:33:28.34 | John Rohrabacher (Police Chief) | So last year, about midway through the summer, we added a six weeks worth of time from a retired park enforcement officer who came back and worked, like I said, for six weeks helping us with the... overflow of people onto El Portal and Tracy Way That cost to us was about $6,500, maybe $7,000, and then offset by the parking citations that That parking officer wrote it would cut that about in half. That's a rough number. So that's all there was to that. |
| 01:34:02.59 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | I see so that that wasn't covered or partially funded by by the bike parking rental fee. |
| 01:34:09.70 | John Rohrabacher (Police Chief) | The remaining balance of, what, $3,000, yes. |
| 01:34:14.00 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Oh, half of it was. Okay. Alright. So then this part-time sworn patrol, this is new. This is a new |
| 01:34:20.45 | John Rohrabacher (Police Chief) | A second one is new, yes. |
| 01:34:21.98 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | The second one is new. |
| 01:34:28.97 | Adam Politzer | you you you what he does. |
| 01:34:37.09 | John Rohrabacher (Police Chief) | Yes, I'm actually very happy to talk about Officer McAfee. So a couple years ago we wanted to increase some coverage in what we're receiving is like a lot of high traffic complaint areas. And we really didn't have the full-time staffing to divert to that and came up with the idea that if we could hire a part-time officer in the $35,000 range to cover about 950, 60 hours a year and have that officer target all the complaint areas, and frankly it's the Alexander South 2nd Richardson Bridgeway Corridor, the downtown area, and then any place else that they get called to. And that's for enforcement of bicycle violations, pedestrian violations, and, of course, motorist violations. And I by all accounts, it's been wildly successful. And I get nothing but compliments about Officer McAfee and his work. It's a great deal for the community. And as I've said before, he's fairly well known by now because of his work to the point that social media has targeted him as the guy to watch out for, which we take as a compliment. So he's doing a really good job and the community, the biking community knows he's there. |
| 01:35:53.63 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | No. |
| 01:35:58.00 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Yeah. |
| 01:36:00.95 | John Rohrabacher (Police Chief) | And I'd like to clone him for my second officer. |
| 01:36:01.19 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Yeah. He's great. I've walked up to him a few times on the street and thanked him for his work. He's really, really a great resource. So I guess I was just clarifying that that's different from the person who was who was helping part time downtown with the bikes and stuff like that. OK. And then my second question is that the emergency management position, the other positions you're asking for quote post, but this one doesn't close. Was this mentioned in post as well? |
| 01:36:05.36 | John Rohrabacher (Police Chief) | Yeah. |
| 01:36:18.20 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 01:36:36.29 | John Rohrabacher (Police Chief) | I don't recall that it was. It's something that we've been asking for or mentioned several times over the last few years because this particular city should be proud of its aggressive approach to emergency operations and disaster preparedness. However, that's done largely from the staffing of the police department, one of the sergeants and lieutenant and some of the officers, and I'd really like to have them go back and do some other primary law enforcement work and have somebody help us with that that doesn't take away from those activities. And we think we can get that done for about $25,000. |
| 01:37:17.73 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | I know the post report also referred to kind of a new beat, suggested a beat structure, which I think recognized, you know, the Spencer area and, you know, the hills and then the waterfront and et cetera. Have you made any adjustments or do these staff recommendations reflect those recommendations with respect to increasing Increasing coverage. |
| 01:37:44.35 | John Rohrabacher (Police Chief) | Well, actually, it's all really rolled up into these part-time requests. So the work that's getting done by the part-time officer and the ones that we expect in the future are activities that they can consciously allow the officers to work on things that are primarily related to their beats. We haven't yet reached the point that we're asking council for what we would call enough officers to fund a third beat. But we're asking the officers who take that area now to be able to spend more time on it, and they can do that if we have some of these other part-time positions pick up some of the work that's Thank you. generated by the high complaint areas. And so it's just a balancing act of trying to keep these pieces going. but really without trying to get, at this moment anyways, the additional full FTEs at the fully burdened rate for new police officers. So we're trying to find other ways to deliver the service that the community would like to have, but for a little bit less money. In fact, in some cases, a lot less money. |
| 01:38:45.74 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. Sure. |
| 01:38:47.22 | Councilmember Theodorus | Chief, on the parking enforcement officer, how much time would you say that person would spend on bicycle and downtown traffic issues versus the other types of duties that you would have that actually |
| 01:38:58.26 | John Rohrabacher (Police Chief) | you Actually, it would be dedicated between all four. So right now we cover seven days a week with three people. we would still cover seven days a week with four people. So it would be spread out and allow a little bit more time. We'd also like them to do more proactive work up in the neighborhood, the residential communities, and respond to some of the parking complaints there. So it's a combination of all those things. It would really smooth out our schedule to have four people covering seven days rather than three people. Thank you. Yes. |
| 01:39:30.35 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thanks. I think we can go back to Melanie. Thanks, Chief. |
| 01:39:41.51 | Adam Politzer | Okay, and included on the discussion items are the license plate readers, which are also recommended by the police department. This includes $132,000 for the purchase and installation of six cameras at three locations. It would be a pilot with these three locations if it works well and we see the kind of, Impact that our neighbors are seeing from having these in place. We would then recommend potentially additional locations ongoing maintenance as I mentioned is twelve thousand dollars. At this point, I think the locations proposed are the perimeters. response the general plan update this is obviously the general plan update is included in the general capital project fund but what we are wanted to highlight here was the use of and I apologize it's a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars of the parking fund balance to support the general plan update recognizing how much of this update is focused on traffic circulation parking management all of the congestion elements that would be applicable and appropriate to use parking revenues for. So that is included in there. |
| 01:40:52.23 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:40:55.62 | Adam Politzer | Any questions? |
| 01:40:57.06 | Councilmember Theodorus | On the license plate readers, my understanding was that if we were to do every place in Sauselita, there's six points, seven. So this is 47% of if we piloted this and then we would need an additional whatever it might be, 150,000 additional or whatever that number is. And maintenance would go up correspondingly. |
| 01:41:13.18 | Adam Politzer | It's about $483,000. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. And actually on the discussion but not included, I have the other half or the other 60%. Recognizing that one location would probably not make much of an impact. The seven would be... all in without knowing whether or not it's successful, this gives us a good balance. We have seen our neighboring communities are seeing good success with it and measurable impact, so we're hoping to do as well. |
| 01:41:47.72 | Adam Politzer | Okay, positions here. We're recommending the upgrade of the assistant, which used to be an associate, planner position to a senior planner. This was a position that existed some time ago, but recognizing the complexity of projects coming through the planning department, as well as heading into some major, major initiatives with a general plan update, the permit tracking software. The cost, including the incremental wage costs, as well as benefit costs would be $87,000, or excuse me, $8,767. On the other side of the equation is downgrading the finance manager position. That would be in finance and admin. Looking to drop that to a lower level position comparable with the existing staff and beating up our capacity for analysis, internal controls, and reporting. That would be a savings of almost $40,000. |
| 01:42:46.61 | Adam Politzer | No question. Okay. |
| 01:42:52.77 | Adam Politzer | The public works reconstruction or construction approach here includes using a foreman in lieu of a DPW division manager and establishing the construction management team in the general capital improvement fund. So I'm gonna talk about actually the bottom one first and then head up to the top one. The bottom is actually the establishing that team in the General Capital Improvement Fund. It's moving an existing DPW division manager who has an expertise in construction management into full-time management of all of our capital projects, or the majority of our capital projects, recognizing that in typical is 10% of a construction project is associated with construction management. This obviously would not fund every construction management, but would allow us to have concentrated in-house expertise, ensuring these projects are timely and completed within budget to the degree possible. The $390,000 includes a full-time position, as well as two consulting roles of about $250,000. So I have that detailed out in terms of salary benefits and ongoing expense in a couple of slides from now. In order to maintain, pardon the pun, but maintain our maintenance efforts, we need to backfill. and ensure that the work on the operating side of the house continues at at least the level it's at, but preferably expanded. Recognizing that we have a lot of parks coming on, being improved, we wanna ensure that that investment is maintained at the optimal level. What you see here is a savings because, in fact, we would be replacing that construction management position, the DPW division manager, with a much lower level position. And I want to recognize that the finance committee questioned some of the salary dollars, and I did go back to verify the MOUs and found a lower level position that was appropriate. So our recommendation is for a foreman, and that would be a working supervisor to be part of a four-person team. It is currently three people and out in the field doing maintenance work. There are some other options to these that we'll go into in just a moment. Obviously, there's an option to promote a landscaper, keeping the team at three people. And contracting, that won't give us quite as much service, but would be the cheapest alternative, or going to keeping the structure the way it is and going to complete consultant contract management, construction management, which would be the most expensive, but probably relatively similar service level. |
| 01:45:35.41 | Adam Politzer | One of the other items related to public works is this recognition of those operating items in the Capital Improvement Fund. The General Capital Improvement Fund included about $50,000 associated with ongoing maintenance. They were put there to highlight them, make them visible. We're recommending putting those into the operating fund as part of the regular expectations. We're also recommending increasing those by $20,000. |
| 01:46:01.28 | Adam Politzer | And here's the MLK conversation. As directed by the finance committee gave considerable feedback, but the council has also been very vocal about looking at how we structure the MLK fund. loan from the general fund to the MLK fund. That was originally, I believe, well, current balance is about $7 million, just under that. The proposal is to include principal and interest, not just interest, and include credit for the non-MLK portions of the certificates of participation, and to pay off the entire debt within 14 years, so that at the end of 14 years, the MLK fund will have zero debt associated with either the certificates of participation or the original loan from the general fund. So I will give you that breakdown in just a moment. The current arrangement is about $315,000 to the general fund as interest income. plus some transfer of net revenue. The recommendation is to continue the transfer of net revenue provided we maintain ongoing fund balance. The one use of fund balance is the proposed $55,000, and that's related to tree removal, access to previously, and it's tree removal. There's actually another project in this. The tree removal actually has to happen in this current year, and that just happened. It just switched as we were putting this together. But the access to previously untenanted space, the space's interior, does not have access from the exterior through an accessible, either ADA accessible or truly physically accessible, acceptably accessible. from the outside, nor does it have adequate structure right now or breakouts. So we could convert the space into artist space, potentially up to four tenants, or we could lease the larger space. The proposal is to use a portion of this to create the foyer, build out a true accessible doorway to ensure that that hallway provides adequate access. That will then provide us with the ability to garner revenue. Other project is traffic calming, ensuring that we have a traffic engineer take a look at the traffic flows and improve pedestrian and traffic safety. And we did find one project that was not included on the condition assessment related to what had previously been perceived as water damage within a tenant space as the tenant responsibility. What we determined, however, was that that damage was due to leaks in the roof. So it's not the tenant's responsibility, it's the landlord's. So in order to own that and take care of it, we are recommending for all of these $55,000 use fund balance. There is a $1.3 million fund balance currently in the MLK. |
| 01:48:56.27 | Adam Politzer | Any questions? Thank you. Okay. This is the MLK loan structure. You'll notice at the top it's $6.3 million current balance as of the end of this fiscal year. I've included on the right-hand side the COP debt service. My intent was to ensure as much as possible that we keep level payments, both for COP, which is by design already, but also level payments to the general fund. You'll see the first four years are listed there, approximately $185,000 to $202,000, but you see the breakdown between principal and interest. By fiscal year 2030, that is paid in full. |
| 01:49:39.64 | Adam Politzer | and credits the MLK immediately in July 1 with the $4.2 million for the parks projects. |
| 01:49:51.91 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Melanie, is that going to be just an immediate one-time credit or is that going to be spread out of the construction timescale? |
| 01:50:01.40 | Adam Politzer | When we originally discussed it, it was to be spread out. But recognizing that the full transfer of funds has been made or is being made to the general capital improvement fund and that interest will accrue there for the support of the projects, we decided to go ahead and do immediate credit. I think that makes sense. |
| 01:50:16.77 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | you Thanks. |
| 01:50:19.06 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Melanie so you know this council is looking at this and I'm very happy that we're following through on our our our commitment with respect to the MLK loan forgiveness so the end of this cop i i guess my question is um what would we do to ensure that this doesn't change you know that future councils don't take a scalpel to this what is being |
| 01:50:54.74 | Adam Politzer | What is being proposed is actually a separate resolution on June 14th, June 28th that will include an actual loan agreement that the council is approving between the two funds. So it is a formal amortization schedule payment plan between the two funds. |
| 01:51:17.70 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | so it's a formal resolution confirming that um so um but technically if a council wanted to you know switch renege on that promise they could just create another resolution correct okay so we just need to you know put a spotlight on this so people know it |
| 01:51:35.20 | Adam Politzer | So, it gets that |
| 01:51:36.44 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:51:39.90 | Adam Politzer | It requires a little more maneuvering than just, hey, we don't want to do that. |
| 01:51:43.86 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Yeah, good. Okay, thank you. |
| 01:51:50.32 | Adam Politzer | Okay, recognizing conversations about OPEB and the pension trust, there's two things that I'm recommending. One is actually establishing the trust as fiduciary funds. Currently, as we've established the trust, they are reported as a portion, as a note in our financial statements. So they will show up not in the face value, per se, of the general fund balance, but rather as a note to the fund balance. I'm recommending that we actually take the formal action by resolution to establish the to fiduciary funds. So they will be reported on our books as separate funds. It doesn't change any of the funding stream. It doesn't change anything else. It just simply makes it much easier for everybody to see What's happening? It also makes it much easier when we talk about funding them that you say. we want to make a transfer to this fund from the general operating. and you make that resolution and that action and then an amendment to the budget. It just simply makes it easier to track and to report. The second recommendation is, as we discussed earlier, is shifting the UAAL to the non-departmental. This is strictly to make it more visible and to recognize that it is not truly a percentage of payroll. It is not based, the cost is not based on what the payroll is. It is based on the actual bill received by CalPERS. We had some conversation at the Finance Committee about how much of that really should belong to active employees as opposed to retirees. And looking at the information available from CalPERS, I've split that up, basically apportioned it, because they do not report the UAL separately. It is simply incurred cost. But try to apportion it so that a percentage of it is then incorporated into active employee payroll based on the employees who are eligible for that, because we do have employees that do not have any unfunded accrued liability. and then we have employees that do. And so we've assigned, basically... matched those up. It is not a pure actuarial science. But it is pretty darn precise. So that would give us a little bit more of a distribution. Again, the conversation being if whether or not we would want to kind of back into that for the current fiscal year or simply go forward. I do recommend it going forward simply because it does emphasize that this is not a negotiable cost. It is a fixed cost. |
| 01:54:14.30 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Melanie before, sorry. |
| 01:54:14.98 | Unknown | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:54:17.86 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. Could you explain for everybody a little bit more detail? You said there are employees that really can't accumulate an unfunded accrued liability. Could you explain which employees those are? |
| 01:54:31.89 | Adam Politzer | It's not unfunded. Thank you. |
| 01:54:37.61 | Adam Politzer | Yes. What happens is in both, well, we do have three plans. We have police, fire, and miscellaneous. In each of those three plans, there's technically three tiers, one, two, and three. One is the long-term employees who've been in CalPERS for a long time. Two are the people who have CalPERS credit over a certain amount of time and are also city employees. So it may not all be credit here, but it or they may not necessarily be here, but they may be somewhere else and they're still in CalPERS. So they're kind of the second tier. obligation. And then there's tier three or what we call PEPRA and those are relatively new to within the last two years to CalPERS. They haven't been in the system long enough to accrue. any unfunded liability and their benefits are considerably lower than tier one or tier two. So, when we talk about the payroll associated with employees, And when I say as a percentage of payroll, I calculate the percentage of payroll based on which tier the employee falls into. And it is particularly notable because police and miscellaneous look very different when you come to the actuarial behavior. They look differently, they act differently, their results are different. And Mr. Bartell went into that pretty detailed last time. So I can go into some of what we had. And last week we did present this, and I apologize. It was caught by Councilmember Pfeiffer reminded me that I had left out the fire department. And I apologize for not having an active fire department. I dropped them. Sorry, guys. Thank you. Thank you. It's nothing personal. We're glad they're there. Unfortunately, I'd left off their actuarial liability. We still have to pay it. What you see here is the market value of assets. That is the money in the bank that CalPERS recognizes as ours, associated with our employee benefits. Then we have the net present value of benefits. And I don't want to go into the detail of how all that's calculated, but basically the upshot is what's not funded. And at $17.2 million, that is the result of the most recent actuarial study. That will fluctuate. Mr. Bartell indicated that he thought it was going to go up given the market behavior of the last two years, which would be expected. So our funding percentage is actually quite healthy. It's 79.57. There are some nuances to working with CalPERS that 100% funding is actually not a good thing. But obviously anything below 60%, 65% would cause great amount of heartburn in your admin services director. So what we look at is how do we want to attack or plan for what this might mean to our payments in the long run. As you notice there, the funding percentages, the unfunded liabilities look a little bit different between police and miscellaneous. That's just, that's again referring back to the nuances between tier one, tier two, PEPRA, as well as, you know, as Mr. Bartell mentioned, police tend to stay longer at a single employer, so majority of our employees in the police department are in tier one. On the other hand, many of our employees in miscellaneous are PEPRA. all of our new ones and we have a handful of tier two |
| 01:57:55.67 | Adam Politzer | Looking at the funding and reporting, this is how I've broken it out, looking at a percentage basis. So if I convert the UAL for active employees to a percentage of payroll, which is actually what is included in the budget, that would be those first two columns. So you see the percentage of 6.99% for police and 3.76% for active. That would add on to the percentages that are currently in place. For reference, PEPRA employees are 6.78. |
| 01:58:28.09 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:58:28.24 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:58:28.24 | Adam Politzer | 100%. |
| 01:58:28.27 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | present no and just for clarification though just to be clear for instance for police 2016-17 that 131 796 that's not the total for unfunded liability. That's just our payment. |
| 01:58:44.49 | Adam Politzer | No. It's actually, it's even different, more different than that. I'm sorry. The 131, 796 is the portionment that I've assigned to active employees based on their pro rata makeup of the accrued life. |
| 01:58:45.11 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | It's a good thing. Okay. |
| 01:58:58.24 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | of the accrual. Okay, so then let me skip over then to total you a L. That's just our payment. That's our payment that for this year Yes, the total you a L is like how many millions? the total just for police |
| 01:59:14.03 | Adam Politzer | For police is 7.3 million. you |
| 01:59:17.60 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 01:59:17.63 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:59:17.88 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 01:59:17.88 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 01:59:17.90 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 01:59:18.41 | Adam Politzer | Yeah. |
| 01:59:19.00 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | And just to clarify, you mentioned that these numbers were based on the latest actuarial or the most recent actuarial study, and that was the 2014 numbers. |
| 01:59:31.47 | Adam Politzer | Yeah. |
| 01:59:31.65 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 01:59:31.77 | Adam Politzer | I believe so. |
| 01:59:32.36 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 01:59:32.85 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Sorry, one more clarification. The unfunded liability is the amount over the actual liability that's the result of the failure of the fund to perform at 7.5%. Have I got that right? Predominantly. So the actual liability for police is? How much? It's more than that. Yeah. How many millions? How many millions? |
| 01:59:57.02 | Adam Politzer | It's more than that. Yeah, how many millions? If I can back up just a little bit. When we look at pension funding, there's normal cost. That's the cost of the employee being here today. That's there, has nothing to do where they've been before other than the rate. |
| 02:00:00.48 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | That's right. |
| 02:00:12.09 | Adam Politzer | And it says, okay, the cost of that employee coming to work this year for contributions to CalPERS is X percent. As I mentioned, for PEPRA, it's 6.78. I believe it's close to 10.5 for Tier 1 and miscellaneous employees. What happens then is the unfunded. In the past, and this is one of the key things to keep in mind, and the reason why I don't say it's 100% due to market behavior is going forward, I would agree with that statement. In the past, I cannot agree with that statement because systematically, CalPERS did not charge employers with the intent to pay off the unfunded liability. That has changed. So now the intent is this will be paid off. It may be 30 years from now, 20 years from now, but it will be paid off. And that is a substantive change. So we will see higher payments as a result of that, but we will see an end in sight. |
| 02:01:06.96 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | But the answer to my question is the police safety, the market value of assets, as of June 30, 2014, just for police safety. is 23 million. 900,000. Correct. The actuarial liability as of June 30th. 2014 is 31 million. 200,000 that difference. is that 7.3. |
| 02:01:28.12 | Adam Politzer | Correct. And that's the unfunded part. That's the stuff we have to pay no matter what. And that is broken up then into our annual accrued liability payments of $708,964 for 2016-17. So what I have done here is distribute this. If you look at traditional funding and traditional budgeting This far right column includes all of the UAL as a portion of payroll, percentage of payroll, 42.49%. If you are understaffed, you might underfund that. And historically, that has been a contributor to the UAL growing. The way CalPERS now bills us, we just come up short, so we don't want that. What we want to be sure is to split them out a little bit. What I've done instead is proposed to use that second column from the left, the active UAL as a percentage of payroll. This reflects the conversation that we had at the finance committee, saying, but wait a minute, there's the retirees, and that makes sense in non-departmental. That's where FIRE has been funded since that closed. But what about everybody else who's still here? This would assign an apportionment to the departments based on the payroll of those employees who are in that plan. |
| 02:02:45.21 | Adam Politzer | a little bit convoluted, but basically it's shifting from this far right column percentage to the second column as a percentage of payroll, with the remainder, that third column, being a fixed payment in non-departmental. |
| 02:03:00.82 | Councilmember Theodorus | And the current UAL for active, the 131, for example, for the police, Would that be a non-departmental, or would it be when you looked up police, the cost of our salaries? Because I'm a little concerned that when someone pulls that up that we need to know how much our active police budget is costing us. |
| 02:03:19.50 | Unknown | Yes. |
| 02:03:19.67 | Councilmember Theodorus | and we plan to cross-reference it or some or just keep it into the |
| 02:03:20.41 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:03:24.53 | Councilmember Theodorus | with the salaries and have everything else in the departmental. |
| 02:03:27.21 | Adam Politzer | What I'm proposing to do is exactly as you described. The active would be in the department. and the non-active would be a non-departmental. So it would split it up a little bit. Recognizing just I need to make sure that it's clear, even though it's active, that's a fixed payment. |
| 02:03:45.01 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Okay. So I'll hold my comment on the non-departmental strategy for the comment period. So we are looking at the 2016-2017 projections. I know the budget we're looking at, you know, future years as well. And as you know, Bartell was, you know, our unfunded pension liability goes up. The projection is that it will go up quite a bit. So will we also in this budget be, you know, projecting payments forward as well regarding the higher unfended pension liability? Yes. |
| 02:04:10.14 | Unknown | Quidditch. |
| 02:04:22.49 | Adam Politzer | Yes, and actually real quick, I'm going to jump into that because I do have a slide just for that. This is how the distribution alters a little bit. You see here at the very bottom an increase in charge that's actually made up by sewer. and other operating funds, because one of the components of this is how we distribute this back to the other operating funds rather than strictly 100% in the general fund. But the really important piece to be looking at is what it looks like when it's in the departments compared to prior. This is where we were talking about is how do we make the comparison. Those first two columns would show you the same approach in budgeting. And then this third column would show you the new approach to budgeting. |
| 02:05:08.33 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Yeah, I'll withhold my comment. |
| 02:05:14.22 | Adam Politzer | So it's really just kind of show that the money is still there, but it's in fact just showing it differently as our discussion. The setting up the trust is at a fiduciary fund real quick, just to let you know what has been happening, where our balances are at, the contributions through the current year. where we should end assuming no more interest rate, no more interest contributions, which, honestly, we've gotten a little bit. But for conservative's sake, let's assume we didn't get anything else for the remaining three months of the fiscal year. We would be at 1.35%. |
| 02:05:52.96 | Adam Politzer | OK. Now, as we discussed, you mentioned what do we do from here, how do we plan forward, what are we going to do about it. some of the options to look at and what is included, for just clarity's sake, what is included in the budget is $212,000 for OPEP. And that was built in and carried forward from prior years, Charlie had set this up very neatly, a kind of a surcharge on to benefits that allows for $212,000 to automatically be transferred for the OPEP. For these, several options that we have is to set aside funds, specifically into non-departmental, to transfer to the fiduciary funds using unreserved unassigned fund balance, some portion of that $800,000. Increasing operating costs by reducing other activities. So making a cut somewhere else in order to make an additional transfer. Reestablishing a policy direction, really making crystal clear what it is as a council you want to see the practice to become. Mr. Bartell mentioned that some of his clients use the whenever we have a surplus One-third goes to pension, one-third goes to capital, one-third goes to reserves. It's a very prudent approach. The question then is going to be what are the details of that? Is that going to be at mid-year? Is that going to be at year end? What is, you know, how do we want to go forward with this? But it's definitely an option. And I highly recommend that we have the policy discussion as we head early first quarter, second quarter of the next fiscal year. talking about what the level of funding should be, and this was something Mr. Bartell also touched on. Putting money in for the sake of money in is not necessarily doing anything about it. But looking at what is the appropriate level, what are we aiming for? What's our target? Partnering with that then is, how are we going to use it? Because it's hard to have a target if you don't know what you're using the target for. When are we planning to use the money? He recommended and supported some kind of strategy that looks at those long term obligations. He mentioned the spikes in years 22, 23, 21, 22, and 23. That would become a serious burden to the general fund and operations, particularly in public safety. That would be an area that we might want to use the trust fund dollars for, but then looking at how much do we put in to ensure that we've got the money to do that. building up the trust versus paying off PERS. He touched on this, I'd like to reinforce rather emphatically. that there is a big distinction, particularly in the state of California, between paying off into your trust and paying off PERSs. Either one counts towards your liability. is an asset. So when we are doing our audits and the auditors come back and say you have this much unfunded liability, they count the assets in either the trust or recorded with CalPERS. So that's an equal opportunity. However, CalPERS has two caveats. If they lose money, they lose it all and you get, they have a much more volatile swing. So if you lose it, you pay off and they lose money, you've lost it. The idea of the trust is that it's not so volatile. You may not gain as much, but neither do you run the risk of losing it. And in an in particular market where you're looking at concerns about whether or not they can actually make their interest projections, that's of concern. Secondly, and probably even more important, though futuristic, if you reach 100% funding in CalPERS, they do not reduce your contributions for normal. and many other pension systems, when you contribute, it can count. And if you reach 100%, 105% funding, as many did in the early 90s and mid-90s, you can reduce your annual contribution. CalPERS does not do that. So you, in effect, don't get credit for it until they start to lose money. So keeping your money close becomes very important. The trust is the only real funding mechanism for OPEP at this point, so that's obviously where we would wanna have that. I just wanted to make those pretty clear that the benefits, are a little more nuanced, but they definitely have some perks to being in the trust, some safety being in the trust as opposed to in PERS. Both account for liabilities. So part of what we've talked about a little bit at the Finance Committee kind of touched on and what I have gleaned from the conversations with council is really a need to take a look at the policy direction, is to set some standards for what we want to do going forward so that the next budget that comes to you includes whatever it is that you've directed. Thank you. |
| 02:10:44.95 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Now it's Sure. So to be clear, we've done no work yet on establishing a policy to superfund, as I'm calling it, the pension or open. Not an ongoing or current policy. Okay. And so if we wanted to put a number in, we wouldn't, at the moment, we'd be just plucking out of air. Is that sort of right? |
| 02:10:50.10 | Adam Politzer | yet. now. |
| 02:10:56.22 | Adam Politzer | Not an ongoing, recurring. |
| 02:11:08.17 | Adam Politzer | More or less, yes. |
| 02:11:08.24 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. Yeah, okay. So what would it take to, you said try and do it in the first quarter of the new fiscal year. Do you think it can be done in about three to six months? |
| 02:11:19.12 | Adam Politzer | Yes. Absolutely. |
| 02:11:21.90 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay. Thank you. |
| 02:11:27.19 | Adam Politzer | Any questions on this information? |
| 02:11:35.14 | Adam Politzer | Okay, heading into the items we did not include. Real quick, we discussed having an assistant building inspector or code enforcement officer. There was consensus that there is a need for code enforcement and that the activities in the building department are certainly enough to need some support. However, we really didn't have consensus on how to go forward from that. The proposed position would be $118,917. the other options include increasing the contract with CSG, who's our current vendor or some other vendor for some level of service toward that. That would be one option. Okay. |
| 02:12:13.71 | Councilmember Theodorus | Yes, sir. What does that mean that it's not including the draft budget? I mean, what happened? Do we don't take, it's just not going to be in the budget unless we take some action. I'm not sure. Correct. What you'd like us to consider. So. |
| 02:12:13.73 | Adam Politzer | Yes, sir. |
| 02:12:23.35 | Adam Politzer | Correct. What I wanted to make sure is that items that the finance committee heard about from the departments and did not have agreement necessarily on how to go forward and that administration decided not to recommend in the draft budget, that the full council got to hear about them. |
| 02:12:41.05 | Councilmember Theodorus | So on this specific one, so they would stick with CSG at an hourly rate. |
| 02:12:45.86 | Adam Politzer | but not at a higher level of service. |
| 02:12:48.14 | Councilmember Theodorus | Okay. |
| 02:12:48.35 | Adam Politzer | So we would continue at our current level of service. |
| 02:12:51.58 | Councilmember Theodorus | Okay, and we would not expend that $118,000. Correct. Thanks. |
| 02:12:54.75 | Adam Politzer | Correct. |
| 02:12:57.03 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Yeah, it's interesting because I was going to ask about this. I know there's a need. Thank you. |
| 02:13:03.04 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. The body cameras for the police department, this is something that nationally is becoming quite the trend, and there's been a lot of conversation over the past few years Recognizing that on average annually we receive less than one complaint. per year. Um, about police behavior, the regulatory nature of body cameras is not really a benefit to the city to justify a $95,000 cost. evidentiary value is still being developed across the country as well but at this time we're recommending looking at it later on, seeing as it develops, what the opportunities are, how much it would actually benefit the city of Sausalito. So that was not recommended to go forward at this point. It's about $95,000 to provide every officer with body cameras. The license plate readers, this is for the additional locations. We mentioned that we're proposing for three locations. This is for the additional four. additional maintenance the maintenance is not on the same linear progression But it is $348,000 additional for the remaining locations. Some of those are a little more difficult to get to, and we anticipate higher installation costs. But this would, again, do the same thing, but just provide more access points for the license plate readers to be used. We're recommending that this be held off until we get some data back on the first three locations. Okay, the new position details. As I mentioned earlier, this is where we talked about what does it actually cost for having a new employee as opposed to some of the other options that we have. The first one, which is not included, was where that $118,917 came in. It includes a salary of $87,000. PERS, because it would be a PEPRA employee, is lower. Cafeteria plan, that's for employee plus one. And then other benefits. All employees per state and federal law have certain benefits, and we estimate those at about 10%. Thank you. cafeteria plan that's for employee plus one and then other benefits all pet all employees per state and federal law have certain benefits and we estimate those at about 10% that includes FICA Medicare workers comp and employment We included the escalators that are currently in the MOU for years two through five. So total cost out annually would be at about $168. At the end of the five years... I believe actually steps go seven years. The contract building in code enforcement, using our current contract for $85, we're saying 2,000 hours. A full-time employee is budgeted at 2080, 2080 hours, but assuming that there's at least two weeks out of the year that we're not going to use somebody, we're saying that's $170,000. with an escalator of 2.5% to 3%, as most of our contracts have. the parking enforcement officer, As I mentioned, it was $83,817. That is a base salary of $53,575. with escalators per the MOU up to 117,000 in year five. The part-time sworn and part-time emergency management, and I apologize, the part-time emergency management is listed here at $20,000. It is included in the budget at $25,000. But you'll see the 10% for other benefits. including The part time emergency management calculation is completely wrong. My apologies, that is actually $22,200. It is correct in the budget. It's not correct here. The landscape foreman, is estimated to be $110,000, including a base salary of $72,000, with the benefits as itemized, replacing the DPW division manager at $169,000. Contract construction. is $175 per hour. and 2,000 hours, again $350,000. It would be the highest cost, but similar, what we would feel would be similar level of service. A lower level of service and obviously much lower cost would be using a lead worker, so promoting an existing employee, not replacing them. and adding an additional landscape contract for $15,000 Approximately $10,000 in increased costs associated with the employee promotion and $15,000 for the contract, so $25,000. Upgrading the assistant planner to a senior, you can see the salary increase is $7,500 and the nominal increase in PERS and other benefits for $8,759. |
| 02:17:39.72 | Adam Politzer | And then down below, finally, the administrative analyst at $67,000, totaling with benefits $98,189. That is compared to the finance manager at $138,000. So these are the positions that we've discussed throughout the evening. All of them have been included with the exception of the assistant building official. |
| 02:18:05.64 | Adam Politzer | Please note all of the new employees would be considered PEPRA employees. |
| 02:18:10.35 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Well, unless you hired them from, and they already had seniority. |
| 02:18:12.37 | Adam Politzer | another city. Yeah, if they have CalPERS credit, then obviously that would be a question. Okay. Any questions on this? |
| 02:18:24.00 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | So... No, I have no questions on this page. |
| 02:18:27.54 | Adam Politzer | Thank you. |
| 02:18:27.66 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | at this time. |
| 02:18:28.67 | Adam Politzer | Okay. Next steps. Now that I've buried you in information. We're looking for feedback. If there are areas of this conversation that there is consensus by the council, we would love to know that so that we know that we can move on, include it, and move forward. Or not include it if that's the consensus. If there is additional questions or additional information that you need in order to have further conversation, we'd like to know that as soon as possible so we can get that to you. there would be a public meeting and review of this budget and the accompanying resolutions on June 14th. Then the adoption with those resolutions would be June 28th. |
| 02:19:14.20 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Okay, so how to proceed tonight? It's 9.25. We haven't had public comment on the budget, and we haven't finished with council questions. So, you know, right now I just want to do a quick poll of the council and see kind of how we want to move forward. My suggestion would be, that we take a five-minute break that we come back and take public comment and that we follow up with, whatever specific questions we have tonight understanding we're not going to finish the budget tonight And then we have another finance committee meeting. I think next week, next Wednesday. |
| 02:19:49.66 | Adam Politzer | June 1st. June 1st. |
| 02:19:50.30 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | That is an open meeting. and then we come back on June 14th this will be an agenda item again And so that's how I would suggest that we proceed this evening. Anybody on the council have an objection to proceeding now? |
| 02:20:03.75 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | No, I fully agree with you. That's the way to proceed. Thank you. |
| 02:20:05.28 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | So that's the way to put it. |
| 02:20:05.96 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 02:20:06.04 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | And I'm going to go. |
| 02:20:06.11 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | I think that's a good plan. |
| 02:20:06.35 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Okay, so we're going to take a five-minute break, and then we're going to come back with public comments. It's going to be very exciting. Thank you. |
| 02:20:51.74 | Councilmember (likely Ray) | you new man, Steven Blue. Hear his heartbeat a little time. |
| 02:20:57.00 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | All right. |
| 02:21:00.85 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | All right, you people, let's go. |
| 02:21:03.32 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:21:04.13 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | . |
| 02:21:08.01 | Unknown | I |
| 02:21:11.87 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | All right. All right, we're back on the record. . We're back on the record where you are at the public comment for business item 1A, which also happens to be the only item on our budget, or only item on our agenda for the fiscal year 2016-2018 budget. because of the late hour, I would ask that people try to keep their comments brief. And if you have already heard from somebody, and they're making the same point, you might say ditto or you might want to refrain but anyway um okay you say you agree okay so the first I'm gonna call off three people and you guys can just come up and line up the first one I have is Bill Hines H Y N E S the second one Shelby van meter and the third one is Aaron singer Oh, well, all right then. We will not hear from Bill tonight. Yes, Shelby. Okay, so the next one is Aaron Singer and then Peter Van Meter is next. |
| 02:22:17.14 | Shelby Van Meter | Okay, here I am. Good evening. I'm a new voice. A new voice. Good evening, Mayor Hoffman. Good evening. Members of the City Council, I'm Shelby Van Meter, President of Sausalito Beautiful. First, thank you for all your thoughtful consideration of the draft budget. which we know represents hours and hours and hours of work discussion and maybe even some hair tearing Staff and the Finance Committee what a job. Thank you for approaching this imposing task with thoughtfulness for public requests. You're going to hear this evening. We really are excited about the results we see in the draft budget from our beautification initiative, which began about two or three years ago. We're very, very pleased and very excited that several projects we've promoted for a long time are represented in the line items of the draft budget. We strongly urge you to approve the following allocations as drafted and any still under discussion as listed by Melanie. One, funds for the Civic Center landscape beautification. The Civic Center is the heart and soul of our community. It speaks to the health of our city, as we know, and it clearly is time for the landscapes to have a facelift. Two, we urge you to approve additional funding for the median improvements. We hear so many complaints about the medians, and we know you do too, rightfully so. North Bridgeway is the gateway to our city. for all the world to see. South City of Beautiful has appointed a committee that's working with staff to improve the medians and we've allocated some money from community donations as a show of partnership. Three, we ask that you approve enhanced funding for overall landscape care and maintenance. Approving staff's recommendation that a landscape foreman be hired to double as a hands-on worker is critical. Increasing the landscape maintenance staff from three to four would make a big difference in the DPW's ability to address the city's extensive public landscapes, which are continually and endlessly in need of attention. Please, please approve this new hire. We also ask that you approve draft allocated funds for Caledonia streetscape improvements. To supplement city funds, we've earmarked donor money for enhancing Caledonia Street's appearance. And we've also appointed a committee to inventory what's there and make recommendations. We think that by working with the city and stakeholders, we can come together and come up with some improvements that will make a very pleasant difference. Finally, we ask that you continue to support Sausalito Beautiful's. That is the community's passion for making sure that our public landscapes are the best they can be. Please hold current draft allocations firm. If you choose to make increases, all the better. Thank you so much for your attention. |
| 02:25:19.43 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. Okay, all right. Yes, Mr. Singer. |
| 02:25:29.65 | Aaron Singer | Hello, and thanks for the opportunity to speak with you. I'm Aaron Singer, owner of Seaplane Adventures down at the north end of town. I've lived and owned businesses here since 1994. I'm also a member of the Sausalito Chamber of Commerce Board, as well as a business advisory committee member. So some of the budget items that we're discussing tonight that I wanted to tease out, the business advisory committee budget line item, the hospitality committee line item, and the chamber kiosk program line item. These items represent the city's investment in our business community and in the Sausalito economy. I wanted to point out a few pieces of data that have come out just recently from Visit California. So in 2015 we had 13 million visitors come to the county of Marin. And they accounted for over $830 million in contribution to our economy. Out of that number, 1.5 million of those folks, 11%, came to Sausalito. And that represented $91 million spent in our little town by the tourism sector. There were 7,000 jobs that were accounted for in tourism in the county of Marin. In Sausalia alone, that's 770 jobs. That's quite a lot. That's in food service, in attractions, in entertainment, in retail, et cetera. The $55,000 roughly over those three segments, specifically $11,000 for the kiosk program, $37,000 for hospitality, $10,000 for business advisory committee. We are asking you as a council to continue to support business in this city with what is really a nominal level of investment, given the amount of economic contribution that specifically our sector, tourism and hospitality, contributes to our city. Okay. you You should be investing in the business committee because it contributes a huge amount of tax base to our city and to all the things we've been discussing in the budget. You should be investing in Sausalito as a brand. And finally, you should be investing in us, business owners. We live and work and vote here, too. Okay. And that's what we're talking about. |
| 02:28:43.38 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:28:50.74 | Peter Van Meter | Hi, Peter Van Meter. I have a number of topics to comment on. If I run out of time, maybe I'll come back at the end. But first of all, I want to amplify what Aaron has just said. The support of these line items relative to the business community is essential to maintain the strength of our retail and business sector. A lot of your income comes from the property tax. You want to grow that if you can. One of the ways that happens is promote the quality of visitor experience in Sausalito The numbers are astounding to me. What is in your budget is only three tenths of 1% of your general fund budget If you respond to some increases to the request for budgeting tonight, it's still going to be less than 1% of your general fund budget. In other words, your policy decision on these topics of support to the business community have nothing to do with money in my opinion, because it's not the dollars. The dollars are practically invisible in the scheme of your budget. So what you're doing, if you denied those expenses, it's saying we don't care. about business maintaining development and those revenues generated by our business community in Sausalito. The second thing that I'd like to comment on is the switch of parking funds to support your general plan development. The general plan program is absolutely essential. It's been put off for years, as we all know, and that's one way of assisting the funding. It absolutely makes sense because as you started out, you know, we're going to start the circulation element to begin with. Now, you rightfully have brought that to the entire general plan and that's one way to support the funding for that I do support the switch of maintenance staff to add an additional person and I'll comment one thing that on the fireboard Where our pensions are with M. Sarah. and not CalPERS, just as a point of information, all retirees are 100% funded. All unfunded liability is credited to active employees. So I don't know if your allocation between actives and inactives really pertains to CalPERS, but I'll just tell you as far as MSERA is concerned, that's the way it works. |
| 02:31:14.04 | Peter Van Meter | Thank you. |
| 02:31:15.25 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 02:31:15.56 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | you Okay. The next three I have up here is Michael Graunick, David Sudo, and Yolanda Young. |
| 02:31:31.15 | Michael Graunick | What I had was is already in works based on conversation I just had with Mr. Goldman. I'll give you a heads up. It's coming. My name is Michael. I represent four of the business owners in town, the laundromat, the village cleaners, the Pilates studio, and. the 7-11 and You can imagine that all those businesses are businesses where customers tend to go somewhere else if the parking lot is full. And we have seven spots and share seven with what I've been told by Mr. Wiener is actually one of the last vestiges of 72-hour parking in the city. So Mr. Goldman will be preparing a report. And while I recognize that everybody might think folks that use Pilates Studio should be walking, and not demanding close parking. The rest of us would appreciate your support in reviewing that report when Mr. Goldman gets it to you and supporting getting that change to two hours. And it's actually, I will close by saying, This is my gift to you guys because you're looking for a new parking enforcement officer and changing those signs to two hours will support that cost. So thank you. |
| 02:32:38.47 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. David, Yolanda, and Christopher Holbrook. David? No? All right, Yolanda, you're up. |
| 02:32:54.58 | Yolanda Young | Good evening, my name is Yolanda Young. I'm the executive assistant at the Saucedo Chamber of Commerce. Thank you for your time this evening. I'd like to speak to the line item on the kiosk. My name is Yolanda Young, the Executive Assistant at the Sausalito Chamber of Commerce for the past years. I came to work in Sausalito not knowing anything about this city. I've since grown to love this beautiful town. Although I don't currently live in Sausalito, I did have the pleasure of living here for a few years. In that time, I came to learn what it was that was so special about this place. the attractions, the shops, the restaurants, the hotels, and all the people that run them. I've come to personally know many of these business owners. listening to the concerns and also applauding their successes. I've sat quietly in the background, confidently watching as our fearless leader, Una Kavanaugh, staunchly advocated for Sausalito's businesses, yet never forgetting the residents. Although I don't presently live in Sausalito. You could say that I have left my heart here in Sausalito. Please help Sausalito to be the good story visitors take home. with them. Be a part of a successful business community environment. withholding funds from the kiosk and hospitality programs and services established through the efforts of many would clearly send a message to the Saucelito business owners and our visitors that you do not care about them or the positive fiscal impact they have on Sausalito. Una may be leaving, but I am not, and the chamber won't let this go quietly. |
| 02:34:46.04 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:34:47.02 | Yolanda Young | Okay. |
| 02:34:47.58 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Okay, Christopher Holbrook, and then I have two more, Keith Kennedy and Una, your batting cleanup tonight. |
| 02:35:01.31 | Christopher Holbrook | My name is Christopher Holbrook, and I am a lifelong Sausalito resident and a home and business owner here in Sausalito. Over the past 15 years, I have served on the Arts Commission, the Hospitality Committee, and I am currently on the Business Advisory Committee and the Chamber Board. Tonight, I stand before you as the voice for a town that cannot speak. I am a town that is like no other in the world. I am your baby. I need to be washed and changed often. I get dressed every morning just like you, but I need your help. My shirt is the majestic bay waters that transport hundreds of thousands of people by ferry each year. Their first impression is important to me. I ask that you vote to give the hospitality committee a raise in their allowance, not take it away. I need the money to help fund the kiosk and pay for advertising and marketing. These are customer acquisition costs that come with running any successful business. I want to be a thriving business community that welcomes people from all over the world. I need your help. My pants are the paved roads where over a million bicycles come to see me each year. Some of these people are here for the first time, and others have come to see my beautiful baby face again. Some visitors will only stay an hour, others will stay the night. In either case, they will spend money to support me. I am concerned for their safety. They need safer roads to travel on. They need a safer way to leaving by ferry. I need your help. My face is the local businesses, restaurants, and hotels that bring in millions of dollars in tax revenue and TOT taxes. Over the past 30 years, I've increased our tax income by millions of dollars. Yet these funds are not put back into the infrastructure of our business community that would help bring in more tax dollars. I need a new pair of clothes. I need your help. Why is it? that when decisions are made for my well-being, we spend tens of thousands of dollars hiring outside agencies and independent contractors to give their professional opinion on what is best for me. Just because you were dad, does not make you a good father. They've never held me in their arms before. They are not my parents. Thank you. you as city staff and council members are. I need your help. Everybody seems to know what is best for me. Yet no one has ever asked what I want. Well, now I am old enough to speak, and this is what I want. but I need your help. I want you to help financially support my sister. The Sausalito Chamber of Commerce. She has always had your back even when she didn't agree with the decisions you and city staff and council members were making. She wants to walk like our cousins. Sonoma, Napa, Healdsburg, and Carmel, whose parents give them an allowance to make their town a better place to visit. I need your help. |
| 02:38:32.62 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:38:33.43 | Christopher Holbrook | I want you to help financially support my older brothers. |
| 02:38:33.62 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Are you almost done? |
| 02:38:37.21 | Christopher Holbrook | the Hospitality Committee, and the Business Advisory Committee. They have helped raise me. and made me the town that I am. Now it is time for me to support them. They also need an allowance. They spend their money wisely. Thank you. |
| 02:38:51.50 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | They spend their money Thank you. |
| 02:38:53.70 | Christopher Holbrook | They spend it on me. |
| 02:38:55.32 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. Una, is he using your time? No. Thank you. |
| 02:39:08.89 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Okay, I have Keith Kennedy, Una, and then I have two adds, Mark Flaherty and Adam Kravatsky. Yes, Keith. |
| 02:39:17.41 | Keith Kennedy | Madam Mayor, I'm Keith Kennedy. I live on prospect. Uh, to move you along a little faster, I sent home or told them they could go home the six other people who were geared to talk about the cameras that we like in the budget the three sites we think it's a very financially prudent way to go. But. I would like to take this time to say to the mayor and the vice mayor and Adam and Melanie, What a tremendous job they did putting this budget together. It's very easy to come in and talk about the pieces that maybe don't work, but this group I attended almost every meeting, including when we did the mid-year review. And I think that the entire |
| 02:40:08.81 | Unknown | mid, |
| 02:40:15.71 | Keith Kennedy | Council. minus those two in the audience, ought to give all of you an applaud for the excellent job you've done. Thank you. |
| 02:40:25.09 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:40:28.97 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. I think there are plenty of you, actually. Okay, so I have Una and Mark and Adam. Those are my next, but if you guys want to switch around, that's fine. That's fine. |
| 02:40:43.03 | Mark Flaherty | So I'm Mark Flaherty, General Manager of the Inn Above Tide. I'm also the co-chair for the Hospitality Business Development Committee, which was founded in 2004 by the city to recommend specific expenditures to increase hotel occupancies, especially in the off-season. Our mission is to enhance the visitor experience to Sausalito and to direct transient occupancy tax funds to aid in accomplishing this goal. TOT receipts for Sausalito's four hotels have increased dramatically over the last several years, in part because of improvements that various hotels have accomplished for their properties and increased occupancy rates and increased room rates as well. The committee has made recommendations for action and funded projects, sometimes seeking matching funds from the chamber or other individual merchants. These things have helped us to participate in promotions and to create new brochures and materials to help encourage greater visits to Sausalito, have greater numbers of visitors enjoying themselves here for longer periods of time, spending more money, and enriching the city's coffers by extension TOT is intended to promote cultural events and other activities that would improve hotel businesses as well as the visitor's experience, but the actual amount of TOT devoted to those categories in the city budget is infinitesimal, $30,000 a year for the Hospitality Business Development Committee. Our transient occupancy tax receipts are well over a million dollars. Until last year, the bulk of our budget was used to pay for salaries at the visitors' kiosk and the Ice House docent program, which are vital staffs, but we really want to move in a direction where, with this upcoming budget, we focus more on trying to increase corporate partnerships and build new partnerships to drive higher spending corporate midweek business to the town. fill our hotel rooms that are existent, not hotel rooms but to actually broaden our all-year business we have some wonderful properties in the town award-winning properties and very special places to stay I know for the end of the tide travel and leisure magazine rated us in the top 20 hotels in the world last year. Con and Nass Traveler, the top 10 hotels in the United States, and number one in Northern California. It's because of the work of my staff that we were able to accomplish that. Also, very careful and hardworking PR and marketing agents. Comes at a cost for us personally as a business. I know that Cosmadrona also plows a lot of money into their PR marketing. But we don't operate in a vacuum. We as a group of hotels contribute much to the community and we need the city to assist in building that corporate midweek business for our existing hotel rooms and just in conclusion the hotel business we sell an experience, we don't just sell a place to rest your head and we need robust hotels, robust businesses that are retailers and restaurants in order to broaden our business and we ask you to support Thank you. robust hotels, robust businesses that are retailers and restaurants in order to broaden our business. And we ask you to support the funding for this committee. Thank you. |
| 02:43:43.27 | Unknown | you Thank you. |
| 02:44:34.22 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:44:34.24 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:44:39.04 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | So I have three, I have Adam and Jeff. Shrash came at the last second, so those are the three cards I have left. |
| 02:44:46.89 | Adam Kravatsky | Good evening, honorable counsel. Ms. Mayor Adam Krivach, 840 Ulima Street. I would like to speak a little bit about the general plan update process that is being budgeted here. I appreciate the fact that the community committed funds for starting the process, and I believe this is a landmark effort. now I'd like to talk about it, how we could best make this process a useful and very helpful operation in the community. We should not think of creating another document You should. think about it as combining all the projects under the umbrella and into single effort to address all the issues that are outstanding in the community, like waterfront development, arrival experience, way finding, those issues that various components of the general plan address. the American Institute of Architects and the American Institute of Planners initiated a process whereby they innovate and short-circuit some of the long commitments that had to be made and that made the general plan updates such expensive processes. There are examples in the United States which demonstrate how this can be done more efficiently and more effectively. And I would like to personally suggest that the community invests a few thousand dollars in its planning director and director of community development to send him visiting these communities where such examples have been carried out and learn firsthand from those communities how they short-circuited the long process, how they saved money, and how they created more action-oriented documents for general plan updates. Thank you. |
| 02:47:46.80 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you, Adam. Okay. Thank you. So the last two I have are. I see Jeff Sirach approaching. |
| 02:47:56.14 | Jeff Sirach | Yes, I am. Thank you. |
| 02:47:56.87 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | and I see Una and then I see Miss Nichols back there waving a card so all right Jeff you're |
| 02:48:02.52 | Jeff Sirach | All right, good evening Mayor Hoffman, City Council and staff. Saw Sue is very unique in many ways. It's a Piscarrest community with incredible views, landscape, and waterfront. a truly one-of-a-kind place. It's one of my kind place, though. while beautiful on the outside and is there is really to show the rest of the world, what it's all about. The Hospitality Fund has a meager budget of $30,000 since 2004. Yes, 2004. when Facebook was still called the Facebook. |
| 02:48:37.15 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:48:37.76 | Jeff Sirach | and not become mainstream as is today. Yoshi, Mark, and I, founders of the Hospitality Committee, along with Una Kavanaugh, Christopher Holbrook, have worked miracles. in putting the $30,000 to use. We've not been afraid to put ourselves out there in the world promoting, marketing our town with visitor brochures, visitor maps, San Francisco travel marketing and promotion materials, San Francisco ferry terminal videos, Amgen Tour California, low season marketing, lighting of even lighting of downtown, showcasing Sausalito as a brand and a destination. really grassroots marketing or Sausalito 1.0. We have a world-class business community, one that you should all be proud of. Hotels, the Conde Nast Awards, and travel and leisure, as Mark mentioned. Restaurants are Mission Star rated nominees. Top 100 restaurants, Wine Spectator Award nominees, retail shops that win awards with GQ, Men's Health, and RIN Magazine. These businesses I'm referring to are all long-term, independently-owned restaurateurs, hoteliers, retail shop owners, many who live here in Sausalito. These people are the fabric of the community who will never turn their back on the city, a nonprofit organization or charity here in town. You won't see this from the big box stores or the corporate shops and retail entities of the world. Since we are independent and entrepreneurs here in Sausalito, we need the support of the city to move to the next level. We need to move from 2004 to 2016 and beyond. Move to Facebook 2.0 of today. We cannot keep doing what we're doing. $30,000 does not provide the necessary funds to promote a world-class destination. TOT was $636,000 in 2004. TOT is estimated to be $1.6 million this year. If you want more bikes, keep what you're doing. If you want to make a better guest experience, let's move to the next level, Sausalito 2.0. Then let's set aside the proper funds to make this happen. We're not suggesting more visitors. We're suggesting integrated marketing and PR campaign program that would target corporate businesses for small meetings, lunches, dinners here in Sausalito, ones that would incorporate business meetings Monday through Thursday, functions that would incorporate our world-class hotels, restaurant, event spaces, and team building businesses, targeting a segment that typically spends 15% to 20% more than businesses and leisure travel. Saucyde 2.0 is not cheap, but the ROI will definitely exceed the $60,000 investment needed to make it happen. Sales tax, TOT, marketing, indirect revenue to the city will definitely exceed that. We ask you to partner with the business community today to move us all in the next level in making 2004 a thing of the past. Thank you. |
| 02:51:40.63 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 02:51:47.42 | Unknown | Good evening. Una Kavana, CEO of the Sausalito Chamber of Commerce. |
| 02:51:52.97 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | And I might say this is Una's last appearance before the City Council. |
| 02:51:56.19 | Unknown | That may not be my last one, Jill. I still live here. Anyway. |
| 02:51:56.46 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. That'll be my last one, Jill. I still live here. Anyway. This is not cutting in your time. Thank you for your time. |
| 02:52:01.90 | Unknown | This is not good. No, exactly, starting from now. Right, I'm speaking. Regarding the hospitality line item of 30,000, should be more, not less. And the kiosk line item of 11K should be 20K, which is what we need. But firstly, I want to tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a professional young couple from London who moved to San Francisco. One of that professional couple was me, and I took a ferry over to Sausalito. Yes, I was a tourist. But dare I say it, I was a quality tourist with good taste and money. And I liked what I saw. I fell in love with the town because it was unique, because it had independent stores, not chain stores. And I wanted to live there. So the story has a happy ending. I get what I want. I moved here 22 years ago with my husband and we have been residents and homeowners since then. But this is not just my story. I have lots of friends who came as visitors to Sausalito and are now homeowners or renters or residents or business owners. They also came to visit Sausalito as a tourist. fell in love with the town and ended up living here. Moral of the story, tourists are not monsters, they are people just like you and me. And some of those people end up being residents who buy houses here, who rent apartments, who eat and wine and dine and spend money in the stores and generate money for the city of Sausalito. We want to attract this kind of quality tourist and visitor, like me and like my friends. I want to tell you another story. I joined the Sausalito Chamber of Commerce nine years ago because I loved my hometown. I wanted to help make Sausalito a better place to live, work, and play. I'm proud to say that after nine years, I have helped that happen. And I have worked hard Thank you. to grow the Sausalito Chamber into a professional, quality organization with a proven record for connecting and supporting businesses and residents. I have done this by the following, working and collaborating with the city of Sausalito, I have attended hundreds of City Council meetings, sometimes till 1am in the morning, advocating for businesses and residents on such examples as better directional signage, funding kiosk staff. I've attended, and if you'll bear with me, I'll finish it. Yes, you get the last. |
| 02:55:10.98 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Yes, you get the last city council meeting waiver. |
| 02:55:13.43 | Unknown | Okay. I have attended, I worked it out, 110 hospitality meetings, working out the best way to spend $30,000 out of $1.4 million this year. $30,000. And I've worked hard along with my colleagues on Hospitality Committee. I have also spent many more hundreds of hours meeting with city staff. Deb Fudge, the police. their bike rental companies, their Golden Gate Ferry, the Blue and Gold Ferry, to try to manage the visitor congestion situation and make it a more pleasant experience for the visitor and for the resident. Our overall goal is the same. to make it a better place to work, live and play. and to attract quality, not quantity, when it comes to visitors. And I've also spent a lot of time researching what other cities do and talking to my fellow CEOs in other towns. And I've got a great example for you. You know Nevada, that well-known tourist town we have up there? Right, well, their TOT is about the same as ours, 1.3. But this Nevada Chamber of Commerce gets 10% of that TOT to run the visitor center. They don't have a separate visitor center like we do. They just run it out of the chamber. Five days a week. I run the visitor center seven days a week in the summer. The other example is Little Mill Valley. We love to say how awful their city council is. Well, their city council have a contract with their Chamber of Commerce to run, guess what, the visitor centre. And that contract is reported on. The Chamber has no problem reporting on anything. because we have nothing to hide. we're doing a quality job. I'm here tonight because I love this town. Someone said to me, sitting up there, why are you coming? You're leaving. What do you care? I care because I love this town, and I've put in 22 years living here and nine years working my life. off. and I am proud to live here and I'm proud to work here. And I'm proud of our independent business owners who are willing to come to City Council at the end of a busy day to fight for what they believe is right. I want what these business people want and what our residents want. I want Sausalito to be a better place to live, work and play. And to do this, the city must support and invest in this town to keep it a quality town. If you want more bikes, keep doing what you're doing, because they're coming anyway. If you want better quality tourists, then you need to be doing better quality promotion. And you need to be putting money, investing money into getting that quality message so you get my kind of people coming to your town, spending money and living here. I'm proud of my town, I'm proud of my chamber, but I will not be proud of our city council if they take 30k away from hospitality and if they do not support the visitor chaos. Do the right thing. Invest in your town and make me and everyone else in this town proud of you. Thank you. |
| 02:59:08.19 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 02:59:19.38 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | That's going to be hard to follow, Vicki, but... Believe it or not, |
| 02:59:21.71 | Vicki Nichols | Believe it or not, I have TOT and hospitality on my list. Okay. |
| 02:59:25.07 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Okay. Thank you. |
| 02:59:26.20 | Vicki Nichols | And the reason my name is Vicki Nichols. The reason I have it on my list is when I was on the board of the Sausalito Historical Society. |
| 02:59:26.21 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | And then, |
| 02:59:26.42 | Unknown | Bye. |
| 02:59:26.50 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | It's free. |
| 02:59:33.33 | Vicki Nichols | A portion of the 30,000 that was set aside by a previous council from the TOT Helped subsidize the docents that we paid the board paid for down there. So I would go to the meetings and And I am now reminded that it has been 2004, so maybe it's time that the... Council did look at that amount and see if they can increase that. So I'm with you guys on that one. But what I wanted to talk about was two things. One, I want to encourage you to listen to Melanie that you got $800K there, but don't go crazy because it might get tight. The previous councils have done a good job. That's why we have such a robust capital improvement budget because they were tight and back to basics, I think, that Adam started. So I think you've seen a good budget. I want to talk about something really different because I was really looking at the numbers tonight, having done budgets corporately. And what I saw was 1.339 in the Tidelands Fund. So I want to spring an idea on you and see what you think. And that would be, you know, we all know that sea level rise is an approaching condition that we have around the bay. The counties, the cities now are working with the county to do the assessment for mitigations in our vulnerabilities. We are unique in the fact that we have this Tidelands Fund that can only be used for waterfront uses. From my other environmental work, when you go after big grants, it's always best if you have money to leverage. So if we could somehow, and I started this conversation with Charlie before he left, and i got a preliminary answer that he thought this would be legal to do i don't know how it can be done but uh if a percentage of that thailand's could be dedicated to uh sea level rise um planning mitigation whatever um we may start a fund that we would be able to use um in the future um i don't know of any other community that can do this but we like i said are very unique in that um |
| 03:00:10.59 | Unknown | because it's like, |
| 03:01:43.05 | Vicki Nichols | having that. So that's my pitch. If you'll just kind of think about that, that'd be great. Thanks. Thank you. |
| 03:01:51.61 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Okay, all right, I have no further cards. I see no one approaching the podium. I'm closing public comment on this, on the budget, on the one item on our agenda tonight. Um, so I'm, um... I think we're back to actually city council questions. Does anybody feel like we're done with questions by any stretch? yeah anybody no questions okay all right then um then we might as well we'll move into city uh we'll move into discussion i perceive this to be a relatively short discussion period tonight with longer follow-up of future meetings or and hopefully in between the meetings as well so i understand those of you might want to leave quietly and that's fine but we're going to keep going Yes. Oh yeah, and thank you to everybody for coming. And we bid Una a phone for a while. I think. So thank you. I have no doubt. I have no doubt. All right. So, yes. Council discussion. Can I... |
| 03:02:57.03 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | start sure just discussion I'm just comment okay yep so yeah so in looking at this I I |
| 03:02:57.73 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Sure, go ahead. |
| 03:03:06.84 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | need to think through the concept of the non-departmental fund because it could, it was touched upon earlier, it could be viewed as something that, you know, it seems to lower expenses or, you know, people have to look in different places to understand exactly what the full cost is. So I'm not sure about that, but I have an open mind, so I'll do a little bit more research on it first I'm hearing about that. I'm really glad we've got the MLK loan forgiveness worked in. Looking forward to that resolution. I am very concerned about the fact that we still have the Complete Streets grant program in there. The South Street, 2nd Street, Richardson Street, that whole program, that whole plan. the explanation that it is a placeholder and that it's going to be a future agenda item and we can always take it out that I can't go with that. I would rather take it out, have the agenda and the discussion in full public open disclosure and transparency, and then decide whether to put it in. I know that I am opposed to what I'm seeing in it. I don't think that we should be looking at widening those streets. And full disclosure, I live on that corridor, so I've had a number of people come up and talk to me about this. So I have a big issue about that. I also have questions around the Tourney Street Gangway because I think that... that that is not as high a priority, certainly not as things like the median, the far northern median, getting that under control immediately with getting, it just looks very, very sorry right now. And let's see, other comment I had, I think those were the highlights. And then I'll withhold my other comments about the pension OPEB stuff. I need to take a little bit closer look at some of those other things. And in terms of the discussion items as well, I'm really happy that I'm seeing the code enforcement officer in there. I also support the police, although I know that the post study said that they were really underfunded, I mean understaffed, and so I'm wondering if we don't need to just bite the bullet and look at budgeting in the future for a full-time officer. So anyway, those are my highlights. Okay, anybody? Yeah, I would like to go. |
| 03:06:15.01 | Councilmember Theodorus | Yeah, I would like to go. I think it's at this stage of the hour and where we are at the budget rather than general comments. First of all, I want to thank Melanie for all the work. It was a great presentation, and I echo Mr. Kennedy's comments that the staff and the Finance Committee did an excellent job. |
| 03:06:21.66 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:06:27.19 | Unknown | and, |
| 03:06:32.73 | Councilmember Theodorus | on this. What I might recommend we do rather than And by the way, only one request I have is, On these potential hires, I'd like to see what it would be hourly and, you know, a comparison of what it would be hourly and if we put them on full time and had a pension cost, I know you have some of them, but on each one, I'd like to have those numbers in front of us when we make a decision, but But I might recommend at this stage to see if there's any way we could take any of these. I mean, we could have general discussions, but I don't find them too illuminating if we just tick off things. If there's anything we could take off this list and narrow it down, then we could save people coming to have to speak on it or worry about it, and we can focus on what we're doing. So that's one comment. Other than that, I'm ready to withhold my comments until we actually get into each item. |
| 03:07:25.45 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | RARE TOWN. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:07:29.82 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I want to echo Tom's thanks of staff, and in particular, Melanie. I do not think that you may appreciate what it must be like to be a new finance director in this city and basically on your first day be told that you've got a budget to prepare for immediately. And this city is actually a complex. This is actually a fairly complex enterprise because of the various activities that we have going on here. So, Melanie, thank you. You've done an outstanding job. And that goes to the whole staff, all the department heads, all the work. I think the videos worked out really good, very informative. So a great big thanks to all. This was a Herculean task, and it was really important that everybody understands that. |
| 03:07:29.90 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 03:07:29.92 | Councilmember Theodorus | I'm sorry. |
| 03:07:29.97 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | I, |
| 03:08:36.91 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | I also would like to knock off some of these items if we can because, you know, If we got people interested in beautification cars and the business community and whatever, are we just saying, well, come back June 14th. We'll see where we are by then. I want to actually get some decisions made if we can. I personally am supportive in its entirety of the budget that staff has presented. I've worked on it for the last two months. I feel comfortable with it. I'm comfortable with what's included, and I'm comfortable with what's been excluded. One thing I would, however, ask us to think through and ask Melanie to think through, and that is I think the – so I'm comfortable with the level of investment in capital. I'm comfortable with the distribution of the investment among the capital. I do believe, however, we need to establish a policy for how we're going to use the pension and the OPEB trust funds. This is very important because it's no good just saying, well, we got $640,000, $650,000 put away in the pension trust fund with no policy of how we're going to use it really and no policy of how we're going to build it. And so I think a reasonable question that Melanie has asked is, should we use some of our reserves, our fund balance, to put a little bit more money into the pension trust fund? Systemically, we've already agreed, we've already structured that we're populating the OPEB trust fund annually by, What was it, Melanie, this year? |
| 03:10:30.13 | Adam Politzer | $212,000. |
| 03:10:31.38 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | 200, okay. So, and I'll finish Madam Mayor fairly quickly. The pension trust fund, we haven't established any algorithm for how to fund it or really how to use it, even though we got John's good advice last week. So, I would like to suggest that we plan to, over the next quarter or two of the new fiscal year, the Finance Committee develops a policy for how to use these trust funds and how to add money to them, how to further superfund them, as I'm calling it. As a suggestion, we might – and we want to have that funding over time gradually become part of the structural operating budget. So that we're pulling from the operating budget into the pension trust fund. I'd like to recommend we transition that over two years. I'd like to throw out a number. Let's call it X for now. What's X going to be? Well, of the amount we put in the pension trust fund, that amount we've got to determine. We can calculate it. We can estimate it. We can do Monte Carlo simulations to try and see what the best hedge-in strategy is. We can't do that tonight. That's going to take some months of work, and I think it could even be done internally. But as a placeholder, just to begin, I'd like us to be thinking about this so you can understand the order of magnitude. This year, in this first budget, we plan to put $200,000 into the pension trust fund for the 16-17 financial year. That $200,000 coming from, I'm calling X $200, dollars because I don't know what X is and that seems about right to me So it's literally that Precise pulling it out of the air We put two hundred thousand dollars in the pension trust fund We've draw that out of out of the fund balance for this year for next year we put we put in $200,000, $100,000 drawn down from reserves, from the fund, and $100,000 programmed in from the operating fund. And then by the third year, |
| 03:10:34.75 | Adam Politzer | Okay. Thank you. Thank you. |
| 03:12:48.62 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | All $200,000 comes out of the operating fund. So we give ourselves two years to program in a super funding over a two-year period. I think that would be a really good idea. I'm making up the number $200,000. We got $800,000 of reserves that we could play with. Melanie doesn't want to touch much of it, and I think she would be comfortable with $200,000, and so that's why I picked that as our X. We need to do the study, though, to determine what would be a robust funding so that we actually could provide the correct head strategy, which is the purpose of the fund. So that's something for us to consider. As I said, I agree with the budget as published. I'm happy with all of the inclusions, all of the exclusions, and I'd like us to consider this added suggestion to possibly how to move ahead on the pension side. |
| 03:13:43.72 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 03:13:45.56 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Thank you. |
| 03:13:45.57 | Councilmember (likely Ray) | Sorry, I don't joke so much. I know, I'll be brief like I usually am. I want to thank Melanie for a great job. She explains things to me and I still don't understand them, but thank you very much. And Jill and Ray for a great job, really. My only comment that I wanted to make was on the South City. THE FACT THAT THE FACT THAT the planning on that. A few years ago. when I was on TAM We went in front of the TAM board. And we asked them because we knew that we had a problem down there. And everybody kept on yelling to us that, well, we don't want to hear your local opinions. Let's bring in professionals to look at what they can do at that end of town. We were fortunate enough that rather than take the money out of the city of Sausalito, we were fortunate enough to get a $120,000 grant to study the south end of town. Um, We still have to look at it. It's hard to move streets. It's probably a very impossible task, but I think it's very important that the future, that we look at that because, see, at one time, when you came across the bridge. You didn't see the first sausalito sign. Until you almost came to Marin City. Well, that's changing now. Now you have your navigation systems. And your navigation systems is telling you to go down to Alexander. So in the future, I think it's very important that we do look at the south end and if there's anything that we can do or take what was recommended from the grant that we got and see if we can really do something that can have a positive effect. Thank you. |
| 03:15:36.64 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | okay so because of the lateness I understand what Ray and Tom are saying but I think and I'm talking about just the discussion items included in the draft budget so I think the discussion items are still on the table for discussion. Okay. So what I would suggest is that we do this. Because some of these are going to take, I think, more discussion than others. And I do want to, if we have consensus on some things, I would like to just know that. Yeah, but I don't think we can do that today because there's just too many things on there. So what I would suggest is that for the next city council meeting that we have numbered so that we can quickly go down and say, you know, how does anybody want to talk about number 25 or number 23 or something? I think that will help us move quickly to rack and stack what kind of moves off the discussion. And then because and then we also have on that on that list also the new position details or the new hires that have been proposed. And so I would like to see the additional information that Council Member Weiner, I'm sorry, Council Member Theodorus requested on those. And also. I have some more questions about the proposed employees, but I can follow up with you before the next city council meeting and probably before the next finance committee meeting. So that's how I would suggest that we adjourn for tonight, that we look at the items that are up for discussion, that we get those numbered, and then we follow up in the intervening time. And our next meeting is June 14th, and that we obviously will agendize the budget on June 14th. you Yes, Councilwoman. Bye. You have a rebuttal. |
| 03:17:27.33 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | So I think that's a good plan, and I support that approach. And, you know, I meant to recognize Melanie for sitting down with me and going over my questions and all of the research you did and everything, and thank you very much for that because it was very helpful. And I know that also you were doing some work over the weekend. I mean, it's quite a lot of work, we know, and we really appreciate all of your hard work. I just wanted to point out those two things. We all are very appreciative of that. Thank you very much. Thank you. And thanks, staff and folks, though. |
| 03:18:06.51 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | All right, so that's it for the agenda tonight? No? Yes, Ray. Come on, Ray. Come on, turn his mic off. |
| 03:18:08.52 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | THE FAMILY IS |
| 03:18:10.33 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Thank you. |
| 03:18:10.36 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Come on. Ray. Turn. Okay, so. |
| 03:18:15.79 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 03:18:18.14 | Unknown | Thank you. |
| 03:18:18.16 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | Okay, I can go along with the way you wanna do theirs, except, you know, |
| 03:18:18.26 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | Okay. |
| 03:18:19.47 | Unknown | . |
| 03:18:27.08 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | June 14th, we need to actually make some decisions. You know, and... |
| 03:18:31.74 | Unknown | And, |
| 03:18:36.13 | Councilmember Pfeiffer | And we need to sort of figure out how people can feel assured that you know, if they're gonna come here and spend you know, three and a half hours sat here to talk about what's on their mind that we actually get some decisions made. So... I will leave it at that. |
| 03:19:00.58 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | All right, that's it. We're adjourned. Anybody else? No. Second. Oh, yeah, do we have a motion to adjourn? Sorry. Motion made. Second. |
| 03:19:07.06 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Sorry. Okay. |
| 03:19:10.37 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | All in favor, yes. Aye. Aye. |
| 03:19:12.75 | Councilmember (likely Ray Withy) | Yeah. |
| 03:19:12.97 | Mayor Jill Hoffman | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
Aaron Singer — In Favor: Advocated for business community investment, highlighting tourism's economic impact and supporting business advisory committee, hospitality committee, and chamber kiosk funding. ▶ 📄
Peter Van Meter — In Favor: Supported business funding as a small percentage of budget, parking fund use for general plan, and adding a maintenance staff person. ▶ 📄
Michael Graunick — Neutral: Requested review of parking time limits for businesses, noting it would support new parking enforcement officer. ▶ 📄
Yolanda Young — In Favor: Advocated for kiosk and hospitality program funding, emphasizing their importance for visitors and business community. ▶ 📄
Christopher Holbrook — In Favor: Urged financial support for Chamber of Commerce, Hospitality Committee, and Business Advisory Committee to enhance town appeal and safety. ▶ 📄
Keith Kennedy — In Favor: Praised staff and council for budget work and supported license plate reader pilot program. ▶ 📄
Mark Flaherty — In Favor: Supported Hospitality Committee funding to increase corporate midweek business and enhance visitor experience, noting TOT growth. ▶ 📄
Adam Kravatsky — Neutral: Suggested efficient general plan update processes and recommended staff visits to other communities for best practices. ▶ 📄
Jeff Sirach — In Favor: Called for increased hospitality funding to move beyond 2004-level budgets and invest in integrated marketing for quality tourism. ▶ 📄
Una Kavanaugh — In Favor: Advocated for increased hospitality and kiosk funding, sharing personal story of moving to Sausalito as a tourist and emphasizing need for quality visitor promotion. ▶ 📄
Vicki Nichols — Neutral: Supported reviewing hospitality funding and proposed dedicating a portion of Tidelands Fund to sea-level rise planning and mitigation. ▶ 📄