| Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00:01.84 | Walfred Solorzano | audience sequence is painting. of convenient admin. ALL PUBLIC. |
| 00:00:20.13 | Walfred Solorzano | Madam Mayor, all public is in. Good morning, Mayor Kelman and Council members. This meeting has been held pursuant to government code section 5-4. 953E in light of the declared state of emergency. The special meeting of the city council for June 3rd, 2022 will be conducted telephonic through Zoom and broadcast live on the city's website. |
| 00:00:44.33 | Mayor | Thank you very much, Serge. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Special Student Council meeting for June 3, 2022. we are going to go ahead and call the meeting to order. So Serge, please call the roll. |
| 00:00:56.21 | Walfred Solorzano | So, Member Sobieski? here. because I'm only three good ones. |
| 00:01:01.52 | Mayor | Thank you. |
| 00:01:01.54 | Vice Mayor | Bye now. |
| 00:01:02.48 | Walfred Solorzano | Councilman Hoffman. |
| 00:01:03.75 | Vice Mayor | Yeah. |
| 00:01:04.51 | Walfred Solorzano | Mayor Brownstein. |
| 00:01:05.96 | Vice Mayor | here. |
| 00:01:06.23 | Mayor | Thank you. |
| 00:01:06.67 | Walfred Solorzano | We are coming. |
| 00:01:07.75 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 00:01:07.77 | Mayor | I don't care. |
| 00:01:08.80 | Walfred Solorzano | Oh, my God. members are placing days of form. |
| 00:01:12.07 | Mayor | Okay, great, thank you. So we have both business items and session items today. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda and a second? some of them. that can. He's gone wrong. |
| 00:01:24.52 | Walfred Solorzano | Council Member Sobieski. Yes. on the liquid of the noise. |
| 00:01:28.67 | Mayor | Yes. |
| 00:01:29.42 | Walfred Solorzano | Chancellor Hoffman. Yes. of Blahnstein. Yes. Mayor Cameron. Thank you. |
| 00:01:35.09 | Mayor | Yes. |
| 00:01:36.39 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:01:37.42 | Mayor | Right, thank you. Okay, we'll go ahead and start our first business item is discussion of the city of South State 2022-23 draft budget and revised budget calendar. I will welcome Mr. City Manager Chris Zapata and Finance Director Chu. to provide the presentation. You have the floor. |
| 00:01:53.40 | Chris Zapata | Thank you, Mayor and Member of the Council. I'm going to need Serge's help on this. If you can share a screen with me, that would be great. While he's doing that, I want to say All city council meetings are important. budget conversations, a little heavier weight in my mind, especially as you try to figure out your path forward because budgets obviously are the mechanism that Your values are implemented in the city. The services are provided in the city. And so budgets reflect what you believe and what the community believes I'd also wanna again, thank our finance director, Vivitch and her team. for the original. departments. I really wanna thank Obviously, you as a city council for the work you've done and past city council's administrations for the work they've done It allowed us to have some options that we can talk about in this presentation. So, Serge, can you put that out? Thank you. |
| 00:02:54.06 | Walfred Solorzano | and Thank you. State manager, we are having a little bit of technical difficulties, so I'll |
| 00:02:59.73 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 00:02:59.97 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:02:59.99 | Chris Zapata | I'm working on it. That's okay. I will go ahead and do it off my notes. So the goal today is we want to see YOUR DIRECTION. on the general fund budget. We have to adopt a budget by the end of June, We have a attendance and calendar two meetings in the 14th and the 28th, and potentially another one on the 17th, if we need that meeting. Today, I wanna get to some things that have shaped our work on the budget and talk about how we got here and what we've done about it. So for me, what's important is to give you a chronological Thank you. And again, I go back to this. Monday will be my birthday in Sausalito. It'll be one year. TODAY. because I came to work for the city. So I'm not new anymore. But I can talk about some things that, I believe are important. In 2020 at the advent of the pandemic, city staff identified what they termed a $4.5 million gap. for the coming budget. That's a heavy lift in a budget the size of Sausalito. And that budget also included the maintenance of the workforce. It also included therefore the maintenance of the service. And it was achieved in a couple of ways, and I want to highlight those. That $4.8 million gap or $4.5 million gap was balanced last year. by using all $1.7 million of American Recovery Program Act monies, the federal one-time monies, a shift of $1.2 million from maintenance and infrastructure to operating costs. taking an additional $1 million from the parking fund. And then looking at $230,000 from the general fund reserve. So that amount is about $4.8 million. And that was your budget balancing approach last year. Obviously not suspect- |
| 00:04:53.76 | Council Member Hoffman | I'm holding. PROGRAM. |
| 00:04:54.87 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 00:04:54.97 | Council Member Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:04:55.02 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 00:04:55.09 | Council Member Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 00:04:55.11 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. traditionally not sustainable. but it's what had to be done in a pandemic and you know what I call unforeseen economic crises. While that was happening, I think the council took some steps and these were cost cutting steps that really had to happen. And normally you wouldn't want things to happen if you can have because in the toolbox you want them. But the financial situation of Sarsenho dictated some serious moves. One of them was we downsized the city manager's office. Another one is you froze two police positions, police officer positions. THE Virtual Gov contract was ended after five months. We have phased out the Cubs and Recreation Director positions. Those are all significant savings for the city that help our budget going forward. So to help that and stand with the of chronology in October, 30th of 2021. The planning and prioritization session was held. And we looked at some of the things that we were facing Number one, huge infrastructure needs. And number two, starting at three years of Uh, DEFICIT BUDGETS. without any increases in compensation or benefits to city staff. So that was fairly sobering. So at that point, city council directed that we look to hire And outside resources in terms of grant writing teams we've done that that our property portfolio, which is extensive and so it needed to be managed professionally. So we hired a property manager to help that out. And that was initiated in October of 2021. and this past April 2022. What I did was I worked with a number of people to provide an assessment. of factors that cause our structural deficit and our budget challenges. Obviously, we've heard this once, twice, three times, You know, rising employee pension costs are a big driver of that. Debt service costs for investments that have been made in police and fire facilities, as well as park improvements. And then again, SARS-CoV-2's revenue mix is different these days as a result of the absorption of the fire service into the Southern Fire District. So we have a higher reliance on sales tax and TOT tax, which as we all know is volatile. so that was all pointed out and so those things create challenges that we are faced with now So we started this process with a major budget update, which showed a significant gap in revenues and expenses. And we started to work on it from the standpoint of what can we cut that is easily cut that isn't going to impact services to the community and our workforce. And so we started with a line item review of all of our city budget. And we did it not once, but twice. We looked at revenues, we looked at expenses. Some of the things that we did, you know, we cut out all travel, training, subscriptions, all the low-hanging, easy pennies. We looked at some of the costs that we had incurred in prior years, such as audit assistance costs, which were significant. And this year, we have totaled about $500,000, $400,000, which we are not doing. We looked at some of the service levels we thought we could move around. some positions that we could downsize. And what we came up with was about $2 million in progress. And so what's reflected in the discussed budget today And it's a proposal. It's not something that you need to take as gospel. And just because the city manager and staff said do it, it needs to be a conversation. And so what we're seeing in the proposed budget is that this budget Thank you. would assume continued service levels. and would assume continued infrastructure investment and moments of the existing workforce. but it does not include or the federal funds obviously the use of measure of funds for operating expenses. And it just takes back the parking revenue fund to what it's been in the past, which is about a $2 million transfer. So that puts us about $2.7 million out of a balanced budget. And so what I want to do is talk about what you could do with that deficit of $2.7 million. I always like to tell people, if you don't know where your money is, you shouldn't have to look for it. So in your city of Saucydeo, in your available general fund reserve accounts. Great, Serge, can you put that up? to go on. |
| 00:09:32.51 | Chris Zapata | I'd like the public to see these. |
| 00:09:38.30 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 00:09:38.35 | Walfred Solorzano | to go on. |
| 00:09:42.77 | Walfred Solorzano | Keep going. |
| 00:09:48.93 | Chris Zapata | can go into general One more slide. No, you went too far. Go back up a little bit. Stop it. Okay, going back to what I was talking about, which is, We want to make sure we know what you have and where you have it. what it can be used for. And so, you know, credit to past city councils past administrations for having the foresight to save money for the city of Sausli in the event of an emergency. or in terms of, or in attempt to try to, help our pension obligation issue or challenge. So what you set aside in Sausalito is called savings in my mind And it's in three buckets that can be used to solve a $2.7 million problem. And these are the numbers. We have a 5% budget stabilization fund, which has $1,070,000 in change. We have a 2% emergency shortfall. find. in the general fund reserve because $2 million 140,000 and change. You have 22% on top of that that's unassigned, unassigned, reserved, we call it. And that's $4,780,000. So in total, The total general fund reserves you have available for purpose of you know, continuing service levels or many emergencies. is 7.2%. Almost $8 million. So what I'm suggesting to the city council Is it? We maintain service levels, we maintain the workforce, We maintain our infrastructure program. And we build on the progress that's been made over the last year, year and a half, two years, during this pandemic environment. and lessening of restructural deficit to continue to attack it. But in order to do that, you need to transfer $2.7 million their unassigned reserve or one of the five percent or ten percent combinations and i would recommend it come totally out of what i call the 22 reserve which will then take that down to about four million two million dollars In total, you would have approximately $5 million. in and in your savings account for uh, emergencies or future costs in future years. THIS DOES NOT speak to the pension trust fund. When we received our report from Bartels, that showed that we were going to have spikes in our pension costs in years 26, 27, and 28. And the money would mature at a higher rate than what we have it in now. And we could then, in fact, use that money then. And that was the advice they gave us. And I think that's been vetted and approved by council. So the bottom line is, is, you know, we've taken a four and a half, five million dollar a deficit in the last two years and taking it down to a real deficit. of about $2.7 million. Well, that's better. That's not good because it's not sustainable. So in conversation with some of you and having heard loudly and clearly, This is not a direction that, you know, is comfortable. It's not a direction obviously that would keep that is sitting in the black. because we're using one-time monies for Thank you. budget purposes. that we need to develop a multi-year plan that involves creating a structural balance in the future And so I always believe that deadlines drive results. And so in that regard, you know, if you want to say, Mr. City Manager, we want to take your recommendation We appreciate the improvements that's been made, the restructuring of the workforce, the cutting of contractual expenses, but we can't continue to do that so we need to plan by the next year of this coming budget, which would be December, January. And then finally, one of my recommendations is that we do not go to the next flight search. |
| 00:13:46.20 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. We do not. uh, ever go below the two months Uh, savings that is about 16.7% in your total reserves. That is, I think, harmful for a number of reasons. But if you go below that, it's problematic in a lot of ways. So, That's the recommendation. The alternatives are to say thank you, but no thank you. We want you to bring us a proposed budget that is balanced. And we don't want you to use all this amount of reserves or less reserves. And then we would in fact go forward and bring you something different on June 14th. Uh, In anticipation of that, I've talked to all of the departments talk to them about what a 10% reduction in each year. department would look like. to start to formulate those things. They've started doing that. We have someone goes in. And again, if that's the direction you think we need to go or so, duration of that we're prepared to do that and bring that forward to you on June 14th so that you can weigh in and we can get the budget adopted by again, June 30th. With that, Mayor and Council and the public, again, I wanna thank our our finance director and our and our departments and yourselves. for your work on this. We're not done, but we're at a critical point where decisions and direction needs to be given so that we can, in fact, adopt a budget this year. If you have any questions, I'm happy to entertain them at this time. |
| 00:15:27.43 | Mayor | Thank you, Mr. City Manager. I'm gonna lead off, I have a couple of questions. First of all, thank you. I know you've been working tirelessly on this, you and Director Chu, and really just their willingness to dig in kind of explore this in some different fashions. So I got a couple of questions. A few of you and I have talked about before. So I asked you the very simple, you're using this phrase structural deficit, right? What does that, what does that actually mean? And at the most basic level, you told me, ongoing costs exceed ongoing revenue. Sure, I get that. We've seen this as far back, what is 2018, 2017? the council talking about a structural Deficit. um, Do you feel like The problem for us historically has been that We spend too much. or that we are not maximizing our revenue. And maybe that sounds like a dumb question, but I'm asking because I have some thoughts about how we develop this multi-year structural balance, but I need to understand, is the problem that we're not I'm not sure. as an organization built for speed, or is the problem that we sort of gave away certain revenue sources that most communities would have relied on? Does that make sense, Chris? |
| 00:16:49.49 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, thank you for that question, Mayor. So first of all, let me just say this. No city ever has enough funds. Okay. The bottom line is is Saucelito is an old community. It has a multitude of needs. Those needs were met by various borrowings. in terms of infrastructure and facilities. every city in California, maybe in California, 5% or less. has this pension issue. and you know, Sausalito to its credit, set up the 115 trust for pensions and other post-employment benefits and they save money. But the bottom line is your revenue stream is dependent on property tax. Your property tax grows slowly. In California, you have what's called Prop 13, And a lot of properties in this city, I'm assuming are pre-crop 13, And so someone buying a new house in South Salido is gonna pay X amount. Someone that has an older home or has been in their home for prior to Prop 13 is paying Y amount. So your property tax isn't a windfall. here. It's stable. but you've cut into that with the actual, sending of your fire service to the Southern Fire District. So your property taxes isn't your big help. What you have here is a dependence on sales tax and TOT and the district tax. And those all depend on people coming to your community or your residents spending money and the city taking 1.5% of that. And the total aggregate, and we've talked about Measure O and what that is, I think it's really important for people to understand that when the state takes 6% and the county takes 6% and you take your 1.5%, that equates to three, six, four million bucks. in sales tax. And the real question is who's paying that? And obviously it's not totally residents. I'll give you an example. Malibu just did a study through HDL, which we will do. to show what visitors spend and what residents spend. And the analysis there was Malibu. 80% of the money that comes in on their regular tax comes in from visitors And on their add-on, 70 something percent comes in from visitors. So the residents are paying 25, 30% of the sales tax in that community. I suspect it's pretty close to that in Sausalito. So your revenue mix here is something that is, uh, really not optimal because it's become almost half of your, uh, or You have a big two here, right? Sales tax and property tax. And so, you know, when that was then you have swings and in good years, great, in bad years, not. So in good years here, what you've done is you've saved some money, which is admirable. But when you have bad years and you have them, there's cycles and obviously pandemic, exacerbated this cycle for us. you have a revenue mix that is shaking. So when we have a revenue mix that is shaking, you have increasing costs, you get to that structural deficit So all of that to say, older communities, revenue streams that are low or reliant on visitors. they're susceptible to swings. And that's what we're in right now. |
| 00:20:12.92 | Mayor | Okay, and the reason I'm asking is because I want to understand when you develop your multi-year structural balance, a plan for that, because you have taken great pains I think to preserve continued service levels and workforce, right? We are very, very concerned about preserving our workforce, not creating furloughs, making sure that we prioritize our employees. And I think that's, really commendable and I wanna keep doing that. So my question then becomes, As you aim towards a multi-year plan, does that mean more revenues? And I have some specific questions on it. Cause what I don't want to do is see us start to rely on consolidations left and right, and shared services left and right. We need to organize ourselves and be structurally strong ourselves before we start trying to maximize efficiencies because we haven't on our house owner. That's just my perspective on it. So, so my question to you is this, and it's, four of them. So you haven't included measure O, in your talk today, but I would assume that would go into the multi-year structural balance. What do you think about in terms of improving revenues, looking at these three things immediately? selling off some city owned land. Number two. immediately revamping our parking revenue structure And number three, and with all respect to the hardworking men and women of the Southern Marine Fire District, sitting down with them and trying to collaborate on a solution that makes a bit more sense from a property tax perspective. I would love to hear your thoughts and whether those are part of your thinking towards a multi-year plan. And then the second subset question is what does multi-year mean to you? Is it three years? Is it five years? So that's it, and then we'll turn it over to the vice mayor. |
| 00:22:04.82 | Chris Zapata | Thank you for that question. I'll try to answer the best I can. So again, solving a budget problem takes a combination of things. And what has happened here in the last two years is you started with cutting expenses And that was outlined pretty clearly in how you downsized you know, certain things in police and city management as well as trying to reconstruct your fire and your finance department in a way that makes sense, as well as your Parks and Recreation Fund. So I believe you always have to talk to the community, not with your hand out, but with an understanding of what you've done to try to solve the problem. And so you've taken significant steps there. The discussion you mentioned, which, which, you know, because I would really strongly you know, um, that measure O is a focal point. Uh, measure o is something that if it goes away in 2025 drops another 1.2 to 1.5 million dollar gap in your revenue stream That's why it's so critical Uh. I strongly agree with you on parking. The parking model in San Saludo could be refreshed into the 21st century. That's really important. I think that's great. Property sale, I think that's, something you really want to look at as well but I think when you look at when you look at parking revenue, You have to do that with an eye towards your debt service and your pension. So for instance, if you sold a piece of property in Sausalito, I would go to a model that we implemented in the city I worked in, in the Bay Area, which was prioritizing our unfunded liability liquidation. So in that particular program, anything that we sold that was general fund related, up to 50% of that could go into the Bay Area, |
| 00:23:57.38 | Walfred Solorzano | Mm-hmm. |
| 00:23:57.65 | Chris Zapata | the budget. that the remainder would have to go into an account. And we set up a 115 trust, Sosno did so that we could build for that spike in retirements that we would be facing. So if you're going to take property sales, I would recommend that you don't just funnel 100% of that into some budget fix. I think the budget fix is multifaceted, including pension costs and debt services. And you need to account for that. As it relates to collaborating with the fire district, I think that's a steep hill to climb. The public voted a long time ago to do this. They voted I believe 67% to support it. It would take I think a huge push to talk to them about how that could be undone because I think they factored that into their long term. projections. What I think you might want to talk to them about is the fixed rate on that building As you all know, the city of San Luis, the Saucyuta owns that building. the rent on that building is a hundred thousand dollars a month and fixed Maybe you could talk to me. |
| 00:25:01.03 | Mayor | Thank you. |
| 00:25:02.68 | Chris Zapata | FOR YOU. Pardon me, what are you saying? |
| 00:25:03.68 | Vice Mayor | That's an annual. you |
| 00:25:05.05 | Chris Zapata | Right, okay. Yeah, and that's fixed. |
| 00:25:05.30 | Vice Mayor | Okay. |
| 00:25:07.80 | Chris Zapata | that's fixed so that might be the only place that I would recommend we'll talk to them about I think the other effort is it's a done deal. Southern Mid Fire District has been doing what it's been doing in South Australia 12 years now. And at the same time, you know, they provide a, what I call, class one service, which is where in California, And so the bottom line is that you're paying for a premium service and you're getting it. But the bottom line to that too is is you're also providing a premium facility and you're not getting what I believe is a just rent for that. I think to undo the actual property tax equation, would just be a hill two steep climb. |
| 00:25:54.05 | Mayor | Okay, thank you. It was very thoughtful. I appreciate the idea around the, the revenue from the lease. Thank you for that. Let's turn over to the Vice Mayor, has her hand up. Thank you very much. Thank you city manager for putting |
| 00:26:06.98 | Vice Mayor | together and Vivian as well for taking the time and prioritizing our employees and really doing the work to figure out a solution that would allow us to keep our workforce and hopefully get our budget back on track from a structural standpoint. I am. I appreciate the response for taking the funds out of reserves, but I am also cautious about taking funds out of reserves, and I wanted to get an understanding or a better sense of the risks and compare this type of reserve withdrawal from what other communities might be doing and where our balance would be. So it seems, given that we have $8 million in reserves to use, that that's a lot of money, but given that our total budget for the year is 6 million and we could potentially lose Measure O in 2025, I'm a little bit nervous. And so I was hoping that Vivian or yourself, City Manager, could provide just some background common uses of reserves, what our backup plan is, assuming that measure O doesn't go through or how we would decide to use reserves going forward. It's an easy solution to dip into reserves, but it can't be the solution that we use all the time. So I just would like to get some. clarity on that. |
| 00:27:12.77 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, I'm understood Vice Mayor. Thank you. And the reserves have specific purposes, they have intended purposes, they have policies around them. And we've done that in Sausalito, and that's where you have the 5%. economic uncertainty 10% budget shortfall. And then you have 22% unsigned. My training has been You want to keep two months of reserves in the bank at all times. It's important to the rating agencies that potentially opine on your borrowings and set interest rates. It's important to the community and it also is practical in the event that something does happen in Sausalito. God forbid you're an earthquake or a much light earth. some fire event. you would need those funds to do that. So never dip below two months. Right now, you're over that two months, and it's a significant way you have been. And so when I see that, my question is why? If you believe that you need that money for future expenses, but at the expense of current needs, that's a policy decision. And I've always recommended to use one-time money for one-time things. an emergency those funds are set aside for emergencies and if a global pandemic isn't an emergency for a tourist-based uh budget on the sales tax site i don't know what is so if you choose not to use it then the answer is Okay, you keep $8 million in the bank. And then we start working on how we, you know, figure out right sizing our budget and that would take a lot of of what I call and, have discussion with the community. because what that would do, that would impact services. And while it seems easier to provide funding from your reserves on a one time basis, as long as you're comfortable with it, it really is, harder. because if you go to a cut scenario, That's easier. Because then we go to departments and you say, I need 10% of your budget, which is three million so give me the X amount. I need 10% of your budget, and all of a sudden you get to the point where you can provide, I can give you a number right now, our personnel costs are around $14 million. If I asked for 10% cuts, I'm sure that $14 million would equate about $1.5 million in savings. That would mean positions and that equates to services. So that's the much harder discussion, which I'm trying to avoid, uh, having with the community, I'm just asking you all for a little more time. TO SOME OF THE Thank you. Thanks, man. that doesn't use all of your reserves. but over the next two to three years, using some of your reserves in combination with right-sizing, in combination with new revenue, and we'll see where Measure O goes. But the bottom line is this. you can choose one course or the other And you know, to be very, very direct in saying, The hardest course is to use your reserves. The easiest course is to just cut. I think you've already cut And if you wanna cut further, you know, that's that's that's not what i want to do but that can be done much easier in this conversation |
| 00:30:19.44 | Vice Mayor | And to the point of cuts, I noticed in the staff report, and I want to thank Kevin McGowan from Public Works for putting together that great memo on CIP and the potential cost saving measures for CIP. Are we waiting for other department heads to see what their 10% would look like? Or was that a specific request just with regards to our CIP funds so we could have a broader view? |
| 00:30:38.41 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, and thank you for noting that, Reissner. Yes, we are, the departments are, if they hadn't done an amend this week, they should have, but Kevin's was integral because there's a general fund component to the Calp Improvement Program. And my thoughts were simply If you wanted to look at some reduction in the the ask from the reserves then we could delay defer or cancel certain capital projects. I don't. support that. I don't And I recommend that. because again, I go back to this. Let's say you save 1 million to $1.4 million and those expenses from the general fund by delaying, deferring, or canceling projects. What then happens is those things, if they're infrastructure related, become more costly down the road. So that's why you didn't see us say, well, we need to use measure money again to have a 1.2 million dollar transfer to the operating budget we kept it when we should have put it in what you did last Don't be worried. is you restored that. So you have a perfect record. of using Measure O money for what was sold to the community. Maybe it not what was legally required, because it's a 50% plus one bill. But you have invested in infrastructure since you got it. You've invested in maintenance since you got it. Last year was an anomaly and you corrected that. And this year we're trying to keep that perfect stream straight so that when 2024 comes along and people say, you know, yeah, you know, city councils did what they intended to do with those funds and they didn't just use it to pay for X, Y, Z. So I appreciate Director McGowan's work on putting that together. The other departments are doing things, but it's frankly pretty simple for them. We've already cut out all of their subscriptions, travel, training, anything like that. we've already asked them to start looking at it. And what that typically means is, and vice mayor and council. And so I'm hoping to avoid that, but if it comes to that, And we'll have that conversation. Right. I'll tell you what, |
| 00:32:40.79 | Vice Mayor | Yeah, that does. It was a really great report from the director, but I was wondering if your recommendation was that we pursue that path or if it was just as requested from all the department heads. So it's good to have that clarification. The other question I had was about some specifics within the budget as presented now. I know we're gonna have a more exhaustive, clear, |
| 00:32:51.23 | Council Member Hoffman | Yes. |
| 00:32:58.03 | Vice Mayor | you know, exact line items for what is what. But I just had a couple of questions. In looking at the five great things that you did since you've come on board in terms of saving money. And I'm just gonna, even though, I'm sure y'all have the staff report just for, in case members of the public didn't read this, it's really impressive. the downsizing of the city manager position office, which you mentioned, the lowering of your own package to support the city, which was a huge step for you to take. So freeze on the two police officer positions. the discontinued virtual golf contract for refinancing about a deal in our finance department and the reorg of parks and recs. I wanted to ask specifically about number five, the reorgs of Parks and Rec because there was a substantial salary position that isn't in existence anymore, but it looks like our our personnel positions costs only went down four percent in this budget um could you just explain Vivian what the what that was or what the what the new hires were for a better understanding of where the spend is. |
| 00:33:53.15 | Chris Zapata | But before she does that, Vice Mayor, thank you for pointing that out. let me give you some city manager arithmetic on those cuts and then she can give you the specifics on that 4% question. So, you know, when, when, when you eliminated the assistant city manager position fully loaded, you're probably talking a quarter of a million dollars. When we eliminated the parks and recreation, or phased out the parks and recreation director position, make sure that'll save us minimum $200,000. The virtual golf contract by cutting as short after five months, that saved us about $500,000. The two police officers that we haven't filled, that won't fill, essentially saved us about 150,000 apiece, so $300,000. So those are significant structural cuts that have helped take that bigger number down to a more manageable number. I don't know we're out there yet. to be sure to point those numbers out. And don't quote me on the exact numbers. Again, that's City Manager with the tick. It's just my general rounding of those costs. So I didn't answer that question. |
| 00:34:53.39 | Vice Mayor | And then Vivian, I just, it's coming from attachment three or two, the FY 2022 general fund expenditures for salary and benefits. I was just surprised given those cuts that it's only at 4.7%. So. I was wondering. |
| 00:35:06.66 | Vivian (Finance Director) | to me. |
| 00:35:07.16 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 00:35:07.18 | Vivian (Finance Director) | Thank you. |
| 00:35:07.60 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 00:35:07.67 | Vivian (Finance Director) | Okay, give me one second. Let me go to that schedule right now. All right. I'm sorry. |
| 00:35:13.96 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | I can just jump in. I asked the same question of Vivian yesterday and the cuts that Chris just described are included in the 2021-22 revised budget because that was our Medeer budget. And the increase, the 4.7% increase, Vivian explained to me in an email, is from step increases, which are the increases that employees get within their category every year. So Vivian, I think you did answer that question for me. I don't know. And the exact same question that the vice mayor just had. |
| 00:35:46.45 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 00:35:46.46 | Chris Zapata | Yes. Go ahead, Chris. Councilmember Cleaver-Nose, thank you for pointing that out. Because in addition to maintaining the workforce and being in the middle of labor negotiations, one of the things that this budget contemplates is continued step increases. |
| 00:35:46.63 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Yes. Go ahead, Chris. |
| 00:36:01.47 | Chris Zapata | A person on our team was a colleague It passes an anniversary date. performance is where it needs to be then there's a bump in pay that wasn't taken out either that's included in this proposed budget |
| 00:36:16.86 | Vice Mayor | Thanks for that, Clare. I think that answers, I'll let, I have a few other questions, but I'll let other members go forward and see what else comes up. |
| 00:36:24.35 | Mayor | All right, thank you, Vice Mayor. Councilman Clemenos? I'm sorry. |
| 00:36:28.97 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, thank you. I do want to thank director to and city manager for all their hard work and scouring our budget and the work that's been going on behind the scenes to get to this place um so thank you for that I did have, in addition to the question that the vice mayor just asked, about why salaries and benefits still look like they're going up when you look at our, this year's budget. I asked about property tax and I think which also it seems to be going down by 11% on our general fund revenue. budget and I think Vivian that you explained to me that I didn't quite understand this is that we had included some the reason that it looks like property tax is going down is not that property tax is actually going down. it's going up, but that our projections from last year were incorrect. Thank you. |
| 00:37:29.62 | Vivian (Finance Director) | Exactly, yes. So, |
| 00:37:29.64 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Exactly. |
| 00:37:33.97 | Vivian (Finance Director) | Let me see if I can show my screen. Hold on one second here. . |
| 00:38:04.60 | Vivian (Finance Director) | Oh, Sorry, give me the wrong sticker. Thank you. |
| 00:38:19.77 | Mayor | you're also welcome to just talk us through that. Okay. |
| 00:38:23.08 | Vivian (Finance Director) | Right. I have problem with sharing my screen. So what happened is in a mid-year budget, so one of the item unsecured COVID tax, Ed the time somehow we put 294 as a mid-year budget, but if you look at the three-year average It's about $85,000. So I have no idea. I don't recall because Chad and James was happy about helping me be putting the numbers there. I don't recall why we put that number so high there and also the, So Q-Prob in Texas also, at the time, it was set so high. And as you can see in the schedule, I send you Council Member Cleveland, the average for the three year is similar to what we budgeted for the next year and that according to HDL's schedule reports. So I think the main reason is just that the mid-year budget be somehow either typo or putting the wrong number of the ID don't recall the reason why we put that so much there at the media, but obviously it's not accurate at the media numbers. |
| 00:39:36.32 | Chris Zapata | I think the best venture for that, Councilmember and council and the public is willing to look at that again. and provide a clear explanation we can do that. All right. shortly, Vivian's answer that we have used HDL to calculate our sales property and TOT tax district taxes, we rely on those numbers. if there was some input error or something like that to our favor, love to find it. If there's some input error to our disadvantage, We'll go to our teams and tell you about it, but we need to go back and look at that. Prevention clarity on it. |
| 00:40:15.72 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Okay, thank you. I really appreciate that. You know, it just, if there are numbers here that are looking like they're going in the counterintuitive direction to both council and the public, I think we need to explain that in the staff report and property tax. should not be going down, it should be going up. So if it's not going up and we, it was because of some missed. assumption in the past. I just think that needs to be clear. The second, kind of more detailed and the weeds question that I had today is There is a line item on our expenditures. that has supplies and materials. And It is going up. by 64. percent with a total of 1.6 million dollars. and there is no rule. explanation as to what is included in this bucket. And I think if I understand the city manager's presentation correctly, what we are being told is that we have cut as far as we can cut. without cutting. staff and services. Thank you. Is that correct? Thanks. |
| 00:41:28.06 | Chris Zapata | That's correct. Yeah. But let me help you with that. again, you know, These meetings are important for everyone to kind of put their eyes to something And again, if we have, a rounding error or some misplaced decimal You know, that can happen. and finding you know, this information out and getting people's eyes on it is helpful. And so if we can... answer that question we will if we can't we'll come back to you and give you a better answer |
| 00:42:04.13 | Vivian (Finance Director) | Can I, I'm sorry, can I, say something about that supply and materials. So as I emailed to you, Council Member Clever knows, that's because that's a catch all item besides professional serving capital outlay. a lot of all other expenses included in this because I tried to match with the mid-year format There's also include insurance and workers' come expense, which is increased 21%. We are paying about 1.1 million for next year's workers' come and property liability and general liability insurance. So that is a part of the supply and materials. We can do a better job by, you know, put more detail on those expense items, but I'll explain. We try to match the mid-year format so that they can have some kind of comparison, but I can rebuild those schedule and make it more clear and more itemized. instead of lumping them all together. |
| 00:43:04.54 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. it sounds like a labeling category question uh Councilman, we can do better on. Because yeah, I would assume the same thing that if we say supplies and whatever it's called, that that's what it is, not insurance and other things. |
| 00:43:22.85 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 00:43:22.97 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 00:43:23.03 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Right, but also it's going up from our last year budget by $1.6 million. And I just heard workers' comp is going up by 21%. So that's fine. So I just think we need to understand what's in there and why it's increasing by so much given... the total size of the budget. |
| 00:43:42.25 | Vivian (Finance Director) | So that's- I will re-work on it and rebuild a mid-year budget to put in the separate- you more detailed items and then we do their schedule again. |
| 00:43:52.60 | Mayor | Yeah, maybe the idea, thank you for bringing that up, Council Member, maybe the idea is if something is going up over let's make some 25% something significant that we have a greater level granularity in the reporting so that we don't have these big buckets and then we don't know what's in them and it doesn't need to be for everything but if there's some air quoting significant increase then that triggers the breakout. Okay. |
| 00:44:17.98 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Bye. Yeah, and I'm not asking for today. I'm just saying for going forward, I'd like some more clarity on this. The second issue that I had is I I understand that we're not including homeless expenses in this budget. I do not agree with, I think we know we're gonna have significant expenses and I just wanna hear why it's been my understanding in budgeting for public agencies, but if you know you're gonna have an expense, We're likely to have an expense. You include that in the budget. And if you know you're going to have a revenue source and it's highly likely you can include that, but it's not prudent to include revenue sources that are not fairly certain. So here I think it's, that we're gonna have additional expenses for homelessness. And so I think we should be ready to put that in our expenses. budget for it and then if we are able to secure additional money from the county or the state that will we can reflect that in our mid-year budget but I just want to understand better why that expense is not in here. when it is almost certain 99% certain that we're going to be expending significant resources on that issue. |
| 00:45:39.77 | Chris Zapata | Fair question, Councillor McLemey-Nos. Thank you. I wrestled with that one and here was the thinking. Um, in my training. If you don't have the fund secured from another agency, i.e. a grant or some type of allocation from the state or county. You don't book it in the budget until you get it. So I'm... I think we're all around it. to acquire funds. I've had conversations with the County manager about $500,000 being allocated to the city as requested by the city council. He has assured me that he is putting that in his budget. The issue is that budget won't be adopted until our budget gets adopted. So I'm hesitant to vote. half a million dollars. by the same token, the expense side, if you want to book that, We could and that would mean the ask on the reserve would be not $2.7 million, but another $500,000 on top of that at a minimum. So in my mind, they wash each other. I think it can be explained, but if you want us to, with that assumption of what the homeless impact is on our budget, we can certainly do that. but again to balance, We can't presume that the county will say yes to half a million dollars. Monday May. If they don't, that you know, we have that in our budget and it's unrealized. So I have no problem with adding another you know, $500,000 to the deficit and having a homeless charge as a contingency. And then, you know, major scrubbing that again, if we do receive the money from the county that they've suggested they're gonna put in their budget Potentially additional money from the state. then there would be an offset and that would not be a burden to the budget. And that's what I was trying to avoid. burdens to the budget. So council's pleasure. |
| 00:47:38.32 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | All right, thank you. I know this isn't the time for comments, but I would recommend that we include the expenditure that's, because we'll need to be prepared to take that risk. If we are in the unlikely event, we are not able to secure additional funds. |
| 00:47:51.62 | Mayor | Can I just add one thought to that too? Thank you. It's a great point. And also arguably, you know, to the extent, let's say for example, DPW, is is working on a homelessness issue and not available or able to focus on capital improvement program you know i do think that that needs to be factored into this budget so sorry to interrupt you councilmember i just wanted to add to that excellent question |
| 00:48:10.67 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, no, I think for that reason, for transparency, I'm sorry. placing the risk where it is right now on us, I think we should reflect that. Thank you. And if 500,000 is the correct number, I am willing to accept that. And just the last thing, which I think has been touched on by the mayor and vice mayor is the structural deficit issue. I just want to appreciate the thought. Um, thoughtful questions, um, from both of you on that. I think this is definitely worth, we cannot. accept the city manager's recommendation to spend on our reserves. at this level without at least the timeline in place to develop a plan to address the structural budget. So deficit, excuse me. So I think we'll have a healthy debate about how we do that. and perhaps maybe just in this budget process, a schedule. If I'm understanding the city manager correctly, what we can commit to at this point is a schedule to addressing the structural deficit perhaps by mid-year, but not within this budget. before we adopt the budget, is that right? |
| 00:49:22.49 | Chris Zapata | That's correct, council member. We will need some time and time will help clarify some of these questions about whether or not there's an appetite for the community on measure O. help clarify what happens with some uncertainty in the world and with our economy around us. I think six months from now, things will be clearer. I want to really point out We've just barely reconstructed our finance team over the last four months. we have to have a restart on that and we have to complete an audit and prepare this budget. So now once, That is bias. You know, we have some other work to do. That will give us a little bit of breathing room so that we can embark on that necessity. Because that is a necessity. You can't keep coming back over here saying we need something from the reserves without some explanation or some plan. |
| 00:50:13.47 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Great, thank you. And just to reiterate one answer to a question, I would like to just, I really appreciate the pushing on HDL about some of the revenue in addition to the property tax issue. The TOT revenue projections are quite low to me. I would have expected with our increase from 12 to 14%, And I, and, uh, 2019 and with the slow rolling up of the tourism economy, that that would be looking a little better. So when you go back to HDR, if you can press a little bit on that, |
| 00:50:49.38 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. All right, thank you. |
| 00:50:50.27 | Mayor | All right, thank you. Thank you so much. Councilman Hoffman, Councilman Sobieski, either one of you have questions? I'm just trying to check. |
| 00:50:58.29 | Council Member Hoffman | I have a project. Yeah, right. I have any questions in light of the questions that are already been asked. Thanks. Excellent. |
| 00:51:04.63 | Council Member Sobieski | Yes, I did, Mayor, thank you. Let's see. I can read my own notes. Uh, So a lot of great questions there answered a lot of the ones that I had. But senior manager, I guess I had. I'm not sure. You've addressed the near term structural deficit in the plan. ...engaging to come up. Yeah. a solution and that's going to be what's going to occupy our discussions for the coming months up to the mid-year. Um, Maybe I would just like to summarize things and have you tell me if I've got it wrong anywhere. Well, actually first I have one question. One way of doing things differently, our major costs are our labor costs. We want to provide levels of service to our community. and do right by our employees. The whole world is experimenting with different labor models. And I'm wondering, plausible within your experience for Sausalito to experiment with Mabul. ways of rewarding employees with different work models that could provide Similar if not better levels of service to our community at a lower cost and a better say work-life balance to our employees. |
| 00:52:19.86 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. Thank you for that. I think that it would be important to note that those conversations are happening right now at the bargaining table, so I don't want to. go deep into them because I think that would impact our ability to engage in what we call good faith bargaining. But the idea that we can look at a different business model for municipal corporation that mirrors what's going on in the world with more remote work use it, you know, make it easier on environment in terms of commutes and stuff like that we're having those conversations we'll see where they go |
| 00:52:57.10 | Council Member Sobieski | Thank you. Okay, thanks. Thanks for that. When you committed to Council Member Keeble-Nolls to have a plan, That's going to be a plan to deal with our multi-year structural deficit. So the thought is that by mid-year, we should really be able to have a plan for how we're going to be balancing our budgets in future years, the operational budget that we've been looking at here. Is that correct? |
| 00:53:18.03 | Chris Zapata | THE END OF THE END OF THE |
| 00:53:18.82 | Council Member Sobieski | Yeah. |
| 00:53:18.84 | Chris Zapata | that's correct and so you adopt the budget and get past labor negotiations you see what money's coming in from sources that you anticipate would come in. You see what bills you didn't catch. you have a better sense of what the world world as they're going forward and so in October the financial information we showed you a deficit in the budget over the next three years. over a million dollars in one year, over a million dollars second year, $700,000 in the third year. with some assumptions that revenues, property tax would go up, sales tax would go up, TOT would go up. Uh, measure O wasn't addressed. But the bottom line is, you know. That was done with no increases to employees compensation. So I think those numbers are low. Uh, I think there really is a need to really examine those. And as you said, look at how we Our biggest cost center obviously is people that provide services, our workforce, how we in fact you know can contain some of those costs We know that we're locked into pensions for the next 10, 15 years, and some strategies can be done to address those, and you've started that with your 115 trust and your prepays on your... unfunded accrued liability. You got your report from Bartels. what the world is looking like, We will continue to have a conversation about maybe refinancing some of that which may or may not happen. But I believe that when all that dust is settled in the next quarter, and then we'll be able to sit down and say, okay, what can we do about the world as it is. Our workforce says we haven't budgeted this year what it looks like next year. what we can do in terms of, you know, balancing not just efficiency and not just cost recovery, but looking at new revenue. And that's where something like Measure O or other whether new streams could come in. And again, I appreciate the conversation around enhancing our parking models so that maybe that is an answer. You know, runtime situations like selling property, I like those, but Again, be cautious that one time but I really think that there would be the time and the need to do this in a way that you just identified that Council Member Clever Mills asked me specifically for a plan. And that plan becomes easier to do with time and with some of the scenarios behind us. OKAY. |
| 00:55:46.38 | Council Member Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 00:55:46.51 | Chris Zapata | you So, |
| 00:55:46.97 | Council Member Sobieski | So, you know, I note that We had a $4.5 million deficit for you instituted a wide range of cuts and under your leadership, pull down to around $2 million. It included cutting your own salary, eliminating some positions. You really are doing more with less and that's something that we talked about doing when we had our initial budget review with the new city council more than a year ago I'm not sure. and that this last bit of the deficit is gonna be covered by a, by a transfer from reserves. and you right now what you're talking about is being committed towards trying to eliminate that structural deficit with a combination of maybe some business model experiments inside the way the city is organized. And potential new revenue sources. In addition to the ones the mayor highlighted, such as selling city owned property, changing the parking revenue structure, which as everyone knows, have been beating the drum about for a while. I'm not sure. I'm wondering if we're looking for Other ideas as well. We know how much money we get from TOT. So with the prospect of adding another small hotel something that we would consider. given the huge amount of tax. something on the order of a million dollars that each of our hotels contributes to our city budget. of the would we look at There were answers to the question of is everyone paying their fair share? that many people have noticed the disproportionate impacts that some kinds of visitors to South Slito have versus the amount of money they leave behind. in the city, in effect, residents subsidizing certain kinds of visitors to town. Is there a way of ensuring that they, that everyone pays their fair share? There's been, It's, uh, are we going to actually have an effort under that label. to limit it for other revenue sources. |
| 00:57:51.99 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. All of those should be on the table. and more. And one of the things that is a practice of mine is whenever you get into a scenario where Thank you. We're challenged fiscally it's an all hands on deck approach. So all ideas are good ideas. including and inviting And I will do so. our employees. to submit what they believe are efficiencies because at some level they know better than we do. And, you know, vetting those with the community and taking council ideas and trying to figure out, you know, how we can be more efficient, how we can be, you know, more balanced in our budget and work toward longterm sustainability so that we don't just, survive, we actually thrive. That's always my mantra. So if you look at this, it's not just the council, you know, pulled by this. It's not just the finance department, city management staff, it's our workforce. So they need to be invested in this as well. And obviously our community. And those things are part and parcel too. solutions. Thank you. That model has worked for me in National City. better off financially when I got there. San Leandro Hussein. I think we can replicate some of those concepts here. in Sausalito to use the ideas of our workforce. to use the ideas of our council and our community to come to something that we all think makes it more sustainable and makes this community more efficient and better. Because if not that, then why are we here? |
| 00:59:27.73 | Council Member Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 00:59:29.09 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 00:59:29.11 | Council Member Sobieski | All right. And then, the mayor talked about the, Southern Moon Fire District and asked you whether you thought there would be a chance of changing that formulation. And you thought it'd be a heavy lift because it went through a voter process and it's set in stone. I just know that the fire district itself is an elected board position and that if there was ever going to be any kind of change, it would probably have to come. through that mechanism, is there any way to to catalyze that. opening simply as a good faith effort to see what the expenses are of the fire district and whether they scale. with property tax or if they're right to get better formula. that would. Expo facto, serve the interests of both the fire district and the city. Is there any role within having that beyond the fire building itself? and, |
| 01:00:19.97 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. Of course you can. Of course you can. what fruit will be born by that? what strife will be created by that. And is there really a benefit to doing so? I think that again, I said it, I'll say it again, that's a steep hill to climb. elections and And cities are obviously and the other side of the country. when you're talking about services that are We love it. like our library. like our police department, like our fire department. or fire district. and you try to disrupt that model or change that model in some kind of way at the top, which would be the board. Good luck. I think you'll have a hard time doing that. So I would, Yeah. not want to spend my time pushing on that because I think Again, that's a hill too steep climb. |
| 01:01:20.76 | Council Member Sobieski | THANK YOU. Thanks, I really appreciate your hand. experienced answer on that question. One of our last question is in the staff report in October of last year, you gave a phenomenal presentation. I recommend everyone to watch. I did the other day and it's just great on October 30th. In there you talked about the $99 million. Well, it's in the staff report for this meeting. It says besides these expenditures, so that's besides power structural deficit basic infrastructure of roads sidewalks buildings and stairs need approximately 99 million dollars to keep up with repair and maintenance needs i'm wondering if you could just allow it a little bit on that statement it's it sets out a different strategic goal that's complementary to the effort you're describing here today. |
| 01:02:03.89 | Chris Zapata | Well, thank you for pulling that out, Councilman Sobieski. And One of the reasons this budget doesn't use Measure O cut down that deficit as last year's budget that was adopted and amended intended to do is because of infrastructure needs. And so one of the things that I do when I come to cities is I look around. And as I looked around Sausalito, some of the most stunning views in the world. Bye. You have them. you know, the idea of your location, it's, It's phenomenal. You have a unique, unique, desirable to move in. But when you look down, And you see the sidewalks. And you see, the roads. And then we walk up the stairs with Mayor Kelman You see the buildings. with the exception of police fire in our library, I don't know. Oregon. And so when I asked Director McGowan to give me a gap analysis of what it would take to look at our infrastructure needs. You know, obviously there are huge lifts that, pay different levels of funding that the city cannot do in terms of underground infrastructure and resiliency approaches to infrastructure, but just your streets and your sidewalks, your stairs and your buildings He identified and $99 million cost. You know, the condition of our roads is such that, you know, we are trending toward a D grade. And so when you put 1.2 million back into measure O, allocated all that money toward road projects project administration grant leverage to improve the roads so you're making an attempt but but obviously that is a huge huge concern needs to be factored into your long-term sustainability as well as your you're a your budget models because you know what you're doing is what you can but what is needed is much more And obviously, You know, like a beautiful old house, the roof gets bad. something gets bad and Maybe you need to paint it. And that's our key. It's a beautiful place that needs some tender love and care. in some basic ways. In October, when I asked the council help us focus on Finance what you're doing today. which you've been doing And our ability to do the work that's being done by kind of looking at our bandwidth and boards, commissions, committees, which we've authorized that to be done and we'll get that to you sometime. early next month. But the infrastructure problems in Sausalito, are pretty important to be aware of. And so to that end as well, We've authorized the hiring of a financial advisor I've been meeting with finance types. I've been talking to city managers in other cities that have done things that are encrusted in terms of their roads. a log spoo, for example. There was a community issue dedicated to roads. And it took them a long time to get it done, but according to the city manager, Now it's just implementing. In Sausalito, I think that in addition to our pension obligations, our infrastructure obligations are something that we should look at in terms of some type of long-term financing, some serious infusion of money that could in fact allow us to catch up and be where we need to be. because again, we can get caught up looking away, but when you look down, It's not good for a car. Pedestrian? bicyclists. to be on bad asphalt or bad sidewalk. So I think we can do much better there. And this budget is trying to hold the line and not take away from that. |
| 01:05:47.03 | Council Member Sobieski | Thanks city manager. I'm sorry the mayor hazed you by making you walk over the stairs. |
| 01:05:51.19 | Mayor | Okay. |
| 01:05:51.35 | Council Member Sobieski | but I will appreciate that. |
| 01:05:51.58 | Mayor | That's it. I'm not. |
| 01:05:53.62 | Council Member Sobieski | I appreciate you doing it. I looked at that leads to my last question, which is just that, That seems daunting, right? We're talking about a $2 million deficit growing from reserves, and we're gonna work hard to try to figure out how to structurally close that GAP. AND THEN ON TOP OF THAT, We have a $99 million you know, for bringing our town up to snuff. So is this project we're gonna engage in for the Meteor budget? Can we in parallel work on that bigger question about what the strategic goal, what the strategic plan would be? your session. to actually, and engage with. of the challenges that are represented in that $99 million number. |
| 01:06:37.25 | Chris Zapata | Yeah, you have to and absolutely you have. Um... started on that. i think that you know you just have to determine that you know that's what you as a council want to do I go back to that October presentation and I said focus on your finances, focus on your infrastructure, and focus on how you can have your people be more efficient by not having them stretch so thin on so many areas. assignments that relate to things that are important and you know Having tented is good. but then of course staff time. if we can kind of stabilize our... organization in terms of the personnel side. And I think that if you look at cuts, then you destabilize it further. If you don't focus on finances, You don't focus on infrastructure. nothing else is really going to matter to the residents. So I hope that we have those conversations. And as I said to a couple of you, We just need a little bit of time, a little bit of runway. And we'll do those things. |
| 01:07:39.18 | Council Member Sobieski | you I'm going to go. |
| 01:07:39.67 | Chris Zapata | See you. |
| 01:07:39.97 | Council Member Sobieski | I'm going to answer this last question related to that. not clear if city if the if you and the staff have clear direction from city council or if we need to make a motion today to direct you to do so which is We've talked about city owned property. I speculate we might be land poor here. We might be sitting on an incredible asset. We don't know about. because the way our accounting is done. all our property is held at cost of depreciated to zero. So it does not show up on a balance sheet. I think we might look a lot poorer than we actually are. for that $99 million number to the mayor's point, there might be a possibility of of trading land sales for substantial infrastructure investment to attend to that. So does sitting Does the city staff, do we have an ongoing project to develop to determine the appropriate value for each parcel of city owned property, both in its current zoning end. with a rezone for its highest and best use? We do not. |
| 01:08:37.02 | Chris Zapata | From my knowledge, we just hired a property manager you know, a few months back in his work has been to get ahead on our portfolio look at our existing leases to make sure we're collecting the revenue needs to be collected. But to get into that type of an exercise, I have not directed him to do that, It could be a worthy exercise. I go back to this in talking to some folks that, you know, help finance major infrastructure improvements. the idea of having those assets to secure some long-term debt whether it's some type of infrastructure, debt or some type of pension Six. Those assets are really important, and to have them unencumbered at this time is really a blessing. So thank you for pointing that out. Knowing their value is something that as you go forward, you probably want to know. Unfortunately, I think that we are I'm trying to ease into a trot. We've been walking, we wanna start trotting in and running. but that's one of the things that would allow us to you know, look at some of these opportunities or solutions for some of these infrastructure needs. Thank you. |
| 01:09:43.95 | Mayor | Okay, thank you everybody. Really great conversation and questions and ideas. We'll take public comment and we'll give some direction to the city manager and the finance director I'll just note that we do have a closed session item we wanna get to. So I think we're probably aiming to maybe spend another 30 minutes here if possible, but we'll see how it goes. So Serge, can you please announce how people can make public comment? |
| 01:10:07.98 | Walfred Solorzano | Sure, video or audio public comment participation is limited to three minutes per speaker. If you would like to make a comment, please raise your hand in the Zoom application and you will be called upon when it's your time to speak. To raise your hand from the phone, press start now, and each speaker will be notified. when the term has elapsed. |
| 01:10:29.55 | Mayor | Okay. |
| 01:10:29.95 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:10:29.97 | Mayor | Thanks. |
| 01:10:30.04 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:10:30.56 | Mayor | Do we have any hands out? |
| 01:10:30.86 | Walfred Solorzano | ANSWER. Madam Mayor, I do not see any hints raised up. |
| 01:10:35.22 | Mayor | Okay, going once. Pointwise. Well, the comment is closed. So back up here. So we all have the recommendations. And actually, can you put that, maybe city manager or Serge, if you could put the screen back up so we can see the three recommendations you had. provided that you like direction I believe, all right. Number one is the question about pulling money from the reserves. I don't know. Number two, direct staff to develop multi-year plan. And then the three was maintain the minimum of 16.7% in the general fund. The alternative was to direct the city manager to amend the proposed budget to balance using no or less reserves. who would like to start us off in terms of direction? Yep, Councilor McLevin, all support. Thank you. |
| 01:11:26.30 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Thank you, Mayor. So I'm supportive of the three recommendations with the, uh, I'm, revision that I suggested earlier about including a decent estimate of our homeless costs in our budget. for the time being, including that cost as a further and assignment from our reserve. and with the expectation that we hope to recover significant amount of that funding from the county. In terms of directing staff to develop a multi-year plan, I just wanna make sure that we have a strong commitment to do that for the schedule if possible, if we could get the schedule before we approve the budget THAT WOULD BE IDEAL. I think we want to make sure that this plan includes projections and includes sort of a rough evaluation of some of the good options that have been put on the table today. And I would add to the list some serious consideration of further shared services or consolidation in their manner. I mentioned that, but I'm not sure that was an actual suggestion. So I would definitely keep all of those on the table. I think economies of scale is one of our biggest problems that we have in Sausalito and to the extent that we can, band together with other jurisdictions to take advantage of shared services, we will be in a good position to do so. But I like the idea of keeping all of our options on the table and evaluating those at some level. So as long as we have a schedule from staff and some elaboration of how this will play out in a commitment to projections, in favor of one and two and three. Rui. And then I did want to um, just talk about the schedule maybe at the very end if we could but If we need a motion today, I'm happy to make a motion along the lines of what I just said. But if we don't need a motion, I'm... Happy birthday. to skip direction. |
| 01:13:41.53 | Mayor | Yeah, let's hear from the others and we'll return to the schedule. Thank you for that. Council Member Hoffman. Thank you. |
| 01:13:47.12 | Council Member Hoffman | Yeah, good morning. Thank you to everybody who worked so hard on this. And Chris, you've done a tremendous job And you and Vivian and the finance team, OF, UM, building the finance department back up and then doing the deep dive into this. So I appreciate very much. the excellent presentation you gave on October 30th and thanks to council member Sobieski for calling that out and then also the preparation for today. So with regard to the three recommendations I would support number one and agree that somehow the potential spend for homelessness is going to have to be accounted for somehow and transparent and so with the caveat maybe it's maybe it's an asterisk of we've been you know we've that we're gonna receive X from. the county and the state and we expect to receive that but we haven't got that in hand yet and so we're accounting for what we think our expan is going to be. Um, whatever we think it's going to be for the next year. And then, you know, Anyway, so that that somehow called out. I agree with that and council members, I believe a normal suggestion on that. With regard to the second one, develop a plan to create a three-year plan. I, you know, frankly, I think it needs to be more aggressive than that. I think we need to get out of the habit of using our reserves for operating costs and other basic services that we're providing. And so I'd like to see a more aggressive, I'm fine with a three year, but I'd like to have an aggressive plan also where, We you know, we're able to, you know no longer dip into our reserves for operating costs and basic services. I think that's critically important. We've gotten into you know, a habit of that over the past four years, that preceded the pandemic right so we started doing deficits and spend budgets I think in 2019. At that time the representation was this is a one off, it's only a one year, we expect to be better. Understood that the pandemic came about, we have to get out of this habit and we have to be committed to it as a council, not to be in the habit of deficit spending any further. Um, with regard to a minimum of a reserve. I think that minimum needs to be higher. I understand that the standard is too much, but I think that's way too low for Sausalito. We know that we're going to have emergencies that happen in Sausalito just based on the past, right? Like we know we're gonna have you know seismic events we just know it's going to happen it's happened you know in the past regularly so And we're such a small town with a small budget and high costs. And so, we're lucky that we have the amount of reserve that we have, but the past few years have shown that we desperately need a higher reserve. If we had only had a 16.7 reserve in 2018 and 2019, we would be in a much more critical position than we are right now. And so, I'm nervous about going down that far. We don't need to go down that far because we know next year we're not going to be down that far, but I certainly don't want to budget presented to us that does a deficit spend down to 16.7%. I think that's very risky. Um, That's my input. I'm happy, obviously, to discuss it further. But I think that's the prudent way to go. Thank you. And I just... |
| 01:17:17.13 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | I just... Sorry to interrupt. Can I just ask Council Member Hoffman, do you have a recommendation? I mean, I definitely, you're, thoughts on that definitely resonate. So at some point, maybe not today, but |
| 01:17:30.68 | Council Member Hoffman | Thank you. |
| 01:17:30.71 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:17:30.73 | Council Member Hoffman | Yeah. |
| 01:17:30.75 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Bye. Yeah. |
| 01:17:32.03 | Council Member Hoffman | Yeah, I think it needs to be higher, probably closer to 20 or 25%. But any budget that contemplates us spending down to 16.7%, I think is, is risky and I don't wanna go in that unless it is absolutely necessary. like existentially necessary. Thank you. |
| 01:17:49.72 | Vice Mayor | Can I ask, does that Is that the number that we get down to by authorizing the 2.7? Is that why it's at 16.7 here? |
| 01:17:58.15 | Council Member Hoffman | I don't know, I think that's a good question for Chris when he comes back to us with the plan, right? With a three-year plan toward a zero deficit budget. And then Chris, if you wouldn't mind, you know, that being part of your clarification of your plan of what your, what your projections are, what our revenue projections are, and then justifying the spend down. |
| 01:18:20.80 | Chris Zapata | If I can speak to that real quick, I think you can. So if you follow the recommendation, it's not to touch the 5% and the 10%, that's 15% that's set aside and not to touch not even on the table, there's 22% that you have available to you. That's the $4.7 million number. If you took 2.7, now three point, that's called the homeless, costs another $500,000, We were looking at about a 25% before that. at the 2.7% or 2.7 million dollar reduction in that 22 percent fund you would be going down to a total counting to five and ten and the two minutes left you'd be at about 25 if you're going to take that lower you're going to be in a different range, and so I'll get that for you. But yeah, that's That's the member. And that's why we're recommending not touching you know, the budget shortfall and emergency stabilization, Those 15% funds stay there. And then the money you would be taking this out of is that 22% on top of it that exists, which is the $4.7 million number So if that goes down 2.7, that's 2 million left. That's 10% of the $20 million budget So that gives you about 25%. If you take it down another $500,000, my arithmetic's not that good, but it's, It's going to be lower than 25%, and we'll get that to you. |
| 01:19:48.60 | Vice Mayor | then where is the 16.7% number coming from? Maybe this is not the forum to answer that question and we should just get to it. |
| 01:19:54.47 | Chris Zapata | It is vice mayor. That's two months of of 100%. Okay, that's clear. That's where that comes from. |
| 01:20:05.26 | Council Member Hoffman | I think Chris has been clear on that, but that's kind of the industry standard. But my point is I think, because of our the amount of our budget and the size of our town, but that industry standard really it really exponentially does not protect us in the way that it should. |
| 01:20:24.19 | Walfred Solorzano | you |
| 01:20:25.37 | Council Member Hoffman | And Vice Mayor, Ms. Yirnandova? |
| 01:20:27.19 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 01:20:27.23 | Council Member Hoffman | Thank you. Thank you. |
| 01:20:27.65 | Vice Mayor | Great and again I want to just echo the appreciation for City Manager Zapata and Director Chu's hard work on this and also Director McGowan for the memo on capital improvements. There was just a lot of great work done to really get us back on track just not just on this one presentation but the Finance Department has been working really hard to get things back up to where they need to be from a structural standpoint. I am also on board with the first recommendation here. I think that makes sense and will allow us to keep our employees and our services at the level that they need to be. We won't lose a level of service, which is really critical. But I also agree that the multi-year plan is really important for us to be able to spend from our reserves. I completely echo the Councilmember Hoffman's concerns about the percentage of our reserves being spent and about using or relying on our reserves year on year. So we need a plan if we're going to use them this year, and we need to know this is not going to be what we do every time we have a deficit. So I think that that makes sense and including the homelessness numbers absolutely makes sense. But I would really like to see recommendations for the percent of reserves that are critical or correct for our community, given all of the good points that Council Member Hoffman made and the points about homelessness that Council Member, so we, sorry pardon me, Council Member Cleveland Knowles made. So I'm comfortable supporting a motion to that effect. And I am looking forward to seeing what steps we can take. I did wanna, just say I think I would like to see staff pursue the three suggestions that Mayor Calvin suggested as well, which is looking at property that we owned, property taxes and parking. um and I would really like to understand how we might do a better job of using the revenues that we have. And I'd also like to consider and explore not for every department by any means, but just what consolidation could do as a money saving measure for some departments so that we have that as a consideration looking forward and thinking about what the multi-year plan is. But I really appreciate the hard work done here. And I would be supportive of whatever version of a motion to that effect comes to the table. |
| 01:22:30.01 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:22:30.04 | Vice Mayor | Thank you. |
| 01:22:30.58 | Mayor | Thank you, Ms. Mayor. City Manager, let's go to Councillor Sobieski and then I'll make comments and then we'll finish with you if that's okay. |
| 01:22:38.28 | Council Member Sobieski | Thank you. So just riffing off of what I've heard from my colleagues, One thing is that we may have actually huge hidden reserves. that we don't know about. that on our balance sheet, we have four or $5 million in cash. those air reserves. So we are sitting on 40 plus acres of property or split across everything, from retail locations downtown to water lots out in the water. to public parks, to parking lots. all of which have a value that doesn't show up on our balance sheet and all, and some of that value is, because we as a community won't choose to change their use or touch them. However, for flying blind, by not knowing what we own. So is there any objection to actually, and it sounds like STAFF doesn't have this direction, even though we've talked about it before. So is there any objection to adding to the staff work, a development of an accurate balance sheet, which would be in, which would be Oh, developing an approximate value for each parcel of city-owned property that we own with our current zoning and what the value would be with a rezone to its highest and best use. |
| 01:23:50.18 | Mayor | So, Councilor Soviski, you know, I've talked about this and it was partially my idea as well. So I am supportive. I am. however cognizant of staff time and availability. And so maybe there is some. level or criteria that we could apply as opposed to look at all 44 acres, It's retail, it's waterfront, it's a certain size, something along those lines. And then I would separate that inquiry from what the so-called highest and best use, because that is a very subjective, Uh. determination depending on where in fact that property is located. And so if we can have a two step process in that evaluation, I think that might be useful. |
| 01:24:31.71 | Council Member Sobieski | Don't remind me, as you guys know, I'm an engineer, I should, well, sorry, I should interrupt it, but I'll just say it so people can react to it. Uh, When you do an engineering approximation, you take a swag at things and you get it to the decimal point. rather than limiting the scope, I fully appreciate limiting the level of granularity and uncertainty. And people hate that when you say, well, it's between one and $4 million, that seems like a broad range. But if you get that answer within five minutes, you know, whether it's worth exploring that more And then you won't spend much time on the property that's worth $10,000 to $50,000. That difference doesn't matter. getting a swag from our property manager, talking to realtors. It doesn't seem like a big exercise, but it does require direction from us to do. It is a substantial task. And again, it goes to our balance sheet. See you in the morning. really important, but sorry, I should have waited until a lot of people said something. Sorry to jump in. What do you mean? |
| 01:25:27.03 | Mayor | on these recommendations. |
| 01:25:27.99 | Council Member Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 01:25:28.07 | Mayor | Thank you. |
| 01:25:28.23 | Council Member Sobieski | Thank you. |
| 01:25:28.29 | Mayor | Thank you. |
| 01:25:29.20 | Council Member Sobieski | I do, I just was wondering whether- |
| 01:25:31.38 | Mayor | let's let's see your comments on the recommendations and then i'd like to keep mine |
| 01:25:33.32 | Council Member Sobieski | and then I will take mine and then go back. All right, so we've talked about a lot. I would love to add that to this list of recommendations that we act on today, which is direct staff to do a engineering to first order approximation analysis of the value of our land holdings. so that we have a better idea of what our balance sheet actually is. I agree with council member Cleveland knows that we should before we approve the budget, actually get a firm schedule for when we're gonna arrive to the promised land of having a clear plan on how to deal with our structural deficit. I would like to add to that exercise at least a first brush. and we're going to have a addressing of how we're going to deal with the bigger strategic goal of attending to the $99 million bill. for bringing our infrastructure up to snuff. We should start talking about that right away. married to the other. I agree with her also that we should look at shared services as part of this exercise. And that we ought to compliment that with what vice mayor said, and echoing you, mayor, which is additional revenue sources, which would include changes to our parking revenue, And I would add to that just the general category looking at places where we might be not taking advantage of our business model, our geographic location and how people are using our community and whether there are other fees or revenue sources and, I would love to see for you You could either task staff to come up with a list of ideas or whether that should be something done cooperation with the planants committee. uh, So those are additions. I support all three recommendations that are here that the staff makes. |
| 01:27:14.81 | Mayor | Thank you, Council Member. I'll just go quickly. This is a great list. It's exhaustive. I support the additional requests, homelessness monies, the first order approximation of land holdings. I wrote that down. I like the way that sounds. Might as well make two clarifications. It would be interesting in this multi-year plan, it sounds like we're looking at a three-year plan. So I just want some clarity. Is it a three-year? Is it a five-year? And are there, are there alternative scenarios, right? There's a plan where this year we, balance the budget, there's a plan where maybe We've, balance it halfway, you know, in two years. I don't know what that looks like, but is this the only option right now to pull 2.7 million from the reserves? What does that look like? And then on the shared services, I just want to clarify, I have some sort of fundamental concerns around shared services that it deflects inadequacies with our own infrastructure and organization. I'm happy to include it in the analysis, but I don't want it to be a crutch that we utilize to remedy some type of budget shortfall. I think we need to get our own house in order and make sure that we are strong and we can maintain those services and that we are running our city and we're not outsourcing that to other entities. So I'm happy to look at it, but I want to add that lens to it. How do we perform our own job better rather than looking for other places? And then if it is a shared services situation that folks do wanna look at, I would add things like a shared corporation or that we host and we make the money from, not that everything's leaving Sausalito to somehow reduce the reduced costs. So I just like to see us get stronger more fiscally you know response responsible and just being able to be the one that owns some of those services instead of outsourcing all the time so that's my perspective on that so nothing else to add in fully you know, supportive of these recommendations as well. I don't know whose hands went up. So just my screen is councilman Hoffman and then council member Cleveland Knowles. So if that's okay. Yeah, I think that's right. |
| 01:29:16.04 | Council Member Hoffman | So with regard to council member Sobieski's you know, list, I think, those would go under two, which is part of the multi-year plan. right and a lot of those things seem to me um to also be things that would be vetted and explored more fully by the finance committee so maybe those don't go on the finance committee agenda list um and explored in detail there and then brought back to the city council or vetted for the multi-year plan. Thank you. I agree that all of those things need to be looked at. Um, but with regard to how the effort to bring this budget to fruition, I think, we need to focus on more on what information we have available to us in the next my weeks. Cause that's when we need to get our budget done in the next three weeks. all good stuff and I think all moving in the right direction. So thanks very much. Agree. |
| 01:30:10.41 | Mayor | Thank you. Casper, I'm going to finish the song. Thank you. |
| 01:30:13.53 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, I have one thing to add to council member Sobieski's proposal. And then I have one question on your comments, mayor. So maybe I'll start with the first one because it directly reflects what we're deciding today. So I don't know if I misheard you, but I thought you said that we were gonna keep on the table having no deficit spending this year. and not dipping into the $2.7 million of reserves. What I understood the direction that the city manager needs from us today is actually to take that option off the table. because if we are gonna keep it on the table, then we are looking at significant service and staff cuts and staff need to do the job to present us a budget at our next meeting. that has those. So I am ready to vote today to take that off the table, Sure, I completely understood |
| 01:31:03.02 | Mayor | what you were saying about this year's budget. No, great, great point. I can see how my comments were not completely clear. I support these recommendations as well. I'm just interested in understanding future scenarios and how they play out. So thank you for the opportunity to clarify. Right. |
| 01:31:18.10 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:31:18.13 | Mayor | So it's that. |
| 01:31:18.97 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | like we're all on the same page and we just need to understand if we're talking about a two-year plan, a three-year plan or a longer-year plan. And hopefully we'll get some clarity before we approve the budget on timeline and method together. to um, plant. On council member Sobieski's proposal, Yeah. of the proposal, but I can't, I'm not sure. specifically support something today without knowing the cost. I mean, we're talking about the budget right now where we are already deficit spending. So I don't know how long it would take our property manager to come up with the analysis that he's proposing. And I think we need to understand the cost of that versus the cost of a parking to one management analysis versus the cost of these other options that we're considering. pursuing and we need to pick a few horses and run with them. The ones that we think are going to be our best bet of developing resources or savings. to resolve our structural deficit. So at some point, and I leave it to the city manager and our finance director to determine I'd like to see a kind of a high level list of our options and costs of analysis. staff costs or consultant costs to do the analysis to see how much we would either save or get in revenue projections. I am supporting council member Sobieski of your ask, but I really have no idea how long that would take our property manager or how much it costs. |
| 01:32:58.82 | Mayor | Thank you. Thank you, council member. Um, Okay, city manager, it looks like We have. Yeah, I'm sorry. |
| 01:33:05.18 | Council Member Sobieski | Yeah. I just wanted, since that was a material question, I guess I would give a material answer. We, um... We asked the sitting there, the, uh, Michael Wagner, I guess is not here, he can speak for himself, what did he estimate the current value of the Bank of America building would be? And his process was to call a few of his realtor friends and ask, and he got arranged. of answers, which was, If you kept the current zoning the same, it was one number. If you changed it to something else, it was another number. it amounted to a few emails from the professional. That effort probably took half an hour to an hour this time. And you can imagine there is a range of properties where that would be that kind of problem. And I illustrate that just as, say what a first approximation to my mind looks like if it doesn't involve us. a complicated appraisal process like you would have for your house, where someone comes out with a flashlight and looks in the crawl space. promote. and does a competitive analysis, but rather there are a range of properties which you would have a first approximation that shouldn't take much money. Things like a water lot might be more complicated, and I think you're feeling of rushing knowing what you're getting into, certainly is relevant, but I just wanted to illustrate what I had in mind. to at least give us some approximation, because the alternative is to have no number whatsoever. And that seems to make us fly extra wide. So I don't know if that addresses if that clarifies anything for you. season. |
| 01:34:37.49 | Mayor | It sounds like, thank you for that, Council Member. we've given kind of a direction to the city manager and perhaps he and Mike Wagner can come back with a recommendation on how to proceed based on those comments. additional material information. pardon me, city managers, I'll tell you, Comments? here. |
| 01:34:56.76 | Chris Zapata | So I'd like to end my comments unless there are questions. |
| 01:35:01.50 | Walfred Solorzano | you |
| 01:35:01.62 | Chris Zapata | with a couple of observations so that These are number one. Budgets are exactly our best estimates. OK. So I hope. I hope that that's clear. to all of us in the public. And to Council Member Sabieski's point about assets we have, that's much appreciated. And cities always find little pockets of funds that they didn't anticipate in their budget. And that's good. But they always find bills that they didn't anticipate. And so they kind of watch each other. So something significant with real value I think is a worthwhile exercise. I'll talk to Mr. Wagner about that. some of the things that, you know, are gonna do just as a matter of course, is we have to do recover our costs from our consultants and all these things that we are doing in our community development department and that must be upgraded. I'm gonna make sure that our business licenses are being paid. that are business license taxes, is being collected and all of those things so those are just internal things that we gotta do And obviously at some point you have to look at your fees to see if they're where they need to be. So an update of your fee is really important. On the reserve side, so what I heard was, you know, we want to include the homeless number in there. and You know, one of the things that you fall into when you do things like that, and I wanna make sure that you understand my thinking. is then there's an expectation. that you're going to spend X number of dollars on X service. That's why, you know, one of the things that when I'm suggesting You have some wiggle room in your Michelle Pham. you know, there will be a cost in terms of labor negotiations. And that's not factored in. But if you tell me what that is, then that number is something that people will gravitate toward and say, you put this in the budget and it was this much money So that's expected for that. Thank you. Mm-hmm. So be aware that that reserve has some local room in it And those things are not missed by me, highlighted by me because I think there's some danger in doing that. So those are my comments regarding budget. And I think I really need some direction as well a calendar that was proposed. a couple of weeks ago and amended by the agenda setting committee meeting last week, which talked about obviously the 14th to talk about the budget. potentially the 17th. to finalize the budget and the 28th to adopt the budget. So if that's the approach, you know, in terms of future dates, what I'm suggesting is I think we have enough direction here. to bring you something on the 14th. And if that meets muster, then you probably would not need that meeting on the 17th. You would just go right to the 28th. |
| 01:38:03.50 | Mayor | Thank you, Chris. I think that schedule sounds right. I think we're all, you're gonna see what The 14th looks like there's a doodle pull out for the 17th So if folks can just kind of reserve that in case we do need that time. but I'm glad to hear you feel like you have enough Yeah, Councilman Cleveland, |
| 01:38:21.39 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Yeah, I have Just two thoughts. One is just, My personal schedule, I had an unexpected trip, so I'll be on the East Coast on June 14th. If we are gonna have a budget meeting on June 14th, I wanna make sure that we have our materials ahead of time. I mean, I think we're expecting some additional detail on the budget. I just personally, it takes me a long time to get through budget information. The materials that we got for today were good, but we got them very, very late for a meeting that we've known about. or quite some time. So, You know, I... I'm okay keeping it on the 14th. If we can get the materials on the same day that we get the materials for the 14th, but we have the meeting on the 17th, That actually, you know, we have a meeting in the morning. Thank you. It might just go better and more smoothly. I don't know what other people think. I mean, that's kind of my personal preference. is to separate those, get the materials on the same Thursday we get our June 14th materials and have a full week to digest them but I'm happy to go forward on the 14th and only do the 17th if we have a I do that if that's what other people want to do, but I would propose that we get the materials well ahead and that we hold the meeting in the morning. |
| 01:39:42.57 | Chris Zapata | Mayor and council, if I may, my experience is there's a legal requirement to have a budget hearing at a regular council meeting So I will check into that to make sure that's what I think it is. but that's why the meetings were scheduled on the 14th and 28th. because they were you know, budget, public budget meetings you have in your budget adoption process, that are required. So let me find out for sure on that. make sure that you can substitute meeting or miss a meeting or not have it on the 14th. because I believe you have to have it on the 14th. And then you have to adopt it by the 30th. And those two regular scheduled meetings fall on the 14th and 28th. |
| 01:40:26.62 | Mayor | Thanks for that because it's helpful. Vice Mayor, hands up and then Councilman will be asking. |
| 01:40:31.51 | Vice Mayor | I was just gonna say I'd be supportive of that just because I appreciate extra time to digest budget materials. I'd also suggested during our agenda setting meeting that we have a requirement of council members to submit your questions the Friday prior. So if we could get the materials Friday, then. 10th 11th whatever Friday that would be before the Tuesday and submit the questions and then be able to have the meeting the following Friday would probably be more which is more effective for the group. And there's also, I think quite a bit on the meeting on the 14th potentially that so I would be supportive of. and the suggestion |
| 01:41:07.69 | Mayor | Okay, Councillor Sobieski, did you want to comment? |
| 01:41:09.72 | Council Member Sobieski | just going to add, uh, if that's not possible to accommodate. Councilmember Cleveland Knowles being on the East Coast, if we could start a little bit earlier with our regular meeting to get at least the preliminaries out of the way. so that we could get to the heart of the matter by seven o'clock. then that makes it easier and more productive. |
| 01:41:30.20 | Mayor | Yeah, thank you for that. I'm open to starting earlier on the 14th. I think I, let's just keep it on um i understand that maybe what would happen is we get an update but then um because we're the most to your point we would keep the 17th on there and that's like the full big discussion but but i wouldn't mind having multiple swipes at this um and having if the city manager has the information ready to go. Even if I haven't fully digested it, I'm happy to receive you know, that information and reflect on anything I have been able to review, but with an eye towards the 17th being the fuller date, that's fine as well. So if everyone's okay, I mean, it's still on the agenda. I'm happy to start earlier. Whatever makes sense for folks who have summer travel. That's fine by me. So maybe... City manager, if you could keep us surprised of your timing and when you think we might have materials and maybe it's even, you have some of the materials ready, but not others, whatever we can get earlier, the better. |
| 01:42:31.02 | Chris Zapata | Thank you. |
| 01:42:32.20 | Mayor | Okay. All right, all. Any other last comments here before we adjourn to session? Do we need to make a motion roll? |
| 01:42:41.31 | Vice Mayor | or just direction to staff is cleared. |
| 01:42:45.80 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. |
| 01:42:45.82 | Chris Zapata | I think I've got enough direction from you all. maybe something sooner than the 14th, but for the 14th. |
| 01:42:53.77 | Mayor | Okay. Thank you, everybody. Very thoughtful and helpful conversation. We'll keep an eye to the 17th so that we can have a full dialogue on that. Okay, before we go to a closed session, I have to announce the items that take for the comment. Sorry, okay. So we have one item in post session. It's conference legal counsel, existing litigation pursuant to California government code section 54956.9 D1. South San Marino County Chapter of the California Homeless Union, Persistency of Sausalito. Do we have any public comment on the closed session items? |
| 01:43:28.16 | Walfred Solorzano | It looks like we do have a public commenter and under the name of TT. unmuted and is to share your video. |
| 01:43:38.74 | Mayor | Great, so you have two minutes, Titi, and welcome. |
| 01:43:44.22 | Mayor | Thank you. |
| 01:43:44.24 | TT | Thank you. Can you all hear me? Yes, ma'am. Great. Okay. So I have some notes here regarding with the homeless union. The defendant's court filings include a supplemental declaration of Chris Zapata, And an excerpt from that document says on December 7th, 2021, The city council approved a contract with Urban Alchemy for the next six months. Urban Alchemy will provide camp management, security and support services. I want to caution you that this may be a violation of the California Business and Professions Code regarding regulations that pertain to private security services under the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services. |
| 01:44:28.28 | Council Member Cleveland Knowles | Thank you. |
| 01:44:29.11 | TT | That being said, I hope you all picked up this week's issue of the Pacific Sun because it outlines why you're absolutely going to have an increase in the budget deficit as it pertains to litigation. I proposed to you many times before how you could have spent a third of the money to resolve this ongoing battle. A homeless shelter does not devalue real estate here. but a sanctioned encampment in our public park does. yet you continue to deflect responsibility. while spending a small fortune to wage war against the poor. seemingly to keep unhoused persons out of public eye. Hypothetically speaking though, what would you do if 50 people from the San Francisco camp showed up here? unless you can offer a shelter bed, unhoused persons have the federal right to camp on public land. So I hope you all figure that out because it's costing a fortune as you have spoken over the duration of this meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We see another hand up. |
| 01:45:34.01 | Mayor | Exactly. |
| 01:45:34.27 | Walfred Solorzano | Thank you. Senator Mayor, we do have a phone number, 415-415-425-425. 532-4675. You've been unmuted. |
| 01:45:45.40 | Walfred Solorzano | Yes, good morning. Salute every one of you, all of you are doing an excellent job. and wrapping the city down into the ground. groups like the most potential that you are going to do for these stones. I don't know if Mr. Sohara is doing that purposely. Thank you. I am in urban alchemy. It is a mistake. He had brought lawsuits against the city for as much as you can. Yes, you are running this town into a ground. and you're not solving anything. you're not making profitable. decisions will be styled. TO THE COUNTRY. This is who you are. Please stand on the back of the... I have to congratulate you for being such a fellow especially Mr. Chris Zapata. is healthy homeless. solve this question. stop looking like the worst. to them. Well, against your own American people. Thank you. |
| 01:46:56.45 | Mayor | City Clerk, do we have any additional |
| 01:46:59.62 | Walfred Solorzano | the comments. Madam Mayor, it does not appear as we have any other hands raised. |
| 01:47:04.29 | Mayor | Okay, public comment is now closed and we'll adjourn to closed session. Thanks very much. |
Anonymous Phone Caller — Against: Criticized city leadership for running the town into the ground, specifically mentioning Urban Alchemy and Chris Zapata. Accused officials of not solving problems and making poor decisions, while congratulating them for being 'such a fellow' in a sarcastic tone. ▶ 📄