 The hour of nine o'clock having arrived the special meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council for budget consideration purposes is called order and the clerk will call the roll. Thank you Mayor. Councilmember Newsom. Present. Brown. Here. Watkins. Here. Brunner. Good morning. Present. Talentary Johnson. Is it? Vice Mayor Golder. Here. And Mayor Keely. Here. A quorum having been established. We will move along. Our item here is the proposed 2023-24 fiscal year budget. If you want to participate in this as a member of the public you can either do so here in chambers or you can call in and we will receive your testimony online. This would be the opportunity for public comment at this moment on if you just hold for just a second. I'll be right with you just just one second. Very good. Thank you. Good morning everybody. Mr. Lonzianotti. How are you sir? Good. My name is Rick Lonzianotti. Thank you. So I have some questions about the Parking District. It's called the Parking Enterprise Fund. So as you know the pandemic hit downtown really hard. The revenue has been lower than expenditures ever since fiscal year 2021 and it looks like it's getting worse. The estimate at the end of this fiscal year which is next month is that the deficit will be two and a quarter million dollars. That's out of expenditures of six and a half million. So a little over a third of the of the revenue of the of the expenditures is being paid somewhere else. And we know from previous years that there's no fund balance. You know the downtown parking district ran through its savings right. It would be really good to see the fund balance in previous years it was listed in the documents and this year it's not. So the question that I have is where's the money come coming from to pay the bills. And if these funds are coming from another source will they be repaid. Is it a loan. You know what's the plan for repayment. So the estimate estimated deficit for the next fiscal year 2024 is even larger than for this year. It's 2.6 million dollars. So does staff estimate that we're going to break even one of these years. Like if so how long will it take to be in the black. And then the next question is after we're in the black how long before we repay the loans presumably from the general fund or wherever else it's coming from. So I have these questions for you in case you didn't take notes but you're all here. If you give those to the clerk. Mr. lunch naughty. Thank you sir. Anyone else. You have someone online someone online. Let's go to the person online. Good morning. Good morning person online. Your. Your moment has arrived. Three two one. We will hear from you later if you'd like to call back in. Right. Members we are on the library presentation. Yolande Wilburn our library director will be presenting on this item. Good morning. Thank you. Good morning Mayor Keely. Good morning council members. Yolande Wilburn director of the Santa Cruz public libraries. Thank you so much for having me here. I'm thrilled to be able to present to you the library's twenty twenty four fiscal year budget. So oops a little too. Okay there we go. So today I'm going to tell you a little bit of an overview of Santa Cruz public libraries. We just recently celebrated National Library Week and the theme for this year was there's more to the story. And so our libraries are no different. There's a lot more going on than you think. And our I will then talk a little bit about our achievements in twenty twenty three things that we accomplished some of our challenges and then a brief overview of our budget as well as what we have to look forward to in twenty twenty four. So again there's more to the story. And it looks like sometimes we're just a bunch of people hanging out over there at the library having a party and crafting and singing and dancing and having a good time. But there's a lot of work that goes into what we do. Part of that begins with our library financing authority. So the library financing authority oversees the county measure our quarter cent sales tax that comes directly to fund the libraries. So annually we get about ten point eight million dollars from that measure our sales tax to help us operate our libraries. We also have our wonderful joint powers authority board who contributes and oversees our operations. The cities of Santa Cruz Capitola Scots Valley and County of Santa Cruz all contribute funds through the joint powers exercise agreement. And so the city of Santa Cruz this body actually contributes about one point nine million dollars annually to our budget. Our library facilities financing authority also oversees the measure S sales tax and that's to renovate and rebuild our libraries. And we are coming to the end. We're so pleased that since the city council here approved the new downtown library affordable housing and parking project we are going to be able to move forward and we're looking forward to the city of Santa Cruz going out for its bond. That's the last bond we need to be able to complete the downtown library. So in addition to our wonderful boards we have a fantastic staff. Our library advisory commission provides citizen input to what we do. We do a lot of work with them. And then we also have our friends of the library who really help us out. Our friends of the library really do help us in not only raising funds but they also volunteer at the library and they've begun providing some community led programming which has been really successful because it's really based on the needs of each individual community. This year we did something a little different. We actually sort of restructured our organizational chart in that assistant director Eric Howard is now sort of overseeing the public services side where I oversee directly more of the administrative and operational side of our operation. Our library's vision is to transform lives and strengthen our community. We do that through lifelong learning, digital inclusion, community connections and transformative spaces as you've seen. This has been the year of building for us. So we've opened a lot of libraries. We also really have begun to work on our organizational capacity. We believe with all of the things that we do it's really important to have our staff be able to have the skills that they need. So training our staff has been a really important part of what we've done this year. All right. So some of our achievements for this year we completed a new strategic plan. We actually completed a new communications plan. That's something that the library has not had in the past. So we're really proud of that. Helping us to better tell our story to the public and get people actively involved. We've begun a new information technology plan. We have a lot of work to do on our IT infrastructure at the library, outdated computers. So we're in the process of we've updated servers this year. Those are all part of our IT improvement plan. We, as you can see, reopened Garfield Park, Scots Valley, Live Oak and just recently the Brands of Forty Library, which was a fantastic opening. And I know many of you were there. So we really appreciate all of your support. We relocated our collection management and IT teams. They were at the downtown library, but we were moving them into the administrative office because they actually serve people countywide. And so we believe that that's where they should be for the rest of the staff that serve people countywide are. And so we got that accomplished. That's something that had been on the books to do for the last several years, and we got it done in 2023. So we're really proud of that. We added 8.5 additional FTE library assistant twos. We had a lot of temps working. So we took some of that temp budget and we used it to specifically hire regular staff and give people regular benefited jobs, which is really important. It also allowed us to be able to increase our service at the library branches. We were able to open most branches six days a week and have regular hours for every community. And it actually allowed us to go from providing 240 hours a week open to 414 hours a week for our community, which is really important. We added a 1.0 community relations specialist. Again, that helps us tell our story, get our marketing out there and make sure that the public know what we're doing so they can participate. We put a librarian at every branch. This is something I heard from the community every time I went out and talked to different groups. They said, hey, what happened to a librarian in every branch? We used to have them sort of clustered regionally, but the branches felt like, hey, the community said, hey, I don't have that librarian I can talk to. We've now got a librarian back at every branch. We migrated to a hosted integrated library system again to help us that's cloud based now help us control our IT infrastructure. We actually served as a FEMA disaster recovery center at our Felton library after the Atmospheric Rivers. We also at our Scots Valley Library, we actually served as an evacuation point for kids who were coming out of a youth camp during the Atmospheric Rivers. They had to get kids out. So they brought them to the Scots Valley Library and that served as a staging point. So as you can see, lots of things going on at the library. And in addition, we added ukuleles to our collection of items you can check out. So we are still having a little bit of fun. So some of the challenges that we're facing this year, we recently, as you know, the city of Santa Cruz actually increased their cost allocations across the city. They hadn't done that for a while. So that cost allocation was going to hit the library pretty hard. Our costs were going to double. And so the city has agreed to the service agreement that we had previously in place since 2016. But we are going to be working on renegotiating that agreement. We want to make sure that we're getting a fair and equitable value for what we're spending. And so we have partnered with the city to do an RFP for cost analysis. So that we anticipate will take about a year. And we are looking forward to working with the city so that we get some really great outcomes from that. Our information technology infrastructure, I've already spoken about this a little bit. We have electrical infrastructure upgrades, even though we've were rebuilding and renovating libraries, there are some additional electrical concerns that we have our Boulder Creek library. We believe we need to put a generator in place in order to do that. We've got to upgrade the electrical system. So that's a project, well, one time project, we're going to come back in and do this year. We also want to redesign our website and rebrand. I've heard from the community, hey, what is that thing that you guys have? Is that a quote mark? And so we want to look at rebranding that brand hasn't changed for quite a while. In addition, we've had this year of the seven year average showed that we have a 10% vacancy rate. We want to bring that down right now. We almost have all of our positions filled. And I know just about time we get something filled, somebody will retire, but we are really close. And so we're really looking forward to bringing that vacancy rate down. We'll get there. So our projected revenue. So this year, we are projecting that our overall revenues will be about 19 million $335,000. We have seen a, we projected a decrease in those measure our sales taxes, you know, people, the session's hitting. So we projected that downward, which is about a 1.3% decrease in the amount we're going to get from measure are this year. The MOE that the cities and county negotiated. That actually is now increasing. So that's really a good thing. They got that renegotiated last year in June at budget time. So that will give us about an 11.5% increase in that MOE amount, which equates to about a 3.5% increase in overall revenue. Our personnel expenses, as you know, across the city are up. A lot of that is due to our increase in benefits, our colas, our perrs. But we also are up in personnel costs because we've actually opened branches, right? And so where we could take that 10% vacancy rate in the past, we just can't hold that right now in order to keep the branches open. So higher personnel costs. The good thing about when we were closed was we were able to really use that salary savings to build our fund balance, which is really great. We have a really healthy fund balance, which you'll see here a little bit later on, and that's going to allow us to do those one-time projects. We actually with the opening of Aptos in the fall, we actually want to add in this year's budget a 1.0 librarian for the Aptos. We already have a youth librarian designated there, but because we are going to be taking in collection materials from the Aptos History Museum, we want to make sure that we have an adult services librarian there to provide programming and do local history programming. We've also reclassified an assistant volunteer coordinator position that's been vacant for a long time. It's a position that we feel could be utilized better elsewhere. So we are going to make that into a 1.0 position. We're going to come on that halftime to a 1.0 in order to provide a library specialist who will work with our community relations specialists doing more of that outreach and then working also with volunteers. So our volunteers, when we do events, we do tabling, we do pop-ups, we need volunteers to help our staff. So that position will help with that. And again, we've talked a little bit already about our vacancy factor. Our operating expenditures and capital outlay, we've seen a actually I sat and worked with all of our branch managers to bring down their budgets about 2.6%. So we ended up balancing the budget. We know that there's a 4.5% increase that we took this year and that's from that city services agreement that we have that cost allocation. And then we augmented some of our collection materials by a trust fund that we have. We have a number of smaller trust fund accounts that the board had spoken to me our library advisory commission and they said, Hey, you guys have had these small amounts for a long time. Why don't you start spending those because they're not earning a whole lot and it would be better served by putting the materials into the collection. So we're going to use some of that trust fund to augment about 8% of our materials budget this year. And then of course, I've talked already a little bit about those one time projects. So as you can see here from our budget overview, our total expenditures are coming out to be about 19,915,000. And that leaves us with a $580,000 need to go to our unrestricted fund balance. We do keep a 20% reserve that we are mandated to have on hand. And as you can see, that still leaves us with a really healthy fund balance to be able to go back in and do a lot of these one time projects. Some of those one time projects include a 10 year financial plan. I know that's something that the city is going out for this year as well. We want to do the same. We want to be fiscally responsible. And so we need to be able to project out how many of these one time projects can we do? What are our Calpers and escalating benefit costs going to be to make sure that we have the funds available to sustain the library system? We're also looking at doing the link plus program. Link plus allows our users to sort of go to our catalog and look at what other libraries have and place an order. So it's similar to ILL but there's no charge to that. This will help to beef up our collection and people's access to more materials. Also Capitola, when we open the Aptos library this fall, we will be pulling 3.0 FTE out of Capitola. Those are Aptos staff who have been working there. And now that we're reopening Aptos, they're going to have to go back. So we have to make a decision. Are we going to put more money into personnel to keep Capitola open on Sundays? So our board has tentatively approved us going out for a pilot project where for six months we're going to use temp staff to help cover the Sunday hours. And then we'll get some do some surveying with the public. We'll look at the numbers. We have people counters that we installed at every branch this year as well. And those will be able to get good counts on how many people are using the space. And then we'll make a determination of and we'll go back to our board to say, are you going to fund more people, right, to keep that open? Or is it something that we need to close? I will say this that in preliminary just looking at the current statistics that we've been able to get, Capitola does continue to serve. Downtown still serves more people, more people in and out the door downtown, but Capitola serves more books on Sunday. So it's interesting. Lots of people checking out books there. Again, our cost allocation analysis and then rebranding our website and redesign. So looking ahead, opening the Aptus library, we are really close. I'm scheduled to do hopefully a punch walk at the end of June. That doesn't mean we're opening. It just means we're almost there. And so my goal is to get our Aptus library opened in September. Live Oak Annex is another project and that's really more study rooms and community space that will be opening. So that should be around the same time is what we're projecting. And then we have the downtown library project where are so excited. The community is very excited. Our friends are very excited and they have begun their campaign. So I continue to work with them on their campaign to raise funds for the downtown library. And then again, those one time projects are going to keep us pretty busy. And of course we will continue to provide our programs and services as we always do. With that, I'm happy to take any of your questions. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. And thanks to all of your staff as well for running such a fine library system. Let me ask if there are questions by members here, Ms. Calantari Johnson. Hi, thank you so much for the presentation and all of your work. Just a couple of questions. I was pleased to hear and see about the 8.5 FTEs instead of the temps. I'm wondering if you could share how many temps, approximately how many temps was that and and in what direction and how did it impact the budget? So I can't say how many temps it was because temps usually are based on hours. And so we did take half of the temp budget. We still kept half the temp budget to be able to provide because our aides and those are our library workers who shelve materials. Those are still under the temp budget. And so we've been able to sustain aides at all of our locations with that budget. And then we also have some on-call librarians and library staff if somebody's out on an extended leave. One of the other things that we did this year was we really looked at having our managers schedule better. So if you need to day off but you can work tomorrow and that was your normal day off, let's just reschedule you rather than calling in temps. And our staff has really been working hard to do that. So we do know this that of those 8.5 were hiring those temps, they're taking the permanent jobs. We have some people here who they've retired and they only want to work 10. And they can continue to do that with us. But the bulk of the people who were hiring are people who already live here and they were in those temp jobs. That's really great. One other question I see in the FY24 goals established a partnership with the County of Santa Cruz to provide a social worker in the downtown library. Can you just share more about what that looks like? And well if it's if it's reflected in the budget or what? Yeah, so it's not really reflected in our budget. So that's something that we've been talking with. One of our board members Carlos Palacios, the County Administrative Officer. And they have committed that they are willing to have a social worker be placed in the downtown library. And so it will be a partnership with them where they would fund it. They would pay that position and we would provide the space for them to operate. Right now we have as you know a number of community partners that go in and out. But they're not there all the time. And so I think having a permanent social worker there will be really helpful. It'll alleviate some of our staff from doing that work. The the problem is that the county is struggling to hire people for that position. And that's where we were hoping we get that done this year. But they just don't have this staff to be able to staff that position. So in the new fiscal year we're gonna really hope and push for that to get that position hired at the county. Great. Thank you so much. Those are welcome. For the questions or comments. Miss Brunner. Thank you so much for that thorough report and information. As the current chair of the library financing authority I'm very pleased to see the healthy fund balance and the reserves and so much action moving forward in the upcoming year. It's just absolutely amazing. So with the city of Santa Cruz library locations I'm happy to see the goals. I'm also happy to see the number of staff members that completed DEI training. I know that has been a topic because the libraries now serve such an array of folks coming in and using the services. And so I look forward to the analysis and the cost allocation analysis as well as a huge project. So thank you. Thank you for all your work. I didn't after our previous library director Susan left. I was sure it would be hard to fill her shoes but you have just stepped into the role and really I feel like the libraries in good hands and your whole team thank you for this work and continuing all the library services for our community. Thank you. Good morning. Couple of questions. One is could you step through what you understand right now to be the timing for the new downtown library. Sure. So my understanding is that we're not anticipating groundbreaking until 2024. So probably end of the year 2025 early. Something like that. We'd love it to be sooner if we can. But I think in order to get all the pieces in place that's the timing. We did go out recently for the infrastructure grant from the state library building forward. That is we're hoping we get that. But again the city of Santa Cruz bond is one of the big pieces that needs to be done in order for that project to be moving forward as well as the other pieces of the construction project. So ground break. We're anticipating probably 2024 late 2024 2025 early and then us moving into the building and opening 2027. And this bond that you've now referenced twice referenced earlier in your presentation. Can you talk about that. Sure. Each during the measure S. So the measure S. There's the fund is there for the city to go out for the bond. Our other county has gone out for their bond. And I know that the city is in talks with the county treasurer who oversees that fund in order to go ahead and have their bond issued right now to do the other projects. My understanding is that the city has been using a pay as you go kind of plan. So as the project has funding they can draw down from that account. But they do still need to go out for the larger bond issue. They meaning the city of Santa Cruz needs to go out on a bond issue in order to build the downtown library. Correct. And that is I believe it's about 27 million. Thank you. A couple of other questions. The there. Am I right in believing there. There will be because I think we do this on many public agency projects. There'll be a art component that will go into the library. The main downtown library. There'll be art components to it. Artistic features to it. Is that right. So I do not have any information on the art. I know with the county projects there was a public art piece. My understanding is the public art piece for the city of Santa Cruz is going to be part of the parking area. A different aspect of the project. So that's my understanding. We do not have any plans at the library and the plans that we've been working on over the last year. We have some feature walls and things like that. But we don't have a specifically art piece. That seems a bit unusual in that in the city we are big proponents of public art in public places in public buildings. And I'm wondering if this project is so far along that there isn't some opportunity to still include that either on the interior or the exterior. Or is that a policy decision that's already been made. No I don't think it's a policy decision and that's where I think that the parking component I think in the parking garage may be where that public art piece was going to come in. Again probably Bonnie Lipscomb is the better person to ask about that because that's where my understanding was. So that may be an external feature of public art where you know on the side where you enter the library. I'm not aware of what specifics are to that art piece. Do you personally or professionally think that it's a good idea to have public art associated with incorporated into new library construction? Well I think in our libraries and all of our libraries we do have art hanging systems and so one of the things that we worked on this year was really establishing a clearer policy about public art in our library spaces and so we actually up until now our friends of the library have largely gone out and solicited artists and said hey would you like to hang your art in the library as a rotating exhibit type of thing. We have some display cases where local artists are able to put in their works and that's again a rotating art piece where we can hang a variety of artists in the community's collections. I know again at our other facilities we do have some public art that was incorporated in some of the county facilities but you know even with Aptos we've got kind of there's a gate feature so the gate to the teen area is a piece of public art so I think it could be certainly incorporated. I am comfortable either way because I know that in the library spaces we make sure that we're displaying public art and we believe in equity, diversity and inclusion and we want to make sure that there's representation from every member of the community and so I like having that rotating ability where you can display a variety of artists not just one artist for all time and then other artists don't get an opportunity so for me that's kind of my perspective. I know you asked me the question about how I personally felt about it. And staying in that vein for a moment, is there an adopted policy with regard to either the selection of artwork that is displayed? Is there a process and is there a policy? There is. We do have an art display policy and that is available on our website. Again we just recently updated that policy because it had been outdated for quite some time and so we've gotten that re-established and we're actually working on putting up on our website a space where artists can just go there and they can actually sign up to try and have their art considered to be displayed in our public space. Again the friends can go there and recommend an artist but we also want to make sure that other artist voices are being heard and that they can just go online, sign up and then we have a committee we're establishing a committee that would review those artists and then they would determine okay you get the first quarter of the year, you get the second quarter, you get the third quarter right? That type of a thing so that we would have the art rotate. And when that committee is meeting and considering do they have some kinds of guidelines, criteria that is adopted, is available to people who know what filter the committee will be pushing the applicants through? Certainly that's exactly part of what the committee work would be and we will have guidelines for them to consider and generally what we're trying to do is get like an art commissioner from the city, an art commissioner from the county, maybe some of the friends of the library and then get some citizens to serve on that committee so that it's fair and equitable and not just me saying oh I like that artist, put that artist up. We want to have a really robust discussion around the artwork to ensure that we are being fair and equitable. Would you be kind enough? We will have to finish this portion of our budget deliberations today then we will come back in June for a final day of reconciliation of various kinds and adopt the final budget. Would you be kind enough to forward to the city council the guidelines that are used by this committee in determining what public art is selected? Absolutely. Thank you very much. And just so you know on the public art from the county side on those pieces that they've put into their facilities, we actually do not decide that. That is the entity that owns the facility. So same thing with downtown. If the city of Santa Cruz wants to put art in that building they can. That's your it's your building. We don't own any of our buildings. It's it's always the city or county or entity that owns that facility. Okay. So I thought I had it now I don't have it. No, I'm sorry. It's me. It's not you. It's me. I thought you just said there was a committee that did this. That's for inside our space as tenants where we're leasing the space from you. And so that's where we would determine what will go up on our walls inside the library. But for those big public art pieces that is part of the building. And so therefore that is the owner of the building. And that that's where that falls to the city and like the county has a process. And actually I served on the county's board. And again, that's where we're kind of looking at best practices that other cities and counties are using to determine how our selections will be made. Is there a process inside the library system? An adopted written policy you could share with us that that guides you on removing public art that has been approved. Do you have do you have any policy on that? There is not. Okay. You think you might ever have one or do you think that's an important thing to do? So we don't think that that's necessarily an important thing to do on how we remove public art. What we do is we in the agreement that we have, it states when we accept public art, when we accept art from someone, what the terms are and that out that in it in that agreement is where we spell out what can happen with art that, you know, we don't hang out necessarily in perpetuity that we may keep it up there for a while. It may become damaged. We would take it down. We sort of outline all of that in the agreement that we have people signed. So it's we're really upfront about it. We're transparent. We don't want to do something on the back end. And so that's where if there's public art that's already existing, then what we do is we go to the entity that installed the public art and say what agreement did you have with this person and absent of any agreement, then there is not an agreement. And so that's where it can get a little sticky. That's why we put it in in that new policy. We built it in up front to say, here's what the terms are. The tone, my basic concern here is, is that we're talking about what I consider to be temples of truth and temples of education and learning and possibilities and enlightenment in various ways. I think they are, in my view, secular churches is what I view libraries as being. And I they have lifted so many people up out of circumstances on their life. I mean, I don't have to tell you, for God's sake, you've dedicated your life to it. I am concerned and this I'll cut to the chase on this. I am very concerned still about what happened at the Boulder Creek Library with regard to the removal of a set of ceramic masks which were placed there as a when the library was brand new. And there was a public competition for placement of art inside the library. An artist was selected. They were placed there. I think they were there 37 years. The Boulder Creek Library got was and thank everybody in the library system for this, underwent a major renovation. By the way, I think it's just fabulous. Terrifically good work done there. And I know it's considered, you know, it's held closely in the heart of the people of Santa Rosa Valley and the Boulder Creek area. It's my understanding that that art was taken down for the renovation then put back up with the approval and assistance of the library system including the county public works department. And that there was one anonymous complaint about the art and the art came down. And I'm not asking to re litigate that issue. I will share with you that that's a very disturbing lack of a process in my view for a public library to take down artwork that had been there for 37 years and was done by an artist that is deeply revered and has passed away deeply revered there. Boulder Creek's Boulder Creek so Supervisor McPherson has to decide what he wants to do to help anything in that regard. But as mayor of Santa Cruz, that is stuck in my mind as in my view, antithetical to libraries for that to have been removed in that way. And that's why I'm questioning what process is in place and what policies are in place for putting artwork up, selecting what art goes up, where does it go, and what artwork comes down and under what conditions. I wonder if you share any of those concerns. So in that particular instance, we went back to the entity that accepted the art and they had no agreement. That is why the art was removed because we asked for an agreement before we would proceed with installing it. And there was the party who had ownership would not sign an agreement. Therefore, we were not able to install that. Well, I think the facts are slightly different. I don't mean to be argumentative, but I think the facts are slightly different. And that is that the artwork was, in fact, reinstalled, that you visited it after it was reinstalled. Then there was one anonymous complaint and the artwork was taken down. That, I believe, is the fact pattern. Again, I know you said you don't want to get into debating this. I'm happy to have a conversation with you. I did want to argue. I'm trying to engage in a conversation here. We again, we went back to the county and I said, do you have an agreement because there were many concerns, not just one complaint. There were many concerns. And so I went back to the county and said, do we have an agreement? I looked through every library record. Is there an agreement that we have for this art? There was no existing agreement anywhere. So I need now to get a signature, because again, if something does happen, then the library are responsible. And so that's where no one would sign agreement. So we can't put it up in our space. That's kind of what it came down to ultimately. Thank you. I appreciate that. You're welcome. Any other questions or comments? Thank you very much for being here. Sure. Thanks. Finance department. Good morning. Good morning. Elizabeth Cabell, finance director. And I'm pleased to present to you this morning our fiscal year 24 budget. Okay, so, okay. Got it. Thank you. Okay, so this morning I'd like to talk first about our core services, look at our organization chart and staffing changes that we're proposing for fiscal year 24, review the accomplishments of 23, our goals for 24 and then look at some of the services that we have in our current status quo discretionary budget. So the finance department really has six divisions and we have accounting, which covers financial reporting and grants, audits, all things kind of general ledger related. Our accounts payable and payroll division, which takes care of pretty much all the money going out. So we've got the paying the bills, the payroll, making sure everybody gets paid on time. The budget division handles our long range planning and forecasting, obviously putting together this large document and works with HR and bargaining unit costing. We have our purchasing division, which is grown significantly this year. I'm very happy for that, which handles all things purchasing, getting the purchase orders out, contracts, RFPs, IFPs, all of those various purchasing acronyms. Our revenue division handles all things money coming in. So we have TOT audits, debt collections, cashiering, all of that is handled through our revenue division and then risk and safety management, which deals with liability insurance claims and workplace safety. The organization chart here, I have all of the various divisions with the we have two additional positions that are proposed as part of the 24 budget and that will bring us up to 31 FTE. And we're very pleased to be able to do that without any additional cost. So we are removing and kind of moving some positions around and also taking some funds from our professional services budget so that we're able to get more, we're able to fill this staff with what we really need right now, which is we need some additional support in the accounting division in particular, as well as budget. So we're looking at and also purchasing, I guess everything. So we're looking at trying to get the staff that we need. So in doing that, we're deleted and a finance manager, we have an accounting technician, an accountant and a buyer. And then we did a little bit of movement between an accountant and a management analyst, senior payments and payments tech. So we're really just trying to right size of the department, get the people and places that we need in order to do what we need to do. But we are very pleased that we could do that without additional cost. So looking at fiscal year 23, we've done some of the accomplishments that we have. We there were several new gas be pronouncements from the government accounting standards board. So we had to implement those. That was a huge lift. We've got more coming up in 24. But that was a huge lift for the accounting accounting division. In purchasing, we have a purchasing assessment that was done about a year ago and we've been working on implementing that. We have now two buyers as well as our purchasing manager. So that's been a big huge lift for the purchasing department. So it's awesome to have that. We've got a fee study that's been launched. Planning talked about this a little bit yesterday, but revenue or revenue division is also involved in that. So we're working on getting updated fees for a cost recovery. Let's see payroll. Got everything out on time. Huge. Again, big accomplishment. Everybody likes to get paid on time. Reports file on time. We did implement a weekly check run for accounts payable. So that's made things a lot smoother and a lot better for departments as far as getting everything process. So lots going on. There's been a lot of movement and trying again, like I said, to try and get the divisions with the right number of people in the right position. So I'm very pleased with how 23 has been going. For 24, we have a couple of big things coming up for the department overall. We've got an ERP implementation that is really going to start. It's being led by the IT department, but finances, of course, heavily involved as part of the getting a new financial system. So that process is just beginning. We're getting the RFP out. We are going to be working on doing major things, like revamping the chart of accounts and getting the whole new system in there. So that's going to be a big project, not just for 24, but moving forward into 25, 26, 27, and so on. We do have an updated land management system, which again, I think Planny spoke about that yesterday. That will also impact our revenue division as business licenses and things like that that we also use that system for. And then we are hoping to in fiscal year 23 to create and implement, provide a popular annual financial report. We always do our comprehensive annual financial report. But the popular report is something that is much more readable. It's about 20 pages instead of 180. It doesn't have as many numbers. It much it talks a lot more about what the services the city offers. It makes the numbers a lot more understandable and readable. And it's a lot easier for citizens to sort of navigate through that very cumbersome annual comprehensive financial report. So we are working on getting that implemented for fiscal year 23. We'll get that that done hopefully by the end of the calendar year. And again, more gas be pronouncements. They always seem to be coming up with new things. So that's an unending, never ending thing for us. We are working on the budget side. We're working on improving our capital investment program. We have fact sheets that went into the budget this year. That is a new thing. As far as the program itself, we are working on other ways and better ways of tracking and managing projects in there. We have a very large capital investment program. So working on streamlining that and really getting understanding that and being able to track that better. We've got a lot of multi-year projects and things. So that's another project for the for the budget division. And then I count payable. The big project is going to be getting some more ACH payments going on. We've got a lot, still do a lot of paper checks. So we're working on getting that process streamlined as well. We've been working with the bank on that. So talking about our status quo budget, it was about 750,000. We've got lots of things that go into that. But what we were able to do, we sort of looked at our expenditures and tried to determine what projects, what things we wanted to do and needed to do for fiscal year 24. These are a few of the things that we have there that are covered under all of these different professional services, property services, other services and so on. A lot of this gov invests e-procurement, that's something that came to the council yesterday. So we are getting that e-procurement system going. We're hoping to get and working on a budget and act for builder. So again, a long-term goal, hopefully not too long term, is to get a lot of things online, like even an online budget book. So working on things like that. So that's sort of what that we've put some money in the budget, just as kind of a starter to start working on that. And then continued things. We use consultants HDL for property and sales tax. We'll continue that. We're looking, we have an RFP out, or I think closes today, for a municipal advisor. So we are working on getting an on-call municipal advisor. We don't, we have, we don't have one city-wide right now. So we're working on getting a contract for that. And then investment advisor as well. So just sort of some things that we're looking at trying to, we don't, right now we do all of our investments internally. We're looking at let's do an RFP and just see if there's another, if there's a better or different way of doing that. Again, more GASB reporting. I seem to hear that everywhere. Hotel and short-term audit services. So we do contract out for that. So we will continue that. Our forecasting model as well. So that's something else that those are sort of continuing there. And then on to the other fund that is part of finance is our risk fund. So the risk fund is an internal service fund that we have. And there's been a lot of, I know this is a teeny tiny less of numbers there. But basically the message is that insurance costs have been increasing significantly over the last few years. Several reasons for that. Natural disasters, higher verdicts. We are a city that is full service and has a lot of very unique things like a wharf, a dam, a levy, those sorts of things. So that all of those sort of contribute to our increasing insurance costs. So the chart down there at the bottom sort of shows you how things liability and property insurance has increased over the years. Fiscal year 23, as I mentioned, we did have the $2 million that came from the general fund to support that that large increase that we saw in 23. In 24, that 8 million is what we have now worked with the actuary to spread out over all of the departments. And then just sort of I listed there a few of the things that we are paid out of that fund. Obviously it's the insurance, but we've got claims, settlements, litigation, safety consultant, actuarial expenses, litigation expenses, safety officer, we're in the process of hiring that we're in the final interviews for that particular position. So all of those things come out of that particular fund. They're not paid out of the general fund, the finance piece of the general fund. They're all paid out of the risk fund. That's it. So I have myself or risk or budget here to answer any questions. Thank you very much for your presentation. Let me see if there are questions. My members, the vice-mayors recognized. OK, you don't even have to answer this, but I'm going to ask it every year in regards to TOT tax if there's a way that we can streamline and collect that through the VRBO or Airbnb tax instead of having the monthly, onerous, remittal process that I guarantee you're not getting all your money. So you don't have to answer. Just I'm throwing it out there like I do every year that hopefully we could do like what the county does at some point to collect that from people. I don't know. And you can tell me now. So that's all because I understand it's different here. But I do have a question that's with and I don't know if it's for you or for HR, but it's in regards to workers' compensation claims. Should I save that for HR or ask you that you can save that for HR? OK, I mean, I may jump up too. But but that that particular internal service fund is handled through HR. So so Sarah might have a little bit more information. I can also or you can ask both of us. You can ask me and if I don't have it, I'll just ask it now and then maybe she can answer it later. But I'm just wondering if there if there's a record kept of workers' compensation claims that happen as a result of homeless encampment and clean cleanups. I know that there's been some injuries to different department individuals in different departments. And I went. Oh, here she comes. And so I'm just wondering if we keep track of that as an expense when we're talking about the ongoing cost associated with. This issue. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. The answer is yes. We do keep track of descriptions of the related injury with some cleanup and reporting to keep the privacy sections safe. We can definitely report out on those things. And I don't need to know. I just think like keeping it while we're keeping it on go when we like our last item last night about the ongoing expense to the city in regards to homelessness that this is another one that the city's tasked with having to step up. Council Member Brunner. Thank you, Elizabeth. My question had to do with the hotel and short term rental audit services. So can you remind me again why we contract out for that and what that. Well, I'll start there. And then I'll ask my next question. Well, we do have we do have an internal audit team that's small. So we do we have an account the senior accountant and an accounting technician. But we do contract out for the actual audit services. I don't have all of the information on exactly what portions are inside and outside. But I can I can get all that information. Find that out. That would be great. And I see in the workload indicators and performance measures on page 120. There's number of transient occupancy tax audits completed. And that looks like 23 was 35. I'm just wondering what our cost I didn't I was having a hard time finding the cost of that audit service. And if they did 35 audits, what that return brings? I will check with our revenue division. But I believe because those are on our on our metrics there, those are the short term rentals that are done internally. And then we outsource for the larger like the hotel audits and things like that. So I will confirm all of that. But that's I believe that's what the our audit division here does. So that we do an internal versus the larger the big hotels would be external that we would contract out for. So Airbnb. Verbo or VRBO. That's internal. Yes. I believe large hotels are external with the audit service that we pay for. Externally paid for. Yes. I'd be curious to see that cost and return on that. And I I'm trying to remember maybe city manager knows I remember in the budget and revenue committee maybe two years ago there was we had a discussion about there are two different ways to collect that tax and I don't remember the two different ways and why the city is doing it one way. But I've had a couple of community members that have found it really hard to pay their tax. They want to abide and comply. And it seems like we should be making it easy to collect the money that is owed. And so I was curious about that morning. Thank you. Thank you mayor. Thank you councilman or Brenner. I will dig up Bobby McGee our interim finance director did research and there was a write up that we had related to transient occupancy tax and the collection and the method that we do it versus going through a third party agency to do it. So I will get that unearthed and reforged to all of you and we can also attach it. OK great. And so you mentioned third party and it just triggered a memory about if we collect from directly from Airbnb or VRBO there's something about they just give it in one lump some and then we don't have data right. And so we opted for the data. Is that correct. Yes. If I recall it also had to do with the one lump sum and traceability and accountability to actual properties and whether or not they were remitting were remitting or not. OK. I feel like there's something in here that we should evaluate and analyze a little deeper to make it. I believe once I unearth the memo and I was looking on my devices but they don't go back far enough. OK. As I recall the bottom line on the revenue take was the finance did the research and they recommended that the revenue that our take revenue of the current process was larger than if we did it through the other mechanism that they researched. But let me find the memo and we'll get that to be read and back out. And then if there are any other additional things to be detected I am sure finance will do so. Right. Thank you. I'm curious if that was related to exactly what I was going to say. And even after you dig up the memo is it possible to reach out to the county and see if that's been their experience because I know they used to have a similar remittance. And then now so for me I've rent out my house on Airbnb. And so like it's confusing for somebody coming to town to and then because the county collects it on their behalf. And so I just maybe reach out to the county and be like did you find that to be true that you got less just getting the lump sum or? We will. And we also do have this is not we do have a bot kind of program that goes out and looks to see where there are Airbnbs and VRBOs and things like that. So so it's not just that we're receiving the data the money and we're not going out to check and make sure that people are not collecting and not remitting. So we do have a process for doing that. But yes we will get back and determine and see if there is kind of what the county's process is the process that we're doing and if it is beneficial or would be beneficial to to change that process. Because it might save time like staff time as well collecting all the envelopes and doing that. I don't know. Back to that and sorry. Thank you. I have one more question. Collections on is that under finance. So bills fees. And all of that is collections under finance. So there yes there is a collections it's actually under risk that the individual that goes out and does like the big collections and then things like and then just so those sort of collections like the bigger things yes we do have a person that is dedicated to collections. And I in the previous department there was a mention of staff DEI training and what not. And I'm wondering if that's in place for finance department especially in the roles of collections and people interface with our community. We do have plans for more of a city wide thing not specific to finance but as far as workplace safety work being aware things like that DEI is definitely a part of that I don't think it's something we have specifically planned as a do only in finance it's more of a work this is something we're going to be doing city wide but yes recognizing that even though we don't have a front counter and our interfaces with the public is not the same as some of the other departments. We do there's there's angry customers there's things we need to deal with on the phone just is just like we do with people with people in person. We do recognize that. Okay is that an HR is that living HR to ensure that customer service side of the city and is sensitive to. I would say the training lives in HR but but yeah I mean. Schmidt good morning again. Thank you ma'am good morning again. Thank you for your question. Health and all policies resides underneath the city manager's office and our climate action sustainability equity manager Tiffany Wise West covers health and all policies. So she coordinates with the various departments to roll out components of health and all policies and the DEI piece for training city wide. Tiffany is coordinating that with Sarah our chief people officer and Sarah's human resources and she'll be up at the podium next or she after it I can't remember. Oh my god I can't remember. Shame on me. So those are kind of that's the connection point between the city manager's office and human resources and then human resources strategically rolling out DEI programs to all of our employees whether it's customer service the way that we hire the way that we interact the way that we just present as a city and who we are and and what we want to be. Thank you. I appreciate you framing it that way and I know being on the health and all policies committee and the racial equity resolution we passed a couple of years ago and really making that front and center a priority. I guess maybe seeing it in the goals like some of the other departments I think with finance it would be equally important to see that. Thank you. And as you know with the focus areas that you all started to draft in the third week in April on the strategic plan thriving organization is one of them. And as we solidify those goals and the strategies to achieve them we'll be able to roll that out to all the departments and then next fiscal year you'll start to see a connection to the direction that you all set with thriving organization and all the components underneath it. Great. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes my question. Thank you. Councilmember Brown. Thank you mayor. Thank you for the presentation. I this isn't necessarily with respect to the questions that have come up around ease of use for participants in the system but I do think it's worth mentioning since we've been talking about the Airbnb dynamic and how we receive those funds that we just to remind us all that we do now have someone who is tracking that and collecting and so that position is more than paying for itself. Is that correct? That's correct. Yeah. So it's not about the kind of ease of use and when payments get made and how but with respect to our short term vacation rental TOT we are doing much better now than certainly when I started on the council. It's been a big difference. Yeah. And my so my question was and I think I probably know the answer but I want to just make sure I'm clear on page one twenty one which is your budget summary. The live I'm just wondering about the big change in the under resources by fund the liability fund that big jump. Just wondering it's probably it's accounting I imagine I'm just trying to figure and it's related to the increase in the cost. That table was really helpful to understand you know what our costs are around risk. So and I'm guessing they're related but I just wanted to ask you about the big jump. And Ross is here can answer more specific questions but but basically it is simply an increase in property and liability insurance and it's been happening for several years it's just that this is the first year that we're seeing it spread out over all the departments you know last year there was a general fund component to that so but yes it truly is just the cost of insurance that's increased. And I'm starting to feel a pattern here any question I have about these big anomalies are really related to this cost allocation system that you've implemented it's great. So thank you this isn't cost allocation not this one right but you're right the other ones if you if you don't know say yes cost allocation. Couple question good morning again. On the same page couple lines down the I think a very positive thing is happening here which is that the net general fund cost is going down quite substantially and as a service department I'm suspecting that's because you're able to take and properly allocate those costs across departments at your service department and so you do that your net city costs should be very very low and it is and I'm suspecting that because of that as we look forward in your budgets this is more what the net city cost is going to look like in terms of the general fund. Exactly yes. I mean ideally it gets to zero but that that's really what we're trying to do everything in the final in these internal and the central service departments should be allocated out. Absolutely me ask about if I understood it I thought I heard you say that you are going out to potentially a vendor on the investment side of Treasury is that correct? Correct. And what is it that why are you doing that? So right now we do we have all the our investments are managed by our in our revenue division does all the investment in putting things in life and keeping track of it but I think that but we're looking now at maybe is it would it be advantageous to have that outsourced to have not just to basically do two things come up with a current and updated investment policy as well as an investment strategy we are pretty much our strategy right now is you know let's stay liquid and we want to make sure that and part of this too is just having we our portfolio is a little larger than it's or maybe a lot larger than it's been over the last few years and so make I think it makes sense to look out and see is there as someone professionally there's lots of companies that do this it is it beneficial both cost wise and resource wise to outsource that particular function in our department as someone who had this responsibility at the county level as a county treasurer I know that under the law the considerations for the investor whether it's your office or you contract that out without being able to move the responsibility over there that's still your responsibility certainly is safety liquidity and yield in that order don't break the buck as they say in the investment world chasing yield is almost always a bad idea in the public space if you have a positive return on investment that's all we should really hope for us we should you never have and you never will as they say break the buck you never will make an investment that that is going to going to fail in some way the question I have then is what is it that somebody else could do following the principles as I understand we have a lot of money in late local agency investment fund a lot of money in there most cities our size do exactly that a lot of money in late life is a proven performer does a good job takes care of your money safety liquidity yield you're never going to get rich off of it but that's not the idea idea safety first then liquidity and then you ladder your investment so that the liquidity occurs when you need it every two weeks for payroll or whatever it happens to be I'm wondering though you keep our money safe you ladder your investment such that it is liquid when we need it and you don't chase yield what is it somebody else could give you because that that's the goal here I'm not even the slightest bit interested in going with a contractor who is suggesting they can do better on yield no public agency should be chasing yield and we're not I think that what we are what I would hope to get is a better ladder we have a lot of money invested in life right now and I think that there's a better way that we can balance that so that we keep enough liquid that we really need I think we right now have overestimated that and so kind of dialing that back and getting a more and more wide ranging ladder front of yield I think is what would make sense for us I don't think I'm not looking at this is you know all of a sudden it's you know investment returns are going to skyrocket or anything like that but I think it's more than worth it and I honestly think it's it's you know for me and my part of my fiduciary responsibilities to make sure that we are getting the best return we are liquid as we need it we are following that safety liquidity liquidity and yield that we're doing that and so part of this is just an exploration and let's just see is this something that makes sense but part of it is I do think it's to our benefit to really and analyze what how much do we need to have in life how much do we need to have spread out a little bit differently in some of our investments you and I will not disagree at all the concentration is a bad idea and in municipal investments so I like hearing we have a lot in life but we also have money elsewhere and I think that's prudent investment policy by any public agency will this contract come to us or you do is that within your authority to undertake that contract oh no it'll come to you we haven't gone out for RFP or anything yet this is just exploratory at this point but yes it would come to council thank you one last question and I strongly encourage this to the collection business to to be undertaken with some level of aggression again when I was the county treasurer admittedly the technology was different but I had a summer intern come in who layered three concepts across each other to identify those who were advertising for vacation rentals but not registered with the county therefore not remitting the to T and in one three month period this intern was able to increase the county's to to T collection by one point seven five million dollars there's that many people out there but do this and don't play by the to T remittance rules I strongly encourage you to go there I think there is a there is an untapped resource and I think that it is also a constantly changing situation more people are coming in some people go out of it some people this some people that but I think more than a sort of one time systematic annual effort to push hard on that to T remittance is a real good idea and I will come back to you with an analysis of that we do it is a constant thing it is not a one time these are the only people who are collecting to T or renting out so we are aware of that and we do have mechanisms in place to kind of do that like I said kind of do a search out there and the in the wide universe to find out people who may be posting things and are not registered so we do have there is a method to this it's not just we're sitting there waiting for people to voluntarily report so but I will get back with more detail about exactly what that is and how that compares to other other options that we may have for that very good thank you so much let me see if there are any questions or comments thank you so very much you your department does this is a very compound complex enterprise and not all dollars are the same and they come in different colors in different ways with different strings all over them and you and your department do an exceptionally fine job in managing our public finances thank you for that members we on the human resources department presentation Sarah De Leon our chief people officer will be making the presentation on behalf of the department good morning how are you I'm doing well thank you mayor good morning council members pleasure to be here I'm honored to present to you the human resources department budget if I clicked it right by me I did it I tried not to I'm so I'll also be providing you a department overview which includes a look at our organizational chart and our core services I will give some highlights of our fiscal year twenty twenty three achievements as well as go through our proposed fiscal twenty four budget which includes some at least the major changes in that area so our human resources department is eleven full time equivalent staff we have three different divisions that you'll see here starting with our employee and labor relations led by Debbie Jones we also have recruitment retention and classification which is led by Kathy Benino and employee benefits by Delia Schultz the core services in these areas are a variety of things I won't read everything on here but some of the major items include training and development diversity equity inclusion onboarding and orientation classification and compensation studies as well as management of over three hundred different job descriptions employee development career development as well as a whole list of employee benefits related to retirement medical vision and dental I like to think of these three different divisions as as married to each other the first two being the health the care and feeding of our staff in their careers and their day-to-day life with us and then the employee benefits is the the personal life right the other of the health benefits everything else we otherwise manage for them some of our fiscal year achievements for twenty three which I will say the clock is not done yet we are not even in June yet but some of the major items include employee safety we have increased the safety boot stipend for our service employees and in the adopted temporary contracts adopted yesterday also added that to our temporary service staff at two hundred and fifty also been this year working with risk management Ross Brandon is not he was here to earlier but we've been going out he's allowed me to tag along with him to meet people meet our staff in the field see the places they're working in here directly some of their safety concerns which will result in some further actions over the next few months and we've also completed who are our contracts our negotiations and get our head above the water certain things there and we've also made some minor improvements albeit improvements to our training and development calendar with use of online feedback forms to gain from staff to better inform training programs for the future and change some email kind of enrollment to an online form as well for easier collection and centralized training resources resources offered by other departments within that calendar so staff is more aware of what what is available to them on the right here we have some temporary new hires since July one we have hired a hundred and thirty three new temp staff a hundred and sixty eight full time new hires and some of those recruitments are multiple vacancies I do want to emphasize this point that's on average about fifteen hires per month since July handled really by one person Debbie Bailey in recruitment classification so I do want to give a shout out to her while our timing on that can vary from two to six months for hiring it is a huge feet for one person and we really appreciate her efforts as well as the other efforts from staff who handle the decentralized hiring from different departments as you heard yesterday from Johnny and Karen we've had over twenty six hundred hours of volunteer support since July as well I believe that was about three hundred plus volunteers that provided that service very grateful for them regarding our fiscal year twenty four budget we are a whopping point three percent of your net general fund budget at one point eight two million dollars like many other budgets sixty seven percent of that is our staff at eleven fte's that you saw our services and supplies is thirty percent those are things for mainly outside consultants things like our engagement surveys if we go out for the poor diversity and equity inclusion programs legal support that's a major chunk of that thirty percent and then of course our volunteer program which is three regarding changes for fiscal year twenty four we are asking for one additional staff to bring us to twelve and increasing very minorly our temporary support and we do have one temporary staff now and we would like to maintain that service for our up front counter the major change if the proposed change would increase the fte's in our employee and labor relations section with an hr analyst is the hope you may ask why from that previous list that I showed employer employee and labor relations is where diversity equity inclusion program is it's where employee engagement is we are really trying to move from more transactional hr to programmatic and holistic services and building our capacity will allow us to focus in investing in areas of improvements such as in people whether that safety or training programs our processes moving from email to something more automated to help not just us but all the other department staff who support us in our decentralized hr services updating policy and also leveraging technology Elizabeth mentioned the rp upgrade that also impacts human resources so that capacity will help us in a number of areas and really have a citywide impact with that you have any questions I'm available do the best thing members have questions on this budget item. Ms. Colantari Johnson. Thank you. Thank you Sarah. Looking at the budget I wonder if you could touch on why specifically on the workers comp and medical dental vision the FY23 adopted is so different than the end year estimate. Yeah so that's actually something I'm working on with Elizabeth we've noticed some of the year end estimates may need some corrections we'll be looking into that I don't know if she has anything to add but I also noticed that as well it does seem a little unusual that we need to correct some errors there. Yeah especially the medical dental is significant. Right. Thank you for pointing that out. For the questions on this item. Seeing and hearing none thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Good job. Thank you to all of your staff who support us you're one of those departments that is a little bit invisible right and we see you in closed session from time to time but by and large you folks sort of toil and obscurity but it doesn't it does not go unnoticed or unappreciated by the council we thank all of your team so very very much. You're certainly welcome. Good morning. Morning Mayor Keely Vice Mayor Golder City Council my name is Ken we are on the information technology budget. Mr. Morgan how are you today. Doing well sir thank you very much. Good. Council members Ken Morgan IT director city of Santa Cruz appreciate your time today I'm going to spend a few minutes talking IT budget. Great so we'll cover our core services our accomplishments from the current fiscal year. We have a quick budget overview for fiscal year 24 and we'll wrap up with some goals. So for those of you that have been present for IT budget presentations in your past you may recall that we've had some rather significant staffing challenges to the tune of 30 to 35% vacancy for the duration of the last three years really the entire pandemic. Really happy to report today that within 30 days I'm anticipating having filled 21 and possibly 22 of our 23 FTE's so a huge push forward for us excited to see the traction we can get for the department and the city and a huge debt of gratitude to our HR department who not only helped us fill these positions but in my estimation filled them with really qualified people so excited to see where we go. With regards to our core services our divisional support remains the same that there is Isaac Steinbrook he is one of our client services individuals a lot of great smiles great guy great customer service part of the team that's out there supporting 550 PCs 200 laptops all of our mobile devices voice over IP phones printers and really kind of leading with that customer service guidance. Our infrastructure services team is responsible for kind of keeping the electricity on when it comes to our wired and wireless networks they're kind of the behind the scenes folks they also manage four data centers citywide we have 150 virtual servers and those data centers networking equipment and then these are also the folks that are wearing the security hat whether that's physical access security cyber security network security. Our process and application solutions team as a full service city you can imagine there's a application for every aspect of service deliver here at the city so this is the team that supports over 90 applications there are database administrators our programmers they're out there trying to improve process and then a very project oriented team you upgrades implementations so a busy team there last strategic and admin services that's myself a wonderful administrative assistant Jackie Trumbull and a project manager we're doing strategy personnel and then obviously today focus on budget. So real quick I wanted to highlight some of our accomplishments and again underscore that despite having some really significant staffing challenges for the last number of years not only have we sustained operations but in my estimation we have really moved the city forward and modernized a lot of applications. Our applications team has upgraded our Tyler cashiering system our check imaging software system utility manager we have an aggregated payment portal here at the city my city of Santa Cruz we made some improvements to that the community requests for service portal we did a business process improvement on that and we retain staff from the infrastructure standpoint we upgraded our security firewalls we onboarded a managed security service provider which is really a partner to help with our cyber posture and then you all are likely carrying these cars around now this is the team that implemented physical access security at the city and this is the 35th site now that we've completed and added to the standard system. Our client services folks 6000 work orders completed 2000 phone calls answered at the help desk replaced 120 PCs and really we're at the forefront of our M365 our Microsoft 365 project that we led this year which I'd like to talk about for a second really a kind of a transformational period for the city we have traditionally managed all of our email on-premise we've had our productivity apps the words the excels the PowerPoints hosted at the city so we finally moved to a subscription based model and moved all these to the M365 cloud we gain better business continuity advanced security reliability but really I think the win was collaboration for our employees the ability to access files and folders and applications from anywhere that has an internet connection it was a huge lift for the department and a really proud project that we completed a lot of effort went into leading into it but when the implementation process took place it was a six month project we had staff here every Wednesday night till 10 o'clock doing 750 installations on workstations so that when staff arrived the next day there was no disruption to service we moved 850 email accounts that's 42 million email messages without causing any disruption to service we switched to our Santa Cruz CA.gov account and further delineated us as a government agency and anyone that wanted training in the city was provided training we trained 300 staff members I think from a return on an investment perspective it's the kind of what did it bring to the city and that really is increased collaboration you see that in just 180 days 200 teams were created and a team is a virtual work space where divisions can work on projects or processes you can collaborate on documents applications have teams meeting so excited to see kind of the traction we're getting there over 5,000 meetings have taken place those are virtual meetings kind of replacing the zoom technology over 1,300 one-on-one phone calls kind of replacing the need to pick up a phone and call somebody now we do it through our computer 95,000 chat messages a whole new way to communicate at the city we're not early adopters to chat but it's really cool to see how some of that less formal communication can take place on that platform and then last is every employee in the city has a OneDrive and that's a virtual space to share files and in six months 321,000 files have been moved to OneDrive that they can access from anywhere and collaborate better with people both internally and externally super excited about M365 super excited to see where it kind of takes the city in the next couple of years switching to budget our proposed budget is 6.2 million like other departments about 60% of that is going to our people the remaining 42% or 2.5 million is wrapped up in our service supplies other and capital outlay of that 42% about 2 million 2.1 million is going straight to the maintenance and support contracts that the city provides for our applications and hardware so it leaves kind of a thin slice of about $400,000 for us to kind of strategically update our data center infrastructure improve applications and then also rely on professional services for skills that we might not have or in the past three years people that we did not have as far as the changes that have taken place typically we see about a 2% to 3% increase in our contracts for CPI and inflation this year it was more along the lines of 7% to 10% just a sign of the times and that equates to about $100,000 in increased fees that we needed to kind of absorb into our budget for maintenance and support, et cetera no change in personnel services there's obviously an uptick but not related to any FTEs that we're adding so as we look forward to how we absorb this we'll strategically look at deferring some of our small projects we have some deferred maintenance and data centers we'll make sure that we're taking a risk adverse approach to maybe passing on replacing equipment that normally would be scheduled for replacement and then the slight uptick you see in service supplies is a $59,000 increase and that's specifically for the land management software system that has been discussed by Director Butler and for that we are looking to absorb that through some technology fees that exist as well as some changes that will be brought to council in the coming weeks not going to go through all of our planned projects but I again wanted to highlight the ERP project because this is one that is going to continue to come to you guys for consideration especially with fund allocation at the city ERP is responsible it's the backbone of services utility billing HR payroll counts payable purchasing budget on and on and on so really a fundamental application it's now two decades old it's been announced as end of life in 2027 so court group of departments including IT are endeavoring to get an RFP done this year with an implementation process taking place in fiscal year 25 and fiscal year 26 some other exciting projects up there I won't go through all the details happy to take questions Mr. Morgan thank you very much and I think I speak on behalf of all of us thank you every day every hour every minute for the fine work of your department when if we don't have that work and the products of your department it all comes to a grinding halt so thank you very very much let me see if there are questions vice-mayors recognize I just have one question what's a virtual server? so in the old days we used to have mainframes and it was a single server that supplied applications for multiple facets so then we moved to these physical individual servers now what we do is we buy a big rack of hard drives of RAM of processing power and we can actually install individual Microsoft Windows servers on there so one appliance can hold 150 servers each one of those servers has a specific functionality or a business application or something network related so it's really just an aggregate of servers where we used to buy a single function server for everything now it sits all in this big bank of array of hard drives RAM etc thank you you're welcome to come to the data center to take a preview if you ever want to see it in person thank you councilmember Watkins I just have like a quick question around your opinions and thoughts around AI and just how that's starting to be integrated and I mentioned this to Matt and he joked with me to check with chat GPT but nonetheless it's going to start changing many things and I'm wondering in terms of your opinion and as you know our IT director how you think that could impact city services I don't think that the city should be early adopters to AI Microsoft I just got back from a conference and it's pushing AI heavily they have a product called co-pilot that's going to basically partner up with all the applications we use every day from Microsoft Word to Excel or whatever I think there's some benefits with AI that we can use today similar to teams can actually go through and notate and meetings as they're narrated out and provide that but I think it's very early on in the AI world and I think there's a lot of concerns about being early adopters and getting into a position where we might be putting ourselves at risk for some of the capabilities it's exciting I use chat GPT every single day so I absolutely understand what we're kind of on what we're sitting on but I think we need to kind of see what the municipality space is doing before we kind of run to the finish line it's more of a crawl walk run and if I'm hearing you correctly there's also conversation happening within city jurisdictions or your industry if you will there are I'm a part of a MISAC group which is the California Information Services Divisions and they're already talking about policies and preventing chat GPT from becoming too integrated for all the reasons that really relate to we don't know what we don't know quite yet Right, exactly Okay, well great I mean I'd love to understand more as that unfolds I think it would happen quickly Right, so I think we already have a lot of interest for the teams component to be able to kind of narrate out meeting notes so that we don't have to have that and we can refer back to that for people that missed a meeting or want to go back and kind of grab that so I think that's a low line for it but we'll see Yeah, thanks Yeah Council Member Brunner That was a great question That was a good question Thank you for that answer I guess I kind of have a comment but the systems side of things and security side of things and you mentioned our key cards and what not and I just want to applaud the modernization that I have pushed for and you have executed on since I came in 2020 that has really made it a more secure and efficient all the facilities and the processes the emails and the integration and all along the way the customer service from your staff including Isaac that was pictured there has been so excellent and helpful so I'm really happy to see you know where the workload indicators and performance measures are and how that's broken down and the allocation of where the spending is and to see that we still have the upcoming projects and that it's still continuing to improve so the cyber security as well and that's a huge one you know I even received some emails from Mayor Fred Keeley that were not Mayor Fred Keeley that was pretty scary and your team was right on it so thank you so much for all of this work I guess I don't really have a question specifically those are my favorite kinds of questions for the questions comments thank you so very very much I returned to my initial comments without the work that you do and your staff this place would come to a grinding halt and that's true of virtually all departments but you are connecting all of us to each other irrespective of department or function and the ability to keep this up and running another comment is thanks to your staff when you live next door to the heart and soul of the technology industry my guess is is that recruiting folks to work in local governments is a challenge and to get high quality folks who will choose public service over stock options and whatnot which is a perfectly legitimate choice either way but the folks who do choose this should be thanked because they are taking in their career a chance where perhaps they won't make as much but what they will get is that reward of working with a public agency if they can't do well they can at least do good and we do the best we can to compensate them I understand that but recruiting retaining in your field given who we are next door to I suspect is a challenge and the ability consistently to retain good talent is really I think a compliment both to you but it is also a compliment to each and every one of your staff they're not unaware of that and they've chosen public service and for that we are very grateful. Thank you. Thank you sir. We are on the police department budget Chief Bush is here to present on behalf of the department. Chief good morning. Morning mayor. Nice to see you sir. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Just on behalf of the chief of police unfortunately I couldn't be here this afternoon but representing for him I just want to thank you for your time and we're happy to present our 2024 fiscal budget to you guys this morning. This wouldn't have been possible without our principal management analyst Catherine Brothers who's behind me here. She's new to the position but not new to the organization. So she's been our PMA for the past six months and it's just done incredible work getting caught up to speed and finalizing a lot of projects that we needed to complete it so very happy to have her and you'll probably see her more going forward meetings in the future. Just want to recognize that it was National Police Week earlier this month and want to thank the mayor personally for the proclamation that you gave recognizing the services of our men and women that are out there doing the job 24 seven. So again, we appreciate that and thank you for the time in recognizing our agency. All right, so we'll go ahead and get started then. We'll kind of breeze through this to try and save time but if you have any questions through or after please feel free to let me know and I can expand on anything in particular. Just the agenda that we have lined up for this morning we'll talk briefly about our core services. We'll go over our organizational chart, speak about current and past workload indicators, talk about some of the major achievements and accomplishments that we did in 2023 then speak briefly about our goals going forward for next fiscal year and talk about our 2024 proposed budgets. All right, so core services, we basically have about 11 major functions that represent the agency and serve our city. The biggest being our police patrol division. Those are your uniforms, your men and women taking 911 calls being out on the streets 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That represents a good chunk of what we do about 50% of our organization. Supporting that we have a traffic division now which consists of four full-time traffic officers two during the day, two during the evening. We have a property and evidence section. Currently we have two employees assigned to that but we're allocated for three looking up to pick up that third one shortly. They are responsible for the intake and storing and of thousands and thousands of pieces of evidence found property, narcotics, guns, credible amount of stuff that comes in throughout the day. Alongside that we have a, we're fortunate enough to have a lieutenant and a training manager assigned full-time just to our training division. We're very younger department nowadays and so we're fortunate that we have two people full-time that are committed to just looking at current and best training practices, getting us the best instructors here, just providing the best training program we can have so that we have the most highly trained and effective officers out in the field. A little off to the right is our volunteer program. Joyce Blaschke, our communications relations specialist was instrumental in developing that and getting it to where it is today. We'll speak a little bit more of that later on but it's just been a tremendous asset to us and records in the field and downtown. I'm just very grateful to have them. Another core component to our services is our investigations division. When we're fully staffed, we have a lieutenant, two sergeants, eight full-time detectives that are responsible for following up on cases. We're also fortunate to be the only agency in the county that has a full-time victim advocate to serve victims of violent crimes in our community. So that falls under that as well. Records division is kind of the backbone of our agency. They take phone calls, they house, they store all things that we write and we cite. We do tremendous amount of paperwork, tremendous amount of undertaking. We couldn't live without them but they are a key component to what we do. Full-time we have a records manager and eight records technicians. Community services, that's kind of where our homeless services response team falls under. Right now we have a sergeant and two officers committed to the homeless services response team. Next to that, we have a school resource officer. We generally like to have two or three but we're, it's the staffing levels, we currently have one. It's currently Trevor Kendall. He's been doing it for a few years and does an amazing job. Downtown, we're looking to rebuild that program as staffing levels increase. We currently have six community service officers attached to that, three each day on both sides of the week but looking to expand upon that as our numbers get back up. And then of course administration division, for the chief of police myself, professional standards, principal management analyst and community relations are housed out of as well. And just to give you a brief overview of the organizational structure of our agency, of course we're led by chief Escalante. Then underneath that, we kind of separate our department into two divisions, operations on the left there which is led by deputy chief Garcia and then administrations on the right, which is myself. The operations division is basically your uniform response, your 24 seven, your in the field officers and administration is all your support staff, support services, budget investigations. And I'll just talk briefly a little bit about each division and just let me know if you have any questions. But under Jose Garcia, we have four lieutenants assigned to operations. Lieutenant Westmore who oversees our mobile field force, our traffic division and all of eight side patrol. Next to that is the tenant Dan Forbes. He oversees our mental health liaison program. We currently have two full-time mental health liaisons deployed in the field responding with us or in place of to mental health crisis. He also oversees our hostage and crisis negotiation team. And then the other half of our patrol side which is the B side. Just for reference, we kind of separate our department into two sides and A side which is Sunday to Wednesday and then a B side which is Wednesday to Saturday. Next to that is the tenant Carter Jones. We're fortunate to have a full-time lieutenant assigned just two community services. And under that is of course the downtown and the homeless response unit. And directly next to him is Lieutenant Greg Crofts who was a full-time assigned to our field training program, our overall department training as well as our emergency services unit and our K9 unit as well. So that's pretty much all the operational side. Those are the uniforms, those are the mental women you see out in the street every day, handling the calls, doing the work. And then not as exciting on the right side is administration where I oversee and that basically will include your investigations division. Right now we're currently short of a lieutenant. So I kind of fill in for that at the moment but normally we'd have a lieutenant, two sergeants, eight detectives and a victim advocate between all of those individuals that are responsible for following up on all persons, property crimes, sex crimes, domestic violence, missing persons, anything that a patrol officer can't handle or resolve at that moment in the field will get sent up to investigators to follow up on. Our property and evidence unit falls under that as well as our school resource officer and we contribute one officer to a county task force agency, county anti-crime task force agency. So we contribute one officer to that. Then just shortly after the right also falls under administration as our community relations specialist Joyce Blaskey, our records manager Megan Patsky, our internal affairs or professional standards units, Sergeant Eric Hoppe and then Catherine Brothers, our principal management analyst. So that kind of breaks down the organizational structure of our agency as it is today. I'm talking about some workload indicators. Looking at the past three years, it's a little hard to kind of get a good handle on workload indicators because of COVID, the 2020 shift in national narrative on policing, our staffing issues that we're currently experiencing, but it does give you at least about a three year period of reports written, traffic citations written, general municipal code and fraction citations, arrests of adults and calls for service. Generally speaking, everything is kind of on a decline at the moment like I said, mainly that was COVID in 2020. And then unfortunately, the current staffing crisis that we're under right now being short about 30% of our patrol, sworn officers out there in the field equates to obviously less reports written, less traffic citations issued and less arrests made. But as one of our many priorities, we've been increasing those numbers and we hope to continue to increase those numbers and get those numbers back up. Now with those numbers being down, we are still adequately and ready to respond to 911 calls, emergency calls, 24 seven, where we end up taking those lack of officers as from our specialized units. Normally our downtown unit would be bigger, normally our traffic unit would be bigger, our investigation division would be bigger. We would have a sergeant and a four person, four officer, street crimes team. So right now all those units are either temporarily suspended or decreased in order to make sure that we provide 24 seven service to the community. All right, talk briefly about some accomplishments for 2023. The chief has mentioned before, I think his priorities are obviously staffing first and foremost, it's gotten better, but there's still a lot of room for improvement. Like I said, we could use about 15 more to get up to full staffing. We are about down six community service officers. We're still short a couple of non sworn administrative staff. So we've increased got better, but still looking to build upon those as we go forward. Chief has spent a lot of focus on retention and wellbeing of our officers. The wellbeing mentally, physically of our officers, their family is a priority in order to them to be successful and be safe out on the job. They need to be physically and mentally in a good state of mind. And we really, the chief has really focused on internal wellness and taking care of the employee so that we can in turn go out and take care of the community. The chief has really driven home a more service oriented philosophy for our officers out there. Really prides ourself on trying to be out there to deliver the best service possible. So we're really fortunate to have chief Escalante and like I said, the numbers are down but we're tracking in a better direction. So again, with the accomplishments, just some notable events is that we've been able to dedicate two full-time CSOs and a sergeant to the interdepartmental homeless response team. Our amazing volunteer program has contributed over 4,300 hours of service to our department, to our city from working the front counter, assisting records, handling calls, patrolling the downtown, assisting with vehicle abatement. That's just 4,300 free hours that were given by these amazing men and women that definitely help us achieve our mission. We've enhanced our recruitment efforts. Just in 2023 alone, we hired 26 officers. That seems like a lot, but at the same time, we continue to lose some either through retirements or competing with other agencies over the hill that pay a little bit more in the Silicon Valley area. This is a difficult job. It always has been, it always will be but in the last couple of years because of the public narrative and some changes in legislation has become even more difficult. So we're not seeing the influx of people wanting to be law enforcement officers like we did 20-something years ago when I started, there was two, 300 people showing up for one position and now I probably get maybe six or seven a month. And we don't lower our standards. So of those six or seven that come through a month, we're lucky if we maybe get one that makes it all the way through. So, but yeah, people are getting out of the business earlier nowadays as soon as they can or looking for other career options. It's a dangerous job. It's a difficult job. It's a stressful job. But just not a big demand for the career anymore. So it's difficult to retain, difficult to attract. But like I said, we're heading in a better direction. Our records division processed over 778 public records requests from the public. Tremendous amount of undertaking, tremendous amount of work. We've been able to commit four officers full-time to our traffic enforcement team to enhance traffic safety measures. And we've also been enhancing, like I said, our department's wellness program and really focusing on the mental wellbeing, the physical wellbeing of our staff. So those are just some of the accomplishments that we wanted to highlight for 2023. Going forward for 2024, again, we kind of want to improve our organizational capacity to be able to support our sworn and non-sworn staff. We really need to increase our numbers. So that's a major goal as we continue forward in 2024. Another big goal, which was, I believe, recently approved by the council last night is the ability to purchase new handpack radios for all of our officers. The ones we have now are outdated and equated. They're just no longer up with today's technology. So we will be purchasing 120 new handheld radios, each one for each one of our sworn staff. So that'll be coming in the next month or two. We are redeploying and rebuilding upon our specialized units throughout the community, including the downtown, looking to increase our numbers of officers that we have on Pacific Avenue, looking to build upon our numbers in our traffic units, also looking to create and develop more units and specialized teams that we've temporarily had to suspend due to staffing levels. So we're really hoping that as our numbers increase, those special teams will come back online. Continue to support successful recruitment and retention strategies. Can't speak about that enough, just trying to recruit and retain people is probably the biggest challenge we have. And it will be continued to be our goal for 2024. We've invested in commercials, social media, advertisement, incentive strategies, just to try and really develop or try to retain and attract the most successful and talented people we have. And without reducing or lowering our standards, it is often difficult. And then again, just continue to take care of the wellness, the wellbeing of our employees is a priority. And then finally, continue with the work that the chief has done with the city manager's office and public works and the start of the integrated of the health response team, the CAHOOTS model as we move forward. Okay. This is just kind of a snapshot of our budget for 2024. As you're aware, we have pretty much a status quo budget, not much is changing, although just to highlight, you'll see that our personnel costs are a big chunk, almost three quarters of what our budget represents to a tune of about 24 million. The other six million falls under services as implies. And then because of the new CAP program, we're gonna see an additional 3,182,000 added to our budget to cover that. So our budget does increase by a little over 3 million, but that's just to incorporate the money that's now given to us through the CAP program. But other than that, we're a status quo budget for 2024. The next slide is just kind of a pie chart, a snapshot of our funds by activity. If you're able to read that, I apologize, but pretty much shows is that patrol, our uniform men and women represent about 50% of our budget. Their personnel services come in around 14 million and the other services fall around two million. But really patrol is a significant part of the expenses that you folks allocate to us to be able to provide the personnel 24-7 to have enough officers, enough non-sworn and sworn staff to be able to protect and service community 24-7. Onto the left, it breaks down a little bit more as far as administration division, our records division, our investigations division, our community services, our traffic division, and then that small little orange slice represents our homeless response money that's allocated for that division as well. That just kind of gives you a little pie chart of how that 30-something million is allocated to us every year. And just to break down apps, not including the personnel expenses, but just to talk about our non-labor expenses, this is just a graph to show where the non-labor expenses come from. Starting at the top, the most predominant is our fees that we pay to our Netcom Regional 911 Center to have 24-7 dispatchers, people answering 911 calls. We contributed a little over two million to that. That's probably our biggest non-personnel operating expense. All by that is our small tools and equipment and then vehicle leases, training, which is huge. The better trained officers we have, the less likely they're to make mistakes, the better service they're providing, the safer they're gonna be out there. So really training is a huge component of what we need. And then it kind of breaks down into safety, clothing, building facilities, evidence, office supplies, radio equipment, and various other programs that we spend money on every year. So with that, happy to take any questions from council. Chief, thank you very, very much. We very much appreciate it. We appreciate the work that the women and men of the Santa Cruz Police Department perform both sworn and civilian. We're so grateful I will now ask members if you have questions and start with Ms. Brunner. Ms. Brunner, question. Thank you for that report and the information and all the work that you and your department does. And thank you to your new PMA. My question, if you could, I have a couple of questions. One is the sexual assault nurse that in the non-labor graph that you showed. Does every jurisdiction in the county pay for a sexual assault nurse and where did they live at the ER or can you talk about that a little more? Yeah, thank you, council member Simon. Great question. Yes, so we do, every agency within the county contributes a percentage based on their population or service needs to the countywide sexual assault program. And what that entails is that when we have a victim of a sexual assault, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there's a forensic sexual assault nurse examiner on call to perform a forensic exam of the survivor. So they basically do an evidentiary exam with a survivor, collect evidence, obtain information and package that up and later for us to use during a criminal prosecution of the suspect. So those fees incorporate the personnel costs, the infrastructure costs, the supply costs to support that program that's a countywide program. Yes, each agency contributes a portion to support that program. Great, thank you. And then grants, I know recently we had a new equipment presented to us that needed to be approved under the military equipment, the bot, and it was purchased with a grant and I'm just curious, you may not know now, but how often grants are able to be accessed and do you have someone that regularly goes after grants and how does that play into the budget? Great question. So we do try and capitalize on any grant opportunities that there are as with all grants, they do come with work, reporting, gathering and take some time to manage. So we generally will look for the ones that are gonna be most beneficial for us that we are able to successfully implement and comply with the regulations. So currently PMA brothers would be our person that has been and continues to look for grant opportunities, anything we can do to offset the cost from the general budget to enhance our abilities to do our job, we're definitely looking forward. We look for, and like I said, each one that comes up, we just kind of weigh the value of it. Is it going to be to our benefits? Can we handle and absorb the requirements that are set forth in it? And then we apply for it. And I know we've gotten a few recently as well and we continue to look for all available options. Great, my next question is regarding calls for service and that decline and I remember in our strategic planning day, there were a couple of factors attributed to that. And so when we look at our budget and dollar amounts and staffing, I have a hard time associating it directly with calls for service because I know there are other reasons for that decline and for example, the community request for service portal that has increased our online reporting portal has increased but it still requires staffing to manage that from what I understand. But is that a different level of staffing than that's required to manage those? What have you seen on how does that affect the staffing, the type of position needed? Yeah, good question. So, yeah, as you notice, the calls for service have gone down and a lot of that has contributed to, we have an online reporting system. We've continued to put out to the public where they have the opportunity to, if they just need to make a police report, there's no suspect information, not gonna require extensive investigative follow-up, a caller will be referred to the online reporting system to make a report online, which wouldn't generate a call for service. Like I said, we just generally, those are for property crimes, no suspect information, people just need a case number to document for insurance or property purposes. So, we end up deferring a lot to those. Like I said, a lot goes to the CRISP app as well. And then just with the reduction of staffing that we have out there also translates into less calls for service. If we have more officers out there, we have more proactive units, we have more officers on motors, more officers downtown, that's gonna generate more proactivity, more calls for service. And so, with our current numbers being down, the actual calls for service are also gonna reflect a lot of that based on the less proactive abilities we have to be out there at the moment. Okay, that makes sense. The community service officer program and staffing, is it easier to recruit for those positions since they're not sworn positions and maybe they don't carry a firearm? So, I'm just curious how what you see is in terms of recruitment and staffing with sworn police officers versus community service officers. Yeah, thank you. So I currently oversee hiring and recruiting and yes, as I've seen lately, a little bit easier and a little more in the community service officer applicants. We see both, we see people that just wanna come and serve their community in the form of a community service officer and then we also see people that wanna have an interest in being a law enforcement officer at some day and they use that as a stepping stone into becoming a law enforcement officer down the road. Our standards are pretty much consistent as CSOs but some of the requirements are different. The less training, there's no six month academy, some of the background requirements are a little different. So it, plus the age limit is lower for a CSO than a police officer. So we're able to cast kind of a more wider net of applicants that would be available for a CSO position than people for a police officer position. It's a non-sworn, you don't carry firearm, you generally don't work nights, albeit the pay is less but it's less dangerous and a little more appealing to people that are looking to serve their community but not necessarily where graveyards engage in the violent and dangerous acts that a police officer does on a daily basis. So it's a little more appealing to a lot more people. Also it's open to people 18 and over versus police officers 21 and over. That's good to hear. And I also have a minor language thing and maybe it's an Elizabeth question but under workload indicators, it says fall fiscal year 2024 goal and I'm having a hard time. I know that might be standard accounting there but I would like to see a different word than goal for a number of arrests and number of citations. I would hope you don't have a goal of increasing citations and arrests but more of like a prediction or an estimate. I think that language really matters with this department to kind of call that out. So on page 183 where it has all the different columns in comparing the different years and having a goal for arrests and citations. Yeah, I absolutely agree. We don't have goals for arrests. We don't have quotas for citations. Matter of, I mean, it would be a great world if we didn't have to make any arrests or write any citations. So the less the better. You know, but we do not put a goal or a quote on any enforcement type activity. Okay, good to hear. Thank you. And then I think that was it for my questions and just thank you to you and your department. I know that I get to see working downtown. I get to see a lot of community service officers in action. I see your police volunteers in action downtown and at the wharf. And that is a wonderful community program. They really embody community engagement and policing and presence in a way that is very welcoming and very helpful to everyone around and visitors and residents. And so I'm happy that I don't know specifically they're volunteers, but I know that there is a cost associated with running that program and uniforms and supplies and whatnot. And I'm happy to see that continue. I think that's a very important program and the CSOs as well. I think it's a lower cost, but a great value for both of those programs to be part of your department. And I would also, in the budget, I'm wondering if the Citizens Police Academy is reflected for 2024. And if you can speak if you know if there are any plans for that to happen again in the course of the next year. I know there was a English and a Spanish version and I know that has been well attended. I know I've attended two of them. It's very enriching and very eye-opening and always attended by various community members, seniors, youth, neighborhood people, people interested in knowing and understanding how the department operates. And I just wonder if that's reflected in the budget as well. Yeah, thank you. It is, that was one of the chief's priorities is bringing back the Citizens Academy, both English and Spanish, well as the Teen Academy. We anticipate to host those again this year. We really find it's one of the best tools to educate our community on what we do, to be transparent and open on how we do things and the more people we can get through that program to connect with our agency, to really see what we do on a day in and day out basis is both great for the community and great for us. And the more trust, the more transparency that we have with the community, the easier it is for us to do our job, the better we can do our job. And so yes, those are priorities and they will continue to be so. Great, thanks for reflecting that in the budget. And one last thing, a goal that just to call out like in other departments, especially for this department is DEI goals and really making sure that communication is there, that officers are receiving and continuing to receive that training and really making that transparent that that is a priority and constantly improving that. And also on the flip side, I'm very happy to see that the priority for the officers themselves to receive mental health and wellbeing training. I think both of those are very, very high level priorities for this department and I'm happy to see that reflected in this budget. I appreciate your kind words and I'll pass them along. Thank you so much. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Deputy Chief Bush. It was great to hear the overview and I actually just wanted to follow up on Council Member Bruner's kind of points and questions around the workload indicators and performance measures because I was ready to say, I don't think that any of us would agree that these are goals, but it is within the standard framework for this budget. So I understand why it's laid out in this way and I do think that thinking about that language would really be helpful. So thank you for that. I'm assuming that the goals here or the projections of potential citations, arrests and reports written is the increase is related to your expectation that you will get closer to that full staffing. Well, it feels weird to even say closer to full staffing because you're so challenged and I really understand and appreciate that challenge, but you're thinking that this means you're gonna have more sworn officers on the streets and that's why those numbers are higher. That's my guess. Yeah, eventually as our numbers increase, so our ability is to staff proactive units and with proactive units will come proactive enforcement, neighborhood engagement, problem solving, any and all efforts to try and increase the quality of life and improve public safety. And with our job, enforcement always isn't the answer. A citation or arrest isn't what we always look to solve the problem, but sometimes it is. And so with that work that we do, absent working with other agencies, other resources, other departments, enforcement is a component and that will tend to go up as our staffing levels increase. And like I said, it's not a goal of ours to increase arrests or citations. It would actually be great if we saw them go down, but we don't have a goal to increase it at all. Gotcha, yeah, that's what I was thinking that this was being hopeful about the number of folks that you can have on patrol and as well under performance measures, the increase of officer initiated calls, meaning that you have the ability, you have the resources and the staffing to be proactive. That's what I assumed, just wanted to check, thank you. And then my last question is, who took that incredible photo for your title slide? We also have it in our budget. It's just like this really cool photo of all these police vehicles with the sunset. And it's not really a question I need an answer to, but it's like whoever thought of it, it's a great one. Well, it wasn't staged, but it turned out quite nicely. The MA brothers found that we do have a volunteer photographer. I'm not sure if it came from him or not, as Sylvie, Steve, where a lot of pictures come from, but it did turn out quite nicely. So thank you. Council Member Calintari-Johnson. Thank you so much for the presentation and all of the great work. I have just a few questions, looking at that slide where it was the work chart and you mentioned the investigative lieutenant has been vacant. Can you share how long it's been vacant and what strategies we're using to fill that position? Yeah, thank you. That position's probably been vacated for about a year and a half since Chief Mills retired. And I currently oversee both positions. We anticipate or hope to have that filled with the next few months. Having sworn officers on the street 24-7 to answer the priority calls is the priority. So if we're looking for an area where we can make a sacrifice with a body or two, an administrative supervisor or manager is probably where we're gonna take that so we can make sure that we have enough officers on the streets. So right now I kinda do dual role, the two investigative sergeants that oversee investigations are fairly competent and experienced so between the three of us, we fill in that gap as the investigative lieutenant position. But the Chief, if staffing continues to project and increase as we're hoping this year, look to fill that within a couple of months. Okay, makes sense, sounds like a lot of work for you. So in our packet, the work chart shows the CPVAW liaison. I didn't see that reflected in the chart in your slides and I'm wondering if you could just touch on who that is, where that is, what their role is. Well, you're talking to him. Oh, is that okay? Well, hello. Yes, I have a lot of roles, but thankfully I have a lot of great people that I work with that's helped support me and accomplish the things we need to do. So normally the investigative lieutenant would be the CAVAW liaison, but since I'm in a dual role at the moment, I take that on as well. Catherine Brothers assists me with some statistical data and crime and trend data. So yes, I will represent the police agency at all their meetings, provide updates, trends, programs, initiatives that we're doing to help assist the commission in their ultimate goal of reducing violence against women. Okay, so similar question, and you probably have a similar response, CSEC, commercial sexual exploitation of children. I know some larger police departments have CSEC, someone dedicated to CSEC. So is it the same, I assume, that we have folks from our investigative team that just respond to that? And I want to just add that I know that Chief Escalante was key in adding CSEC training into the training modules a couple of years ago. Yes, thank you. So we do have our investigation division as comprised of highly experienced trained officers. And we have a couple with an emphasis and a more intense training background on crimes against children. So 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we do have an investigators available to respond and provide those investigative services to children of violent or sexual assault crimes. We also are a part of a county-wide multi-disciplinary interview center where we contribute, as run by the Sheriff's Office, but it's a specially designed location and program to interview children of violent crimes or sexual assaults on a level, a more comfortable environment that they can open up in. Okay, great, thank you. Wait, a couple more questions. So looking at the budget I see in the police community services, I'm sorry if you already touched on this, but the adopted budget of FY23 at 1.5 million and the year-end estimate at 181,000, just wondering if you could touch on what that discrepancy is. Yeah, for that particular number question, I'll turn over to Catherine Brothers. She can probably speak a little bit more to that. Oh yeah, one page 184. Maybe as she's getting up all. While she's looking, I can take other questions and then we can come back to that one. Yeah, that's great. And you can get back to us later too if that's easier. Okay, let's see, I have just two more comments, questions. I know that the SCPD and FIRE have been working on evacuation response and protocols and there was an app that was being developed. Maybe it's already been developed. I can't remember now the name of the app or where it's at. Safe Haven, or Zone Haven, I'm sorry. Zone Haven, thank you. So just to note that that is either an accomplishment or a goal to accomplish that I would hope to have noted because I know that it was a lot of work to put all that together and maybe it's still in progress but be great to see that here. Yeah, FIRE did a phenomenal job and took the lead on getting that implemented and rolled out the last couple of years and we've been slowly getting trained and updated on its use and integrating it with our agency as well. But yes, a great program to have and thankful for FIRE for rolling that out and getting that going. But we continue to train yearly on it as well. Okay, great. RBS, Responsible Beverage Services Training. I know that our police department used to do in collaboration with County Substance Use Prevention. Is that, I didn't see it anywhere reflected. Is that something that is just handled by the state or the county now? There we go, I'm sorry, to alcohol. Responsible Beverage Services Trainings, yeah. So when we're full staff, we will generally assign one officer full time to alcohol beverage enforcement who will not only regulate all the licenses and establishments within the city, but they will also provide ongoing training to people that serve or alcohol through the leads program and make sure that they're educated and informed on best practices to make sure that they're not over-serving people or serving underage people. That is a program we have. It's just currently not staffed at the moment due to our staffing shortage. Okay, it's not staffed at the moment. Okay, just last point in picking up on what Council Member Bruno was saying around the decline in calls for service and why that might be. I think it would be important to show that full picture in the stats that we show. So showing the Chris numbers and the online numbers so that we can see that we've seen a decline for calls for service, but we've seen an increase here. So just to have the full picture when we have the stats before us would be helpful. Yeah, thank you. We actually do have that just to, our presentation was pretty big and then we tried to condense it down, but we're happy to provide that to you. Okay. Those were my questions and if we need to get back to the other point, that's fine. Good morning. The discrepancy between the actual number and what is budgeted is simply because we just don't have as many personnel. Okay. So we're budgeted for 13, we currently have 11 and it's just in that salary savings and employee benefits is where you see the difference. But we have a fully expanded all the other services and supply funds that were available to us this year. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Watkins. Great. Thank you. Hello, thank you for the presentation. That was actually my question in regards to sort of the salary savings that I know you're budgeting. I think my understanding is you're budgeting for full staffing, but essentially not able to meet that. And so what we're seeing is that you're unable to to meet that and that's where the salary savings that's where that difference goes. And then how, and maybe this is how are those salary savings? Are those rolled back up into our general fund and general or what then happens to those dollars? So maybe that's a question for you, Matt or someone else. It's like somebody's getting called up to take that one for me. Yeah. Oh, there she is. They are general fund dollars, but I will ask Elizabeth to come up and speak to what happens with those salary savings when we have vacancies. So, hello again. So any budget items that are not spent in the general fund, they basically, it goes back to fund balance. They're then available for appropriation for something else. So you don't see it as a specific like a transfer or anything like that. But if it's not, if it's budgeted and not used, then it's available later, like the next year to be used for other appropriations. Next year, okay, I see. Okay, thank you. And then I just wanted to appreciate that you put a measurable performance measure for wellness program participation. I think it's really important to track. You can offer, I see that often the case, like we do wellness yet nobody really takes advantage of that or is actually experiencing wellness. And so having a measurable goal of trying to make it meaningful for your staff, I just want to commend you for that. Thank you. Yes. And we want to see them well. And then in terms of what I believe I heard in your presentation is matching more senior officers with a lot of the newer staff and sort of trying to help mentor and support them given that we have a younger staffing, I think is part of the concern. I mean, naturally you understand that's who we're trying to recruit and they're younger and not as experienced in their armed in our communities, right? And so having mentorship seems really critical. And then I also wanted to see where maybe training is also allocated in the budget to support the professional growth of these individuals. Yes, you're correct. We do have a much younger generation of officers out there nowadays. And they go through the same background, the same training as everybody else does, but sometimes not as much life experience as people who are a little older that come to us. So we really do put an emphasis and a priority on training, consistent ongoing year-round training to really maximize their exposure to scenarios, to best practices, to de-escalation efforts. So that is really where a good amount of our funds go is to support that initiative. So much so that we've committed a full-time lieutenant basically to oversee, identify training needs, make sure we're up to date on the best standards and practices in compliance with the law. And it's just really been an added benefit. And that's the best way to try and address that these younger generation of officers coming in is not only training, but yes, constant mentorship by some of the senior officers that we have out there. Yeah, great, I agree. And I just want to encourage you to continue to do that because that's truly needed. I think in any profession, but particularly one when individuals are young and armed, right? And then lastly, I guess, maybe it's just not a, it's not really a question, but maybe it's just a comment in general. But a strategy that across departments could be looked at is just the workforce development, really recruiting from internally, really thinking about, I know we've talked about that with water and the pre-apprenticeship programming. We're seeing vacancies in so many areas that if we can get individuals from our community, particularly in this field, it's so much more ideal. And so however, we're really taking a proactive approach to workforce development and recruitment and the pipeline educationally, I think, for this and for other departments is something that I'd like to see as a priority as well. So no response needed, just a comment in general. Anyways, thank you for your presentation. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Council Member. Vice Mayor is recognized. I kind of like being second to last because everything I wanted to say has kind of already been said. But what I was trying to write a note to my colleague here was when she was talking about the, what was it called? Responsible Veverage Services. Do you also follow up, do they do checks on like dispensaries? I just know that a lot of underage people get served in both places. And it's kind of- Marijuana dispensaries? Yeah. Part of a community services division overseen by Lieutenant Jones is the marijuana dispensary licenses and outlets. So we will provide inspections, training, and ensure that they are in compliance with all state and local laws as well. Okay. And then this is a hypothetical question. When I get a traffic ticket here in town and I pay the fee, where does that money go? Asking for a friend. Asking for a friend. When I run a stop sign. It depends on what kind of citation you get. Have a traffic. If I ran a stop sign. Oh, hypothetical. A red light, something like that. Some of the money goes, stays locally. Some of the money goes to the court. Some of the money goes to the state. Some goes to traffic initiatives. It really gets dispersed among several agencies. It doesn't come back to the department. So there's no incentive to give out more tickets. No, we generally don't know. We don't see really an increase in revenue by the citations we issue, which is good because then that keeps us out of that motivating to write more tickets business. So yeah, we don't see more money just because we write more tickets or make more of us. So I think a bunch of teenagers are gonna hate me for suggesting this even though it's not gonna make any money is the helmets. It makes me so nervous when I see piles of kids on those electric bikes and with those new, whatever they're called, jump bike, ones coming back to town. I think it's only a matter of time before someone gets seriously injured when they're riding around without their helmet or their helmet unstrapped and maybe we could bring Officer Black back out of retirement to start ending out. I don't know. But I mean, it's just in terms of goals and public safety, it's really scary. Yeah, we do have a significant high level. Thankfully, luckily, we're a bicycle-friendly city, a bicycle-friendly environment. We do a lot of bicyclists, but unfortunately, when a bicyclist in a car collide, the bicyclist always ends up losing. And so really just emphasizing on helmets and safety with the amount of riders that we have in this community is always important. Yeah, and I don't see anything wrong with citing underage kids as a reminder to click it or to get. And then the other thing I just wanted to add on is I appreciated what Council Member Bruner said about CSO as being a good bang for the buck and same with the volunteers. And I think the more presence we have downtown really adds to the economic vitality of our community with the increase of robberies and things like that happening downtown. I know it makes not only business owners, but people that work in the shops feel safer when they see uniformed officers, regardless if they're sworn or not down there. Yeah, we agree as well. And the chief's priority is that as our numbers get back to get more resources, more uniforms downtown, it's the priority when our numbers get back up. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Good morning. Good morning, Mayor. First of all, thank you for pointing that out to me. I will start alternating so that you are not always a second or the last. Oh, you like going second or the last. I'm crossing off, I don't have to text you much. Oh, it sounded like a complaint. No, I like it. Look at how many things I crossed off. Okay. All right. Chief, good morning again. Morning, sir. I'm going to pick up on this e-bike business. These e-bikes are no longer a bicycle with a little electric pack on it that added two or three pounds to what's going on. Some of these weigh 50, 60, 70 pounds or more when you put somebody who weighs anything from 120 to 200 pounds on top of that. And these have the capacity to go 40 miles an hour. I think it begs the question of where do they properly belong when they're moving? And it would seem to me that sidewalks, walkways such as West Cliff, other areas are not suitable and the bike lane might not even be suitable because Lance Armstrong can't pedal his bike 40 miles an hour. Probably bad choice of bicycle riders to bring out of retirement for this purpose. But anyway, even with his drug support, he can ride his bike 40 miles an hour flat. General Lady talked about the lack of helmets, fair enough. I think there's this larger question of what we're going to be doing with these vehicles. Now, in my mind, this is suitable subject matter for the state legislature and the governor to take up where do these belong? As a municipal government, do we have the authority to start if we wanted to adopt local ordinances relative to where e-bikes can be operated? Thank you, Mayor. It's a good question. I'd probably defer to the city attorney or if he was here, but I cannot tell you if we have the abilities to institute legislation or local measures to enforce or regulate e-bikes. Identify with your concerns. They are increasing in popularity. We see them daily. They do carry a heavier weight, faster speeds, and right now they're currently regulated in forces if they were regular bicycles. So we could definitely look at exploring the options to bring in some new legislation or ordinances to better safely regulate those. Chief, would you be kind enough to, at least on an outline kind of basis, would you be willing to return on or before our final budget actions in June in consultation with the city attorney come back and provide us with some more thoughts on this issue? Absolutely, I'd be happy to. Thank you very much. I'm here to interject briefly. Pardon me, Mr. Mayor. Tony came on screen. I was gonna give him an opportunity. Oh, I'm sorry. I do believe we have the ability to regulate e-bikes. And my sense is that the California vehicle code has probably not caught up with the technology. But we can certainly explore that with the police department and be prepared to report back to you. Thank you. I wanna be clear about this. Certainly folks in my age demographic are finding that e-bikes is a way to extend your enjoyment of bicycling. This is, and for younger, I think across age groups, this is popular and growing in popularity. And I think there's a lot of reasons for that. So I think that if the state is not covering this territory yet, and without thinking about this in the context of we're trying to prohibit the use, that isn't it at all. It's where is it appropriate, given that these are really no longer bicycles? They're trending closer to small motorcycles than they are a bicycle. So thank you for your willingness. Mr. Kandadi, thank you for your willingness to take a look at that and report back prior to our final budget actions. My other question, sir, is you just happen to be standing there, so what I'm going to go into is my particular hobby horse on this general topic of criminal justice and public safety. Would you know, or would your analyst know, on the number of arrests that were made, the arrests, how that split between misdemeanors and felonies? I don't think we have that data available today, but we can source that data and get it back to you. Okay, do you think that's another one that we might be able to have prior to our final budget actions in June? Oh, absolutely. I could even get that back to you sooner if you need it, sir. Well, thank you, and I would, and let me tell you why. What I think we know is the following. It's a criminal justice system of which you are the front of it. The middle of it is the district attorney, and the end of it is the sheriff's responsibility inside the city in terms of being the jailer. And if I understand the current, either policy or practices are both at the district attorney and the sheriff level goes like this. State of California in order to reduce prison overcrowding and not have to build new prisons, push the non-non-nons, non-sexual predator, non-violent, non-third strike from serving in state prison to now serving the remainder of their time in county jails. That helped the state resolve their overcrowding issue and Judge Stelton Henderson gave the state the authority back to run the prison system under those conditions. As I understand it, what that has done has put the sheriff in a place where the sheriff says, I have no room at the jail. And with that then backing one step further is that the district attorney is very selective about prosecuting misdemeanors and essentially doesn't prosecute mis, excuse me, felonies and essentially doesn't prosecute misdemeanors. So what I see happening in this is that no matter how much good work you do that some number of the citations and arrests are like Groundhog Day. It is a largely meaningless act to the extent that it must be frustrating to you and your staff that you do your part but because the district attorney and the sheriff can't or won't, not blaming them, can't or won't do their job, your job is hindered significantly is my view of this. And that a better world would be if the district attorney had the capacity to prosecute and the sheriff had the capacity to jail those offenders who the law anticipates by its construct belong in jail or in state prison. Let me be very clear what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that we should undertake some wholesale incarceration program that is not the trend in the United States as not the trend in the world, generally speaking. But I think there's a vast difference between over-incarcerating over here and not being able, in my view, to keep our streets safe, our neighborhoods safe because the two component parts above where we are can't do, won't do, fail to do, don't have the money to do their jobs. And for me as a mayor, that's unacceptable because to me that severely constrains the effectiveness of what you do. Now, I'm not necessarily asking you to respond to my speech but I would ask you this question. If the district attorney and the sheriff had increased ability to do their jobs, would that be of benefit to the city and the police department in doing your job? Yes, great point. Thank you for bringing that up, mayor. Just to go back a little further, yes, that is one of the probably the most frustrating components our officers deal with is the recidivism, dealing with the same people over and over again, the nuisance, the quality of life issues. Literally we know people by full name, date of birth, sometimes deal with them a couple of times in the same shift and that represents probably a majority of the work that our men and women do is a small amount of population or the repeat offenders are the ones that we're constantly dealing with and responding to on a daily basis. So the abilities to have accountability measures to hold those people accountable, whether it's jail or mental health or programs would definitely not only increase, well, one of the morale for our officers, the abilities to do their job, the effectiveness of their job, but would also reduce calls, increase quality of life, reduce crime, that would be instrumental if that was more effective. I thank you for that comment, that candid comment. Our city manager isn't here for a moment and maybe I could ask Ms. Schmidt in his absence, the city manager is back. Sir, I was waiting just for a moment to ask you this question. We had been in a colloquy about the criminal justice system and the component parts and what effect that has when the other two actors do or don't do what they do, what happens to us and chief was responding that at a minimum it makes the job frustrating and at maybe a more equally significant level. That doesn't help at all making our community a safer place to be. My question now that you're back is whether there are ongoing conversations between our city and those two county wide elected officials because my guess is they're not making this up. This is an honest to God genuine constraint on them. This is not, they're not choosing not to do their job. The district attorney has capacity issues. The sheriff has physical jail issues, constraints to understand. This is no way in my estimation to continue to operate a criminal justice system. And I think that certainly a very significant portion of this can only be solved by the governor and the state legislature. Can't do this at the city level. Probably can't do it at the county level because when we talk to those two other county wide elected officials, they don't have excuses, they have real reasons. That means that the system is stuck. And for all the money we spend then on your department, the county spends on the district attorney and the sheriff is to agree to fail. And I'm wondering if this city should engage those two elected officials and because they are not going to give us excuses, they're gonna give us darn good reasons. And then incorporate our senator, our two assembly members in a conversation because what we're going to say to them runs contrary to the tide that has been rolling through state government, which is to take felonies, make them misdemeanors a lot of changes. And I think that they are well intended. I don't doubt that, that they're well intended. And that may be quite helpful in some communities what they're doing. I don't think it's at all helpful in our community, not at all. And so I'm wondering if we have engaged the county, the district attorney and the sheriff and our legislative delegation in trying to make a very significant change that will help us again, not some mass incarceration, not spitting on the sidewalk, get you two months in jail. That's not what this is about. But if you're dealing with a known group of re-offenders time and time again, it moves us from being champions of safety to chomps. And I think that should be unacceptable by our city. Sir? Mayor, there is no question that our state is woefully failing when it comes to our criminal justice system and our mental and behavioral health support services across the state. Many of the ways in which the system is inadequate come to a head in our community. And we experience it every day as Chief Bush is describing. And really, as you've heard woven throughout all of our department presentations. So we are in regular communication with our county partners. We were also engaging at a state level. And as you heard yesterday as part of the homelessness response presentation, we have brought on lobbyists that have special experience in this area to engage with Senator Laird and our local elected delegation to really advance and champion state-wide change that needs to happen. Without that, we're gonna continue to be constrained with the challenges we have in front of us and not make meaningful progress on some of the most complex issues that are facing Santa Cruz. So those conversations are ongoing. I think if any city is gonna be a leader, it should be Santa Cruz again, given the way that these issues really come to a head in our town. So more to come. Thank you, sir. Mayor, we were fortunate to have the state attorney general come and visit us a few weeks back and meet with law enforcement, representation, probation and mental health representatives, specifically to begin the conversations of such an important topic and how to address those, including the abilities to provide additional mental health services or incarceration services, forcing people for treatment that need it and looking at long-term solutions to this problem that we're having. So those conversations are also currently underway between the chief, the state and the county as well. I appreciate that. I know that I think we all know we received a presentation on this a month or so ago that the so-called care court concept that is coming is probably a couple of years away, I would suspect. And that component part, which goes to the issues around mental health and so on that are associated with, in some cases, criminal activity, totally understand the appropriate move there is into the mental health side of the system. I think that's right. In the general category of we can't do nothing about this until somebody above us decides to change the law or provide more funding or whatever it may be, which given the governor's proposed budget this year seems a not at all interested topic. I wonder about this. We'll be very careful how I frame this. Somebody commits what you folks believe to be a crime. They are arrested for it. It is a misdemeanor, maybe even formerly a felony, but it's a misdemeanor. Under some circumstances, you take them to jail, not all. Sometimes they're given a citation, that's that. Some cases you take them to jail. Am I right on that so far? You absolutely, yes. Some instances. And then at the jail, the intake side of that, unless there's probably certain conditions I imagine met, that person isn't there very long. And I think you said some 15 or 20 minutes ago that you actually encounter some folks that you cite twice in a single day or more perhaps. And that this group of people is known to you. And I think it's some version of the old broken window theory, which is that if at a certain level, a certain group of people who commit an awful lot of, who are alleged to have committed an awful lot of crimes repeatedly, that it would seem to make sense that you've got a pretty good idea then when you've picked somebody up 20 or 30 times in a year or whatever it might be, pretty good idea that this is a bad actor. Now, whether they need mental health services or they need this and that, I'm gonna stay out of that. That's what judges do. God created judges to figure that part out. And we don't have judges here. That's a county and state function. But from a policing function, I am wondering if repeatedly arresting people, well, let me do a slightly different way. Is there a legal approach, an established best practice approach in the law enforcement field about dealing with the, I don't know that you gave us a number. I'm going to guess it's 20 to 30 to 40 people in the city that you know on this regular basis. And the community is having to experience that as it's not a meaningful act. When that, at the moment it occurs, my guess is victims or observers feel, oh goodness, there are really some consequences of that. Thank goodness. If they were to know that there are essentially no consequences of that even when someone's arrested, I'm wondering if the department is engaged in any kind of work to understand what best practices would mean if we're trying to reduce the level of crime, especially by a cohort of folks that are known to the department, what the best way to deal with that is. I wonder if you have thoughts on that. Yes, thank you, Mayor. You are correct. There's a small number of people that create a majority of the problems for us. And usually behind those issues are either mental health or drug and alcohol problems. And a five hour or one or two day stint in jail is not going to solve the problem long term. We're not going to be able to arrest or enforce our way out of addressing that population that creates the most work for us unless they commit such a serious crime that it would send them to prison or jail for a year or two or more. Ultimately, the success that we see is in collaboration with mental health, with probation, with drug and alcohol treatment programs to really try and identify the core problem that these individuals suffer from and address that root cause in hopes whether it's like I said, mental health, drugs or alcohol to try and solve that underlying problem that ultimately leads to them causing and generating crime or the calls for service that we often deal with associated with them. That's where we really see our best success. Some of the problems we run into is that we can offer some of these programs, we can offer treatment and whether or not they want to take it, sometimes it's up to them. So, when it's mandated or forced by the courts or the judicial system, it's much more successful. Thank you, so that does raise the question then. If there are some, can we agree that, so that I get less vague about this, can we agree that this number is closer to 30 or 40 than it is five or 10 or 60 or 70? Are we speaking in the right range here? Yes, absolutely. 30, 40 people. We could even go a little higher, but yes. 50? Sure, yeah. Okay, so I'm really trying to get a sense of scale here, but something on the order of 50, 50 folks. Okay, so in the homeless space, we know that we can offer people a place to go shelter, service, camping, whatever it might be. They're totally in charge or whether or not they do that. It seems to me because it's not illegal to be homeless, nor should it be. And so, if somebody chooses not to accept shelter or services, whatever it might be, that's a right they have to do that. Doesn't seem to me that you have the right if you are arrested for and convicted of a crime and your underlying problem is drug alcohol or mental health. Doesn't seem to me that it's that person's choice. It seems to me that's the judge's choice and probation and consultation with social services. So the idea that somebody may not want treatment, that's fine in this other context over here. But it would be like me getting arrested and getting sentenced to jail. And I say, well, I'd choose not to do that, which I think would be my choice. I'm wondering why that's a choice then. That's a good question. Probably couldn't answer your question completely. I know there are oftentimes, I mean, sometimes mental health and drugs, especially mental health, people don't necessarily have a choice when it comes to mental health issues. Drug and alcohol, it eventually becomes a disease and an addiction and sometimes beyond their control and really trying to work before it gets to that level is always a priority. But yeah, friends, I can't speak for the justice system, but there are instances where court-ordered treatment is required by the offender. But prior to that, if it's before an arrest or before a citation issued, the ability to offer is, yes, up to them. Oh yeah, no, I'm talking about post-arrest. But I think the example you just gave assumed that you get in front of a judge. Yeah, correct. In order for that to actually happen, as you're familiar with and I appreciate your understanding, is that those arrests would have to be first filed on by the district attorney before that individual has even gone before a judge, then either subsequently plead guilty or convicted in a jury trial before we even would get to the component of mandated behavior of health or drug and alcohol treatment. And the percentage of people that make it all the way through that process could definitely be a lot higher than what it is right now. Thank you for that. I think this is a very important topic for us to engage the two county officials that are directly elected officials who have jurisdiction over the prosecution and the jailing. And also, I think it may be fruitful potentially to engage the bench in this conversation and the public defender's office who all have more than a minor role in this activity. This is, I suspect, you said it, I don't have to suspect it, you said it. This is enormously frustrating for your officers and for the department at large. And I hope that when we're here a year from now that perhaps we have got better ways to deal with four dozen people who apparently cause a great deal of harm and havoc in our community around which we don't seem to be able to be effective. And would like to see that the chief and city manager, CAO, we know what they're going to say. We don't have to think about it. We know what they're gonna say. Once we've all said it to each other, then the question becomes, now what do we do about this? Because it doesn't seem to me that it'll work for us to get our legislative delegation to do something for a city. This isn't where the problem is in terms of law enforcement and real consequences. So it seems to me that those partners have to be in this and agree to it and then be willing to be advocates with us in this enterprise. Chief, thank you to you and thank you to all the women and men of your department who keep us safe every day. Council Member Watkins. Thank you. I have one last budget question that I forgot to ask. I apologize when I have the floor. In regards to the amount of overtime, I know that because of the shortage it requires a lot of the patrol officers having and just staff in general having to work overtime. I don't know. I'm just curious like how do you, do you quantify that and could, okay. And what do you think? I mean, I know it's not outlined here in this budget, but what do you estimate that cost to be annually? That's a good question. Let me turn it up. And if you don't have, I mean, even just a general estimate, it'd be. I can get you a detailed report on what amount is set aside for overtime for each of our activities. We've exceeded all of them. I'm sure. However, we also haven't spent all of our funds. It works out. Yeah, we're not running a deficit, but because we have some salary savings, however, we are having, we had mandated shifts and staffing shortages. We've had a lot of our officers work overtime. So, and I can provide all those numbers for you. I'd be curious, I think, or thinking about with the wellness goal also, those go hand in hand, right? In terms of the pressure and work, the goal around recruitment and then also probably reducing the amount of time officers are required for overtime too. So anyways, I just wanted to make that recognition statement. I see. Just a very quick follow up to that and Chief Bush could speak to this, but there was a period of time where we were having a mandatory overtime. And so as the staffing has reached a threshold that we're no longer having a mandate over time in all situations. I know there's still instances in which we have to. That helps with what you're describing. Council Member Watkins and has been one of the priorities of the department. Okay, yeah. That's absolutely correct. We were on a 12 hour mandatory overtime shift. Normally we were 10s. Oftentimes 10s just turn into 11 or 12s naturally because it calls for service and paperwork. When you're working at 12, then at 12 turns into 13 or 14 hour shift and with commute times. So that was a big strain on our staff and to morale. And thankfully with the Chief's efforts and getting our numbers back up, we're back to a 10 hour schedule, which is much more preferred by the staff and better on morale and personal life and family life as well. Okay, great. Well, it's nice to hear that, but it's moving in the right direction as well. So thank you. Again Chief, thank you very, very much. We are a better and safer community because of the fine works of women and men in your department. Did you have a comment? Please do. Thank you. I appreciate your questions, Mayor, as that you were asking and kind of framing the context of the criminal justice system and the role that our police department plays in the process. And the lack of resources and support to get at some of the root causes of what our officers are dealing with, having more programs in place, having more alternative locations for people to go besides jail, which is full and there's just all these domino effects. And I just wanted to mention that I have also been taking a deep dive in this exact same topic because I think our community needs better systems. And it's a big undertaking and it's not just something that our council or the city can control. And I would even say we could revisit this conversation with our next report at FIRE and some of the same people and repeat response calls. We can, again, be back at that situation. But I wonder if this is something to, you made a recommendation for communication and I wonder, you know, I've been doing some outreach on this for understanding, but I wonder if it's something the Public Safety Committee could take a deep dive in. I know we're meeting next month and otherwise I'm happy to continue working on this and kind of looking at how we can support people in our community to get what they need for better wellbeing and to support our systems and our police department and reduce all of our calls for service and all of that. So thank you. Council Member Brenner, I think that's an excellent suggestion. That's a very good venue in which to have this conversation. And I think you will do what you will do in your committee. Certainly focusing, you will focus where you deem appropriate. That's why you folks are the Public Safety Committee. I would hope that the committee, while we are a compassionate and caring community and while there are, it does make sense to have various avenues for treating people, drug alcohol, mental health issues. Absolutely important to do. Not everyone who commits a crime has mental health issues or an addiction problem. And so there are actually, yes, bad people. And so I think that's important to keep in mind also. I don't diminish the importance of those who have addiction, mental health issues, need a different kind of assistance in life. But there are criminals who are victimizing our community on a regular basis who need, as far as I'm concerned, to be taken out of play for some considerable period of time as punishment for putting other people's public safety at risk. Other questions or comments? Seeing and hearing none, Chief, thank you very much. Please pass on to the women and men of the police department, sworn and civilian, and volunteer that we are very clear that our community is only as safe as it is because of the fine job that you all do. We love you, we respect you, and we care deeply about the work that you do every day. Thank you, I appreciate that. I'll be sure to pass that along to the Chief as well. Thank you, sir. We are going to at this time, and I wanna thank the Fire Chief for agreeing to do this. We're gonna take a break right now. We will see you for, oh, I'm sorry. Oh, they wanna go before lunch. I misunderstood the audible. Come on, come on, come on, we're gonna do this. No, no, that was my interpretation, I didn't. Sort of a formidable task, being the one person between you and lunch. There we go, there we go. I understand that, and I respect it. Chief, welcome. Thank you. We are pleased to have you here today in presenting the fire department's annual budget. Thank you, Mayor, Council. I appreciate the opportunity. Before we get started, I just wanna recognize my entire budget team here. It was an all-hands collaborative effort to prepare this for you today, as we have a number of people that'll be leaving and stepping into new roles. So it was very important to me that we all sort of had a hand in this. So, but also be available for questions, should you have any. I would also be remiss not to sort of recognize and show my appreciation on behalf of the fire department to you, Mr. Mayor and Council, for your support most recently during our loss of Captain Brian Tracy. I just really appreciate the support that we've received from the city, and specifically the city manager's office, HR, had come out, actually had breakfast with each crew. And so that meant a lot to me, but I got a lot of good feedback from the crews. And so I just wanna share our appreciation with each and every one of you for that. So thank you. And with that, I'll go ahead and jump into our presentation for our fiscal year at 24 budget. So the agenda really is quite simple, like many others, just a quick department overview, talk about some of our core services, our achievements for our last fiscal year 23, our 24 budget, as well as some goals that we have set for ourselves. First and foremost, this is our organizational chart here, difficult to sort of read on the screen itself, but I know you guys have copies. We are made up of 66 full-time employees, 61 of which are sworn. And then in addition to that, we have over 50 temps, and those are comprised primarily of our seasonal lifeguard staff, as well as a few other temps that we have that assist us in the prior prevention bureau by way of conducting inspections. I think it's important to note that currently at this point in time, we only have one vacancy, and that is the deputy fire marshal position that we are currently actively recruiting for and testing. That was just due to the various promotions with that eight in the last month. With that, we also currently on the operation side have no openings. That was by way of we had one individual leave for personal reasons to another department back down south, but prior to that, we were able with the cooperation of the city manager's office and finance department in HR to bring back an individual who had left us in a year ago and decided to actually come back. So right now we currently stand operationally, fully staffed, although as I mentioned before, we have a number of forecasted retirements that'll be occurring within this calendar year. We believe we'll have six by the end of the year, and so we're looking to hire another six individuals and start them in an academy by January of next year. And again, that over hiring that we did has all been in part by the cooperation and assistance we had with the city manager's office, HR and the finance department, so I thank them as well. And I think also it's really important to note that this org chart that you see here, aside from a reorg that we had in 2014, the addition of the fire station and the fire crew from the university in 2014, and of course the addition of a marine safety captain when we took over the marine safety division from Parks and Rec back in 2007, we haven't really seen a net growth in the number of personnel that we have that respond to calls for service in the city. So something to sort of keep in mind as we go through some of our calls for service and of course something that we will address in this next calendar year or fiscal year as we look to do a standards of cover survey to see that we are in fact going to be well prepared for the city in the future. The next thing I just want to review with all of you is for the fire department, we try and focus on three pillars. We consider them our foundation and it's really an integral part of us moving into the future. And those three pillars consist of personnel, response and community. Obviously Santa Cruz firefighters are the ones who get things done. So in order to maintain that and maintain that expectation on our staff we wanna make sure the workforce is healthy, engaged, satisfied and prepared to meet these challenges of this job. So that's why personnel is one of those pillars. Response, we're all risk. So we need to respond promptly, professionally and respectfully to all calls for service. And lastly, community, a strong sense of genuine connection to our community allows us to excel in our delivery to the community. So we wanna educate the public about the services that we provide and then of course in doing so we enhance the resiliency of our community. And so those are things that we try and remind ourselves every single day when making decisions and of course when we develop this budget those pillars were the back of our mind, of course. So going into our core services for the fire department you have obviously our fire operations. Those are the division that respond to 911 calls on a daily basis. Our fire prevention bureau that's not just the preventative side of fire but arson investigation, public education and outreach followed by the marine safety division. That of course is our seasonal lifeguard core but also as many of you know we do have rescue swimmers that are embedded on all of our fire engines and so it is a well oiled machine that responds to a number of water rescues year round in the city. The next one is followed is our train division. That's our train division of one. We have one individual who runs that and of course that's the focus on making sure that all of our men and women of the fire department are properly trained to meet the rigors of the job. And then last but not least is our office of emergency services which too is an army of one and comprised of Paul Horvat. And that is really the support that we get not only for the EOC and responding to those local disasters but also the reimbursement that goes along with FEMA and OAS as we try and collect money that we have spent in responding to those emergencies. So first and foremost the fire operations of course we respond last year to 9,611 calls for service. And again those are comprised of fire, EMS or medicals rescues, water rescues, public service and of course our mutual aid and the Cal OES mutual aid system. That's a 910 increase in calls for service from 2021. And I think it's important to note that in the last 10 years we've seen a steady rise in calls for service about 31% since 2012. And over the last 20 years we've seen our calls for service go up actually 52%. And again that's in contrast with the fact that our staffing levels have remained stagnant in that same time period. I think it's important to note that of the fires we had we had 107 structure fires, 144 wildland fires and then 46 other fires and those are vehicle fires, trash can fires, nuisance fires of those nature. 5,000 emergency, over 5,000 emergency medical responses, 25 water rescues and 112 hazmats sort of comprised some of those. Those are some of the highlights of the calls for service for the operations division. Fire prevention again is comprised of not only the preventative inspections on new construction but also fire investigation. They are the tip of the spear when it comes to our vegetation management program for wildfire prevention. And this last year we did about 20 acres of treatment in our open spaces. They coordinate and conduct outreach with our fire-wise groups that are currently the Prospect Heights neighborhood and Highland neighborhoods. And of course they team up in our integral part of the homeless response and resource coordination. We've done site inspections at a number of different sanctioned encampments as well as just working with the homeless response unit and PD in terms of ensuring that the unhoused are safe while they're out there. Of course, open space management that's during the high fire danger so fire season we will go out and proactively contact those that are out in the open spaces both using them for hiking and biking but also again the unhoused community to make sure that everybody is aware of those hazards in the open spaces during the fire season. And then of course, wildland urban interface code enforcement and outreach. So those are those residents that are sort of on the outskirts of the city that border the wildland urban interface to make sure that they're meeting all the required building codes in terms of fire safety out in those areas. Next up is our Marine Safety Division. Like I mentioned before they are the lifeguard service our on-call Marine Rescue Unit that pair up with our fire engine-based rescue swimmers. We also have PWC watercraft that are an integral part of our rescuing operations much more effective in our coastal area than any sort of other vessel like a boat that the Harbor Patrol has. We also last year did lifeguard services for the city of Capitola under contract and this year we've sort of changed pace a little bit they're looking to actually have their own certified lifeguard agency and so what we have done a little pivot where we are basically training all of their staff to stand them up to be prepared to provide their own autonomous lifeguard service so that's something that we've done this year. I think yesterday you guys actually had Marine Safety Captain Brian Thomas here that talked a lot about some of the highlights from the Marine Safety Division but I think some of the big ones that should be repeated is just the sheer number of people that attended our beaches almost a million it was 943,000 that were in attendance. We had 244 water rescues and then of course that 70,000 over 70,000 preventative contacts and four vessel rescues so again they are the tip of the spear when it comes to our safety, public safety in the ocean environment. Again last but not least the Emergency Management OES that we managed the Emergency Operations Center which was a huge lift early this year during the storms again we activated and directed EOC responses during those winter storms. We coordinate reimbursement processes for Cal OES and FEMA they also coordinate community emergency response training otherwise known as CERT and then of course do a lot of coordination for grant acquiring for vegetation management and equipment we actually just along with all the work that we're gonna be doing out in PogoNIP and some of the other open spaces in the city we just took possession of a chipper that allows us to do that work and that of course was part and part by the work that Paul does in the OES office and then of course another big lift is train city staff to manage and support our EOC activations when we have them. Some of our achievements again we successfully conducted some countywide training and again when I say countywide it's a collaborative effort by all the departments in the county Watsonville, Central Fire, Scotts Valley and some of our counterparts up in the valley where we're training on life fire, ventilation operations wild land, hazmat and search and rescue. Again we conducted that cost recovery for Cal OES and FEMA operations. Vegetation management we completed 20 acres this last year in the open space. We purchased and installed a new station alerting system for all four fire stations and that's really a focus on firefighter health and wellness. That was one of our goals last year during the CIP process and we have that installed at this point. We ordered a new and took delivery of a new type one fire engine in less than six months. That was a heavy lift. And we completed 18 week regional firefighter one academy for six individuals and they're actually as we speak out at the west side fire station completing their annual end of probation skills testing. And so that's going on and again that's a collaboration. We have some folks from central fire that are there assisting us in that because again it's a logistical lift to get all that testing done in one day for six individuals. Again we conducted a number of EOC trainings just to get in those covered finance, management, logistics, planning and operations and then provided leadership training for the city of Capitola again in standing up their lifeguard program for themselves this coming year. So for fiscal year 24 budget what we asked for and the primary one is the adding of a principal management analyst to our ranks to sort of assist us in some focused project management. We're trying to complete a overhaul of our department policies and procedures by way of using the Lexapol platform PD uses that and it's basically a vetted system that makes sure that we're meeting all of the state and federal and local guidelines when it comes to our policies in terms of emergency response and health and wellness for the firefighters. Looking at shared services that may be available to us within the county and then also help us with budget management and standards of coverage server that we look to put out for RFP and complete in the next fiscal year so that will be a huge lift for us. On the other big piece that we got that we're looking for is the funds reinstated from previous budget constraints we had to give some money back and that was 20,000 for rescue equipment, 90,000 that we took away temporarily that was focused on vegetation management and then another $40,000 for temporary fire inspectors just to bolster the funding we have for those temporary fire investigators. And just to talk briefly on all three of those items the rescue equipment just allows our lifeguards to purchase all the safety equipment they need rescue boards, rescue tubes and potentially lifeguard towers. The vegetation management I think is pretty obvious it's just to create shitted fuel breaks and emergency access in our city open spaces. And in terms of those temporary fire inspectors it's critical for us because as you guys all may remember in 2020 the grand jury sort of found us made a recommendation that we need to increase our presence out there in terms of inspections and so recommended that we do something to address that and so these terms really allow us to do that in a better responsive way. So quickly our fire department budget makes up 18% of the net city budget. It's been against status quo like many others. The big differences are our budget this year for personnel services is pretty stable we haven't changed revenue but we don't really make a lot of money and a lot of our operations the money that we do bring in is by way of our contract with UCSC for service capitol contract and then of course any response that we do out of county on any mutual aid fire and last year there was actually a little bit less that we did that a lot of that was due to a less number of incidents in the state but also our inability to fill those orders or requests just because of this year challenge of a lot of injuries that we had and staffing challenges around that so and then supplies and services we're gonna see a little bit of an increase and that's just because of that money that we got refunded into our budget for equipment and vegetation management. Our goals for 2024, we wanna shoot for the stars when complete I was gonna go with 30 acres of vegetation management that we wanna complete but we'll just say 20 plus at this point but again we always wanna do more every single year there's a lot of challenges that we face but of course our goal is to just make our wild land area much more safer and resilient. We in that are gonna implement a five year city wildfire resiliency plan and that's a collaborative effort with water, parks and rec and public works and we are currently working on that we receive grant funding and hope to have that plan out within this fiscal year. We're gonna of course strive to conduct all of our state-manded fire inspections and that's of course in assistance with those temporary fire inspectors conduct more EOC training that was something that came out of our after action in these last incidents that we had end of 2022, early 23. We are currently in the process and gonna continue to do so provide leadership training to all department personnel to really galvanize our workforce and really develop a true succession plan for the future as we have a number of people with significant institutional knowledge and experience that'll be going out the door. We've got a big focus on enhancing our health and wellness initiatives with a focus on cancer screenings and mental health services. Next step, develop an RFP and identify implementation strategy for again, like I mentioned the standards of coverage survey, identify funding partnerships and location for a regional public safety training center and last but not least close out FEMA cost recovery efforts for the CZU COVID and our recent storms and with that I will take any questions. Thank you very much, Chief. Let me ask if there are questions. Let's start here. Are you good? I have a question. Ms. Collin Targ Johnson. Thank you, Chief, presentation and the amazing work. I've been hearing about fire district consolidation throughout the county. I don't know if that's gonna happen or not or when it will happen, but how, if it does happen and maybe you can share more if you have information, how does that impact our department and the contracts that you named or any other contracts? That's a great question. So the contracts are all a little bit different, but in terms of consolidation itself, we are working closely and collaboratively with our neighbors, Central Fire, both of us being sort of the busier of the two in the county and a little bit more upstanding in terms of our level of preparedness to serve our constituents. We are working a lot in different areas at investigating shared services by way of our training division, our Marine Safety Division. We're sort of the benchmark for the county and they're sort of starting that. They have rescue summers on their engines and so we've helped them over the last year sort of, and they've assisted us in delivering the service and working with the city of Capitola in both delivering lifeguard services last year and also with the training for them to stand up their own operation this coming summer. So we are looking in that. We have talked a lot about it. Like I said, the primary agency that we've been working with currently is just Central Fire being so close. We share that boundary and we do so many things together in responding to large emergencies, we're all there together anyway. But I know concurrently, LAFCO is also looking at it and I've had to provide some information to the county for that purpose and so they've yet to come up with a report but we will work with them on that. And like I said, just working with Central Fire to examine all the opportunities that are out there. Thank you. Good questions or comments? Ms. Pruner. Thank you. Thank you for all of your work and for bringing the whole team, for everyone contributing to this. My question, I guess, you mentioned and I see it in the PulsePoint app, Medical Emergencies. And that seems to be the most frequent, I think you said 5,000 medical calls for service. And I just, I wonder how that's called out. Everything is marine and fire. And I guess I wanna see a little more about where, how funds and cost is around medical and those medical responses. And oftentimes I see an entire large fire engine truck respond and to medical emergencies and I'm also hoping you can speak to how that came to be that the fire truck would come and respond to a medical emergency and why there are not smaller fire trucks that could respond in those situations. I have questions around all that. Absolutely, no, that's a great question. A lot of it comes down to, we are part of an EMSIA, JPA with all the other fire agencies in the county. And in doing so, that's how we sort of came about to have paramedics on the fire engine. And so with that, there's a whole host of training and other requirements that the EMSIA provides. But with that, we are under contract with the... But not all, come on. Of the comments during the police department presentation or at least tangentially related to budget until the mayor started. Tony Tandotti. No problem, I've done that myself. So we are under contract with AMR for their county contract. We stopped the clock for them. So there's only at any given time on a good day, six ambulances in the whole entire county. So that's from Watsonville up to the north coast and in the valley. So we have paramedics. So when the call is dispatched and they have determined that it's a medical emergency, they send an ambulance and a fire engine. And that's in every jurisdiction. And so when we get there, we stop the clock. The clock is the requirement that the county has put on AMR for them to meet their contractual obligation. And so we stop that by having a paramedic on scene. There's a requirement that the county has established. This is a paramedic needs to be on scene in this amount of time. I see that. Right. And so we are supposed to be there. And so what we do is, because an ambulance is typically there within 10 or 12 minutes, unacceptable. So the fire engine shows up because we are closer and throughout the whole entire county you have 20, 30 fire engines versus six ambulances. So we are much closer and responsive to those medical emergencies. And as such, can intervene much quicker. And unfortunately, because we are all risk, we have to show up with our toolbox. So that toolbox is ready to go to a medical emergency, a structure fire, a wildland fire, a vehicle lockout, a water rescue. So we have to go with that toolbox. And so it's sometimes we're struggling, you know, obviously to meet all the needs of the community. And we'd have to have a tremendous amount of staffing to then staff smaller vehicles to go there. So it's sort of a delicate balance. Does that man to your question? It does. It's very interesting to me. And especially in my job working downtown, I see a lot of response to medical and then refusal of service. And then the truck goes away. And so I'm just in my mind thinking again, you know, how our systems can do better but the impact to the city and this department and the budget. And I just don't know if you've had those conversations over the years, if you have ideas, you don't have to answer that now. But however we can support in that field, I think it's important to continue looking at how we can do better as a city, as a community and advocate to our higher level state, federal, you know. So. Absolutely, no, I appreciate that. And you know, again, going back to the fire engine being on those calls, it's not uncommon for us to then leave that one medical and go to yet another medical and or a fire vehicle accident. And so again, the reason you see the large engine there. To your point about, we call it resource utilization and making sure we're sending the right resource to that call. We're taking a pretty proactive role in a number of discussions to look at ways, one of which is the resource utilization group within the county. We're looking at sending again, maybe certain calls like at the jail, for instance, doesn't require a fire engine since they have medical staff on scene. And so we're in meetings and looking at ways. We're in phase two of trying to address some of those issues. In addition, we're working with PD and the city manager's office on that mobile response unit of health unit to see how we can sort of again respond to the right resource to what people actually need and not just dumping everything on there and maybe making the situation worse. So we're working on that as well. And I've offered up EMTs to be a part of that potential unit down the road. And then of course, in my conversations with my counterpart at Central Fire, we have looked at other models that down the road when AMR's contract is up that we could better serve not only the county, but this community as well. And the community, and then of course, it's workers, I think it would be, we would benefit greatly if we had some sort of resource here in the city that would be like an ambulance that would be responsive for special events, any disasters, and of course, to medical emergencies within the city. So that's something that's on our long to do list. So thank you for bringing that up. Yeah, thank you. I'm curious, do you track the medical response like what type of medical and specifically if your increase is related to Narcan administering and overdoses? It's interesting to say that. So we can get a breakdown based on the run cards they call them up at netcom. And so that's where we source our data. It would be difficult to get down to that granular detail. But what we are doing on our end for our reporting within the fire department is adding a checkbox that would denote that as well as some other key indicators that we're looking to sort of monitor in the future. And so Narcan or drug overdose, and it might not be specifically an opioid overdose, but an overdose in general, we're looking to gather that information. And so we're adding that on our end. It's just to really get down that deep on the netcom side of things where they sort of keep all that data is difficult. But we do, we can get down to sort of, is it a chest pain, like a cardiac call? Yeah, or a traumatic call. Those things we can break down, but when you get to the medical, yeah, there's so many various medical responses. Exactly. Is there anything that would help, and that would be needed in the budget that would help with some of those long-term goals? I know over the past couple of years, when I first came on council, it was really important to get a new truck. There was one truck that kept breaking down and was at its max life. And so really prioritizing equipment, systems, needs for your department, you respond to so many needs in the community. And so do you feel like everything is represented to the best in this budget? Or I'd love to see a column of, I know we have kind of, yeah, I know we have some projects down the loan, but what is it that we can work towards and make sure we're... I think a lot of that work will come when we complete the standards of coverage survey that will really give us the lay of the land, both now and what we would expect in the future and sort of any changes we might need to make to infrastructure, staffing and equipment. Additionally, we've been pretty successful by way of this sort of emergency purchase of that type one fire engine. That got us back on schedule on our apparatus replacement schedule, but I think what will be helpful, and I've been working with the city manager's office and Elizabeth and finance to basically fund that replacement schedule and sort of sock away some money so that when we do need them on that pre-established schedule, we can just buy that and it's not an emergency issue or a CIP products. And so that's something that we'll be working on and obviously bringing to you guys down the road. And I think, again, that standard of coverage survey will really answer a lot of those key questions for us on what we need, but I think one big one that will be helpful in terms of your questions about Narcan and medical responses is, and again, we had that presentation from Ben Clymer on that mobile response unit. I think focusing on that and potentially allocating funds towards that effort that we take on either individually as a city by way of PD, fire and city manager's office or in partnership with the county will be extremely helpful because what he found is basically that we would see a 13% reduction in calls for service that really aren't fire or police specific, but we just go to them because that's sort of how the system works at this point in time. So that would be obviously supportive as well. Right, and then on the revenue side, if you are no longer after the training with Capitola, that's revenue you won't be getting anymore. Right, right, they will be on their own, standing on their own after this season and I think we're hopeful. They were, they're being endorsed by the United States Lifesaving Association and approved after this year. And so unless they come back and need assistance, which will be on the ready to provide if needed. You know, I think that's one of those things too we're looking at is regionalizing life-guarding operations here in the county because it's getting more and more difficult and we're both all the agencies, state parks, Capitola now, Santa Cruz fire are struggling to recruit and retain that specific workforce. It's very unique. They're young and they are transient in the sense that they come in for a couple of years and obviously move on to greener pastures. So that's gonna be a challenge for all of us and so for us to do that together is gonna be extremely beneficial. That's helpful. Let's see, okay, I think that's it for now. Thank you so much everybody and your whole team. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Watkins. Yes, thank you for the presentation and certainly thank you to you all in your entire division for the work that you do day in and day out. I just had a quick question about the fire strike team budget item. I see that, well I was just, I don't know and I apologize if I didn't hear an explanation but I was wondering in terms of what is budgeted versus what is actually expended and why. So that's unique in a way because you can't pre-plan that. There's some years like 2020 throughout the state was one of the largest for obvious reasons. We had CZU in our backyard. They had other large complex fires throughout the state and then since then each year the incidents themselves have dropped off as well as the amount of funding and so again when we go out we get fully reimbursed for that both for the equipment, the personnel and the admin that goes into supporting those operations and that's not only for a fire engine but we support that heavily with what we call overhead. So we'll send various chiefs or people that are specially trained in supply, logistics, line paramedics, safety officers to these incidents to help support the overall mission for the state. Okay, got it. I just was curious where it fit within so it's a preventative kind of planning thing. Great and then in terms of the fire truck I know over the years there was also just the amount of higher development coming in and potential concern about being able to access the top floors. How are you feeling in terms of what's going on with that and your preparedness or what you might need in response? Yeah, that's a great question and one that you know I hope to answer with that standards of cover survey. Now again for all those larger metropolitan areas that have larger buildings there is no truck that will reach to the top of anything. Right, I mean that's where they sort of integrate building design and the fire prevention comes in for that piece but in terms of that growth whether it's building size, access is always one of our key things. Water supply is huge but then again it really is the along with the equipment and access is the personnel to do so. I'm making sure that we're not meeting our obligation both for medical emergencies and the variety of other services we provide and so that will be a challenge and I'm really hopeful that it will that sort of information will be laid out for us in a very methodical way so that we can plan accordingly for the future. I think another thing to bring up and it's something that we've learned we have our public safety impact fee that we do gain a small amount of revenue from but unfortunately what we found is why we rightfully so have a tremendous focus on affordable housing that sort of negates us collecting money on that and we all know that affordable housing the numbers are still gonna be there the buildings are still there and the people within them are still there but unfortunately there's no revenue that's going towards allowing us to prepare for those developments and so something that we'll be working on maybe asking for support is how can we with this development and of course not passing anything on to those that are qualified for these buildings but to the developers but obviously not make it cost prohibitive for them but it's just something as we see the whole entire state moving in this direction we need to be mindful of how are we going to fund that and the public safety impact fee helps that but we're just not sort of seeing that influx of money to support the equipment the personnel and the training as at this point just because affordable housing sort of has a loophole so to speak no I really appreciate that insight and I think definitely a thought for our advocacy and legislative lobbying that happens and in terms of our sales tax dollars I believe some of those dollars were paid for the fire engine so when we're thinking about revenue sources and what they could go towards I mean having that data will really help us with that prioritization so thank you thank you Council Member excuse me Council Member Brown thank you I am really glad to hear about the conversations that are going on through this resource utilization group when I came on the council there was some hope that we could move forward in addressing this question around medical calls and the role that the city fire department plays it must be terribly frustrating for you all to have that responsibility without a lot of control over how that all those calls get answered and who shows up the constraints there so I hope that this this group is productive space for you to have those conversations and try to identify a way forward and you did mention that when the contract comes up that there may be some potential for the city playing another role and I know that that was something that was discussed from the time that I was that I've been on the council so and if I can't remember it was 2017 or 18 decided to not move forward because there was a lot more work that needed to be done with trying to get the city to play that role and so I'm just wondering when does that contract come up do you think that there's are you more hopeful about the potential as we move forward to make that happen I'm glad to see it's on your radar on your list I was really hope I guess I'm asking because I was like well we're gonna do this and we're gonna make the changes and it's gonna be more cost effective and less frustrating and then we got kind of didn't seem like it was possible so I'm just wondering if you feel hopeful that there's some possibility there and when you're referring to the contract you're referring to the ambulance contract yeah the county oh yeah I'm trying to be I don't want to disparage I understand any other entities the Board of Supervisors did approve a two-year extension for AMR and that current contract as it stands and I believe it expires 2026 2027 I believe they were gonna be up in 25 and with that extension that they were granted there were a number of fire departments I know in terms of those that are I think greatly impact just by sheer call volume was City of Watsonville and Santa Cruz we did ask for question prior you know tried to scrutinize some of the numbers to make sure that that the obligation is being met on their end and they were able to sort of prove that which allowed them to extend that contract for the two years we still work very collaboratively with them it's a good relationship but of course they are a for-profit where many of us are obviously public service and so therein lies the inherent problem that we have I just was at a conference where we've looked at a couple different options of counties and city departments that have they call the alliance model and you go in with a private provider and you bid that contract that private provider basically provides that whole EMS infrastructure the equipment the whole payroll they basically all wear the same uniform have the same paint jobs and logos and what not but the paychecks for those individuals on the ambulance come from that private provider but it's a partnership that has worked most closely it's in Contra Costa County and San Bernardino County so something that again I was at that conference with the chief of central fire and we of course were networking and getting some information from those fire chiefs and those companies as well Santa Cruz is just very unique in its size and scope and what's expected and so we'd have to find a good partner and of course really coalesce as county fire chiefs to make sure that that's what's good because again what's unique about us not only in our size is we have the corridor that's made up of paid professional apartments but we have a number of valley that are volunteer and so how they are configured and what their requirements are a little bit different so that therein lies a challenge but it's not insurmountable we can get there thank you and just because councilmember Bruner brought it up the question about you know what do you need and I know you were talking more about operations but I'll just remind us all that there's a huge unfunded CIP for the for fire you have massive infrastructure investments that are needed as well as some of that equipment and so I I want to say that here and I want to say that you know I'm as a councilmember continue to be committed to trying to find ways to finance those projects because well for all the reasons you know yeah but it's it's daunting when you look at it your CIP in particular I think for public safety operation you're limping along and so I would agree and you know that was our last year with sort of our five-year CIP plan of identifying projects prioritizing them based on need and the financial requirement behind them but again I think it'll will get additional support and guidance from that standards of coverage survey and with that you may find that there may be something within the infrastructure that needs to be addressed and I think there are opportunities out there when we talk about shared service annexation or consolidation with these other agencies in terms of addressing the need for more people more equipment immediately versus a bond measure and trying to build new facilities throughout the city or in another area so I think we're trying to go at it from a bunch of different ways and I think we'll come out successful but again we don't know we don't know until we complete that survey and I think that'll help us even more in addressing those CIP needs but thank you for recognizing that thank you for the questions comments chief thank you very very much thank you council please do pass on to all of the members of your department at all levels how much we appreciate it we know that you suffered a family loss in the fire department very recently our hearts go out to all the members to both to their families and to all the members of the department we know this is dangerous work we know that it is selfless work we deeply appreciate your role in keeping us safe in our community thank you please pass out on to all the members of the department absolutely I'll be sure to do so thank you all we stand we stand in recess for one hour one hour I think so I've had many copies Santa Cruz city council meeting of May 24th 2023 is back in session following an afternoon recess we are continuing with the budget hearings regarding the city's 2023-2024 fiscal year budget to alert members in discussions with the city manager given timing here on our budget hearings suggestions been made that with respect to the capital improvement project budget that that be continued to follow our next regular city council meeting we would still have sufficient time plenty of time to review that may comments on it prior to the beginning of the fiscal year prior to our final action on budget in June so without objection we may have to do this by motion we're awaiting response from the city attorney but right now what we know for sure is that we will not take up the capital improvement budget today mayor if I can clarify just for the minutes we continue to the 13th June 13th or to another meeting June 13th it's my understanding it's the meeting after that that we take our final budget actions fine so we would have sufficient time between hearing the CIP and taking final budget action as I understand yes mayor Keeley it would be appropriate to continue that by motion Mr. Kandadi please repeat that sir it would be appropriate to continue the item by motion by motion can we have such a motion motion and a second to continue consideration of the capital improvement budget for the 23-24 fiscal year until immediately following our meeting on June the 13th is that correct June 13th it's a continuation to June 13th continuation to June 13th continuation to June 13th debate or discussion did you have a question just a quick question because we initially had the adoption of the budget on the 13th sir are we going to bump that to the 7th I would like to do that move it to that date unless I'm looking at Elizabeth our finance director I don't think there's a problem with that if that's the will of the council that would allow us to bring CIP on the 13th any potential tweaks that might need to be made and then final adoption at the following meeting so yes technically we can go ahead and do it on the 27th but it gives us three days to get everything depending on if there's changes that's a very short timeline for us to get things in there so we want to make sure that that's understood which is why we usually do it first meeting in June so that we can make sure traditionally we don't have there's not a huge number of changes but we want to make sure we have enough time to get all of that done so in order for us for the council to be able if it chooses to have an imprint on the capital improvement budget though we would want to hold that separately from adoption of the budget I would think that's your best advice on how to do this well we want to do we can do a separate meeting it's not a very what do we have on there 30 minutes or an hour for the capital improvement program mayor it could also give us a chance to come back with answers to the questions that have come up yesterday and today okay council member brown could we have that portion of our meeting have the CIP hearing at the beginning of our meeting on the 13th and then adopt the budget later in the day I don't imagine for the CIP there are going to be major changes is that possible it does come to we can do that I think that was the initial thought we would do the CIP at the beginning and then we would have the adoption after that so yeah we would like that that would be ideal in our world I'll amend my motion then to continue the CIP budget to the beginning of our June 13th meeting prior to budget adoption agreeable to the second debate or discussion miss bruner I missed the reason why we're doing this because we're running a few hours behind today the way our budget hearings have been going yesterday and today got it thank you and one follow up question do we need it to be two separate meetings on the same day or it can be the same meeting I believe it can be the same meeting okay that's correct okay great thank you thank you very much for the debate or discussion click will click will call council members Newsome I Brown I Watkins I Bruner I Johnston I vice mayor and mayor carries and so ordered we are on the council and city managers budgets this will be presented by our assistant city manager miss Schmidt good afternoon thank you mayor vice mayor and council members I am happy to be here to give you an overview of our fiscal year 24 budget our agenda my agenda has a pattern as you have been able to figure out right now all the departments first off will be the who and the what of the city manager's office our achievements for this current fiscal year 23 in process and our goals for the next year and fiscal year 24 and the budget to be able to support those goals so our services and who delivers them when you look at our organizational chart and the functions and the services that we deliver we start out with our amazing city clerks office and you get to interact with Bonnie and Julia at least twice a month and they do an amazing job and I'll go over a little bit more detail of the different functions within each one of these areas in the next slide we also have citywide communications within the city manager's office and all of you have been amazed and astounded by Erica's communications and videos of late we also have our homelessness response team a very another small but mighty team within the city and you heard their specific budget not just for the city manager's homelessness response but for the broader city integrated work with public works and PD as well we also serve various programs and projects examples of those are climate action and sustainability and all policies and west cliff which you saw last night we also support the city council and your business of creating policies for the city and ordinance and such and then we also oversee the overall city operations and administration this is a little bit more detail of each one of those vertical areas and citywide communications we have we do emergency and public information and media responses digital social and other creative services and press releases ongoing media work and then internal communications as well so our employee all hands meetings and any of the work that we do to support any of our departments internally as well as externally homelessness response you heard from them yesterday their major functions are altering care outreach and encampment response our city clerks division you interact with them on the specific pieces of the way that they do meeting conduct but they also do records management elections and then community information and they also do small things like public records requests for the city council support overall city administration on the right side left side of that we have commission and committee support and we'll show you a smattering of who those commissions and committees are any council ad hoc committee work that you guys establish an ad hoc subset of the council to work on something we'll help with staff that we work on strategy and administration like supporting the five year strategic plan process that's in that we're working on right now that'll come back to you in June in the independent police auditor and the legislative program on the overall program and project management side on the city administration work we also do general ad hoc programs and projects so things that come up that are big like the west cliff work things that come up that are smaller we'll deal with as well if there is more than several city departments involved or citywide chances are the city manager's office will deploy staff to help with that our amazing climate sustainability work from Tiffany wise west there and in her spare time she's also picked up health and all policies and equity she also helps with the citywide grant coordination so we are chasing a lot of grants out there to supplement our revenue streams and Tiffany takes the citywide perspective and also helps facilitate our departments working with a certified list of grant writing firms that can help us if we need it and we also sit on various joint powers authority boards on behalf of the city the information below is the actual head count per job title I'm not going to go into it in detail but in the slide in fiscal year 24 we do have one personnel ask and one reorganization and that will be reflected later in the fiscal year 24 portion of the presentation this is a smattering of the commissions and committee work and other work from those verticals that we saw on the previous slide on the standing committee side we support and assist with things like the children's fund the climate action task force the commission for the prevention of violence against women health and all policies in the public safety committee on the ad hoc and project side all in shaping our future a effort to modernize our organization as well as in view a culture of continuous improvement in the way that we go about our business that is what all in shaping our future is about we also staff the budget and revenue ad hoc committee and we also have a public comment on the housing bill at measure ad hoc sugary sweetened beverage and other projects that come up like tobacco waste the water street bridge and I've already mentioned west cliff the joint powers authorities that we sit on support on behalf of the city or the animal shelter library system and Santa Cruz regional 9 1 1 which takes care of our dispatch and we also have the CSE board we collaborate and are the conduit to the county's core program and the county's homelessness coordination committee and housing for health board as well we also staff such groups such as the Monterey Bay resources group and the Monterey Bay regional climate project working group so Tiffany sits on both of those and that's an organizational chart for us I'm not going to go at it in a grave amount of detail but it gives you an idea in your agenda packet of who reports to whom in our organization and all of our different employees I am happy to say that we are one person one position shy of being fully staffed in the city manager's office which is I think as close as we've gotten in plus I've been at the city so M is our principal management analyst she's a recent addition Brittany over in the city clerk's office is another recent addition as well as Bernie he is a management analyst that is reporting to Tiffany so we're very excited about our new folks and then Susan Oki started a year ago but I don't know that she was around the last time we had the budget but I wanted to mention her as well she's our half time homelessness response community relations specialist so what have we been up to in fiscal year 23 and keep in mind these achievements were a point in time and are reflected in the budget book as of about February I believe so the clerks in the November of 2024 coordinated our first district based election and also helped with the paperwork signatures and everything else that goes along with two citizen based initiatives they administered 32 regular and special council meetings and they made sure that we hit the 98% deadline compliance for statements of economic interest that is your form 700 and if you haven't done it for this year you might want to do that for Bonnie they also managed about 270 public records request so all of those filter through the clerk's office on the climate action sustainability and equity front they adopted an equity based climate action 2030 plan and they also conducted a 2023 city grant citywide grants strategic roadmap so they went through Tiffany went through and worked with the departments and figured out all the different grant areas that we needed to go after for across all the departments and we have a consolidated view for that now and have targeted areas of opportunity health and all policies that committee worked on a Santa Cruz like me study that has a lot of great recommendations and is part of our fiscal year 24 implementation goals and then we also developed and delivered a 2023 ledge program and international sea level rise workshop and then the beginnings of our west cliff integrated roadmap and coordination of that amazing team on the city manager's office some highlights are we will complete by no we will it'll be August will be the final adoption so the city five-year strategic plan is in process and I would anticipate we would have final adoption and begin to roll that out in August we have started and launched our continuous improvement and modernization program that's the all in shaping our future and then we also helped coordinate and will complete the homelessness lobbying one what was spoken about yesterday that one is done and will be effective as of June 1st and then we are in the process of completing a polling and public opinion research RFP as well as the city branding and communications one what did you guys achieve you achieved a lot of time in meetings so this is a comparison over time of the fiscal years of the meetings and if that were a heartbeat it would be very erratic our longest meeting happened in fiscal year 21 at 15.7 hours and our shortest meeting happened in fiscal year 22 on January the 11th at 3.55 hours average times so rather than seeing the up and down it's you've gone from 9.9 hours on average and this is for regular meetings only in fiscal year 20 down to 7.31 hours in fiscal year 23 so yeah give you guys a pat on the back and the mayor a high five so that's our accomplishments and targeted accomplishments for 23 and in fiscal year 24 I have not translated the two pages of goals that are in your budget book I've put just a subset of them up here from our different divisions so our five-year strategic plan will get completed and we will champion and roll that out as well as deliver the reporting in fiscal year 24 and beyond the city clerk's office will be working with all the different departments and the staff leads for the various commissions to execute a universal onboarding process and then the integrated west cliff roadmap will deliver portions of that roadmap at the end of August and then the 50 year plus and coalition partnership and then we will begin the execution of the related projects but you also know that many of the public works and the post disaster recovery projects are already in process Santa Cruz like me is the one I've highlighted on the health and all policy side there are various recommendations and one of them that stood out is Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz and one of them that stood out is working with the county and with our internally with all of our commissions and committees to have more balanced representation on our groups and then in order to be able to do that to change the application process in the way that we go out and coordinate and get applicants to help us do the work that we do. We also will implement a coastal change monitoring network on the site. We will also be able to implement a coastal change monitoring network and execute various service improvements and organizational modernization projects. Budget numbers so in order to be able to deliver these services what does our budget look like so for the city council you have about five hundred and fifty thousand half a million dollars in your budget and you always carry a baseline for facilitations and meeting support for things like strategic plan updates the employee appreciation event which usually occurs annually in the winter time you have training and travel budget and then also included in fiscal year twenty four is an update to the expense accounts that was recently adopted with the new district engagement policy and that equates to a little bit over twelve thousand dollars. We also fund any mobile technology needs and updates to your ipads and other accessories and recommended from the council revenue and budget ad hoc committee is an additional twenty thousand dollars for tenant sanctuary and their work to help renters in our community and that total would go up to fifty thousand dollars so it's an increase of twenty would take it two fifty the city manager's office budget the city manager's office coordinates something like thirteen activity codes technically so those are the little four digit codes in edin so I've tried to break this up so that it makes more sense functionally in this pie you have the city manager's office the membership and dues that we participate in things like the league of california cities our climate action work and that includes health and all policies the city clerks division as well as our independent police auditor so this is the breakup of those different areas we have included some inflationary increases in the dues and memberships because those increase and we don't really have control over that we also have some additional administrative temp dollars in there for the mayor and council to be able to bring additional bandwidth as needed we have a one-time project for citywide branding and communications updates we also have added ongoing funds for ballot measure consulting for both the poll side and the consulting side we usually just deal with those on an ad hoc basis but over the years it's been reoccurring so we asked finance to get that taken into account on our budget ongoing health and all policies we've retained the $15,000 that we commit to that program every year and that is most often used for meeting facilitation and plan development for health and all policies we have a $50,000 grant pool of money and that helps departments hire from our pool of grant writing firms that we got through an RFP process and what happens there is you take the pool to hire one of the consulting firms from the pool and then if you win the grant then you'll be able to put the money back from the administrative overhead charges of that grant so it's just kind of an ongoing pool and then in some cases where we don't get the grant then that money just becomes an expenditure instead of being replenished in the city manager's office or the city manager's office and the homelessness response team our personnel asked for the fiscal year is a principal management analyst half of which is for the city manager's office and I'll go into that a little bit more detail at the end of all the pie charts on the city manager's office side the community programs work Lisa covered a fair amount of this yesterday but this represents the entirety of our investment community related services and programming the animal shelter we participate in the joint powers authority so they basically are our designated animal shelter and animal control function they have asked for a 10% increase and I think that's reasonable during the COVID years we took a couple of budget cuts and they were able to stay really lean and now they are ramping back up to the pre-pandemic levels ongoing core programs so we will be next fiscal year in year two of a three-year investment cycle and that's the $1.03 million we also have in the gray slice of the pie Lisa mentioned this yesterday the downtown outreach worker program the mental health liaisons that work with our police department and the county hopes team that helps connect homeless individuals to services CPVAW is also in here and the ad hoc budget and revenue committee asked for an additional $15,000 for reinstituting self-defense classes so that is in the budget proposed to you and then on the city manager's office homelessness response team the blue pie represents Lisa, Larry and all of our homelessness outreach specialist and then the orange pie is the $1.48 or so million that she spoke about yesterday also in that blue pie is the addition of the half principal management analyst so we're looking to hire one person who would split their time between the two functions the other part of the personnel changes for the city manager's office and fiscal year 23-24 is a consolidation of our community relations specialist right now we have Erica smart in our communications area and we have half time of Susie for homelessness response we have three separate community relations specialists one of them is in the police department one is in public works and one is water organizationally we are asking to consolidate those three underneath the city manager's office so we can get some synergies of skills as well as leverage across our organization so for instance would be if there were 25% capacity available at any given point how do we harness that more effectively for the entire city if we have five projects going on in this department and three projects going on in this department instead of just working in this department because they have a dedicated community relation specialist how do we prioritize across those eight projects and what is the biggest bang for the buck for the city that helps our community that helps us deliver services or our project that means that has a higher priority than something else so those are the types of things that we are hoping to get out of this it's going to be a new world for the city manager to consolidate the folks see how it goes create the operational support model and then take a good pulse of what's working well and what is not working well and then in the spirit of continuous improvement make adjustments as we need to and get it all figured out in the homelessness response silo you will see highlighted in orange a half time PMA and then in half time PMA so we would like to hire one PMA and have them split their time that will give them some flexibility if sometimes they may be working more on homelessness response things sometimes more on the city manager's office work but as Lisa alluded to yesterday things like being able to develop the lobbying the federal or the state lobbyist RFP for homelessness that's something that we have to jump in on to help the homelessness response team because they don't have a PMA looking into and beating the bushes for additional vendors in the sheltering space that takes a lot of time and if you think of the world that Larry and Megan and Jeremy and Chris and Lisa live in they don't have that capacity so how can we supplement their capacity even doing quarterly fiscal updates on the homelessness response with the rest of the team and with the council it's a lot of lift and so we're asking to be able to supplement them additionally on the city manager's office side you saw the list of standing committees and the potential list of the ad hoc that come up and then the projects that come up it will be very much entirely resting at this point on some help from me depending upon the subject but mostly on M so we would like to get some additional capacity there and this is our first attempt to supplement that get some help and hopefully be able to get some of this covered a little bit more without burning out our staff and with that I am done and what questions do you have thank you very much for your presentation and Mr. Huffaker thank you to you and your staff who provide such great leadership in our councilmanic form of government and we appreciate that every single day and the support that you provide to help us get our work done as well it's very much appreciated everyone in your department as far as I'm concerned is a star who performs every day at a great and high level very much appreciate it let me see if there are questions or comments with the city manager yes thank you thank you Laura for the presentation and as Mayor Keeley said all the great work I wanted to note that the Children and Youth Bill of Rights work that the city manager's department has done a great job of picking up and I know will be continuing to do that but that wasn't noted in the accomplishments or goals for FY24 and I think it should be because we held our first state of the youth community meeting with our first youth liaison and will be bringing the first state of the youth or hopefully at the end of the summer so just to note that the work has been great it's new to that to city manager's office and I'd like to see that reflected thank you that was one of those things that I wanted to talk about. Thank you. I got it and I think similarly district engagement I didn't see reflected in sort of the work moving forward and I know that there is that commitment as we passed an agenda item prior so those were just my comments not really questions but thank you for all of the great work that you do and is it necessarily topic specific so I just want to acknowledge that and thank you for that because it's difficult to kind of switch hats and you do it really well. I'll let my colleague comment on the health and all policies. Madam health and all policies. I'll take a bit on. Thank you. Yes, I appreciate I know you guys do a lot in the city manager's office so I too just that goes very recognized and I know we put a lot of pressure and also on our city clerks so thank you. I guess I have one question and it was around the communications are those folks going to be shifting over to the city manager's office space there. Okay and so and then sharing their kind of roles or how we're going to accommodate the city clerks staff together in anticipation of that we're working on various moves and furniture buys and things like that so they will come over and be as close together as we can get given the office space situation and the operating model still needs to be finalized but what we're envisioning is aligning the various community relations with whom they have affinity and deep knowledge of right now and then additionally aligning all of them across the board with other departments so if you think of planning and community development, economic development and housing, parks and rec who don't have community relations specialists so how do we have a model where those departments have somebody to go to as well but then also we have flexibility to assign based upon subject expertise and skill set as well as capacity depending upon the project. I mean at some point I would just be curious like the communications plan I think part of what I've observed to my time on the council is a very just challenging environment for communications and how can we be not so reactive or put on a defense and defending you know facts essentially or strategy but also thinking holistically about how you know we can have a proactive approach especially with so many really big things that we have here really outlined today in our budget and I see Erica. Erica has plopped on I think she has some great thoughts and direction that she's taking us in so I'm going to hand that over to her. Thanks Laura and thank you everyone for the questions about our new communications team it's super exciting and I obviously have had my hands full over the six months of getting to know all of our different departments and all the really just great work that everyone's doing it really is just an incredible team citywide and I'm looking forward to bringing in this skill set we have these great community relations folks already on board that have that special interest in public works PD and water and being able to leverage their skill set to serve our other departments I think is really important for modernizing our communication strategy and also leveraging their skill set so that we can serve the community in a more proactive way and I have lots of different ideas that I could give you a whole presentation on at some point to talk in more depth about our communication strategy but the big things I'm looking at are one being able to provide better support for our departments streamline our communications policies and really modernize how we're doing and how we're doing it so that we can better serve the community and from an internal and external approach that sounds really good yeah thanks Erica I appreciate that and then in terms of the health and all policies that council membership as Shebra Kellentary Johnson referenced you know one of the things that I mean I'll just say I'd like to see more funding personally in that in that budget area I think Tiffany is really an exceptional job and she's got many hats that she wears and I think from when it first took off it was in you know in response to a community-wide listening session and ordinance passing and then operationalizing and then now it's really integrated even more so in a way that's you know written into our budget right and so for me I personally feel like one of the things that it offers and if you look at kind of the budget and that we're looking at end of the line response with our funding for homelessness services particularly so if you look at it in comparison to that you're now dealing with people after they're in crisis and having challenge but the health and all policies framework in many ways is about a preventative upstream approach in terms of how we're trying to build healthy people healthy community and sustainability and we have all these also focus areas within the budget that I feel you know would be really great to see how we're meeting those performance measures and having more system systems in place to track what we're doing to achieve these goals amongst many other things that I think could be possible with health and all policies from working with for example a point that I referenced earlier which was the workforce development so working with art knowing that the city isn't alone able to accomplish all the elements that go into place the the recipe for a healthy and thriving community it takes business engagement it takes workforce development takes education we see that you know enrollments going down workforce housing in terms of teacher housing etc so I think as we're also really being strategic about some of these initiatives that we're really wanting to embark on or continue our journey on to have some of some kind of support behind that and I want to say I hasn't been enough with Tiffany I think she's fantastic in doing the best she can but I think she could use more support and so however that looks in terms of you know I don't know what the council feels about that or has thoughts on but in terms of coming back and helping me understand how that could be potentially integrated or shown in other ways with throughout the the budget would be helpful for me I'll leave it there sorry I know I've already spoken I just want to add to that to note that the health and all policies has now taken the community programs committee as you all know and often times when we have great ideas like exploring tobacco waste product it falls under health and all policy so the work of the committee and the staff to the committee has expanded since it was first brought to the council six years ago whenever it was and just real quickly I'll chime in on that and Laura may have thoughts too but I appreciate those comments councilmember Watkins and Calentari Johnson it is true that health and all policies has grown in scale since its inception and I appreciate the sensitivity around the full plate that Tiffany has as well as she's inherited a number of really important programs that she manages out of our office one of the halftime visit the full time analysts that Laura had mentioned earlier part of that was in the spirit of providing her with some additional support also acknowledging that I think we're going to need to continue thinking through and troubleshooting how we can best from a sustainability standpoint support those programs and you know we're going to be pursuing other revenue opportunities I think that's something that is another element we can consider as part of those opportunities as well so more to come I think long term one of the things that Tiffany and I and Matt and I have talked about is with Bernie coming on board as a management analyst to see how what type of capacity that we garner from there and then how that is helping with Tiffany's workload and then the entirety of health and all policies climate action grants and legislative program right so and keep an eye on that see how it goes what kind of bandwidth capacity that we get from that because the other thing we need there's a lot of different things that we need to consider moving forward whether it's funding for professional services consulting help whether it's internal staffing do we need for instance a grants management grants writer person how does that help the capacity for Tiffany and this whole division that we are now standing up within the city manager's office is that a principal management analyst is that a project manager because you need somebody with integrated part of the magic formula for Westcliffe is an integrating project manager who has overall project management superstar like skills to be able to work with all the departments and build the bridges so that's part of the secret sauce we're trying to figure all of that out but I don't think we've landed anywhere so we want to definitely let that percolate, marinate whatever the word is and be able to come back to you all with a recommendation and a conversation I think that sounds really great and I recognize that she yes I really appreciated seeing her having that support I think our climate needs clearly are going to be more pressing and requiring a lot more and a project manager to help across departments I think is really great for any organization and particularly for an initiative like health and all policies when it touches really essentially all of the divisions and departments so however that's part of that strategy I think really fits with the intention and as something that we're seeing show up within every area of our city too so I would love to hear back at some point if possible we will definitely come back to you Thanks for that Council Member Brown I think my question is for us and a little maybe a little rhetorical but I where are our goals and accomplishments the city councils it occurs to me and somebody else mentioned it and I thought well I'll just say it here I recognize that a lot of what we do cuts across I mean we are here to theoretically provide oversight for public funds as they are spent in city operations and so we're kind of involved we touch all of it in some way a lot of it very indirectly I would say but there are things that we do that perhaps we could think about highlighting and it seems like now with having a four year mayor everything is going to be on board and really at the helm that we could think about for next year putting together a little bit more from our end My hope is your goals are going to be the five year strategic plan and the format that we come back to you with a recommendation of how we keep that updated the measures we track and the reporting that we do on a consistent basis I would like to have that at the front part of future budget books because that's the vision for the city that you developed for the next five years take that vision take those focus areas and the strategies and report on that and how we're doing because you all spent a lot of time in interviews talking with community members in a workshop you'll spend more time in the next couple of two more council meetings and we need to embed that into our organization and I think that you have expressed your goals for the city through the strategic plan and that's the way it should be I could just say thank you for that I absolutely agree and really was just thinking about it in the context of this document and the continuity here so I hope that we really can and I'm glad to hear you're thinking about it in that way that we can integrate that into everything and make it clear these are citywide goals these are the council's goals and we're measuring I'm looking at M because she's like combing the internet and rigging it rigging it creates something better and more spiffy than any other city has thank you again Mish Schmidt thank you Mr. Huff Hecker and all of the folks in the city manager's office I have a few questions I do think in the spirit of council members council member rounds sentiment or the direction she was working and I think that on the city manager's list of accomplishments on page 98 I think there's 3678 and on 99 two more I think there's at least 10 which are there as a function of council direction and leadership and I don't resent at all the city manager putting those in as an accomplishment because they were activities that were directed by the city council and that's the city manager's job where the policy makers of what you are asked how and we don't try to do your job you're kind enough not to try to do ours so and we work very cooperatively I think day in and day out with each other but I associate myself with the comments there as to whether or not the strategic plan reflects any kind of five-year or multi-year policy direction of the city I think there's some truth to that but it is not entirely true we have elections every two years elections are the way we establish priorities in the democracy by who we elect and send here and so I think that the strategic plan is a helpful document I think it is quite valuable the exercise is enormously helpful in terms of coordination prioritizing where we focus our resources and so on I don't think it is the only way to read what are the policy objectives of the city council I have another issue here and that is I think that it is fair anyway the city manager and I had this conversation briefly when when I first had the good fortune to take this office and that is that when we look at issues around diversity and equity and inclusion as it relates to the city council I think that a way to address at least some issues around that has to do with who can literally run for office who can either with a relatively low paying job or going to run for city council and get another low paying part-time job and whether that is a barrier to entry for people to even choose even dream even think about running for city council I think also there is a question of the staffing support for council members I want to make this absolutely 100% clear there is not one thing that I have asked for or tried to do with the city manager's office where there was any resistance or pushback it's always yes let us help you try to do that even if you don't agree with it that you provide the support to help us advance our policy goals and objectives and for that I am very grateful to you I think there is having served in two capacities as a staff member and now four capacities the role of staff to an elected official is very different than the kindness that is extended to the council by the city manager's office again I have yet to encounter and suspect I never will a lack of willingness on the part of the city manager's office to provide assistance it is a different relationship between an elected official and a staff member however in helping formulate that those policies in executing those policies from a response to constituent point of view and else wise I think it would be useful and I don't think we ought to do this in conjunction with this budget do not think we should do it but I do think we should consider at the mid-year budget review I think we should consider a multi-year plan to step up the city council salaries and city council staffing directly hired by each city council member if that's a point two five to start with whatever the number the number is not important to me at this stage what is important is these local governments and this one in particular over performs for a city its size we see that in the administration we see that in departments we're a very aggressive creative engaged city and so are our constituents and I think that it would be helpful to take a look at a possible three or four year plan for doing that which primarily from my point of view it would be designed to take down what I think is the single largest barrier I think going to district elections was enormously helpful in terms of knocking down a barrier to entry running for city council the cost of the campaign this I think is the service and office equivalent of that which is how can we best do that how can we make sure that very very wide range of folks in the community can have it even for their mind that they could run for city council so I would hope that that would be something Mr. Huffaker that we could discuss six or so months from now and think about a two or three or more year plan for doing that I appreciate the comments mayor and as you stood you and I have had a few conversations about this off and on over the course of the last several months we would certainly defer to the will of the council if there was interest in doing so we received direction a few months back to do a compensation analysis in terms of how the council and mayor salary stack up against other comparable cities of our size and a full service operation that work is underway and so if there was interest amongst the council we could certainly expand that scope to also look at options for the city council and I think we would want to take a look at what models are out there that would reflect what you're suggesting so just some initial thoughts but certainly defer to the will of the council and I my guess thank you for that my guess would be that there isn't unanimity on this body of the council and I think we would want to take a look at what models are out there. There isn't unanimity on this body right now about what to do on that but the opportunity to examine it not in the budget hearings not under that kind of pressure but in the mid-year review where you've got time to examine that and we could we could discuss it at that point and that would then give us plenty of runway to actually start effectuating if it was a desire of the body to move in that direction what would be the step and the time period in which to do that so thank you very much. We could certainly run that to ground and bring something back for the council's consideration. Okay. Please do. On this topic in terms of the maybe it's for the city attorney but if there were the council members does that need to go to a vote of the community? I just wanted to make sure in terms of no. The meeting code provides some flexibility in that regard. I'm sorry, what's that? There is a provision in the meeting code that allows the council to increase compensation within a certain parameters which I can look up real quick but otherwise it would require a charter amendment. Okay. Yeah, I'm just trying to wrap my brain around there's sort of two things. One is the sort of the council salaries and elevation there as well as staff and so what types of processes are in place are needed in response to options but we can fit two moving parts. I would imagine all of that would come back Mr. Huffaker would you like us to direct or is this sufficient and you'll come back during that period of time during the mid-year? Unless there are objections. Is there any objection to doing that? Seeing hearing no objection we'll see you. We'll make it so. Mid-year budget hearings among other reports that you'll provide. Thank you very much for that. I have no further questions. Other questions, comments? Thank you. Mr. Huffaker and all of your staff thank you very, very much. Speaking for myself I suspect I might be speaking for the council but this is not a doable job on our part without level of cooperation and kindness that you extend to us every day. There's no tension between us there are no games being played seriously you don't find that in every government I've worked in a few and I think one of the great values of this small government is that council members can disagree without being disagreeable. The administration and the council can work together cooperatively. Your team senior and executive management team are terribly responsible to us when we have needs and wants during the calendar year at a moment's notice they are very responsive and responsible. I love the way you, sir, have developed this teamwork approach among the departments. The department head seem genuinely enthused about their work they genuinely seem to like each other which you also don't find in every government and that begins at the top that kind of spirit and ethic and I want to thank you Mr. Huffaker for that leadership Thank you. Mr. Mayor, I can respond to your question now if you like. I would like. So pursue it to section 1820 of the municipal code effective January 1st of 2010 each council member shall receive a salary of $1,710 and $0.35 per month that $0.35 comes in handy or shall receive a salary of $3,420 and $0.68 per month the charter also contains a provision that allows the council to amend council member compensation by ordinance but you cannot increase it beyond 5% since the last adjustment without an amendment to the charter. So you could adjust from 5% I believe it says 5% per annum but in any event you could make an adjustment within those parameters otherwise it would require a charter amendment. Thank you Mr. City Attorney we appreciate that we are on the public works budget Mr. Nathan Nguyen who is the director of the public works department is here to present the department's budget good afternoon sir thank you thank you Mr. City Council members Nathan Nguyen director of public works today we are presenting the public works budget for fiscal 24 okay so similar to the other departments I'll be going over the organizational overview as well as going through our core services I'll discuss some of the highlights that we had this past year in fiscal 23 as well as diving into the actual budget itself we are going to start with our organization so public works is the largest department within the city of Santa Cruz you can see that we have there's actually 7 divisions here that we oversee and we put the FTEs under each one of those so you can see how many staff members are within each one of those divisions so I'll dive into each one of the divisions and talk about our core services so first up is our wastewater division then we manage over 150 miles of underground sewer pipe as well as 29 lift stations we place about up to a mile of pipe each year as part of our maintenance program what's interesting about our city to use on wastewater division is that we also clean and maintain our storm drain network and so we also do the flood control system support as well within the wastewater division we have our wastewater treatment facility it's a regional facility that serves over 130,000 residents so all of the city of Santa Cruz as well as an additional about 65,000 residents in the county we generate in excess about 70% of energy on site and so we are able to that's through our digester gas as well as our solar arrays that we have out there again saving customers money and reducing our imprint we also at the treatment facility have partnered as you guys were probably well aware with Soquel Creek Water District on their recycled water program that's going well and we hope to see that launch early sometime next year the facility itself treats about 7 million gallons per day and so let's see what's also housed there is our environmental compliance lab so environmental compliance provides performs inspections does monitoring guidance to our local businesses as well as discharges into our sewer system our local limits it will be coming back to you guys later this June we've done a lot of work it's going to be one of our achievements I'll highlight later that we've performed this year as we're trying to keep up with future mandates as we work towards more recycled water issue we also issue discharge permits to individual dischargers and liquid waste haulers okay our next division is resource recovery resource recovery has a collections subdivision we provide refuse being a full service city we do recycling we also do green waste and as a part of our senate bill 1383 we're also doing food scrap waste as well and so we're doing the collections now but we're also working with as I mentioned earlier in the wastewater treatment facility that will be potentially bringing our food scraps down there to help feed our digesters completing that cycle we also do street sweeping we remove about 500 tons of year of debris in our city streets and this is again separate outside of the homelessness response field which I'll mention in another division here in a minute at the resource recovery facility itself we process we market and sell our recyclable materials we work with the county to accept hazardous waste materials at this site we also have methane gas that we collect there to help produce and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and then waste reduction so waste reduction is another core piece to our resource recovery division we do waste reduction program to help us meet the city and state mandates and goals we go out there and educate both public and businesses on reduction reuse recycling, you know, hazardous houseways, composting and pollution prevention the city the waste reduction team also provides does the city green business certification program which is really popular our next division in public works operations the operations we have a few different subdivisions in there we have streets, maintenance they do a lot of the minor work with regards to sidewalk curb and gutter repairs a lot of our striping signs as well as repair and replace our street lights that you see on the roadways they also do some vegetation management and some sediment controls, re-removal along our streets and rivers as well the mechanical maintenance we also have our courtyard so that's a team of about six mechanics who manage over 600 vehicles that we roughly see about 4,000 work orders a year on so those vehicles are city wide so they include police, parks in Iraq public works and also heavy machinery as well city fleet also administers our replacement vehicle program so again we work with the other city departments on managing their fleet and we also have the 24-hour fueling services at our courtyard that mechanical maintenance overseas so facility maintenance so facility maintenance there's only four folks in this group they are the ones that do 24-hour response for our facility emergencies so that's a city-wide maintenance facilities team that's housed within public works they also provide safety inspections to all of our facilities and then we also house in the energy management team within the operations so we have a staff member who works on energy projects works with Tiffany Y. West as well as other engineers and other folks and other departments to help create energy efficiency you'll see some solar panels and so forth as you guys may recall we're approved at our garages and at our courtyard parking division so we own and manage both on-street and off-street facilities we have four parking garages within our downtown core as well as 19 surface slots city-wide we're a full service city so we do our own parking enforcement as you may know and then we also manage the residential and business permit parking program within the downtown district we only have one parking district those funds also go towards sidewalk maintenance so you'll see a lot of streets scrubbing and then we have public restrooms at our facilities and our garages and so they help maintain those as well I'm going to go through this quickly here for you guys all right so engineering division here so engineering works to manage our five-year capital investment program you'll hear a little bit more about I guess at the next meeting I'll touch on it a little bit later today you know this work they work on a variety of projects in our capital and our capital projects including repair and improvement of transportation projects, street and design, reconstruction slope to stability utility undergrounding sewer, sanitary sewer collection and treatment stormwater collections refuse and recycling as well as city facilities that I can mention earlier another important function that we do with an engineering division is doing a lot of development review for both residential and commercial projects we issue over-the-counter permits or street openings concrete work, utility installation things of that nature we also do the engineering team also has to do its own environmental work so we also work towards getting IMF MDs, notice of exemptions and EIRs for our projects within that development review too is that we also do review traffic impact studies so we work with developers on setting up those parameters and making sure that those studies are complete when those development projects come to you guys for approval okay so roads our roads and sewer systems stormwater and refuse so the funding behind these is in several forms so we have some that are gas that are enterprise fund and some that are through grants so some of the past funding that we get is like SB1 gas tax funding which is an important resource we also have as a community has passed Measure D as well as Measure H to help support our roadway reconstruction and funding alternative transportation projects we've also have Measure E that was passed which also provides funding towards clean water and clean beaches and rivers and engineering does an overall excellent job and I'll talk about traffic engineering in a minute with getting grants to implement our CIP projects so traffic engineering similar to the engineering division there's about six folks in this group so it's a small but mighty team you're going to hear that quite often but they do a lot of projects related to active transportation as well on analyzing traffic patterns managing our traffic signal system the big part of what they have to do is also responding to a lot of citizen requests that we receive whether it's traffic calming or lighting or anything of that nature they've developed the traffic demand management program as well which is also known as Go Santa Cruz you may have heard of that and it's active in the downtown core we hope to expand some of that maybe potentially later in other areas they also mentioned earlier about the development and the traffic impact studies that they also are responsible for on the transportation planning side we've done several different plans we have the active transportation plan which was completed in 2017 we're working towards getting a revision getting a grant to revise that we also did the local roadway safety program that's a highway safety improvement program grant that we recently completed and I'll touch on that about some medians in a minute with that we also assist with the climate action plan so obviously as you guys may know that transportation is a really big contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions in our county so we work closely again with Tiffany Wise-West on the climate action plan climate adaptation plan as well and as I mentioned earlier about the grants we've been really successful you may recall earlier this year we received 36 million dollar grant for rail trail segments 8 and 9 construction and hopefully we can get that groundbreaking in 2025 another component is our education and outreach harm so while I mentioned Go Santa Cruz being a really successful TDM program we also have a street smarts program you may recall it's really successful in our schools we really try to get the walking school bus program teaching and educating kids how to walk and ride bikes to school to and from school it's actually so successful that I believe that the county is now taking that on as a regional program so street smarts is now going to be a countywide regional partners so we're helping implement that I believe there was some mention earlier too about a bike share program so the bike share regional bike share program is coming back it is going to be called B-Cycle and we'll have a ribbon cutting ground breaking ceremony for that hopefully next month we'll definitely give you guys an update on that again it's going to be beyond just the city we'll be working with UCSC, Cabrillo County, City of Capitola and Watsonville so on to our achievements this past year so I've got a couple slides here and some of the images of the major projects and programs that were completed this year you know up on the top left hand corner I'm really proud to say that I felt like our team really was in good response to the storms that happened in January so you can see over there that some of the early traffic calming measures that we put out there and that we've made some adjustments and continue to make adjustments as you well know on the bottom left there are two projects as well as the middle bottom one the Chestnut Stormdrain and Paving project those were completed in this past year and quite frankly those completed just in the right time prior to our January storms because those of those streets sustained a lot of flooding localized flooding over the years so we're really happy to get those two projects completed just before the bomb time cleanse happened fortunately you see the FEMA levy certification that image actually is of the bomb time cleanse that actually displays what we had on our levy but we are making a lot of progress towards our levy certification we hope to have that complete in the next month or so as far as submitting the work that we have to FEMA and then we'll have to wait to appear back as far as the formal certification from them the San Lorenzo River River Lagoon Culvert project and you know we really we're this close to getting it in before this year's storms but this year's the summer but we're going to actually have to wait now until subside before we can actually fully complete that project but that should happen very very shortly and then our landfill project it's about a six million dollar project all the landfill debris and stuff that goes there that's that life that sells for about another six years so before we have to work on that next next project okay and then a few more projects that just want to highlight the groundbreaking of rail trail segment seven phase two hopefully that will be in operation by the next year completion of the highway one nine project really happy to say that the homelessness response fuel crews operating really well and I'll touch that on that in a minute about about staffing but they seem to be doing really well now they're parking access revenue control so we've replaced most of that equipment in our downtown garages and we're working on finalizing the equipment down at the wharf right now and of course we had our first electric refuse vehicle truck that we're proud to say that we're the first leading ones in the county and then our local limits update again I kind of touched on it earlier so this is going to be some work that's going to be actually presented to you guys next month as far as updating those local limits the team has been really proactive on trying to stay up to date with all the regulations requirements as we move towards recycled water use okay now for the budget so here's a pie chart basically showing our expenditures you can roughly see that two-thirds of our budget is in resource recovery and in wastewater and then you'll see that a lot of the work that happens it's wanted to point out where we talk about traffic engine transportation engineering and engineering is about two and a half percent of that but when we talk about the capital improvement work that they do is is quite large right as far as the overall improvements that they make throughout the city and you'll see there that we have a mechanical maintenance so that's basically fleet that's our 600 or so vehicles that mentioned earlier that we help manage across the city homeless response it's a small portion up there as well that's our homeless response fuel crew and then a couple of these other items up there stormwater and I'll go into a little bit more too it's more of a challenged part of our budget and I'll talk about that in a minute okay and so here are the revenues that come in within through our department again refuse and wastewater those are enterprise funds fee generated so those are consistent the roughly two-thirds and then there's a little bit of adjustments between the different other sources that you see up there a small piece of that though is the general fund which I'll go into a little bit in a minute okay so general fund costs so roughly our department has about a 10 million fiscal 23 was about a 10 million dollar hit onto the general fund a relatively small portion when you think about the overall pie of the general fund and then how much the actual department does with those general funds so that traffic engineering engineering admin those staff that's the majority of those costs now the increase that you see between fiscal 23 and the 24 budget there is attributed to a few different things one is the homelessness response field crew so now that we have a division another division there's four staff members and I'm going to talk about asking for five staff members here in a second is a part of that as well as some of the operation side that we're adding to the budget this year that wasn't originally anticipated in the adoption of the 23 budget again it was a mid-year budget adjustment when we were able to get some of the staff going on the homelessness response field crew and then some of the other differences too with regards to just salary increases we are a large department but that's essentially what's showing up there so some of the staffing changes here that we have in public works so I mentioned the homelessness response field crew we had two workers a senior and a supervisor what we're asking for is to actually increase that to actually have an additional worker so that the teams can work in pairs while having a supervisor and that in conjunction with the approval of the mini trash compactor recently should substantially improve the services through the homelessness response field crew so we're really excited and appreciate your guys' support on that on the admin side we have a couple different adjustments that we're proposing here wastewater again an enterprise fund is asking for an additional half-person to work down at the treatment facility as they manage a lot more of that construction there's a lot of PO's being issued down there and then the communications relation specialists Laura mentioned earlier so that is being removed out of this budget at this time but then we're working on structuring the funding so that we can help us continue to support the new format for the communications team overall only a net change of one FDE okay so now I'll go into the challenges we thought it would be we thought it would be good to start going into daylight some of the upcoming challenges that we see for some of the work that we're working to implement stormwater financing refuse rates and wastewater so on the stormwater funding side I mentioned to you earlier that we have a major e-bond that was passed I think in about 2006 somewhere around that range generates about $630,000 annually and goes towards a lot of monitoring a lot of clean beach activities but it is woefully underfunded it is not a significant source towards implementation for CIP projects it really is a status quo to just help us maintain the beaches and the rivers that we are currently trying to do now fund 751 that's a utility citywide utility fee and so that's generates I think that comes in on your property taxes and that generates about $570,000 annually but our stormwater projects I was going to mention a little bit earlier when we talked about the Chestnut storm drain project that was about a $2.1 million project the Treven storm drain project was roughly about a million there's lots of other storm drain improvement projects that we want to work towards that do not have a dedicated funding source and so 751 we just are already tapped out and that's really similar to what's 752 so the floodplain utility fee that's more of the Salon Runes River levy in the surrounding area the fund the amount of money it generates is about $320,000 annually but the maintenance of just the inboard side of the levy that we perform every year is roughly $300,000 and so you can see that that's not very much money left over to do anything else on the levy and now we had the FEMA accreditation process that we're in right now so that we had some injection from the Army Corps where we're paying for the vegetation management and the outboard side as well as the road and control measures but we're also woefully underfunded in that area as well and so I'll be bringing back something to you guys with regards to CIP I guess in the next meeting some of these other items that are also within the stormwater fund that I mentioned so the levy maintenance our upgrade to our pump station while our pump stations worked well during this last winter they are antiquated and we are needing to upgrade both the Lowell Street pump station number one as well as add an additional pump station on Soquel and then there's a few other projects on there that you can see that are also lining up that again we do not have funding for at this moment okay and then I'll move on to refuse rates so this is something that we wanted to daylight with you guys at this budget hearing this is actually something that we'll be proposing to you guys at the next council meeting so in refuse our rates right now they haven't been increased since 2018 and so it's been almost five plus years here where we haven't had a revenue or a fee increase while our cost of doing business is continuing to rise things like the food scrap program that wasn't something that was always something that we had to do as well as you can kind of see this chart right here where there's a dotted line if we increase our rates and then it drops sharply towards the end and that's because we're planning for a finance eating upgrade so there's about four million dollars as well as preparing for our next cell three or an Excel project at the end of at the end of the decade now our operating budget we want to be able to have about six months of reserve in there and that's that's where that blue line of 14 million dollars is set right now so to stay that with you guys right now is one of the challenges and some that you guys will see here very shortly and then lastly the wastewater rates so wastewater also hasn't been upgrade updated in quite some or I apologize it's going through its last rate increase late this upcoming fiscal year but at the wastewater treatment facility and we've kind of run through the honeymoon period down there where the last major upgrade we did was in the 90s and as we work towards additional mandates with recycled water I'm forgetting the state bill I'll top my head but as we do that type of work we need to upgrade our facility as well as some of the electrical and so I'll touch on that in a minute as far as the electrical upgrade which is about a 40 million dollar project that we're looking at that we need funding for and then these are the some of the other additional challenges again some of them I've kind of already mentioned with the food scraps I think you guys are well aware the West Cliff repairs that we're all working towards we also have a project for an electrification roadmap that we'll be bringing back later this year I believe that's working with Tiffany Oise-West and our operations team to help look at our facilities and how we get towards improving our electrification network I also put a bullet point on here about recruitment and retention all staffing levels I'm proud to say that we're moving towards getting a lot of our key critical positions filled it still becomes a challenge as a lot of folks are retiring out and we're trying to bring in new staff and get them up to speed and a lot of these critical and critical knowledge positions especially at the treatment facility you know you can't just hire somebody new and then expect them to run at the same level where we are trying to work on towards a better plan towards that and then our major CIP projects where again I won't go into the projects here I'll be presenting some of those projects in the next meeting and I thought I'd throw in this last slide after thank you Mayor Keely for the reminder on the medians so I put a short list here together there's other intersections that have medians but really these are the critical ones that I would mention that end up having a little bit more folks that are hanging out in the median or people are jaywalking and things of that nature and so those are the listed on the left and I wanted to also just reiterate the work that we're collaborating with with economic development as well as the planning department on this ocean street beautification project it's really at the initial stage right now and so you guys know there's a survey out for the community to make some comments but I also added an image there to the right that you guys approved earlier this year so the ocean street paving project is proceeding and so that is going to happen this fall we'll work on either striping the median wider or potentially depending on what comes out of the survey work we may be able to do some hard improvements and actually widen the median at the beginning of Plymouth there the goal though is to potentially look at adding some other future improvements whether it be maybe some type of fencing or artwork to also help from being on on our medians you know looking at hardscape potentially some landscape but we know that our park spec crews are limited as far as being able to maintain that type of work so in the future next year we could look at potentially doing like a pilot program do through an RFP process to really identify some of the improvements that could be proposed in some of these locations that are shown here and with that I'm happy to answer any questions you may have thank you mr. Nguyen thank you to all of your staff who work across a range of very important public services we very much appreciate that miss brown thank you for the presentation thank you for all of your incredible work managing a very very hectic hectic being an understatement winner and moving through recovery now along with all of the incredible work you've done to get funding for the rail trail segment seven we're just doing wonderfully and I want to acknowledge that and your team for all of that work that planning work and then the work that happens on the ground in real time we were I was with the mayor we had a conversation you were there but I want to say this to everybody while we have the opportunity with some staff from the California Transportation Commission and the vice chair to be chair of the transportation state transportation commission and universally the staff there lauded Santa Cruz city of Santa Cruz public works for here just being incredible partner hands down they said over and over and so and it really shows it really shows so and now I'm going to ask you the questions that actually I'll ask one question about I did have what was wondering about segments eight and nine not being on the twenty twenty four goals at to as a part because that work is going to be moving forward but it sounds like you're talking about twenty five for groundbreaking so are you intending to save that for the that's correct yeah I mean I probably should have added actually just the approval of the EIR was significant and so thank you that was a really big achievement on that project the next phase though I'm going to move towards right away and getting mitigations and permits in place and we anticipate that to take another twelve to twenty four months so I didn't necessarily think that as we work towards also final design over the next year there is a potential that it could move into twenty four but I decided to keep it into twenty five and that's actually the way our grant construction is set up right now as well got it thank you and and now I do have I want to ask some questions that were brought just to because I think this is something that consistently people are interested in and I want to make sure the public hears from you on this so I I'll just ask related to the parking enterprise fund that the downtown parking district that fun that there's no fund balance listed here and so just wondering about that is there are people wondering about that fund balance recognizing that in previous years it has been negative how do we fill those gaps how do we manage that parking fund and does the general fund end up covering some of those costs yeah I'll happy to take that question thank you for the kind words too for the department when it comes to the parking fund it did take a significant hit due to COVID in the past few years we worked with the business owners in the areas that helped maintain their businesses as well as keep our staffing as well as not letting go people as you may recall we actually brought back the rate increase for the parking district and so with those approval which is I believe going to happen on July 1st of this upcoming year the fund is looking the fund should be solvent in this upcoming year moving in towards the black and then allowing us to hopefully expand some of the services on downtown core but the fund itself as far as the general fund and parking fund those do not intermix there's no general fund dollars that are going towards the parking fund thank you for clarifying that I think that's the my only set of questions here thanks for this Ms. Collin Tari Johnson sure thank you that's all I had even said but thank you thank you for the great work and the presentation just a couple of questions you mentioned the food scraps program is one of the challenges could you elaborate where the challenges are yeah with that food strike program right now we launched the collection system commercially initially last year or maybe it was really here before that and then we've moved towards into the residential portion and so I know there were some little bit of grumblings that have happened over this time and so I think we're still working out some of those kinks but now the actual material itself where would where do we process it so currently we collect it and we bring it all the way back up to the resource recovery facility and then it gets transported to another site out of our county to dispose of or to you know dispose of that that material ideally though what we want to do is we want to be able to take it into our wastewater treatment facility so we have another major CIP project again where there's a lot of them stacking up down there that we need to that we are currently embarking upon right now I say that it's a challenge because we don't really know where it's going to fit or how it's going to operate quite yet but we do know that we want to be able to keep that that source in-house and so to help power our treatment facility okay great I've heard some of the grumblings too so just getting into the budget I just wanted to ask if you could comment on it's a slight decrease but the decrease in the street lighting budget this is just that we've met the street lighting needs of the community so we don't need as much why the 60 or so thousand decrease I believe when we're meeting with the operations team that they felt they could we were trying to move different keep the fund itself at the same level not increase or decrease it and so we were shifting some funds around and so our streets team thought we could take some funding from the street light budget while maintaining our services okay as long as we're lit up that's a safety issue as you know okay just last comment is given the actions of yesterday's Westcliffe item I'm hoping we can see that reflected in the FY24 goals specifically the completion of the zero to three year plan and implementation of those components and then the development and completion of the three plus 50 year plan I appreciate the comment and we can definitely after based on yesterday's decisions that we can incorporate that into our work thank you so much Ms. Watkins is recognized thank you for the presentation for the work and it's nice to hear that you were recognized and celebrated so I appreciated you sharing that member Brown you mentioned the highway one highway nine and I just because I am involved in that intersection on a regular basis I drive that's part of my commute so I just want to applaud the work that has gone I know there's also some transition I think I just I'm wondering your thoughts on how it's going so far in terms of the three lanes now and I've witnessed certain things where I'm like oh my gosh like people aren't realizing especially when you're turning from the nine onto the one southbound that there's actually a third lane that can in that way too so how I mean I guess maybe it's a PD question too is just how do you think that's going in terms of flow I think my initial take is that the increased capacity as though that was a part of this project and some of the safety improvements have been beneficial to that intersection and I can't speak specifically to the actual increase in efficiency through there but I do think that overall the additional lane that the third left turn lane as well as the second through lane going northbound on river towards highway nine has increased that capacity and I know that we have some additional signage that maybe potentially could be discussed as you merge on the north side of highway nine there and continuing northbound but overall I think it's been a successful project by all accounts I agree I agree for those for those reasons and then for the ocean street exit in terms of some of the backup there is that part of that you know is that part of the discussions for that intersection or not really I don't believe so talking about the off ramp of southbound highway one onto ocean that's currently not in the scope of work as far as looking at potential improvements on highway one nine intersection there is a future project that we have in our CIP that we're looking towards widening those bridges across the Sandlin-Renzel river and maybe at that time we can incorporate working with again both of these projects no matter what we do is going to be working with Caltrans making sure they can get on board with some potential improvements both on the on ramp and even on the on ramp side as well yeah no problem no I just I see it backed up too so it just seems I didn't know if it was part of that thought process and then I guess in terms of the ocean street planning and you know one of the things I think it's important to revisit it's an entry to our city it's really important to have that be a priority area it's also an area that's very dangerous with people literally running across the street it freaks me out all the time and I know there's fencing currently up right now which is you know it is what it is I guess so in terms of the timeline associated with the plans for that can you remind us when you know when we could start to see things happening around I think the initial work that's going to be performed will be a part of the ocean street paving project so you'll see that paving all the way through Plymouth all the way down to Water Street and so we see a lot of striping improvements a little bit of media improvements as well the work that's happening in conjunction with an economic development will lag behind most likely as we parse through the survey try to get ideas of what we can actually implement now and then I think a subsequent will have a bigger project because the ocean street beautification project as Bonnie mentioned yesterday is I think along a business district so all the way down to Soquel Avenue and so it's going to be a much larger effort when we talk about looking at making improvements along Ocean Street great yeah I think it's important to prioritize that it is the entry to our city and I think we want to make sure that we're really reflecting who we are as best we can so I look forward to seeing that coming and then in terms of the fee increases and when do you assume or where are your thoughts on timeline associated with that as well yeah so for refuse we're looking at trying to propose and again we'll daylight more this next month but try and propose those rate increases for this fall to help keep that fun going and then as again preparing for some of the work that's going to happen over the resource recovery facility on the stormwater side that's still one of our biggest question marks it's always been a challenge to figure out where we get funding for stormwater again there's no direct funding source so we do apply for grants and that's typically how we've done a lot of that work and then on the wastewater facility side the work is going to begin this year on a long-range financial plan that will go that will probably go into fiscal 24 as well and then our 25 as well and then we'll probably be looking at a rating increase at the end of fiscal 25 thank you for the questions or comments madam vice mayor I just quickly wanted to highlight I was shocked that the amount of illegal encampment debris removed that's astonishing thank you otherwise that would end up in our watershed and at our beaches and out in our open spaces and then and I don't know if this is possible but with the rail trail we've had both of us have had some people reaching out to us about the segments that have been completed about the possibility of installing any trees and I know that might be more of an RTC thing and I don't need an answer but I just wanted I'm happy to speak to that as well actually so as we develop the segment 7 project starting in 2016 we did work with RTC on developing the plans and where we could actually locate and plant trees on their actual right away and so in segment 7 phase 1 I think we only removed one or two heritage trees so the replacement was only I think 4 or 5 but we ended up planting roughly 35 trees in segment 7 phase 1 and again that's working with RTC staff on where that would be allowed we're working within a really tight narrow right away of course and then anything outside on the other side of the trail itself would be directly through the RTC as far as being able to plant additional trees and then some of the private businesses that are on the south especially between SWIFT and natural bridges and so I know that the economic development team has worked with us and has worked with RTC and we are embarking upon an art installation over off of SWIFT Street so there is some but they did have to get some an easement for the art installation itself so there is a potential but it is working with our partners and some of the private right away owners that are out there thank you for the questions and comments Mr. Nguyen thank you very much can I make one more comment oh of course you can I just want to say I forgot about this in my zeal to talk about the funding for active transportation and rail trail goals furthering our food too good to waste program and I don't have a lot of questions about it in particular but I just wanted to highlight it here that it is listed in your goals we are talking about some major projects and this is a really important one and it is not part of your core activities but it is something that I have found your department staff to be really proactive about and just really glad to see it here so folks know we are really we're in on a food too good to waste effort thank you good afternoon sir afternoon take a look at page 190 what in our binder is 196 and 197 that would be public work summary budget summary public works budget summary public works essentially your money out money in thank you would I be right in assuming the following that on page 196 waste water collection waste water treatment waste water source control waste water pump house waste water admin charges and waste water lab are all the waste water function they are separated out there but when put together that's the waste water function is that correct that's correct okay look across the page and it under resources by fund it says waste water so I'm going to assume this is now how we pay for the expenses in the category I just mentioned would that be right I'm not sure if I follow that I mentioned a number of waste water expense items that are designated with at least the first word is waste water and I read those to you and you said yes that's the waste water in its entirety do I have that about right yeah I'm hoping that I'm looking at the same budget summary page I have printouts right here and I do see the waste water control waste water treatment facility secondary plant parks mitigation waste water source control waste water pump house waste water admin charges and that's while they're different object numbers there they all come out of the same fund so generally there might be a dog or a cat or a nitter or a nat that's out of place but in the main I've got it right that's waste water and then over on page 197 where says about halfway down waste water there's a number of 23,272,000 dollars this is on the revenue side thank you so much okay I apologize I'm following now mayor Kimmy we're following okay good enough so here here comes my question as I understand it we can fully cost recover because this is a service that we can fully cost recover if we choose to the cost of our waste water activities is that correct I believe so okay so now let me go to another another issue here go back to the expense page and we're going to look at refuse as I see it resource recovery collection refuse disposal recycling program would I be right in thinking and resource recovery collection cart that is everything under refuse would that be correct or are there any other items that would go under refuse I believe that's correct I'm pulling up the actual budget right now and then when we go over again to the revenue page there's one line for refuse which I am assuming includes all those expenditure categories on the other page and so what we're doing there is excuse me 21,570,000 there am I okay so far on those two assumption yes at this point okay then let's go back over to that expense page and look at stormwater management stormwater overlaid debt service are those two the those two have corresponding revenue items on the right hand page stormwater is a $320,000 item but stormwater overlay is $2.5 million do I have everything now that's under stormwater yes I believe so okay now with regard to those three categories wastewater refuse and stormwater it's my understanding that those are eligible for full cost recovery in a fee system that the law allows us to recover full cost recovery in a fee system for those enterprises they are enterprise activities is that correct no I would not I would not classify stormwater or stormwater overlay as an enterprise fund while there's a utility fee associated with those services it is not a direct fee like our refuse funds where you're paying a monthly fee for that service this is almost similar to more of a tax I would almost call that utility fee it's it kind of straddles the line between both those on the stormwater and so when we talk about full cost recovery for stormwater overlay and stormwater those two funds 751 and 752 we don't have a full cost recovery for the maintenance efforts on the levy itself or repairs or our pump station upgrades so I wouldn't classify that as an enterprise fund typically like you have with wastewater and refuse or water could it be that's an interesting question I would imagine that we could try to create some type of fee I don't know if it would be a tax and would go to the voters or if it would be something that would go to our wastewater in principle is what I'm really looking at how we how we get there maybe a subsequent question I'll have but in principle under law will we be able following a study that would identify the cost and so on and what is in there it's my understanding whether we call it an enterprise fund is that it's an activity undertaken by the city for which we could attempt through a fee system to have full cost recovery that's my question I think I'd have to I prefer to the city attorney right there to respond okay and I'd be happy to weigh in so you're familiar with the requirements of Proposition 218 for property related fees and charges in essence you have to provide certain notice requirements there's a majority protest hearing and the fee or charge has to be proportionate to the cost of the property related service attributed to the parcel and whether or not storm water charges are charges for water service is sort of a gray area under Prop 218 and so I think Nathan is right that it's sort of somewhere in between a property related fee or charge and a tax and we can certainly explore ways of increasing the cost recovery for those types of fees or charges and it may entail having a Prop 218 style hearing process or it may entail asking the voters to approve a tax and we'll have to analyze that and report back to the council thank you Mr. Condati for that answer the reason I ask and I go through this sir is because at the two levels of local government at which I've had the great privilege of getting to serve public works to a great extent is a target rich environment in my view for full cost recovery it's very clear I think it might be harder police services or fire services or this or that I see that's a general fund support and pretty hard to say your property gets this and yours gets this but you send out about not you personally but the city sends out about and thank you for that information your assistant provided this to me offline a minute ago roughly 100,000 utility bills and we're underwriting the department with general fund money to the tune of about $5.8 million a year now I'm going to do arithmetic about which you should object strenuously okay and that is if we took $5.8 million and we divided it by 100,000 customers we had 12 bills a year the average bill would go up $4.83 and we wouldn't be subsidizing the department with $5.8 million but you would experience no change in your revenue that would just be for the normal operations that we have going on today when we look at the CIP and some of the other improvements that we need to make and I kind of talked about that in the challenges these are going to be significant cost increases maybe some of them are one time and some of them will add to our maintenance efforts as well and so it's a while our budget or while the department has a portion of the general fund that supports our department overall the revenues that we do bring in through our grants and through our other fees with like building permit fees and over the counter fees etc helps does help offset some of those costs that you're seeing on the general fund side well my interest is to jealously guard every penny of the general fund because that's the only discretion we have is when we want to do something we have to go find the money we have to find the money in the general fund the degree to which the general fund is subsidizing departments is a totally legitimate issue but the degree to which it is I want to examine it closely and see if what we can do is engage in more 100% cost recovery in these in these three areas so I am wondering and this may go to Mr. Huffaker Ms. Cabello yourself and that is whether we could should or have conducted a full cost recovery study on these three areas of the public works department so mayor I appreciate the questions and as Elizabeth has also alluded to in many of her presentations and initial financial overview principally speaking we completely agree that to the extent appropriate and legally permissible we want to achieve full cost recovery in all of our enterprise and utility operations particularly where we can draw a direct benefit for the services being provided as you're describing as Nathan had mentioned earlier the onset of his presentation there are also functions within the public works department our transportation team comes to mind that are providing services in a more general nature which would not be appropriate to try to draw a more direct connection from a cost recovery standpoint that's why there will always be an element of the public works operations that will need to be appropriately fund supported but we have been having conversations and part of the fee increases is a reflection of this as well of trying to be good shepherds of that funding acknowledging the scarcity of resources we have on the general fund side and ensure we're looking at that critically as we have those opportunities for all three of the functions that we're talking about today let me ask a question very directly then whether well let me do it this way how often does your department conduct a full cost recovery analysis of the elements of your department that could be subject to full cost recovery I understand what the city manager just said we're talking about refuse and wastewater let's stick with refuse first there is full cost we're on a great trajectory in the sense that we've been able to perform the CIP work perform our operations under a current structure but we are looking at keeping a six month operation reserve in place and so we are embarking on the work towards increasing that fee again that will come up to you next month so that would be a full cost recovery plan for that service for that we provide through public works and that is refuse similarly wastewater is going to be doing the same thing well we have a good fund balance right now we do know we have some large looming improvements infrastructure projects both at the treatment facility and around the city and so we're embarking upon a long range financial plan as well as doing a cost service analysis a full cost analysis and that'll be presented to you guys most likely in 2025 for that increase and so between those two services we are embarking upon a full cost recovery plan for those but when it comes to stormwater stormwater that's the big challenge for us where it's not a direct service that's going a fee that goes directly into a direct connection that you can make towards that effort and so those are the grants we're going after some we don't really use general fund for the stormwater we do ask for that though we come back as an appropriation but it's not necessarily a year over year take from the general fund I want to make sure you understand the last thing you said I'm not sure I tracked it did you say that there's no general fund money going into the stormwater currently right now we don't have general fund we're using our 751 as well as our 752 funds to help support the wastewater the stormwater work that we're on which funds are those 751 is the stormwater and then the 752 is the stormwater overlay it's basically the flood control system within the downtown core is the overlay and then the 751 stormwater is general for citywide citywide so what are you saying about how those are paid for that's what we added earlier discussion about being is it a tax or is it a fee it kind of straddles both of those and then trying now it's I believe again it's in the property the property tax bill that you receive and I want to say that it shows up as utility tax but I don't recall if it's exactly specifically a tax I'd have to check in with the city attorney on that but not general fund and if I may mayor chime in I say we have one of our directors of another important utility with her hand up wanting to chime in rosemary has some thoughts on the matter good afternoon good afternoon I'll be over there and just a little bit to give you my spiel but I wanted to say a couple of things one is the number 100,000 customers is the population we serve it's not the number of accounts we bill that's a number more like about 27,000 per month but that also includes about 30% of those are outside city customers so it does sort of do a couple of things about to reduce that I guess the other comment I want to make with respect to a property related fee to sort of talk about talk to follow up on some comments that the city attorney made the only place I've seen a stormwater utility sort of get created and this is a while ago so there might have been some changes was in poor LaDargan where they actually did property resizing and determined for each property how much stormwater was retained on the property versus how much went over into sort of the streets or into the storm drains and that was obviously one side of Portland is quite flat the other side of Portland is quite hilly and topography was taken into account as well it's a very onerous sort of mechanism in order to reduce the amount of damage to the property and to reduce the connection between the cost of service and what the contribution is so I just would put that out there as not saying you can't do it I'm just saying it's complicated if I could just add on to rosemary's comment Mr. City Attorney what the water director is and I think I think it's a very interesting statement in Oregon law under California law that is there is required to be an engineering study that identifies the impact of the activity in this case it's stormwater runoff on the entire system and then attributes a cost associated with that for each and a proportionate impact of the assessment on the property so if you have a couple of large landowners like big ag users in the Pagaro Valley for instance the vote is heavily weighted in favor of the larger landowners and it receives a simple majority based on that weighted vote. Thank you for that the risk of belaboring the point is to say this that the general fund I believe should be jealously guarded I don't think there's anything that's being done with the general fund that is frivolous certainly we're very good at watching our money however having said that complexity of like the city attorney was just describing to me is not a reason to say we won't do this I would like to see in the spirit of protecting the general fund and preserving as much discretion to the policy makers as possible I would like to see a report back it does not have to be for next week but I would like to see unless there is objection perhaps Mr. Huffaker this is something that you and Mr. Nguyen and Ms. Cabell and whoever else you want to bring into the fold on this could examine this because it does seem to me that we should have legal options available to us and then whether or not we take those is a question it's absolutely something we need to run to ground as Nathan has shared it's been an ongoing challenge with having these assets under invested in for quite some time so what the city attorney described is a special benefit assessment something very similar to what we had worked on for the Pahoa River network there are other mechanisms as well and we're certainly interested and we'll need to explore for it I wonder if what you could do sir is we do have the budget and revenue subcommittee and perhaps in the new fiscal year that could be one of the items that we would entertain at that committee happy to do that and appreciate the interest in wanting to pursue it something that we need to work on very good Mr. Nguyen I believe we're finished with questions thank you very very much the department does extraordinary work all the time I would say that a lot of it is how would I say this taken for granted taken for granted my streets paved that the stormwater system works that all of the work that you're engaged in we don't even think about it that's the evidence I think the proof positive that you're doing a very very good job thank you on behalf of the council and I think I I take no risk at thanking you on behalf of the public thank you mayor thank you council members thank you shoe we're on the parks and recreation commission budget I invite Mr. Elliott good good afternoon mayor city council good afternoon sir how are you doing well thank you good good we welcome you who have you brought with you with you all right I've got Lindsay Bass our principal management analyst with parks and recreation here and if the council is ready we will go through our presentation thumbs up no seventh inning stretch we'll jump right in yeah thank you so much for the opportunity to present our fiscal year 24 budget this afternoon to the city council introduce Lindsay Bass our principal management analyst who will join me in we also have our park superintendent Travis Beck in the audience here and one of our two acting recreation superintendents DC Lawson Thomas is back here as well to answer any questions once we get to that point so as the library director Yolanda Wilburn said early this morning about the libraries libraries aren't just singing and dancing and having fun and I would say the same with parks and recreation there's a little bit of that in parks and recreation but there's a lot of great work that's happening a lot of hard work a lot of tough work that's out there but really as an investment in the quality of life that we enjoy here in Santa Cruz so we'll talk about that a little bit through this presentation want to just give a brief outline very similar format to the other departments that the council has heard from today so we'll go through just briefly our core services and then indoor general fund budget for fiscal year 24 including both personnel and supplies and services in our operating budget we'll talk about some of our operational and strategic priorities as we come into this new fiscal year and welcome feedback and questions but again just to start to kind of ground us in terms of our mission and parks and recreation our mission is to provide quality public spaces and experiences that build a healthy community foster equity and better the environment so just kind of grounding that as we head into our budget so I'll go through our core services quickly here so parks and recreation is the steward on behalf of the city of approximately 1,700 acres of open spaces parks, beaches, wharf and urban forest we maintain 75 buildings some of these are very well known like the Civic Auditorium and London Nelson Community Center Market Street Senior Center but a lot of smaller buildings just over at Harvey West for example so we maintain about 170,000 square feet of facility space throughout the park system alright we create unique places that foster relationships with people in nature so this image here is actually from our outreach material as part of the San Lorenzo Park redesign process that we're going through right now so connecting our neighborhoods our community members connecting our downtown with these unique places that we have and really trying to activate these and bring these to life through our programs these are really our registered programs we serve about 100,000 youth and teens adults and seniors through those programs in addition to that our parks and beaches as we heard I think from the fire department earlier today around a million visitors to our beach each year about 2 million visitors to the wharf each year and so we serve millions of people through this incredible park system here in Santa Cruz wanted to use this slide quickly just to talk about the sort of value proposition of Parks and Rec creation so we really try to balance we have things like a revenue policy and we do operations plans and business plans to really make sure that the community is getting the best bang for the buck in terms of value so Parks and Rec is supported through the general fund but we try to be really smart and thoughtful about balancing accessibility and affordability to our programs and services with smart revenue generation as well Parks and Rec is a permitting office as well so we issue about 700 tree and special event permits on an annual basis on behalf of the city and then just in summary really Parks and Recreation is at the heart of Santa Cruz we like to say Santa Cruz is Parks and Recreation so these different components here on the screen related to health and wellness conservation resiliency property values, economic development visitor spending a lot of the departments in the council and community have heard from through this budget process we really all work together really closely and I think the role and function of Parks and Recreation is at the heart of a lot of these factors I just wanted to kind of highlight briefly the conservation resiliency piece being really at the heart of our climate action in an area where I think big opportunity in terms of just climate and investment in our parks the green belt open spaces so we'll talk about that more as we go through the presentation today and then as we talk about the capital improvement plan further on June 13th just quickly through our organizational chart the Parks and Rec department has 84 FTEs so that includes both regular full-time and part-time staff in addition to those 84 FTEs we have approximately 150 temp staff that come in in the summer in particular both for parks but in programs like our summer camps junior guards and so forth so that amounts to about 35,000 hours in temp time so this is a breakdown of our various divisions and sort of work areas within Parks and Rec urban forestry golf course, wharf London Nelson community center sports and beaches so on and so forth and then the number under each of these supervisors names are the amount of folks reporting to each of these divisions so here's a quick photo of our group from last year's summer kickoff a number of our staff there and then this next slide are photos of our staff in action out in the field that the council and community often see and run into so with that I'm going to hand this over to our principal management analyst Lindsey Bass Miss Bass welcome good afternoon. Great thank you so much council it's a pleasure to be with you all this afternoon and the staff of parks and recreation we really see ourselves as custodians of a one-of-a-kind parks and rec system so we understand that we stand on the shoulders of folks that made decisions before us that have kept this amazing system humming and moving and we see it as our responsibility to continue to do that work both currently and for the future so we are planting lots of seeds right now that will hopefully bear much fruit to serve the community both now and to come and how we think about that work is really framed through these seven strategic priorities and so we have a parks master plan that sets a horizon for us through 2030 but there are many plans that we utilize within the department we think about how this aligns with the general plan we're already considering how this will align with the current strategic plan that the city council is working on but very much grounded in our parks master plan we think about things like design excellence, play community health and interaction stewardship and sustainability accessible and connected community partnerships and good governance as kind of guiding themes to the work that we do beyond that we added a strategic theme outside of what's listed in our master plan which is in the middle there a safety first in recognition of how important it is to make sure that we're providing a safe park system both for the public and for our staff and so this is really how we think about and how we measure our accomplishments and set our goals for the future so you can see here on the chart many of those accomplishments aligned against these themes I'm not going to go through each and every one of them they're in your packet but I do want to highlight just a few so under design excellence we were able to complete a number of CIP projects this fiscal year a flagship project that we had Vice Mayor Golder help us cut the ribbon on was the renovation and refurbishing of Garfield Park so a brand new playground there wonderful new amenities there for that neighborhood to begin to utilize in terms of safety first the department has done a lot of work this year both planned and unplanned addressing safety both of our community the temporary shelters that were stood up around the Civic Auditorium Depot Freight Building as well as continuing to respond to safety concerns in the park system by employing additional security and alarms across our facility to keep folks safe and also on the flip side of that to make sure that our staff are trained and so we completed a full de-escalation training for the entire department this fiscal year that was really underscored by the Parkesyard Arson event that happened last June in addition I think we're really proud of the work that we do around stewardship and sustainability so a number of grants we continue to bring into the department to help continue our stewardship and sustainability efforts and following on from that in the partnerships arena this year we've really expanded our relationship with city schools and are really leveraging them to help us make sure that our programs are accessible from a financial standpoint for our most vulnerable and needy families and so working in conjunction with city schools and friends of parks and recreation we're kind of blowing away all goals around being able to provide scholarships to kids to take part in recreation programs so this year we awarded over $75,000 of scholarships to around 199 kids almost 200 kids so it's great to see that partnership continue to bear fruit and then just from a good governance standpoint and a Tony's point we have completed additional business plans so for the civic auditorium to really ramp up cost recovery of that facility as well as addressing a number of fee areas within the department make sure those continue to keep pace with inflationary pressures we also have great ambitions for the coming fiscal year and similarly we're aligning those against these strategic themes I'm not going to go through those those are also in your packet I'll let your questions guide how we go into detail there but just know there's a lot of really important incredible work planned within the department for the coming fiscal year so that brings us down to the brass tax of the budget for FY24 we are looking within parks and recreation at $20.6 million budget this is a status quo budget the way that number breaks down very roughly is about $11.3 million to support our personnel about 55% and then $9.3 million to support services supplies capital outlay everything else this does spread for the most part within the general fund but it does include the wharf and some other smaller funds as well in terms of revenues Tony also mentioned that the department is a revenue generating department we bring in fees for a lot of the services and a lot of the amenities that we provide and so we're budgeting to bring in just under $6 million in the coming fiscal year we tend to be conservative with our revenue projections but it's worth noting that in FY22 the department brought in 6.4 million so we really do try to overperform and when you see folks out there on the golf course or out enjoying dinner on the wharf in our picnic areas that's all fueling and helping to keep the general fund healthy we see that as a very important role that we play it's interesting though as a department the winter storms this year are a good example of how weather can affect that pretty significantly and so we are now beginning to think about how do we weatherproof some of our revenue opportunities and the last point that I'll make here is in terms of how our budget compares to FY23 as I said it is a status quo budget but we do have a certain portion of internal services like other departments that have been rolled in this year and so that's representative of the increase that you would see if you compare this to our FY23 budget so let's take a little bit of a deep dive into the 11.3 piece of that budget that 55% for personnel so as Tony mentioned in FY23 we had 84 FTE in the budget before you we are recommending 86.5 FTE and you'll see in a light pink where those increases are coming so for the most part we did our best to make these budget neutral to the general fund so we're actually converting temporary dollars for the half time FTE under events and classes and the full time FTE under open spaces and greenways we know that's not a full one to one as we get into the future but just really trying to do our part while also increasing capacity these shifts are somewhat in to workforce changes coming out of the pandemic and so it's been really hard to keep half time positions filled we've seen a lot of turnover in classes and events and so really trying to make that position as full time more attractive and similarly for open spaces and greenways it's been really hard to get temporary folks into that area and so being able to offer a regular full time position will hopefully bring some more solid staffing to that area and then finally the last FTE is bringing a half time REC coordinator at the wharf and a half time building maintenance worker position at the wharf both to full time that will bring us to 86.5 and as Tony mentioned we'll continue to leverage very significantly temporary staff to ensure that we're able to deliver on our mission and vision so that's what's in the budget there are also some things that will be a priority for us in FY24 from a personnel standpoint that we wanted to flag to you that we're in discussions with city manager's office HR and finance on just in terms of prioritizing these things and figuring out the best road maps for how those will come forward so these involve things that in some ways are mixed in with the compensation study that was done that in terms of the recreation supervisor pay equity piece as well as new job titles within the recreation division just to ensure that we have really strong career ladders within that division to make it as healthy and strong as it can possibly be outside of those areas we're looking at trying to improve and increase our capacity around capital improvement projects so right now that full sweet and compliment and we'll talk more about this on June 13th our CIP portfolio is managed by our supervisors so this leadership team that you see on the screen before you and so when operational issues arise they have to set those projects aside address emergencies and that can slow things down we have a lot of deferred maintenance in the system we want to be able to keep up with that so building capacity here would be incredibly helpful to the department and to the community and allow us to get through more of those projects on time and beyond that I've heard other departments mention retirements that continue to happen and succession planning that they are doing we see some of these coming through to our department as well so making some of these structural adjustments around how and what positions we have within these different areas we may need to be bringing some of those forward to you in the coming fiscal year so just wanted to put that on the radar and more to come there okay so that was on the personnel side the 55% for the rest of the budget that remaining 9.3 million we kind of think about this in a couple of different through a few different lenses and the first is this lens so these are just the basics so about 80% of that supply and service budget is to afford the cost allocation plan it's to pay for water sewer and refuse some is taking notes as Nathan was talking about refuse rates going up and we know that there will be water rate increases and so we are the city's biggest water customer so we track that very closely Elizabeth mentioned general liability is going up so we see that hit our budget Tony mentioned the breadth of buildings and acres that we manage so we got to get people out to these places so we do that through equipment and fleet and that takes resources in addition to being able to bring in that $6 million we do have to have software to support registrations reservations we have to build into our budget costs for credit card fees paying instructors paying operators so these are the kind of things that we see in cost recovery and then there's just basic safety right so keeping our people safe keeping our facilities and our parks safe for the public so those costs get rolled in under safety and then keeping the lights on the buildings heated and then small amounts for capital outlay staff support so all of that adds up to about 80% of that budget which leaves about 20% to do everything else and basically deliver what the public sees so that encompasses things like basic landscape and park maintenance building and facility maintenance maintenance of our trees and vegetation so that urban forestry and then programming doing all of that amazing work in terms of junior guards special events seniors teens classes after school activities that runs the whole gamut so with all of the pressures out there in terms of inflation and increases continuing to stretch this budget that requires real dedication from the team we talk about budget management as a team sport in person to make sure that we come in at or below budget and so now I'll turn it over to Tony to talk through some of the implications of how we're going to operationalize the elements of our FY24 budget. All right thank you Lindsay so as we think about our fiscal year 2014 budget the status quo budget to go back roughly $1.9 million is what we have to work with apart from personnel and apart from a lot of the sort of costs for water sewer refuse so we've got roughly $2 million to sort of work with and so over the next few slides I'm going to look at sort of three buckets that are oriented toward how are we going to do this in fiscal year 2014 and so I just want to go through a few of these bullet points here but really the message here for all of these is that as we go into this new year and need to identify funding for these other needs whether it's related to staff and public safety these inflationary increases that Lindsay alluded to trying to find opportunities for additional funding within our existing budget however these are things that we would come back to the council to really discuss and get specific approval for these needs so these operating priorities so critical equipment and facility needs as our facilities continue to need investment and a variety of needs that's an area where we're going to have to figure out how do we sort of in a way absorb this into our existing budget or come back to the council or find new opportunities for funding same with the civic auditorium in terms of cost recovery so the demand is back at the civic auditorium so it's a matter of how do we do that how do we run it how do we make sure that we're in a position to really serve the community through the demand needs of the civic staff and public safety this is an ongoing thing but as Lindsay alluded to really investing in training and tools in potentially hardening some of our facilities in terms of security systems whatever that might be so there are some needs there that aren't included in this budget and be really engaged with the council throughout fiscal year 24 on how do we fund these moving forward inflationary increases this is something that applies to virtually every department in the city and we're feeling as well and then staff development and MOU requirements and so this piece really speaks to overtime and on-call staff that we've got on-call virtually all the time as different needs come up in evenings and weekends so I may come back to this slide but I just want to sort of reference an example of this at Harvey West pool and we may sort of go through this as an example once we get to questions but again I want to use these slides here to kind of contextualize the how how are we managing how are we really going to use this status quo budget to be successful in service to the community so the second piece the second bucket if you will and really implementing our budget for fiscal year 24 is really thinking outside the budget so we heard yesterday at city council regarding the city's volunteer program and this is an area where parks and rec in partnership with our many many volunteers continues to be successful is an area that we really want to lean into even more and so just to highlight a couple examples here I'm going to get in that pool example looking to work with Santa Cruz County Parks and Recreation to run Harvey West pool on behalf of the city so where we don't have the capacity per se from a staffing or budget standpoint we can leverage the subject matter expert and the team over at Simpkin swim center to potentially work with the county to run our pool so looking for those really creative partnerships on how we can provide a level of service to the community but in a way that's smart and working with these both volunteers and sort of organized partners in this case the county the other example I wanted to highlight here is actually that third bullet point which is the Santa Cruz mountain trail stewardship organization which is doing virtually 100% of the trail maintenance in the city of Santa Cruz right now so I think that that is a real success story in a lot of ways but it's a group that we really rely on from a volunteer standpoint at a partnership standpoint through various MOUs or adoptive park agreements to really maintain the trails not just biking but hiking trails really many of our trails throughout the system so this is a bit of that the how in terms of with the status quo budget the different demands from the community how do we really do this and it's largely rooted in being very creative and being very engaged with a lot of our partners in the community and in this third bucket in terms of how on our budget and fiscal year 24 so we talked about our operational priorities but we want to make sure that we continue as Lindsay talked about planting seed so the sort of tree metaphor that we talked about this is really that piece of it so looking at the strategic priorities we want to make sure to invest in these areas as well so that relates to developing plans to address infrastructures this could be green infrastructure but this could be things like doing a facilities condition assessment and fiscal year 24 so we have an idea of the true capital needs and costs throughout our facilities we've not done that before so we really need to assess what are those needs capital outlay forecast and planning as well so really focusing on infrastructure looking forward focusing on cost recovery as well as Lindsay mentioned we just finalized a draft five year business plan for the civic auditorium in terms of generating revenue to make that a cost control operation for the city fund 104 is this piece of the general fund that's really oriented toward the wharf and is a piece of the general fund that has several departments involved from the fire department marine safety, economic development public works and parks and recreation so we really want to focus on how do we make sure that the wharf is as successful as it can be from a revenue standpoint but also from a maintenance standpoint and just long term sustainability standpoint as well golf course and disc golf fall into the strategic priority as well we do have some capital improvement dollars appropriated currently for both disc golf and the golf course so those are projects underway and we'll talk about those more on June 13th but we do 40,000 rounds of golf roughly at the golf course and approximately 65,000 rounds of disc golf per year so really trying to invest in those areas to make those generate positive revenue for the city to help support these other operations and functions within parks and rec and then pursuing federal and state aid always a key strategic priority for us let's see I know there's two more bullet points on here if I can get them to go Bonnie will you advance the slide there thank you alright this item we have a question about the city leadership what we're calling a parks positive ballot measure in other words referring to a potential sales tax measure in November of 2024 so really talking about these needs doing the assessment being in a position strategically to look toward November of 2024 and as we talked about a little bit really we've got a lot of identified personnel challenges we want to make sure to continue to think about how do we keep our staff safe how do we keep the parks safe how do we make sure that that quality of life that people just value so much in this community how do we make sure to retain that and invest in that so we want to make sure that parks and our staff and our facilities remain safe so a lot of work to do there and all of this again both the strategic priorities the operational priorities and in the partnerships the thinking budget are all the types of ways that we'll be thinking about implementing our fiscal year 24 budget this year how do we put it in practice and make sure that we're successful in service to the community wanted to just for the council's information and consideration to share a little bit from the parks and recreation commission we met on April 24th and presented our budget to them and a lot of similar themes we really sought high level feedback from the commission in terms of themes where they believe that the department and hopefully the city will make investment in the parks and recreation budget so these are really consistent with what we've talked about but these are the high level themes we didn't get into line item detail but really these are kind of the high level again sort of categories or themes from the parks and recreation commission so again developing plans to address infrastructure progress on the Harvey West pool emphasis on green infrastructure urban forestry continued cost recovery efforts and going to the bottom there identified personnel issues and staff safety so very similar to what we've talked about as a department with the city manager within the city so a lot of key themes there I just wanted to acknowledge Commissioner Jacob Pollock we couldn't find a picture for him so forgive he's not he's not a shadow he's a real person and he's a great commission member so apologies we couldn't find a photo for Commissioner Pollock alright with that that brings us to the end and we're very appreciative of the time Mayor and Council and happy to welcome questions at this point Mr. Elliott thanks to you thank you very much for the budget presentation thank you to all of your staff for the fine work that you do let me acknowledge Council Member Brown I'm going to try to go first so I don't go on for too long thank you it's always great to hear from you and your team and see the wonderful work you do and with very little resources thank you Lindsay it's always great to hear from you as well your whole team I have a couple of just really particular questions one actually one related to the goals could we or should we have a goal replacing the walkways at Neary I think that's something that's moving forward and I didn't see it in there you have a very long list which reflects the ambitions of your department which is wonderful but I'd love to see that captured and then perhaps a goal for next year to be first on the presentation list for budget hearings because you always end up towards the end and we and maybe feel rushed as a result so I'm kidding about that one so I wanted to just raise the pool you suggested that that might be something for further conversation in the Q&A and I wanted to first say I'm thrilled that there are folks in the community who are picking this up we councilmember Watkins and myself were on a committee we tried to move forward in this direction and came to the conclusion that a feasibility study along with the Parks and Rec commissioners who formed a subcommittee with us to move forward with this and we do there is funding for a feasibility study hopefully enough and there is a group in the community that is really excited about moving forward and they are quite ambitious and I've talked with them and I think many of you have I'm not sure if you've heard from them yet but the cruise masters and I think we have such an opportunity to move forward with that study I want to make sure that you're clear that it's a priority and so I don't imagine there's anyone who would say no to that I think it's a real commitment and their ambitions are to really develop a world-class aquatic center and I think we've got the will and we don't have the resources but we can get there so I wanted to just ask you to make sure that you feel with the allocation that you have already in the budget that that will be sufficient I wouldn't want some cost overrun to hold that up or cause us to have to rethink how we proceed so I just want to make sure that you've got what you need there thank you so much as you mentioned we have appropriated dollars currently to do a feasibility study or a market study on aquatic so we've got that direction we've got the funding to do that that's a project that we will undertake this calendar year with our new recreation superintendent who's starting here in a couple weeks so that funding is there we are in contact with cruise masters and really support and partner and welcome that involvement and would even welcome an expansion of community involvement in that I think it'll be a big effort and I think a lot of exciting things there we have I just wanted to acknowledge there was a committee a couple years ago a subcommittee of both council and parks and rec commission members they said very clearly we need a pool and we want a pool and the current pool is failing but we want to figure out how to invest in a new pool looking from with this goal of really exploring what is the need and then working our way toward that goal through some sort of capital campaign with cruise masters and through the community another piece of this just to tie in and we'll talk about through the CIP discussion in a couple weeks is related to a potential Harvey West overall master plan and our interest in doing that so right now we're in a San Lorenzo line which is I think going really well we've gotten great feedback from the community Harvey West doesn't have a master plan and has a lot of antiquated amenities in Harvey West Park including the pool and so I think another piece that could tie into this that really overhaul or re-envisioning of Harvey West Park as a whole and that could tie into this as well so a lot of opportunities there councilmember Brown I think you mentioned in terms of long-term operational cost that's the question at this point we know that to run Harvey West pool as it is currently is a little over a million dollars a year to run it that's funding that we don't currently have so we'll have to work toward getting to that point thank you and just to follow up on that because we are we still have a pool and people are interested in using it and I know you've been working really hard on that partnership which you talked about in your slides so I wanted to just you know ask if where how you're feeling about that is it I mean what I got out of that experience with the committee was that we are that investment to continue to operate the pool is not really an efficient investment either and it's it's because all the reasons you know and so do you feel like and we're gonna we'll have the possibility to rate you know for that to be a you know fees to cover those costs right to for staffing for the pool but do you so do you have a sense that the work that is going to be done this year will be sufficient to have some access in the shorter term it's a great question so currently so today we are piecing funding together basically to invest in basically making the pool safe and accessible so we've got a host of issues that we are again piecing funding together to get the pool up and running this summer so our goal as of today is to open the pool July first this summer now with that said a lot of steps there we've got to get the projects done from a maintenance standpoint to make it safe and accessible we have to get confirmation from county environmental health to give us the thumbs up on all of those things we are working with county parks and recreation so they have a draft MOU that's going to the county board of supervisors also on June 13th for adoption if that's adopted then we'll be in good shape to open on July 1st with all of that said it'll be a light opening so county would plan to run our pool maintain and operate it lifeguards etc with their existing staff so it'll be a matter of them sort of shifting staff over from Simpkins to the Harvey West pool to make it work so to start we may only be open for public access a day or two or three days a week we're trying to figure that out right now so but again we know there's huge demand on the pool we know that our summer campers want to access the pool as part of that program so we're doing all that we can to maximize that access but a lot of steps to get there so yeah more more to come on that thank you I'll just say in closing to the extent that we had a committee and we didn't get very far and then COVID and lots of other things so I don't know that we would necessarily want to reinvigorate that kind of process but to the extent that you are looking to council members to provide leadership for that capital campaign and related activities please do call on me it's in my district the wide asset and treasure really and we want to do our part thank you just a couple of comments ditto I think we probably all feel that way it is in your district council member brown but that pool means a lot to me my family and the community so I'm there to support when that moves forward I just want to comment on the integration of the commission's feedback into your presentation I'm sure that all the departments as appropriate have included that in the forming of the budget but to see it visibly was really helpful so I would just like to see that again with Parks and Rec excuse me I can't speak clearly the other departments as appropriate to integrate the commission feedbacks as well in the future and the other thing I wanted to note was I saw in the accomplishments the surf school permit RFP and I think what I would like to add to that is there was a lot of work that went into integrating an equity lens to that RFP so I just wanted to acknowledge and call it out and thank you and thank Trey and thank everyone who put so much work into it's not perfect but to getting it to the next level of where where we want it to head we want to acknowledge that and then just one last comment, feedback I know we talked about this there was a small group but a small group of youth from Santa Cruz High that came to the State of the Youth community meeting and noted that they weren't aware of all the Parks and Rec offerings so just something for us to think about in the future of how to engage Thank you The Vice Mayor is recognized Thank you, I'm going to follow up on that since we talked about that in D.C. and I think we talked about a good way to do that we've been working really hard with Santa Cruz City Schools elementary schools this year and I think we could do that certainly with the two high schools and two middle schools in our city next year and put that in and I'd be happy to act as a liaison to help facilitate that with the appropriate people at those sites I wanted to say one thing I was so excited and I think you know what it is and the goals is the spring break and winter break junior guards and this is something that's super exciting and I hope that eventually we can move towards some sort of year round junior guard program and those students they're junior guards they got to go to France over spring break to visit the year round program they have over there it's really amazing and it's life-saving as a sport and it's each safety week it seems super appropriate that we're training generations of kids but obviously a barrier to joining is not being able to swim so the pool is another thing I really want to help with and finally there is one goal that I don't see in here but I would like to see because I'm super excited about all those kids we got scholarships and I hope that it'll just show up naturally but I would like to see some of the demographics of the youth programming reflect the demographics of our town and so you know when you go to the beach and oh mine's the blonde kid in the red bathing suit I'd like to see some of the other kids in the community there thanks guys what we're happy to yeah thank you I would like to welcome Lindy to speak to that we do have a scholarship standpoint we do capture that data I think some really good success so I just want to speak to that briefly yeah just real quickly I think I mentioned about 34% of scholarship recipients were MediCal families yeah which is a huge increase from last year and I think that that's kind of been you know through the targeted outreach but also being deliberate about tracking the demographics that we were also put in touch with the Central Coast Alliance for Health and so we've been talking with them about ways that we can partner more explicitly with them to support more of the programming and they made that point as well in terms of the need to better track demographics now our system does allow us to track certain aspects but you know beginning to make that more robust I think is a logical next step and something that we definitely want to do in FY24 I totally appreciate that and I'm super excited about the work thus far so I have no doubt that it's going to continue next year Council Member Watkins yes thank you for the presentation I agree with all of my colleagues comments and I'm happy to hear that you're also going to be tracking some of the demographics I know it's something we've been wanting to do I'll just go ahead and add sort of an exclamation mark if I can on Council Member Brown's comments about the pool I think it's been something I feel like I've been talking about since the time I came on office and we had a different parks director at the time who actually wasn't supportive of the pool I learned and was like not wanting to keep the pool and so at least we have this pool still I guess it's on the positive but we need to use the pool and especially as the weather is getting hotter and people are looking for relief people want to access a pool and there's no public pool and if you have to pay for a pool it would be a member it makes it elite if you will and so however we can have that facility available to all would be amazing I think part of what worked with the scholarships and I want to credit you Renee Council Member Golder for her work is really you can offer something and you can have something in place but if there isn't a connection between why people aren't accessing it then there's a breakdown right and so having your leadership Santa Cruz City Schools to say look our families aren't registering for the online portal and they have language barriers and we're going to sit down with them and we're going to get them accounts and then we're going to help them when Super Saturday comes or whatever it is register for these offerings and get them enrolled in the scholarships that's that bridge right for those two entities to kind of be that catalyst for making it work and so for the pool I think that's the same approach we should take and that we can have a great pool but if our youth from the beach flats who have not felt culturally safe to be around water or able to even access via transportation to the pool that's a breakdown right and so however we're thinking about the equity issues and ensuring that our parks programming reflects our demographics I 100% agree with you Renee in terms of what we see at the junior guards program that is a accessible beach for all to enjoy its beauty of California beaches you have to sometimes pay in other states to access beaches so the fact that we don't have more diversity in that program is troubling and it's not for anyone's fault but it's just the reality of how we need to be intentional and purposeful about enrolling and supporting people being able to access those programs so I'm 100% supportive of whatever that looks like in terms of resources, council direction leadership, subcommittee you name it you mentioned the sales tax as the parks measure and I know this is probably forthcoming so you can just say hey wait I'm totally fine with that but I know at a time when I was on this revenue committee there was also a conversation about a parks bond and I'm just curious where we're at with all of that stuff if it's appropriate to share at this time I happen to chime in on that councilmember Watkins appreciate the question so one thing that Tony didn't mention is over the course of the last year the trust republic land conducted a really great comprehensive analysis of all the potential sustainable revenue mechanisms we might consider one of those that's kind of floated to the top is a sales tax measure but that is work it's early days that the ad hoc subcommittee will run to ground in terms of what the best option to pursue and in addition to all the parks priorities that we're wanting to move forward might we want to also weave in there so within all of that framework there could be future opportunities for bonding as well for some of the capital and infrastructure opportunities we're talking about today including potentially as part in tandem with the capital campaign related to the aquatics facilities and the many other the long list of improvements we're wanting to make from a parks perspective I'll just go ahead and add that I think our community really values parks space they value all the beautiful aspects of our community that we're so lucky to live in and enjoy and so however we're really using what we're hearing from our community members from our visitors to invest in things that they want to enjoy and want others to enjoy I think is really important and then bless you my last comment I'd say is you know in terms of like the the development and the neighborhoods and you know I know we have parks but I'm wondering how parklets could fit into and I see the performance measure of looking at a percentage of residents a 10 minute walk to a park it's just like you know small spaces where kids can play or you know little there's little parks all over and so especially in our downtown I'd say you know we're having a significant growth in that in this area and people will want space to play and have like their kids run free or open and then available for enjoyment in other ways so I don't know how to relay that but maybe it fits within that performance measure is definitely something to you know prioritize as we're looking at our development plans as well okay that's it thanks Mr. Newsom is recognized thank you Mary Keely and I you know just want to thank you and your staff for the great work that you do you do great work around the city and just want to thank you for that and I just want to say I was really excited with this proposal to see the kind of increased focus in youth programs and in teen services and also you know in neighborhood parks and also in great community centers around that we have you know the London Nelson Community Center and the Civic and the Beach Flags Community Center so thank you for that and thank you for your work others thank you very very much for all your good work we appreciate your entire department you are one of the important faces of this government to the public and you are in the enviable position of facing publicly with a big smile on your face and what you get back the other way from the public with whom you interact is a big smile on their face it's one of those wonderful departments in which to work and we do understand that the capital needs are far outstripping the resources at this point and looking at a revenue measure sometime next year makes very very good sense it you know a way to think about this is Santa Cruz without a public pool and that is just pausing on that for a second is rather stunning so and I think that's symbolic of maybe a somewhat wider issue around investment in our parks and recreation facilities we are blessed to have state parks national monuments and all manner of things around but we are the ones that are expected to do that inside the city and you folks with enormous challenges on the demand side do a very very good job thank you all very very much for that thank you very much we are on the water department budget Ms. Menard will be presenting on behalf of the water department good afternoon afternoon mayor and council members I have with me David Baum who's the water department chief financial officer and are you putting my presentation up for you it's the power point I have a couple of items in there that just bring up if we get a question okay then so I have pitched this presentation at a fairly high level but believe me if you have questions we can go into any degree of detail why does that not surprise me why does that not surprise me well in part because I figured out that I was well I didn't think I was at the end but close to the end I thought your appetite for a lot of detail might not be terribly high at this time of day and then again it might and if it is it is okay so I'm hoping that I know how to make this work here's my brief agenda today I want to talk a little bit about the overview of our department this should be very familiar to you at this point achievements, proposed budget and then something about the CIP now in our case our capital program is integrated into our budget because we use a integrated financial pro forma to help us make sure that we are pulling all the pieces together in an understandable way with respect to our revenues, our expenditures our debt service, our debt service coverage, our financial metrics that we're managing as part of this major capital re-investment and I did want to mention with respect to the water commission's role they have been very involved and over the last number of years we have had the water commission make an explicit recommendation about the budget which they will do at their meeting on the 5th of June and that will come to you as a letter, a fairly detailed letter with a number of attachments to it with a recommendation to accept the water commission's recommendation on the budget and the capital program so to go ahead our core service, we operate 24-7, 365 and we provide water to about 100,000 population inside the city and outside the city we provide meter reading billing and prompt and courteous customer service, I don't know about you but very seldom does an angry customer get through to me and I really appreciate the way that my customer service staff the Santa Cruz municipal utility staff addresses and works with our customers to courteously respectfully and in a prompt way to address their issues which they often have many we operate and maintain water system with a replacement value of about a billion dollars our major infrastructure is a huge part of the community's infrastructure that supports economic and environmental sustainability in our community and I think that we know how important it is to make that do its job and also to be good stewards of that resource the infrastructure resource over time and we also own and manage about 4,000 acres of land in the county and many of them have our facilities on them but also we operate a recreation program at Loch Lomond that is required by our license for the Newell Creek Dam and is one of the jewels of the upper basin I understand those people up there think it's their park haha um so uh to move on which I need to point this out something there we go so in terms of achievements I wanted to stop here for a second and I wanted to say that probably of all the things the city does this is the one that most people interact with pretty much every day when you got up this morning and hopped in the shower in the back and getting your glass filled up with water or whether when you get home it's time to cook dinner or do the laundry or run a you know load of dishes at the end of the day you turn the water on and you expect it to come out and by God it does and uh I was thinking about this thing with respect to the post office what they used to say was something about neither sleet nor snow or whatever that quote was that I think we're all familiar with and I think for the water staff we definitely had that kind of a winter this year it's not the first time for us um and no one turned their water on and didn't have it come out which is really an accomplishment to those folks who know how to make it work they they take it seriously and they make it work they are creative problem solvers and believe me we had a lot of those this year but it's not just in these kind of circumstances you know we have droughts we have other kinds of issues that we are working on all the time and my folks deliver and I think people take it for granted and frankly given how complicated our world is today it's nice to be able to know that when you turn the faucet the water will come on um I want to sort of just give you some examples in addition to that everyday operational production of drinking water that is high quality and uh you know reliably there for you um that we have been doing a lot in our system over the last number of years that are involving major reinvestments in the water system and sort of stopping starting in the upper left hand corner at least the way I'm looking at it there there's two um and then running clockwise there's two pictures there of the uh inlet outlet pipeline the one with the fellow inside the pipe that you can see in the middle there that is the new intake pipeline and the pipe that's kind of down to the left there is a separate fish flow release pipeline so that we can uh take that pipe out of service occasionally and do an inspection it was size specifically so that it could be inspected internally either with a remote rover kind of thing or even in some cases a person on a little sort of are you volunteering? so I think that project is winding down now we finished up here in another few months and the one there to the left of that one is part of the replacement of about 2000 feet of the new creek pipeline that comes out of that dam and is a really important part of a lot of the work we do we uh obviously fixed hundreds of leaks in the distribution system the distribution system is getting older it does need attention we are kind of purposefully doing kind of patch that work because we've got a lot of other big things on tap right now and frankly we don't have enough money to do everything we would need to do all at once and then in the middle there on the bottom we can see that we did a meter replacement that's closing in on finishing the meter replacement for the whole system creating a lot of opportunity for people to understand what's going on with their own water use but also giving us the ability to give folks leak notices when we see that leaks are happening on their side of the meter and the jumping people there in that bottom is folks accepting a $7.6 million check from the state for a grant for the Santa Margarita excuse me the Santa Cruz Mid County groundwater base and it's an implementation grant from Department of Water Resources and that money is going into further supporting our exploration of aquifer storage and recovery in the Mid County base and a lot of work looking at the potential for recycled water to actually serve both of Cal's needs and our own needs for drought supply here sort of on the ASR theme we've been doing sort of feasibility testing and demonstration testing of aquifer storage and recovery in that upper left picture that's the Belts 12 and that is one of the sites that we've been using we've done some work to improve the fire in our watershed there are two 10,000 gallon tanks that were placed up there to be available to firefighters to Cal Fire for example in the event that we got something going in that watershed and the catastrophic burn in that watershed would be very damaging to water quality and likely produce sedimentation into the reservoir that would reduce its volume neither of which would be a good thing we replaced an intake structure on the Laguna that's there on the right hand side that facility has a plaque on it that says 1890 and that is one of the earliest pieces of our water infrastructure and it was a very difficult supply to use had a lot of maintenance issues the new intake screen replaced those and gave us access to that facility and that water during parts of the time this winter when we were having trouble with pipeline breaks on the Newell Creek Pipeline and then the bottom there center picture is the final replacement of the Ocean Street extension main that was necessary in order for us to do some of the work that's planned at the Graham Hill Water Treatment Plant which is the last slide at the bottom on the left hand side and you'll see that that's basically looking at that facility which is a subject of a lot of major work ongoing now and planned over the next few years you heard a presentation about that a few months ago and then finally in terms of accomplishments I want to highlight some work we did last November with a lot of other partners on workforce development this is the first Santa Cruz trades fair that was held at the Civic that event is scheduled to be re-held again this coming November and it's part of an activity that we've been working on that's focused on workforce development for green economy construction and skilled trades jobs and we've got a really great informal partnership that's involving the workforce development board staff the county office of education some folks from your future is our business and a number of other parties that are engaged with us in Cabrillo College in planning how we can support workforce development for high paying jobs for living wage jobs for our residents here to both participate in some of the work that's going on not just in the water department but also sort of city-wide, county-wide on major reinvestment in infrastructure construction of new development what have you but also for our own employees because we do have both us wastewater and others have significant operating employees that need skilled trades and are part of the target audience that we're working on there the picture with that odd thing with a lot of red in it that's the one of the new concrete tanks there are three concrete tanks that are being replaced up there at that's the second one the roof is being put on that now as we speak when that one and the other one that's completed are commissioned here shortly then what will happen is the last tank up there will be demolished and the third tank will be built where that's being demolished so a lot of effort to try to figure out how to operate a plant while you're basically tearing it apart and making it new again you took an action here a short while ago to approve a whiffy loan for us 1.27 127 million and then finally the bottom is issues related to some work we're doing with our customers on low income water low income household water assistance program which is a federal program that we're implementing to assist customers who are having trouble paying their bills and so that's one of the major issues too our future our water our future item which I forgot to mention is really the most recent stage of that work that we started with the water supply advisory committee that resulted in securing our water future policy that the council adopted last November okay so an overview of our budget we asked our staff to do modest increases we have a multi-year rate increase that the council approved in November of 2021 the second year of that will be going into effect and you can see it's pretty big 16 percent and so that is part of the increased funding to pay for the capital program that we're doing and then our proposed budget is 42 .6 million and that's a little bit over last year the numbers from fiscal 23 include 5 million that we haven't included in that calculation of the 1.7 million dollar increase because we paid down 5 million on the most revolving line of credit that we have with the Bank of America to help us manage cash flow and that line of credit was under 1 percent more than a year, slightly more than a year ago and is now running about 5 percent so we want to give them that money back and find some less expensive money and one of the things that the council has been looking at both historically are these three goals our budget is entirely in alignment with both fiscal sustainability for an enterprise fund for infrastructure renewal which we have been making a major investment on over the last about five or six, eight years and then thriving organization it's really important to us that our folks are well trained that they have the resources they need to do their job and we're working hard to make that so and an environment that I think we all find challenging with respect to some of these issues we do a lot of long-range financial planning in our organization and included in that is we have a multi-year financial pro forma that we use as a model kind of our performance over time we have a number of inflation factors that are built into that that look at salaries and benefits services implies and what are the inflationary factors that are included there we include the cost of debt and you can see that we have a number of different financing options there and they all have different kind of interest rates associated with them and we are actively trying to move towards the least cost debt options for ourselves going forward because a huge part of our capital reinvestment is being debt financed as a way of allowing us to spread the cost across the beneficiaries at multi sort of multi-year multi-generational beneficiaries of these investments so you can see that our our capital program has a five-year number there of about $373 million so far in fiscal 23 we've spent $63 million and we've got about $21 million carrying over and then I believe that the number for next year is probably on this next slide I think it's 30 something right and how much for this year the 24 what's the 53 so anyway big numbers compared to a lot of what you've been hearing about big numbers this is a little bit about our revenues we are 100% enterprise funded the main source of our resources comes from water rates we do have a little bit of money that is in a rate stabilization reserve that is integrated into water rate revenue collection and we do use that to help us sort of even out some of the things like when COVID happens and we don't sell right as much water as we think we're going to sell or we have inflationary impacts like we had last year that really kind of upset the apple cart with respect to financing and then we have a relatively modest amount in our system development fund that is used for expansion of the system as opposed to reinvestment in the system our expenses are mostly personnel and services and supplies and we do have a growing amount of debt service that we are obviously managing and planning for and one of the things that is included in the work we've done that you will see and the materials that come to you for the full budget is we do have a financial pro forma and you'll be able to see our performance against established financial metrics for reserves for an emergency reserve for cash on hand operating cash and then also debt service coverage and days of cash so those are some really important financial metrics we work very hard to manage to I mentioned the capital program mentioning that one of the things that's happened that's been a big relief is that we've got inflation back in somewhat more acceptable level last year almost 9% which is a big deal but now we're just under just over 2.6% in the past year so that's a really big help and these are some of our key capital projects all of these projects were part of the package of projects that were included in the WIFI loan that the council looked at a month ago big ones, a no creek pipeline replacement felt into Graham Hill and it's a really big deal and it's one of the ones that the government is prioritized and really ready to go it's one of the ones we're looking for SRF funding for because we could potentially get something at 2% 2.1% interest rather than the WIFI loan which is right now running at 3.7% but you know it shows you according to our long range financial plan that we have a strategy for about 15% of our capital financing is a page you go financing funding and then the rest is debt funding and you can sort of see what's going on here about the amounts that we're looking at over the next couple of years and clearly debt service is going to be one of our budget over the long term as a result of these investments and with that well this is my friend Eileen who feels like puppies must have and she asked me if she could put this in and I said knock yourself out leave them smiling that's right well thank you so much Ms. Menard earlier this year richly deserved the national recognition that you received for your career in this work and it couldn't be more true the take it for granted part about turning on that water tap and I think that that became especially evident during the disaster this winter when you were challenged with essentially fix the flat tire but don't stop the car in the process and to be able to uninterrupted provide 100,000 customers with water during they had enough worries on their mind without that and that was not exactly a band-aid fix that took some real work and you and your team and the contractors that came in to assist you deserve great recognition and appreciate from the public let me ask a couple of questions with regard to Locke Lomond and its actual capacity to impound water I was in another office I held was involved in the decommissioning of the Carmel Dam which was put together and over several decades the failure to to dredge essentially that dam they ended up with something that's a 200 foot dam and they had three feet of water in it because of the failure to maintain so the only solution to that actually was to take the dam down move the river around it was really quite a complicated deal but my question here goes to Locke Lomond in terms of its storage capacity how do we retain that storage capacity yeah that's a great question I will tell you that we do about every decade we do a bathymetry sort of a study that looks at the volume of water in the lake and the last one was done probably probably it was pre-COVID so 17-18 that kind of timeframe that report was shared with our water commission at the time to sort of describe it but we weren't we're not seeing a huge amount of accumulation of sediment in that basin we have seen and we've been having obviously more severe rain events that have increased sedimentation coming in from the main feeder to that reservoir which is Newell Creek above the dam right we saw some I think quite a bit of land movement in the evaluations that the staff was doing this year but we're not seeing a massive amount of sedimentation as occurred there that's a situation we see much more in Laguna over on the north coast and also in majors over there and those are one of the reasons that we needed to replace the intake and the Laguna facility was that the whole area behind the diversion structure is sedimented and what happens is that when the storm events happen and that water is then available following the storms there's not very much pressure to be able to divert quantities into the intake structure because it's sort of coming over just like this amount instead of you know all across the whole face of the screen because it's sedimented up but so we're not seeing that particular issue but I do think that with respect to the sort of climate impacts on what kind of storage we can expect to happen have over time it's a big deal because multi-year droughts you know years where La Cloneman doesn't fill because we don't get the sort of kind of gusher storms these are becoming much more common and so you don't fill it, you make recovery but you know incrementally over time if you continue and draw in dry conditions you draw it down, draw it down, draw it down to the point of which regardless of its capacity there just isn't water there that can get you through another dry season and I imagine that with regard to sedimentation getting into the impoundment area behind the dam face that forest fires we got kind of lucky on this one it seemed to me that that La Cloneman's if you will mini watershed around it was not effective whereas had it been which I think we should assume in the future it could be I would imagine that accelerates the sedimentation behind Yeah, there's an example for a Denver watershed that was kind of on the west side of the Rockies a lot of their water comes over and comes through the Rockies into Denver of a major watershed that was burned over in a forest fire this is probably 20 years ago now and the amount of sedimentation pretty much took that watershed out of service until they came in and completely dredged it and then allowed it to refill I think a couple of things one is things that are happening that the department is doing I mentioned the fire you know the fire safety improvements up at La Cloneman we have been looking at ways to identify our ecology study for that watershed we've been looking at ways to manage our lands in ways that are more sustainable from a wildfire protection point of view I also would say that we have the work that we're doing at the Gram-Hell Water Treatment Plan in terms of updated treatment design will give us a lot more capacity to deal with impaired water quality than we currently have more treatment processes and steps that would allow us to continue to use water from that supply even if it's more impacted by you know sediments or things that would get into it as a result of having parts of the watershed have been burned thank you you mentioned in your presentation and I acknowledge this frequently which is that before I got here this city council and you did a very good job establishing the city's policy framework for resiliency in terms of our water and if I understand where we are now what will come to this city council over the next little while is going to be selecting from among the menu of choices that were predicated upon that policy work that was done in 2022 and so my question is when we will start seeing that and which of the which options are likely to come our way yeah that's a great question so the work that's going on right now is basically implementation planning for looking at the range of options so the sources are some form of recycled water some form of upper storage and recovery or use of surface water in some other way and then obviously we have the ocean in our front yard we can't take that off the table even though I think we all know that that particular source has its own set of cooties if you will but I do think that what we're really looking at is some form of using surface more surface water when it's available and this would be a good year if parts of our system were in a little bit more robust shape than they currently are that we know that we have some opportunities potentially work with the scott's valley water district as it relates to this new intertide that was grant funded that we're going to be connected up with them in a couple of years to maybe do some water with them which might be a really cost effective low regrets kind of activity that would get us certainly doesn't solve the whole problem but would contribute greatly to being able to have some more water available for those years that aren't the worst case condition but look kind of ugly and then I think that there are a number of recycled water options that we're actively exploring in collaboration with wastewater and also with the Soquel Creek water district to look at those that's part of what's being funded out of that 7 point million dollar check that came in from the state because whatever we're going to do there we or the Soquel Creek water district has to be done in a way that contributes to and supports the ultimate sustainability of that groundwater basin which is clearly important regionally both to the Soquel system and our system when you asked me when and I didn't answer that part the when part is probably in 24 probably like this time next year start seeing some things about it that'll be quite helpful I do want to comment on what you said I know you're kidding around a little bit about DSL about the cooties let me say this about that that that was put on the ballot at a very different time and it was put on the ballot not during a drought and the measure passed rather easily but the measure did not say the city could not pursue DSL it said that the voters needed to vote on it before the trigger could be pulled so I think it's a very good idea that we are studying this much the same as any other technology the DSL nation technology is advancing literally every day it's reducing its energy cost per gallon and it's increasing in favorability around the coast of this country including in California and including at the California coastal commission so I think we should I appreciate you're kidding around about that because I think that's a fair way to say it but I think we are it's an evolving issue and I don't think we as a council should be afraid to have that in front of us as an option and discuss it openly and honestly with the public I agree with you and I was kidding around there I do think that it's hard to think about where we are geographically located and what resources we have access to and how important it is for us to have an adequate resource to deal with conditions that look like they're getting bad and there could be the kind of experience we're having with whiplash weather longer droughts, drier conditions we've done a lot of work looking at climate that is kind of scary looking and makes you want to have a lot of robustness to your supply choices because some of the things we've depended on for a long time might not be a big part of the solutions during those periods of time. I think that's absolutely right, I think we can look at other jurisdictions, city and county San Francisco has the entire Hetch Hetchy at their disposal if you live in basically central or southern California you either have the diversion from the Colorado river or you have the California water project or you have the California aqueduct or this year you have the Kern river or this year you have the Kern river which they just diverted to the state water project being what I would call off system which means we are dependent upon ourselves to be able to make this work and I think that's another reason to have the entire community before us in a contemporary way to evaluate what makes good sense. Let me ask if there are other members who have questions. Vice-mayors recognize you. I appreciate what you said mayor and I actually completely agree and that if I back paddled I probably would have changed my vote, I mean obviously back then it was a different climate and I completely did not support desal, I think I've gone 180 degrees and basically I'd rather see more water flowing down the San Lorenzo river and restoring native fishing and I think if we're thinking about ourselves as just a tiny part of the global fishing industry having that as a natural resource as well it contributes to food and recreation around the world the salmon right so I think we have to look at it through a different lens at this point in time and so I appreciate that you are all saying let's not take it off the table when we're talking about this. Well and I think the other thing to note which we haven't talked so much about recently but hopefully you're going to be able to see here in some time in this calendar year you know we've been working on a habitat conservation plan for anadromous species as steel head and coho and we have water rights changes that are pending before the state water resource control board that would adopt agreed flows we've got work going on to bring forward that habitat conservation plan and that's designed to share the resource with our community and with the natural systems including these really important species so I think that is something that is not that common in California and I keep wondering why the state isn't wanting to make this happen sooner because they could point to us and say you know this is a good example that you can make it work if you're willing to make the commitment that says it's about water for fish and water for people exactly councilmember Watkins well thank you Rose Mary I feel like your department I we get so many regular updates that I just really appreciate you always just keeping us abreast of all the moving parts especially with the complexity of the different projects underway and issues that arise and planning that's underway for the future I just wanted to one echo my colleagues comments in support of the various options coming before us but also really thank you for a conversation I know we've had over the years which is how to help low income families being able to afford the water bill our water bill gets high my husband loves fish tanks and working people it makes an impact in terms of affordability and I know over the years we've talked about how are we reducing the balance I guess restoring the balance of affordability and that was one way we discussed so I just really appreciated seeing that accomplishment and your work in that area as well and just so that you know next week I'm going to testify in front of the senate environment public work sub committee in a hearing on affordability water affordability can you send me the details so I can tune in I think that it's a subcommittee hearing being chaired by Senator Padilla but I was invited the last few days to do a testimony on affordability because we have really embraced the idea that we need to address this and that it's not someone else's problem it's our community's problem it's we need to step up but we can't do the solution that we need to do without the sort of federal safety net state safety net kind of contributions and that's really part of what's going on in DC they're talking about whether to continue the funding for the low income household water assistance program that funding was COVID related it's intended to end at the end of this federal fiscal year at the end of September and there's a lot of folks around the country not just obviously me saying we need to have some funding on this ongoing because we can make these commitments to doing what needs to be done to address the water system reliability climate adaptation issues or we can have Jackson Mississippi be lots of places and that's where everybody or we can have we cannot do those things and we can have non reliable systems or we can try to do the whole thing with local rates and then we'll have people who can't afford to have water service which is really not acceptable 100% agree and I couldn't think of a better person to be up there testifying on behalf of this issue and very proud to have you representing us and advocating in this way so thank you for sharing that and thank you for your work in this discussion. Thank you. I'll echo exclamation mark on council member Watkins point and I just want I mean I can't say thank you enough really for the work you do and your team does it's always a pleasure to hear from you. I don't have a lot of questions in large part because you help us understand every step of the way what's going on in the department and how we are going to mitigate the real risk in our future so I won't go on I was I did have a question though I just wanted to see if I am understanding here in your budget summary under and the resources by fund this is page 208 the 711 fund water fund is projected to increase by a pretty significant amount from 38 mill in 22 to 46 67 and I'm just wondering what constitutes that increase is that related to rate increase end of drought all of the above what are your things if you look at the lines above when you see the expenditures and you look at the debt service line you can see what's happening with debt service and that is driving what has to happen on the revenue side and that was my other question so thank you very clear other further questions or comments seeing and hearing none thank you so very very much keep up your good work thank all of your employees on our behalf they do a tremendous job so do you my goodness are we going to ever miss you well thank you for everything I know it is indispensable and I'm sure that whoever is standing here next next year will do a fabulous job thank you so much thank you alright for the business to come before us I think we've had enough today final comment final comment for a moment Mr. City Manager these were quite helpful informative very much like the formatting of both the presentations and the formatting within the document itself I think it's clear and consumable not just by budget wonks but by people who are interested in their government they're elected but the public also there's a very accessible document we cannot always say that in public agencies about budgets sometimes they are very mysterious this is not anything close to that it's very good work you and all the city staff deserve a lot of credit for a well-done presentation all around I know we will see you again in June on this a last question of you can you provide us before that meeting with each of those directions that were given about reports back either at mid-year budget hearings or at the meeting in June could you give us a listing of that first off Mayor thank you for the supportive comments it was obviously a team effort I want to thank all of our department heads all of our budget leads and of course Elizabeth and our finance team for this as smooth as it was today and yes in fact we've already been talking about putting together a document that we will send out to the council in response to all of the pending items that came up today thank you very much Vice Mayor moves adjournment and Mr. Newsom reluctantly seconds it is non-debatable those in favor say aye motion carries we're out of here recording stopped I can't believe you had my shoe you're such a prankster I love pranksters I love pranksters