 Here. Clever. Here. Meyers. Here. Brown. Here. Matthews. Here. City television channel 25 and is streaming on the city's website. City at the city of Santa Cruz dot com. Hudson Sanses is our technician for today and I'd like to thank you Hudson for being here and for your work. The purpose of today's meeting is to hear the fiscal year 2020 proposed budget. Our budget hearing schedule will proceed as follows. We will hear some content this morning from our city manager Martin Bernal and our finance director Marcus Pimentel. We will have an opportunity for public comment. We will take a break for lunch, we'll return and see if there's any additional comments and then we'll get into our council deliberations. Does our city manager have any additions to the proposed schedule? I don't, thank you. Okay, great. So at this time we'll just jump right in and good morning, Marcus. Good morning, Martin. You're welcome to take it away. All right, thank you. I was going to just start out by doing a brief introduction and essentially summary of the budget message and then I'll turn it over to Marcus who will dive into additional detail and process with respect to the proposed budget before you. So first of all, thank you very much for the opportunity this morning to go over the budget. And I will start with, I've got a few slides. Okay, so I'll start with, what really is the- Is it on? I'll be over to you. Got it, thank you. So the overall theme really is to proceed with caution given our fiscal outlook and some of the issues that we're facing and we'll go over those in a second. But I think that's basically it, that again if we proceed and we're careful with respect to what we do that we will get through these difficult fiscal times. And I think by way of background, we're optimistic obviously that we will do that because we've had a history of being able to manage our budget in a very responsible way. That has been our practice, that has been our culture, and that's what we've been able to do. And I anticipate that that will continue to be the case. And we've got a number of reasons why that's the case. First of all, we've been very good about developing fiscal sustainability plans, which involves really forecasting and looking ahead at our budget and anticipating what might happen. And then creating strategies relative to addressing those. So for example, a few years ago when we did our forecast, we projected a deficit of a million dollars this year. But we took actions in the last several years to bring that down to where while we do have a deficit, it's not at the same level, it's more manageable. And we'll be working on that and anticipate that we'll obviously deal with it. And those strategies involve a number of different factors and we'll get into those a little bit more. But again, it's really looking at the whole picture. How do we, strategies around revenues, strategies around expenditures, strategies around operations and best practices, that sort of thing. And so over the years, we've had a history of doing that and it's reflected in our audited reports when you look at our audits. We always do very well. And also the overall really indication of it is our bond rating. We have the AA plus bond rating, which is the second highest bond rating that you can achieve, which is not insignificant and that has tremendous value to our community, to our ability to finance and to move forward. So it clearly is the case that we have good fiscal practices. And we are in better shape than many communities for a variety of reasons. We are fortunate to have a diverse tax base. We are fortunate to be able to have had sort of a culture and history of fiscal responsibility. So for all those reasons, we I think we're in better shape than many other communities. So to just give you a big picture overview of our budget, we are a large organization, particularly for a city of our size. Our overall budget is $262 million and that's everything. All of our operations, a good amount of that. $106 million is our general fund and that really is what is the focus of most of our conversations. And when we talk about deficits, we really talk about the general fund. And that's largely because with respect to the general fund, that is the one area where this council, and the way fiscal policies are with respect to the general fund, is that the council really doesn't have direct control over particularly the revenues related to that. With respect to the rest of our budget, which are enterprise funds, the council can set rates with respect to how to fund those. And because of that, you can do much more long term planning. And so with those, we really never have deficits because we have much more control to do that. If that was the case in the general fund, we wouldn't probably be in the position we are now. However, in the general fund, we have to rely on the economy. We have to rely on a bunch of other factors that are beyond our control. So deficits are something that we have to manage in a completely different way, much more difficult to do. And so that requires all the work that we've been doing that we'll go over with you today. But that's where, when we're talking about the deficit, the $3 million deficit that we're facing, it's in our general fund, which is $106 million operation. And as you know, that funds largely public safety, our parks system, and some of the streets improvements. Our capital improvement budget is about $21 million. And I think the big issue here is that it is largely or entirely from our enterprise funds. Because that's the other thing that we're challenged with respect to our general fund is that because we're trying to manage these deficits, it's very hard to set aside money for capital relative to the general fund. And so in the proposed budget, there really is zero money in the general fund improvement budget. And as Marcus has mentioned many times, it's just really not a sustainable practice. We need to try to address that and build sources of funding for capital improvements. Because we'll need to make investments, otherwise we'll have multiple facilities that will fall apart over time. As I noted, while we are forecasting deficits, we believe they're manageable and with our continued fiscal strategies. And the one thing I should note that we had come in this year anticipating a deficit of about $1.6 million. We had hoped that we could present a budget to you that was balanced. However, the deficit did grow at a faster rate than we anticipated. And so we do have an increased deficit. We'll go over exactly why that happened. And that we'll be presented to you some of the options with respect to reducing that. And then we'll hear from the council and we'll be back to you with completing the whole deficit reduction process. In general, and Marcus will go over the specifics, but really it's because we continue to see some revenue decline in terms of just our tax base being eroded and some of our revenue sources. And we've just seen expenditure increases. Again, these are not necessarily unusual. Many entities are facing these increases, particularly as it relates to some of the employee costs. To be able to keep up with the PERS cost as well as, again, we do have a need to try to recruit and maintain our employees in our city. And so nonetheless, it does require some reductions. I think where our goal is to do those that are at the scale and the type that do not directly impact negatively our services. So that's our goal and we'll go with those in a few minutes. So the deficit we projected at this point is about 3.1 to 3.2 million. As I mentioned, we've developed some strategies to address that and we'll go over those in a second. And we'll have to bring back additional strategies and reductions based on the remaining and so what else the city council would like to see in the budget. And so we'll put all that together and come back to you with closing that gap. And finally, I just want to just take a little bit of time to just really thank everyone involved in the city, particularly to that really is what makes a difference in terms of the work that we do. And as you've seen in the presentations that we've had, the city has remarkable achievements and we do a lot every single day. Most doesn't get a lot of attention, it's really the crisis issues, the difficult issues that get the most attention. But there really are so many incredible things that are done in our community every day. And we're a leader in so many ways compared to so many communities. I'm sure you hear the same things when I ever go to conferences or other places. People look to Santa Cruz to ideas, to examples, I'm constantly being asked about how do you do this? And we always have really great examples. So when people are talking about, here's the latest things that we're doing, we've already are doing and we're already talking about them. So we are really a leader overall and it's easy to forget that. But it's accomplished because we have excellent employees who go above and beyond to do incredible work. They really are committed to the city, they're very loyal to the city, and they work really hard. So they need to be acknowledged. This budget document and the budget process is incredibly complex, takes a lot of time, a big effort. And we have an excellent finance team, so I want to thank them for the incredible work that they've done to put this together before you and the work that will continue. We have an excellent executive team as well, really a team that works holistically to address issues, to go beyond the department lines. I want to thank the city council. Councils have traditionally been very supportive of forwarding their priorities and concerns, but also balancing the various consistencies, balancing the various needs in a way that's responsible. And finally, we have an incredibly involved and dedicated community, lots of ideas, never a shortage. And that keeps us really pressing forward and moving ahead with many, many issues. It'll be a challenge sometimes, but by and large, we'd rather have some community that's engaged than one that doesn't care. So with that, I'll turn it over to Marcus and he'll go over more of the details. Good morning. My haste to get going yesterday morning with our 10 a.m. department finance department presentation. We're about to introduce you to the two other people who are sitting next to me and I know they self-introduced themselves, but that was bad form. So I wanted to start with Marcus Pimentel, your finance director, with us today, Cheryl Fye for assistant finance director. She's been with the city longer than I have, but not much. She's a dynamic, valuable resource to me and our entire department and to you. You don't see her a lot because she's behind the scenes making sure that when I'm not there, things are going really well. And I'm not there much, we're always in meetings and doing other things. She's really been the key to the success of a lot of things in finding us. Tracy Cole, she's our principal management analyst. She's just finishing almost her one year anniversary being in a new budget role. She was a former accountant with us. We stole her from down south. She's still a Dodger fan. We're working on that. But she's been a value add to us and to our team. We've had some, we've been challenged with a lot of workload this year. This is not one of those presentations. I'm really proud of what we've been able to achieve largely because of Cheryl and Tracy. They've been dynamic responsive late nights, weekends, doing a lot of extra work above and beyond. They're full-time day jobs as they also have families that they take care of too. So I'm just really appreciative of them and I just wanted to introduce you to who they are and a little bit about them. As Senator Martín Bernal mentioned, we have a tagline right up at the top. We've tracked a fiscal stability through unprecedented times. We've not value tested that statement. We haven't gone through focus groups, but that's kind of what we feel. We're really proud of this community, this organization, this board, this city council, current, present, and past. And we'll see what, expect those trends to continue in the future. That they've wanted us to be a fiscally responsible city because they get it, no money, no mission. Without smart finance planning, it's really hard to do your mission and what you're here to do. We are in unprecedented times. We've talked a lot about this in our mid-year presentations, prior to budget presentations, but the themes are still there. When we're seeing $12 million interest payments to the state for their lack of investments, that's $12 million of interest every year going out of this city to the state. There's interest on the debt because of their investment shortfalls. They haven't made their targets. That's a lot of resources leaving this community. I mean, we've surpassed the RDA scale or we're close to that. I mean, it's just that is an unprecedented idea, given that where you'll see a chart later. We're about ready to become the longest economic recovery period in the city's history. Yet, we're getting added on to these large, large, large payments. We've been shielding that burden for a while, but it's difficult. The economy is evolving as economies do. Consumers are evolving as consumers do. Some of us consumers are getting a little bit older and our spending habits are changing. Healthcare is becoming a more bigger piece of what we're doing. So just consumer behavior, how we're evolving, streaming videos, things that used to be taxable and non-taxable. All those things we've been talking about are unprecedented because it's all happening right now, they're all layered on, baby boomers, they don't have a lot of kids behind them, workforces, issues. Anyways, so we've talked a lot about that. That's the nature of us. We've been proactively thinking forward about how we navigate this and how we get to 23, how we get to 25, how do we get to 2031 through really difficult decisions. And it's putting a lot of strain and pressure on you guys, and we apologize. We wish we had an easier path. We wish we were telling greater stories, but this is the story we're dealt with and we're going to work together to resolve it. I just want to just remind you that this is hard work and I'm sorry about that. We wish it were different, but we're proud of the work that's been done. And Martín mentioned something that's really important to just think about. We forecasted a $1.6 million deficit for the year coming up. It's grown to $3.2 million. Your first reaction might be, wow, that's tough. And it is, we're finance people and we're nervous about that. A couple years ago, this deficit was $11 million and two years ago it was $8 million. The 2020 has been a big year for us. It's been that milestone year, like if we could figure out how to solve that, things aren't easy, but we'll be better positioned. So we do a lot of work in 2014, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19 those fiscal years. A lot of work looking to 2020, making good decisions back then for next year. We've reduced that gap already by a lot, where most communities might have just said, well, let's just see what happens. So I'm really proud of this council, I'm really proud of staff that we've been able to take that effort. And now we have a still gap, it's much more reasonable to think about. We're not in a place where we're closing centers, we're not doing that. So I just want to acknowledge all the work that's been done. Martín, his team, a lot of people behind finance who you never see, and a lot of people in this organization, your department heads, the people that are starting to fill in in the right corner because they don't want to be on TV. There's a lot of amazing people in the city, and they've all been collectively joining in to how to solve this. So I just want to acknowledge this is not just a few people, it's a collective whole. We've had 90 managers that put time out of their busy schedules last year and are doing it again this year to help us solve problems. So a little bit more of an intro than I wanted, but I just thought, this is a big day. We've allocated most of this day for you and the public, we're hoping expecting to be done around 11. That being said, we've got 27 slides, it's not I, it's we. That's less than we've ever had before for a $260 million budget because we really wanted to prioritize your time and community's time. Our goal for today is to really focus on the gap that we have and talk about how we can start solving that $3.2 million challenge. So that by June 11th, we're adopting a balanced budget. And we have about $2.4 million identified what we think are reasonable, we've recommended some touch points in there that we'll have to come back to you discuss a little bit more, but we're getting closer to that number. So I want to let you know we're making progress, we're getting closer. And I wish we could have been having this conversation one on one or in documents a week ago, and I apologize about that. But it's been really challenging to get all this together. So that being said, we're going to get started five minutes later. So as Martin mentioned, if you think about our budget, we have a $262 million budget. And it's not to downplay a $3.2 million deficit, but it's to also acknowledge, we have $156 million in that blue pie chart that's doing really well, our enterprise funds, a lot of our special revenue funds. We have a lot of operations that are planned for the future. Well funded capitals there, resources are there, staffing are there, programs are there, services are there, and they're robust and they're strong. And we're providing above and beyond, we're going beyond our city boundaries. So most of our, over half of our budget is doing really, really well. The general fund portion, $106 million, $103 million is funded. Maybe not doing so well because we're not funding capital, maybe not doing so well because we all recognize there's more to be done. But there is $103 million that is funded. So when you get down to it, we have a sliver of $3.2 million that we're going to spend most of our day on today. And I apologize about that, I'd rather be talking about the bigger pie. But we really need to emphasize how we can solve this and start getting your feedback what resonates with you. So we can start moving forward and bring back more information. Maybe it's May 14th, maybe it's May 28th, so we're leading up to a June 11th adoption. So that's our goal today is to focus on that sliver that will take a lot of our time. And I recognize that. Different from me standing with a clicker, I think I like it. Jumped into our head a decade of deficits. I'm not sure I like that term, but 2015 through 2024 we're forecasting. We've had and we're forecasting eight of those 10 years to be deficit years. We don't want that to be our future. We want to turn that around so where it's eight out of 10 are balanced or surplus years. Because we need to start building reserves so we can start making dynamic investments. So we want to turn that story around from a decade of deficits to a decade of surpluses or a decade of service deliveries. Equal to our community, but we've got some work to do. And so today is just like last year, which is the year before we've got work to do. And we keep doing the work and so I'm proud about that. We'll talk about a little bit later, our general fund reserves. So these are our themes. We're projecting deficits in the general fund. Again, the $156 million of the city is doing fine, their operations are balanced. Within the $100 million general fund, we've got some forecasted challenges. Part of it because of things we've talked a lot about revenue erosion with tax bases and backfilling the state on pensions and less money coming in. The state has lots of surpluses but we're not seeing, thankfully for homelessness and some housing programs, we can use more help. But if we forecast even our smaller deficits that we're looking at now, our reserves are gone in two years and that's a scary thing for a finance director to say and this isn't the sky is falling because we'll take action and we'll correct that. We're going to power through and blow through a lot of our reserves. And we don't have set aside funding for dealing with a larger scale environmental event, whether it's fires, river, levees, whatever it might be. We don't have in the general fund the type of resources that the general fund would need to respond, pay in advance, and then wait 15, 18, 20 months later for FEMA to come back and reimburse us. We're also not funding our capital improvement program. While we don't have a precise number anywhere from three to five million is a minimum, what we should be doing. We're seeing the pain threshold of our department present it with our CIP capital program every year, coming up with a $2 million, $4 million minimum need for funding. So we need to get back to a funding level where we're adding two to $5 million more into the budget to fund our capital and our infrastructures, our parks, our sidewalks, bike lanes, all those fun things. So we need to turn that deficit into surpluses so we can build up our reserves. We need stronger reserves so we can have more flexibility to invest when we want to. And we need to build up our CIP so we, fixing things when they're broken is a lot more expensive than maintaining and investing early on. So we need to break this habit. What our goal for today is really about the general fund. We say it a lot, we spend all our energy on a very small slur for the general fund. We'll have most of the afternoon available for questions, comments about where you want to go. I realize we have a $20 million capital investment program. I realize we have 156 million of other operations, water fund, wastewater, refuse. Those are all areas that got great stories. You've heard the department presentation, there's a lot of information in there. Should you want to dive deeper into those spaces, we'll hear that. We'll record that and we'll come back on those conversations in subsequent meetings. But we really want today to be spending time to talk about the reductions and budget solutions. And getting that feedback on are we ready to go? And then we've got to do some more work to bridge our gap. So we'll start with just a recap of our budget document, just make sure we're recognizing it. And we've done a lot of work, so maybe it's just selfish. We just want to acknowledge some of the cool stuff in it. We will review the funds that are fiscally sound. We'll talk about very briefly our CIP investments. And then we'll spend most of the presentation, most of the comments today in the general fund. Now to solve it in getting council direction and public feedback. Basie. Hi, good morning. So we're just going to take a quick overview of the budget document. Some of the changes that we've made, made it a better, more visual appealing document in the next few slides. A lot of research went into reviewing what other cities are producing. And we realized we really needed to kind of up our game on this document. We are going digital with it. It's online, our adopted will be online only, so we won't be printing any of those documents. Okay, so what you need to know and where to find it. So quick overview, the budget in brief, which is actually the budget dashboard section of the document that you have in front of you. It's meant to be just a quick look at the summary of the budget. We've got the city manager's message in there, soon to come the finance director's overview. Also in there is the personnel narrative that talks about the ads and that went into this year's budget. Back at the back of the section, you'll see the breakdown of the personnel in the index section. Then also in the budget dashboard, you'll see the debt and pension liability that the city has. The workload indicators, this was a direct request from the budget focus group that we met with last May of May of 2018. Every department worked very hard to get these workload indicators into the document. The department's got to choose three to five indicators of their choice. And this is kind of a test year, this is the first year we've done this. So we'll reach out to the council and the community to find out if they like these workload indicators. We've got some examples here that you can read. Next year and in the years to come, these will be driven by the strategic plan of the city council. And we'll hopefully get to move more to a performance measurement type of indicator as well. Okay, I think you're familiar with this one, but I thought I'd give you a quick overview. And if you have questions, you can ask about it, dive a little deeper into it. But the budgets, this is an example of the department's summary of the finance department. You'll see that there's three years of data, that's the prior year, the current year, and the proposed, the request for the next budget year. You'll see in the current year, we have the adopted budget and we have the amended budget. The amended budget is any type of budget adjustments that might come through the council during the year. So those are put into there. They also include any carry forwards of purchase orders that didn't lapse and were ongoing that probably will in that the current year, but crossed over years. And then the request is what we're proposing that's the proposed budget. The first section is the expenditures by character. And the character means it's the major expenditure categories and a slight little summary of it. And it's broken down by personnel services, services supplies and other charges. And then the capital outlay, capital outlay are usually something that's going to turn into an asset. The next section is broken down by activity or program. And it's the specific purposes of the department. So like in parks, they might have sports and they might have senior programs. And so they're identified by an activity at name and number and we list those in the summary and you'll see the expenditure first. We also isolate the general fund so you can see what the impact is to the general fund, the cost. And then other funds follow that. And then there's a total at the bottom in that section. The fourth section is resources by fund. And anything that is supporting this directly, like if there's fees for an activity in parks or something, that would be listed here. You wouldn't have general revenues in here, but anything specific to the department that or the activity is included in that. And then your last line, well, second to the last line, is the net general fund cost. So you can see anything that, it's the difference between the activity revenue that's brought in and the expenditure. And so you see what the impact is to our discretionary or general revenue, mainly taxes. So in the very last line is the authorized personnel for that department for the three years. The next one is the CIP document. That previous slide that you saw does not include the CIP, even in the enterprise funds. The CIP document is outside of the operational budget, which we just went over. The first one, the first column is the prior year. Projects are non-lapsing, which means they go across several years. Usually it takes several years to get a project done. So you'll see the project number, the description, the name, and then prior year costs. That includes, that could go back five years, but you'll see that total there. And then you'll see the current budget, which is the current appropriation and then an estimate actual. The estimated would usually be the whole budget, because we know that it's going, if we haven't done the work that year, we're going to carry over the appropriations to the next year. And they will be added to the next year, the first year where you see 2021. That would be the budget that we're, the 2020, that would be the budget that we're going to adopt. The following years in this are for information, but we don't adopt that portion. We only adopt the first new year. And that, I just wanted to add that the estimate actual that you see there, anything not spent will be added to that new year. So, so new this year, we added this community profile. It's a way to highlight our community, and feedback is absolutely welcome on this. It's the first year that we've introduced this, so it's kind of going to be kind of a work in progress for the next few years. We raised this loosely on, I'm going to admit it, we stole it from Berkeley. We saw it, it looked great, and we're like, okay, well, we're going to steal this. And I think it's a great graphic tool that we can definitely add to in the future. Here's some more ring ledgers here, but you'll see that we have the personnel profile, which is in the first part of your budget book. And then this listing of positions by department and listing of the position titles is in the back of your book. So the two go together, but we thought we'd put the ledger in the back of the book. So in case you need to refer to it, you would. But the first part is just a narrative of the changes to positions in the city. So you'll notice that we have no new general fund cost increases. We might have changed positions around, but or we might have revised the type of position if they're usually they're vacant or we say. Or someone is retired and so we think there's another position that might be better. But we make sure in the general fund that there's no cost increase going forward. The following is, we did have increases in the water department and the enterprise funds. Next section is the debt. And you can see it has the two years for history. It's like you can see the city wide debt before pensions. And then we take out the pension obligation. And just as a little, I don't know, I think you know this already. But when we went into the public safety pool for retirement, there was a side fund that we had to pay off, because we weren't funded as high as the other agencies in the pool. And in 2010, I believe, we took out pension obligations bonds because we saved the interest. CalPERS was charging us more than what we were able to get with pension obligation bonds. So you're looking at the pension obligation bonds in the next one. We're looking at our pension debt. And we had that to that, the city wide unfunded portion, which is what CalPERS tells us with their actuarial reports that this is what we have a liability for in the future. They're projecting, they use how, what the cost is going to be for our retirement for our employees. And when we have that, when you see that becomes a really large number. What I want to say about the pension obligation bonds is they'll be paid off in a couple of years. The difference is in the beginning where we're paying an annual debt service payment of approximately a billion dollars increase. But these next two years are around $3 million, so it's a heavier hit, but then they'll be finished. And just to recap, there's some data in there. We're not adding any positions to the general fund. We're not increasing positions in the general fund. There's 11 added to our entire city workforce, and really five of them are the library system that's not technically the city's oversight. The library systems employees are embedded in the city, there's five new ads. And we take those out, and we've got four ads in water and two in public work. So for an entire organization, we're adding, proposing six new positions on the enterprise funds. Now we'll just recap the healthy, great stories that are in our other funds. So our water fund, resource recovery fund, waste water fund, our wharf housing community development. A lot of our funds are doing well. They have robust budgets, water is a $46 million budget. Many of our enterprise funds are in the $20 million range. Outside of stormwater, most of those funds, we look forward and we feel like they have the ability to manage themselves. We have a couple of one-offs, like the low-emod housing fund, that's Granton. That one's a very unique fund that we call the representations by economic development. There's a lot of nuance within that fund, but our enterprise funds are doing really well. The wharf has long-term needs, certainly, like most of our capital investments. The wharf ERR plan, there's a lot of big goals for reinvesting in the wharf. So I'm not saying that the wharf doesn't have, they have long-term ambitions and opportunities there. But right now in this budget, the wharf has most of the resources they need, not all of it, but most. They still require some help from the general fund and, unfortunately, we're not able to give them the help they need. There are some of the reductions you'll see today or the impacts of us reducing the general fund could impact some wharf maintenance. We're trying to mitigate that to a certain extent possible. By and large, these are the funds that we're not going to dive deep in today. If we want to spend more time into their budget, we're always happy to. You know me if we want to talk budget anytime, any place, let's go. But we really want to focus the priority today on the reductions because you're seeing those for the first time. So if there's an interest to dive deeper into their operations, we're happy to bring that back. You've seen this graphic, I don't need to repeat it. What I mean by that is we have May 14th, May 28th, two scheduled council meetings where while May 14th agenda is being finalized now, we can squeeze in some conversation about the budget. May 28th, we do have allocated time to come back to you about the budget. We expect to have a more revised, have the final plan on how we're going to balance the year's budget on May 28th. And should there be more information or more discussion that you want to have, we would come back on the 28th for sure with the budget conversation. And in June 11th, there'll be more budget conversation with the goal of adopting the balanced budget on June 11th. In the CIP program, kind of a similar story. We have funding in place coming from a lot of our enterprise funds largely, some grants. Water has zero million, I forgot to take out the word million. It's one of the first years I've been here, they have no new money coming into the CIP program this year. And that's not an oversight. They have a lot of big projects already on the books. Their resources in bandwidth is focusing on the projects that they've already committed and working towards. So they've already got by and large the bulk of the funding they need in place. So this is a new year where there's not 10 million, 20 million, 30 million dollars of new water projects come in board. I believe there's one small investment that they're doing, but by and large the water fund is working on the projects that are already in place. You can see the allocation of some of our other types of projects. Cinec Trail is about 9.9 million. That's the Monterey Bay Cinec Trail, I think phase seven, I forget which phase we're on. We have a solar PV project that we're working towards, $400,000, it's in the CIP library. Well, I just said briefly about the library positions, or not the city's positions. We have two primary branches that have investment coming into this year's CIP program, Garfield and Branson 40. These are city projects, city branches, that there is library funding coming to the city to invest in those projects. We have $4.2 million coming to invest in Garfield and Branson 40. So the projects by department or projects listed here, the numbers represent new capital projects. The money may be sitting there already in reserves or it may be coming in new. But these are new big capital projects in this project. Yes, this is the new additions in 2020 for the capital improvement program. So this is a summary of the types of projects you'll see. We've spent some time doing a debrief on the CIP program overall in the mid-year. You've heard the presentations by departments that touched on many of these projects. Again, we're happy to go deeper into these, happy to. But we really want to focus today on the reductions to balance the budget. Just a different way of looking at it by type. And this is finance tractor lens, so I was trying to distinguish new project, meaning not new money, but something we're investing that we haven't done before versus investing in something that's rehabbing, working on an existing project. So I'm sure some of the departments are going to come back to me and say, well, what's your definition anew? This was late last night, just thinking of how to break down the numbers at some different way. So I just want to give you a glimpse. The yellow bars represent the water department. They have a $2.5 million that's coming in. It's largely invested in the current system versus transportation. We have a lot of new projects, expansion of like the Marty Bay Scenic Trail. That's a large project coming in that we're developing and building. So that's in order of magnitude of the CIP program by types. And that concludes our conversation about the CIP. That's unusual for this hearing. Like I said, we have more important things that we wanted to get to and create the space and time for it. We're getting a lot faster than I thought. We are available for questions, so I forgot the logistics. Happy to stop and spend some time on questions. There's also a format that has worked in the past before. We've got this afternoon allocated for a council discussion deliberation. Did you have something that comes to your mind any time during this presentation or any time during this morning or later in the afternoon that you want to have added to the discussion list? Let us know. We'll track that and we'll create a live tracking list of all the different discussion items. We want to talk about planting trees. Let's go, let's do it. But whatever that topic is, just let us know we're not requesting that you do a motion. Your body can decide how you want to do that in the past. It's worked well to just put up the ideas as they come to you. And we can discuss them collectively in the afternoon. That's a recommendation that's worked well in the past, so I forgot to open with that, my apologies. Thank you, Marcus. We'll go ahead and maybe take a moment to pause and see if there are any questions from council members at this time in regards to the presentation so far. Council member Cronk? Thank you, Marcus. What is the new project library 4.3 and the refuse on the CIP by type? Page eight of the handout. The Garfield and Brantz of Forty branches have $4.2 million coming into them. I believe Garfield's got $3 million and Brantz of Forty 1.2 are my, actually, I think I'm reversed. Brantz of Forty's, I think it's the larger one. Those are the, again, money coming from the measure asked from a couple years ago. Voters approved measure, different measure asked to fund the county library system. So there's capital money coming to us to build out those branches. Are you taking input, oh, go ahead, sorry. No, no. Are you taking input on the list that you just mentioned? Right now? Let me, in what way? I have three things. Gasoline purchases, pick up trucks, and what you just said, street trees. Are there questions, council member Cronk? I think I could just say, council member Cronk said pick up trucks. I would just expand that to vehicle purchases and leases. Marcus, I just have a quick question, or maybe just, I didn't catch it. But you mentioned wharf maintenance and how that impacts or where that fits within the general fund, would you mind explaining that a little bit further? Yeah, the wharf is a component of the general fund. We have it set aside as fund 104, but technically if a fund starts with the one, it's part of the general fund. But the wharf is a 104 fund because there's some special grants and titans and some other things that we really need to report and we're required to report distinctly different. They require, they always require general fund support and general fund subsidies, wrong word subsidy. But there's a general fund investment always in the wharf within this list that we'll get to in a few minutes. One of the proposals is to make a moderate reduction in some of our wharf maintenance. Parks and Rec, when they're looking at how might they reduce their budget operating costs? One of them is to think about reducing some of their wharf maintenance. I don't think it's the top of their list, but it's one of the things that we need to unpack a little bit more with the departments. And then come back to you May 28th with a more thought, not thoughtful, but more detail on what the impacts of these would be. Thank you. Councilor Myers. I just want to make sure I'm understanding our debt. So on the slide that says debt and positions on it, debt and positions. I believe it's slide, upper right corner has a number in there. There it is, number 11. So the 218 million pension, that's the obligation that we have financed through the bonds that we are now. Could you just explain a little bit about just, so I'm tracking and the public can track on sort of this obligation, yeah. As I've talked in the past and recently with a few of you, it's a deep dive conversation to get into the pensions, the state system, the difference between the cost of the pension. And now the new layer of two thirds of this new cost is attributed to paying back the state for investment shortfalls. Right. So by order of magnitude, Santa Cruz Local's a new podcast and not, they didn't pay me to say this, but it's a pretty good podcast, Karen, Karen, excuse me. My good, good, excuse me. Anyways, she's right behind you. Yeah. Hey, this is now embarrassing. We were having a conversation yesterday and she asked a really great question, what was the origins of our unfunded liability? What was it in the mid-2000s and I wasn't here in the 2000s, I recall where I was. It was a small insignificant amount and they just fluctuated year to year based on cow pervers adjusting their annual numbers. Going back to 2004, just looked last night at $6 million. So we had a $6 million liability in our miscellaneous benefits to the system. We were nearly 92% funded. That feels like a lot back then. I probably remember seeing numbers like that going, wow, $6 million, holy cow. Yeah. It's $100 million now, $107 million. 17,000% has grown since 2004. There's been no benefit change. Is that a percent? 17,000% now, because that's what the math said. Yeah, I never heard that before. It's beyond belief. I mean, the numbers we're talking about when we talk about $107 million just for miscellaneous benefits, which are pretty comparable to a lot of private sector stuff. That's a wild number to think about and it leads where the conversations have gone, where the newspaper has gone, where a lot of the conversations have gone. Wow, the systems bankrupt, the benefits are bloated. Actually, the miscellaneous benefits are not, and it's not the cost of the benefit. It's this new layer that's coming on board to pay back the state for their A investment losses in the 2000s. And since then, they haven't been achieving the results that the market has and they haven't been achieving the results at the level that they've done in the past. So we've seen that unfund liability grow only because of the shortfall in investments, not because the benefits gotten bigger because it hasn't, the benefits stayed the same. In fact, we've reduced our benefits, Santa Cruz adopted a second tier, Santa Cruz has lowered its benefits. We've had employees paying more, so we've done a lot of work ourselves to lower the benefit cost. So that's what I mean, it's a very complicated subject. Well, that's why I asked the question, because I do think that it's an important thing for the community to understand. Is that the debt obligation, I mean, anyone that, when you learned how to do your checkbook, you learned that if you wrote a check and you only had, I mean, this goes back to just proper. And it speaks more largely to the financial security, not only of the city, but of our community as well, because of so many services we provide. And so I think it's just a very important thing to really have. I mean, it's worth having the extra five or ten minutes, just because that obligation is clearly, it's in a sense unprecedented. And so that is an important piece for people to understand. And it speaks even more importantly to the need to be fiscally smart and conservative to get us through this obligation that hopefully we will never, as an individual city or for all the cities in California to be burdened with again. So I just think it's an important hiccup in the history of cities in California because it is across the entire state. And it does demonstrate that we, I believe, thanks to all your guys' work, we're really being forecasted into the future in a really smart way so that we do not end up where a lot of cities will be in a few years. So thank you, I just wanted to dig a little deeper. Thanks. Excellent question. Three points, I'll take the question. Thanks, Marcus. I have a question. Councilor McCormick. So did you, Mr. Reiter, those $107 million are just paying for benefits? No, no, the bulk of the $107 million is to pay, the state is a loose word, but the state manages the investment for the pension system. The state, the investments for the state for the pension system have been underperforming compared to what they could be doing. We've seen the slides, we did some decent modeling that if the state had just followed what a basket of index funds, normal average index funds have done, they'd be super funded right now. Instead of being billions and billions in the hole, they'd be super funded right now. And we wouldn't have seen these layers of cost increase. And the city would have $12 million more right now to manage and invest in our community. But because they haven't made those, they haven't followed the market or followed what they've done in the past. Their investment shortfalls are being funded by us and every member agency across the state. So it's, we're backfilling the state pension system because of the investment shortfalls. We've got over explained it. You have a notion of how that happened just in terms of just people just giving generous benefits? I think it's policies decisions by investment advisors that have said, boy, we really took a bath, we really were annihilated. The state hires a lot of multi-million dollar companies to manage their investments, it's not just staff. And they all missed it, like most in the 2000 Great Recession, they missed it, they were annihilated. So I think it's natural reaction to be, well, let's never miss that again. Let's get ultra conservative and let's not take risks and let's not seek yield. Let's get ultra conservative so we're always green, or green meaning positive, not green meaning environmental. So I think they made policy decisions to become more conservative. At the time when the economy is doing better, that's the wrong time to become more conservative, is in the beginning of a 10 year growth period. They also have made, and we can all have opinions on the why, but they've also made a lot of political policy decisions on, let's not invest here because we don't want to invest in those type of industries. I'm not saying that's good or bad, but those two kind of pathways have led to a more conservative investment or profile, and then less diversity in their investments. So their investment decisions being made within the state pension system have led to less returns and where the plug. So think of, loaning money to your kids and they go off to Tahoe and you give them 200 bucks. And they come back with a credit card bill of $10,000. You're the plug, we're that plug, the state investment didn't. I'm not sure that's a great analogy, I don't know why I went there. It's a complicated topic, but the state missed their targets and whenever they miss it, they make us pay for it. And then they charge a seven and a quarter interest on that. So it's a, like I said, it's a deep dive. I could have two other people standing beside me and go a lot deeper into this, but my bottom line is the miscellaneous benefit is not driving the cost of this. It's investment shortfalls. Councilmember Brown? I don't want to go too far down this road today given that there's not much we can do about it here at the moment. But I've been really following this and trying to understand since I came on to the council. And so based on what you said today, I just want to make sure I'm getting this right. So after the CalPERS system took a bath on those investments and then became conservative, there was already that loss. So then we weren't, they didn't make any of it up in addition to being very conservative, is that right? So they're like, they were starting from a deficit position and then got conservative. Okay, thanks. So we all recognize that the system will take a hit. We're going to have to, we're partners of that. What we didn't recognize is that they wouldn't hit their benchmarks. I mean, typically CalPERS has done 11, 15, 18% returns in good times. We've had a 10-year run of good times and they're not doing that. There's years in this time period, 0.6%, 0.6%, less than 1% returns in these good times. There's a 2%, there's a 1%. There's numbers like that in this 10-year run that's like, wow. So when they're not hitting 8 and they're hitting 0.6, that's an immediate increase in our rates. That is where the backfill. Thank you for the clarification, Marcus. I think I'll just add that I think there's a lot of work happening within the league of cities and really looking at how do we advocate as cities who are now stuck in this position. So you'll keep us informed if there's more that we can do in that regard. Please continue. Any question about the municipal wharf? Do you want to put that on your list or should I just ask you maybe there's an easy answer for it? It appears in several different places, but one place, it's 104, which is 180,000, and then it appears in Parks and Rec for 2.3 million. What is that? That's the annual cost for the wharf? Yeah, just maintaining the wharf through Parks and Rec, 2.3 million. With personnel, it's our most challenging asset with wind, water, and erosion and other things. So there's a lot of maintenance that goes on that we never see beneath the wharf. So it's a very intensive system to maintain and keep open to the public. And what's 104, the fund? That's the fund number. That's just an internal designation. That's 180,000, what does that mean? I'd have to look at it. That might be their net number. There was a settlement for the- There's a resource coming in. It was an insurance settlement for repairs that's for. And that's where that money comes from? It was an insurance settlement, yes. So it's there until the cost of the repairs, they haven't finished them yet, so. Thank you. So a year ago, we were projecting this year to have a $1.6 million deficit. And why we're at three now, I just want to unpack that a little bit, where labor negotiations are like any negotiation. We projected what it could be, and we're choosing to invest more. We're losing staff. We need to attract, retain, and develop, so we recognize that. So our labor costs are trending higher than we projected. So that's a big change from where our forecast was. I'm not regretting saying council and committee support, but some of it is. I'm not necessarily saying you guys, but we've all collectively recognized things like the housing task force. And there's other initiatives with updating strategic, developing a strategic plan. There's things we need to do, health in all policies, things we need to do that have numbers of 20,000 to 250,000. Collectively, when we pile them together, this is about $400,000 of additional investments that are coming into the budget. So that's pushed or numbered up. The 901 Center, we're part of a pool that jointly manages the 901 Center. It's collectively run. We don't have our own center. We rely on a shared resource system. It's very cost effective. They have an outdated records management system that your police department can talk to you all the time about. We want data. They want data, but the 901 system is just like our Eden thing yesterday. We were talking about 20 year Eden, our city's financial system. Their system needs an upgrade. They're doing that. So they're getting closer to selecting a vendor. They're getting closer to finalizing the price. That number is bigger than what we had allocated in, but this is a good investment. Going through the list of what has changed, we've always have liability claims. This past year, we've had a couple bigger ones than expected that we haven't got to the place that this is the number. But they look like they're going to be bigger than we expected. So that's pushing our budget up a little bit. And there's just generally a lot of other support things that are popping in, even things like the census for next year, 2020, every 10 years is a census. And so we want to have small investment to help make sure that goes. So we've got collectively almost doubled our deficit from 1.6 to 3.2 million. Those are some of the bigger ticket items of how we got there. The question, Kara asked yesterday and I haven't got back to her. What are we seeing on cost increases from our shelter from the Ross camp? And to date, we're not seeing significant increases. There's a lot of chatter about that. Most of our time is staff time out there. We do have some direct costs and we're still collecting and paying invoices and working on getting that information to you. But this deficit is not largely driven by those numbers. The city manager's office had smartly included some allocations of budget capacity for those types of programs in their budget. So we believe we've got, we fairly represent, we believe the budget that we plan for will be enough to cover our direct additional costs. But it is staff intensive, there are a lot of city staff involved for sure. And then we want to just touch on where we've been, we'll get there again. This 2020, because like I said in the beginning, was a big year for us a couple years ago. We looked at 2020 and said, wow, that's a big, that's when our gap gets really large. How are we going to tackle that? And I'm proud that it got down to 1.6 million and I'm still nervous, 3.2 million. We'll get there, but it makes me a little bit nervous. But more recently, we've, in April and May, you've heard department presentations priming you for what's coming. We have the opportunity to schedule special study sessions, should we want to dive deeper. We've got today's May 8th hearing, May 14th, May 28th, June 11th, the next three council dates. May 28th and June 11th, we've already got an allocation for budget. So I'm repeating things I've said before, that if you feel like you want to dive deeper on things and we're running out of time today, today's the beginning, not the end, so we'll have more opportunity to go deeper. Things I've said before, how we prepared for today, really we have a fiscal sustainability plan, a fiscal 2023 that we've identified a lot of things starting around 2015 of how we can start dealing with 21, 22 and 23. Last year we had a very award winning action lab process that generated 67 different initiatives and ideas to think about, look deeper on. We've researched about 19 of them, there's nine actively in play right now that the committees are doing amazing work and I was part of some presentations that we're doing and I can't wait to bring you their stuff, but it's getting closer. So we've been working towards some other solutions. We had last year's budget ACOC committee, budget revenue committees, a lot of work went into place last year with a lot of you. We were seeing all your faces in different times and places on repeat different roles. So there was a lot of work last year on getting ready for the stuff. We have budget focus groups, one-on-one meetings. So we've been doing a lot of work prior to today, but recognizing that there's still more to come. A little bit about our fiscal 2023 sustainability plan, it's kind of a guideline document. We recognize that it's an evolving tool, to some respects it's a way for us to catalog the stuff we've been doing. And when we started looking at all the stuff we've been doing in the last three or four years, we weren't surprised by this number, but still felt really proud of $14 million of new general fund resources has come out of our fiscal 2023 sustainability plan already. So we're not for that plan, we'd have $14 million less of opportunities right now. So it's been a very well-designed, smart initiative that's included things like last year's measure of sales tax. We've re-engineered how we present budgets, we've re-engineered some of our starting points of budgets. We've updated cost allocation plans, updated fee studies. We've done a lot of work setting up retirement pension trusts. A lot of workers come out of that that's starting to pay big, big, big dividends, almost compounding dividends. You saved $200,000 three years ago and it grows to $600,000 by now. We've been making a lot of good effort and there's more work to come. So I just want to acknowledge that we've been acting smartly forward thinking for quite a while and more work to be done. This is all stuff you've seen before, so I'm going to go through it a little bit fast. We're getting closer to the longest, oh, I'm sorry. I do have a question on these last two here. You mentioned the action labs and you've been very proud of those. We just haven't heard details, which is not your fault. So do that offline, but have those ideas either already in progress or potentially save some significant amounts of money or just nibbling on the edges? No, there's some significant, there's some possible nibbling that could also be culture change or organizational change. But might not be big dollars now, but there is some big stuff we're talking about. One of the ideas, I don't want to dive too deep because I want to respect the group that we'll be likely presenting to you on it. But one of the ideas is re-looking at our impact fees and how we might redesign some of our impact fees. We need to find a funding source for, call it what it is, our fire engines do not have a funding source. And when they come due, we need to be ready to replace them and they come with a big price tag. So can we get a, re-engineer some impact fees so our parks and fire vehicles, can have stable, dependable funding sources. So that's an idea that's being researched thoroughly. We've got some ballot measure ideas that they're looking at. So there's some big initiatives, certainly in play. There's also some different things. Without going into detail here, but I think we'd probably all like to get an update on that. Because so far it's just been kind of theoretical. And I think many people have been saying, what about this, what about that, and you're already working on them. Yeah, so just again, it is probably worthy of a more deep dive conversation. But where we're at right now is they've finished a lot of their preliminary research. They're getting ready to present and go through a grilling of executive level department head testing of their assumptions. And then a lot of those ideas will be, we hope, presented by the group to you because this is also about succession development, teamwork, bringing people together. You have a timeline thought on that? We're envisioning this parallel. So May 28th, you might see a first review, May 28th or June 11th. One of those two meetings, we're moving towards those dates that have a few things start coming to you. Great. Thank you for the question. And then again, it's really impressive in the slide 18. 14 million in general fund budget solutions is impressive. And I'd personally just like more information on that too. I'll get together with you. That rectangular sheet that's shown there, I think Tracy, you showed that. Do we have that? Where? I believe they were handed out during the mid-year budget. Okay, we'll push that out to you. Yeah, we'll send it out. It was not at my fingertips. Great, thank you. Marcus, would you prefer that we wait until you've concluded this portion of the presentation and then ask questions or would you? We've done both ways. I think it's okay to ask questions. I mean, it's fine with me to ask questions while we're there on that slide. Okay, okay, Councilor Meyers. Just a quick question. Measure as sales tax, that's the measure that was passed 2016. Yes, 2018. Sorry, okay, so not the library tax. We're both called measure as, so okay. And what's our current tax rate right now off top of you? Nine and a quarter. Is it nine and a quarter? Is that, and that's the max, right? We're at the ceiling. Thank you. Funny how the most obvious questions I want to go, huh? A lot of receipt, right? So this slide is not a doom and gloom, but it's just recognizing next month in June will it be equal to the longest recovery period in our nation's history? Again, it doesn't mean that we can't go longer and because we had a second worst recession ever, we're not surprised it's going longer. But things do come to an end and good times do come to an end. Recessions do happen typically about every five or six years. So we're well beyond the time frame when a recession would have already happened. So we've had a good run. For us, it's not felt like a good run because of irreven erosion, backfilling the state pension system. We're not seeing those good times that the private sector is or down down or the boardwalk are. But we do recognize that the economy is doing well. We hope and hope that it gets bigger and does more, but we're not optimistic about that. We think at some point in time, it's got to stop. What this means for our forecast is we're a little bullish in a downtime, meaning we don't expect a 5% loss in revenue in a downtime. We think property values will stay okay, sales tax will go down a little bit. The boardwalk tends to do really good in downtimes. So we have a diversified economy, we can talk a lot more about that at another point in time. So what it means for us if our projection comes true and next year we start to hit the recession, it means a moderate change in our economic outlook. If the economy stays humming, the downside is if we projected a 2% growth rate and we get 3, then that delta isn't that big. If we thought we were going to drop 5 and we got 3, then you got an 8% swing, then you're doing, wow, this is much better than we thought. So I just want to alert you that it would be great news for this recession to not come. But it also doesn't alter our forecast a whole lot if it stays good for a couple of years. It'll get slightly better, but we're not expecting a big drop for us. Maybe that's too complicated, but talked a little bit about this. The CalPERS had just done things that they've done in the past or followed the market 65 billion, billion, billion more right now they'd have than they need. They'd be a surplus position instead of 144 billion behind. So that's just a reflection of if only, what if, what if they had followed market returns? What if they'd followed average returns that they've done in the past during good times? So this is stuff we've talked about before. Again, recognizing that these are very deep dives. Our tax bases, sales tax, I'm rolling. And I forgot all about facing Cheryl, who we had a strategy on. I'm not throwing anything at me, just dawned on me. I'm doing all the talking. Okay, this is more about, this is three items in our general revenue. We talked about the general revenue before where if you see the net general fund cost. This is where the support comes from. And where these were set up before to be able to bring in adequate revenues to support that. The change in the way that citizens are, the way we're spending is changing and it's changing for everybody. But the taxable items are goods and goods. Services aren't taxed and like the baby boomers are spending more on services. Even other age groups are spending more on services instead of goods. So we're not seeing that revenue, something that the baby boomers would be spending on is healthcare. There's no sales tax on that. The gas tax, we've got the fuel efficient cars. And so we're not bringing in enough in that respect too because they're not buying gasoline. And then just the difference in the way that our entertainment is or landlines are vanishing, so we're not bringing in the franchise and utility tax on that. So what ends up happening is, as our tax basis is rosing, as we're making more to backfill the state for pension investment shortfalls and other things happening. When we look at our general fund primary reserves, 11.5 million feels great right now. It starts shrinking and if we don't solve the 3.2 million deficit and we don't solve the out-year deficits by 2022, we're in the red and we're borrowing from somewhere to sustain operations or we're having to make big cuts. So this is not a great story, certainly, but we will act. And I'm confident that we'll have by June 11 some solutions in place. But this just gives a sense of what we're facing. Again, I'm thankful that we're in this community. We have a diversified tax base. We have a community that's thoughtful, responsive, engaged. So we like to think we can collectively come together with a lot of great solutions. But we don't have a lot of time to wait. We're not in a position, because we're forecasting multi-year deficits, we're not in a position to say, let's see what happens next year. And I'm not saying most do, but some agencies get so busy they forget to plan ahead. So. Council Member Brown? Quick question. So forecasting deficits, does that include forecasting around additional revenue enhancements? I mean, are you assuming that that will happen? We're assuming some things, but like ballot measures, we don't typically assume those because of their nature. But that would be great. And I know we're thinking about ballot measures for sure. We could add that for afternoon discussion. Thanks. Council Member Matthews. And I'm just reading on this chart. Our goal is a 10% reserve. We've achieved that in our 100 million general fund for 2019. But we're already seeing a drop below our target for 2020. Am I reading that? Yeah, in fact, in 19, we're going to finish below where we should be because if you look at our 10% reserves plus public trust funds, plus economic development trust funds, we probably should have closer to 12 or 13 million at the minimum. And we're starting to eat into those. Big time then, like half. Yeah, so what it means is by somewhere early on in 2022, our public trust is empty, our economic development trust is empty, and our general fund reserves are gone. Again, we're going to act and we'll collectively get there, but that's what we're facing. It's just around the corner. Just the thought on this in the future then might be good to have the different colors in that bar. That's a good point. Of the components. And I emphasize as a finance director, I have to recommend that we should be thinking about other types of reserves we might want in place. It was rarely alarming last year's fires and the nature hearing fire chiefs and other people talk about the projection for future fires and to look at our community, we have a high risk there. And it would be smart to start building up some what if funding just in case we have a disaster at a bigger level than we've seen before. And we don't have that in place. It would be good to have, every year we have a capital project failure or something that comes along the line. It would be nice to have a place where we can touch to go to to grab some funding without dipping into reserves or minimum security reserves. That 10% is really there for like, oh my gosh, we've got a three year economic recovery recession coming. And we want to start pulling a little bit from there. That's really the model where you want your reserves to be is that last stop because you need to preserve things. Because you know something's coming that's going to be better. Right now, because we see a revenue erosion continuing without tax reform. And because we see we don't know how long this next recession will be. We're nervous about saying let's pull from reserves and hope that good times will be coming later. Because I think it's going to get worse, not better for governments. And so does the budget that you've presented us here assume a drop to a $7 million reserve or? Yes, until we fix this balance, until we offset our 3.2 million, yes, we will erode into. And if we can achieve that, we return to a healthier balance. And we need to also start thinking about, I know it's hard to think about plan surpluses. We should try to plan for some surpluses to build up. Right, build the reserves, yeah. Councilmember Byers. I guess I just want to follow up a little bit on the, I'm very supportive of the Disaster Contingency Fund. This could also very easily be called a climate resilience fund, frankly. Because that's really probably what we're looking at short of another earthquake and I would say we've already had ours. We need another one, but it's a really intriguing idea. I think the county of Sonoma is the lead on this sort of, this idea of resilience. And I know they just completed an extensive resilience report that I think would be worth looking at. It's something that I think we and our local city should really look at in partnership with the county eventually. But we won't ask for that money this year. But I think in terms of sort of state forecasting, this is going to be so incredibly important. I mean, it's absolutely shocking what has gone on in the last two summers. It's unbelievable. So I'm really pleased to see that you are thinking this way. And while reserves used to be proper fiscal policy, they actually could mean the difference between really if people can survive through some of these things. So this is just a different level and I just want to compliment you in thinking this way. And very much appreciate you guys bringing this forward. Don't want to be doom and gloom, but this is a really important thing for governments in California to be really thinking about. So thank you. Thank you for that name. That's a good one. I'm going to remind those in the audience if you do have a poster to please keep it down because it will block the people behind you from being able to see. Okay. Now we get to our budget solution. So staff have been working aggressively with department heads and their managers and identifying how we would bridge a gap. We've confidently got to about 2.4 million. So we're not done. We've had a list of other ideas, but we just need more time really understanding the impacts of them to be able to recommend a thoughtful recommendation to you about how we get from 2.4 to 3.2. So we recognize we're 800,000 short of our goal right now and we haven't talked about this afternoon and what might change. So there's more work that we have to do and we're doing it. We're doing it now. We're just not at that place where we can confidently recommend this versus that and explain why we're recommending that. But we do have $2.4 million identified and we'll spend some time again recognizing that you're seeing it in slide deck for the first time. Some of the stuff we're still fine tuning yesterday and conversations. So what you see here is resulting of an allocation by functional groups within the general fund. City council all the way down to public works in alphabetical order. You see the total amount of reductions that are coming out of those operations. I can pause here. I don't think I need to read the numbers to you, but if there's any questions just in how we got here. So we met with department heads. We asked them, what would you do? What can you do? They came up with a long list of ideas. We've had meetings about those individual ideas collectively. Is this probable? Is this realistic? Is this sustainable? So we've been through a lot of filtering of those ideas and these are the ones we feel confident that are sustainable, are smart. And by and large wouldn't alter the face and look of how the community is getting services now. There are some things that might, and we'll talk about those, but I'll just pause right here. If there are questions just about how we got here or about the numbers. Councilor McCormick? I would ask, what was the 24,000 city council? Well, I'll jump right into that if you don't mind. Okay, please then continue. Again, recognizing that that's a particular interesting one. We're not laughing at that. It's staff recommending to you what we think you should do, but we haven't got your input on what we think you should do. So we recognize there's a chicken and egg process, and this is that process where we'll discuss that. So starting with some of the bigger departments, we're going to start with first police and fire. We recognize that their operations are really compounded by a lot of service demands. They don't have the flexibility to alter their operations a whole lot. Even though they came forward with a lot of ideas, and let me tell you they did a lot of hard work, what they could do might do. And we're just not comfortable with some of those outcomes of not hiring, going slow in positions, eliminating certain positions. We're not comfortable, those are the right solutions. So that might be something we have to do further down the line. We recognize that, but we're hoping we don't have to get to those points. What did come out in police and fire is a fire department, a first responder fee. Recognizing, again, we're not saying yesterday, what we want to get us daylight is the types of things we want to bring back May 28th and really firm up. But highlight what it is we're thinking about. So in our first responder fee, the fire department's been doing a lot of work over the last couple of years, looking at how they might become a more responsive department in the community. We thought about things of working with ambulance provider of contracts. But this is an outcome of those types of conversations. There are a lot of communities that, there's some communities that have a fee that when the fire department responds for a medical call, it's really a way to build the insurance if the person is insured. We get into that billing process. If you're picked up by an ambulance and you have insurance, then insurance is backfilling the cost of the ambulance. When we show up and we're first on scene, and we're treating and providing resources to, we're doing that at no cost to anybody. I mean, it's our dime. But the ambulance shows up and they're billable by the minute once they get there. So it's kind of replicating that model for us. So if we're first on scene and we're providing medical response or whatever it might be, that we can get into that billable space largely for insurance purposes. And I'm starting to defer to the fire department when we're ready to have this conversation. Today's not the day to say, yes, let's do that and let's go live next week. But it's to acknowledge this is one of the ideas that we come that came forward that seems worthy for consideration. So that's the first responder fee. Can I ask a question? Is that something that other jurisdictions do? Is it something or would it be something brand new? No, there are other jurisdictions that do that for sure. I wouldn't say everybody's doing that, but there are a lot of, yes. See the logic. Okay, thank you. In the police department, one of the ones we felt comfortable having the conversation. We've had these conversations before about first alarm. We contract with first alarm private security to supplement things we do and also just be eyes and ears out there in the community. Just by design, they're not able to do a lot of things that a police officer or even a ranger might. They're more eyes and walkie talkie calling in things, a little bit of interaction with issues. When we're looking at the police department, it feels like a worthy conversation to have. Should we reduce the level of our use of private patrols? So things like patrols in lower Ocean Street, patrols around the wharf area. Those might be areas that we're not seeing the bang for the buck. And I think our police chief and the team can talk more about that. There's more questions involved. Those are two perfect examples of things that are definitely worthy of this conversation and definitely more interaction, more information has become. As compared to the finance department working on lease negotiation, lowering our lease rate. I'm not sure a lot of people will care a whole lot of them, just do it. Or passing on certain credit card fees to transactions that people are used to paying those. Those feel like just do it things. These are not just do it. These are conversations we want to have to counsel. Make sure before we go forward, do you support generally these ideas? If you say we want first alarm, in fact, we want a double first alarm, I'm not saying you would. That's important for us to understand. We want to recommend the reducing first alarm. We think there are better ways of doing it and to allow the police department to further research that and come back May 28th with a very concrete proposal of what that might look and feel like. So that's an example to get warmed up of two things. And are there in all of these other just do it type? Yes, for sure, for sure. I mean, very candidly, there's easily 1.6 million of the 2.4 that would have just been built in the budget anyways. There are things that if we have to reduce the things we could do without a lot of notice. A lot of impact or people even knowing that we did it. I mean, we talked to a year ago, and Councilman Remeyer is really noodling on this climate resiliency idea. But that was our theme last year's budget of the cuts we're making are starting to really eat into our resiliency and you're starting to see it. We're not as nimble as we were a year ago, we're delayed on giving you certain materials. So the reductions that we would do, I would say, are something that we can do and we will do, but it just restricts us even more. It's not just resiliency, we're losing response time at some levels for us. So I'm over-explaining that yes, we would do it and yes, we recommend it, we wish we weren't doing any of this. So as I read it, all these things that we're going to go through now are things that you anticipate merit real conversation. Yes, some do and some we should probably just do to be very candid. And under all this is the realization that as we eat into the just do it things, that's the low hanging fruit and it gets harder and harder. Yeah, it's not the fruit, we're breaking limbs off now. We've picked the fruit, the fruit's gone now, it's breaking that small limb off. All right, I'm trying, I'm not sure if that works, but it's popped in my head. Better than the Band-Aid one. So these are essentially representative of the entire list. The numbers are still fluctuating a little bit, like what would that save, how would that look? Port of magnitude of first responder fee is a couple hundred thousand dollars. Reducing first alarm could be 100,000 to 400,000, I think 200,000 to 400,000 or 300,000. But my point is we've got a really reasonable framework of how that might look and we want to come back with more. So today if you say absolutely not, do not consider first alarm reductions. That's important for us to understand. If you say absolutely not, my gut tells me that we don't want to explore first responder fee. That's important for us to hear to see to hear. Again, I recognize that you need more time with us, so we're not making those final decisions. But we're just looking for your feedback. Does this feel like the right direction? Because we've got to do something. Question, again, it's just procedurally, do you want that feedback now as we go through all these? Or will we be coming back to these? I think this might be a place, let me power through it. And I think it is okay just to get started about how this might flow. And then be able to respond, because we have a lot of people from our departments who are better positioned to answer some of these questions. Okay, we'll go ahead and finish up and we'll hold our questions till the end. So police and fire, again, they had other ideas. We just weren't comfortable with things that impact staffing and direct operations. We're not sure that we're at that place yet. Public Works, Operations and Engineering. Public Works, as you know, is in the general fund, they're diverse. But outside of the whole city, they're incredibly diverse department from waste water to resource recovery, landfill management, storm drains, engineering grants, capital improvement programs, facilities. But within the general fund, there were some direct areas that we directly fund. Engineering, traffic, and some of their operations. And some parking stuff that's general fund parking revenues supported. So the ideas that came out of the public works came out of, we have certain services that we make available for people who need emergency work done or emergency engineering or some last minute permitting stuff. Public Works is part of community support projects. What we would recommend there is reducing our level of responsiveness in there to even less than we have now. Other ideas that are coming out of the public works, we spend a lot of time looking at energy resource and this is a painful one to talk about. I don't, we would not eliminate all ideas, but we'd have to recognize we can't keep spending multiple levels of resource, staff time, and consultant cost on analyzing every great idea on how we might do things differently with energy. We have to be a little bit smarter, make a little more strategic about that. Again, they could talk to you a lot more detail about this. Reducing flood control maintenance, which includes some surrounding vegetarian, vegetation, those are examples of things that are nuanced. Again, this list or outside of energy stuff might be something we would do anyways, and we would have probably built into the budget anyways. They feel more smaller scale impact, but certainly if we have questions, they're available to get into it. Within their parking and traffic, they're looking at and they've heard the idea about increasing parking rates. So beach area would be definitely an area that we would aggressively look at. Getting into residential and guest permit pricing. Those would be areas that we would also look at. So if there's a concern or don't go forward, that's something we want to hear today. Street smarts outreach program, I'll let them talk a little bit more. That's one that definitely would be on the radar of let's have a conversation about it, as would funding for some bike and pedestrian crossing areas. So we recognize that those are areas that we want to have a little bit more conversation on. So those are public works. Some of our other developments, economic development, planning and parks and rec. Economic development has several that are important to talk about reducing, not eliminating, but reducing facade improvement program. Reducing graffiti contract and reducing some public artwork. We have staff that are heavily involved in a lot of those areas. And we have contractors involved in many of those areas and we do direct grants for facade improvements. So we'll be reducing those areas. Facade improvements, we've been doing that in the past. So every year we're taking a little bit less out of that pot. And it is a valuable program. We've had some great successes out of that. They've also got some temp staffing and contractual staffing that helped them do their job. I don't think they would love to reduce that. It's probably not the top of their list, but it's on their list of ideas to think about. Planning and economic development, or planning and community development, excuse me. They have a lot of professional resources, whether it's people helping review plans or helping support research or supporting housing initiatives. They rely on a lot of professional resources to help them provide information to you and to the public and to the commission. So their impacts would reduce their ability to use as many resources, which couldn't reduce their ability to do some of the project work. They would also reduce some of their ability to support counters, be responsive to client support. As well as they were, in the last several years, relied more on some legal support for various research projects, ideas, initiatives. Reduce the legal support. We'd have to reduce some of that project work. So it's not just as simple as we won't use attorneys, it's we have to stop the work that's triggering the attorney's use. So there's some pain in that space, for sure. Parks and Rec, there's some things in here we might do anyways and some things we want to be more thoughtful about. I already had the conversation about, for example, delaying wharf. But also there's some museum maintenance that we do. And these are moderate delays, wouldn't noticeably be seen. We hate delaying any maintenance. So it's not something we want to do, but you're breaking those limbs off. I mean, these are not easy choices. But if we want to bridge the gap, these are things we can do. We have staff time and some direct costs to help with fencing and maintaining fencing around some of our parks and other areas. We recognize also that we can reduce some of our water costs, we're a client, a customer of our water system. And so Parks and Rec pays a lot of, buys water from our water system. So they will reduce some of their water usage by browning out certain areas. They have other programs, summer programs, our museum program that they eliminate. They eliminate the youth museum programming. They reduce some hiring for sports officials, some of our camps attempts. And they can talk to you more about the impact statement. It's not eliminate, it's reduce some. As well as reducing trail and some cleanup costs. There's also some advertisement promotion efforts we put into some of our summer programming and some bus trips that would be stopped. So that's the nature of those types of changes and impacts. Finally getting into where we started with council. What's the council stuff and community support programming and some admin departments. The last of the service departments, finance, HR and IT. There's a combination of things that would happen. The city invests as a partner in leadership Santa Cruz. We often send people to leadership Santa Cruz. I went a couple years ago and I was blown away by what it was. I didn't understand what it was and I was just amazed by it. And the connections, the information, the content you get of who this community is and the history behind it is amazing. So that's not a great one that we want to think about limiting. But again, we're at that point where we're pulling the branches off the trees. We have other things that are done in human resources, compensation class studies and some specialized work that they do for particular recruitments. Are they invest more in helping other recruitments? We're having a hard time recruiting certain positions. So it would be reducing some of our resources to our net which shrink as far as amount of candidates that we would be pulling in. For finance, we have a couple things. We have a courier service that goes onsite to pick up and streamline deposits and checks and some other transactions that happen where they show up onsite instead of people walking around the city with cash or resources. So we looked at reducing the amount of scope of those pickup sites. It's not something we would like to do and we're looking for other alternatives. But that is, it's a trade off to, we've got core stuff that we must maintain. One area that was an absolute and we've already started making progress is expanding credit card convenience fees. There's a point in time when I was a little bullish in doing this. Because we want to see more people using credit cards, we don't want to disincentivize at it. It seems like the operations, but there's a cost to it. So we're at that point in time where we can't absorb those costs. We already implemented last year, council give us the authority to do a lot of credit card fees. So this would be taking a step further into almost all of our transactions. So TOT was a place where we hit aggressively, but business license, emissions tax and for other tax payments, some other counter payments, we would start having a convenience fee added on to all of those. Again, we've traditionally wanted to encourage people making credit card payments because it just makes things flow so much better and takes off internal control risks and other things. But now at that point in time where it's just the no brainer, we need to pass those fees on to the consumers. There are some modest staffing reductions we're looking within finance HR and IT, as well as within IT, reducing some of their help desk responsiveness time, and we've got some lease costs that when finance temporarily moved off site, we might be, we should be looking at lower cost and there are some opportunities that could have us in lower cost space, but there's a trade off to that. Being further away from our clients and our community, the close yard or city hall prices are higher. The further out you get, they're less. So there's some trade off there. We've got to try to value judge that. So that's kind of your primary operating departments getting to community support council, city manager, city clerk. Within the community support, there would be a recommendation to reduce some of our community group funding. Typically when the general fund is facing a reduction, we look at an equivalent level of community group funding reduction. So if we're looking somewhere of three, four, or five percent, whatever that number ends up being, then we look to an equitable level of community group funding as a recommendation. Again, recognizing that there would be more discussion that would come out of that. CPVAW is a committee that would reduce some of that budget support. We have funding that we set aside in the city manager's budget every year for some homelessness. We would reduce some of our flexibility in that space by reducing some funding for our coordinating committees. We also have programs, Hope Support and Open Streets that would reduce some of the funding there. Concluding with things that would impact council, probably the reducing travel and training that would be the one that you would foresee that most of the staff would be looking at that anyways, but that would be a space that could impact you directly. There's also some special projects and services that council members have placeholders for, typically some special projects they're not often used, so it would be eliminating that of budget authority. So that's the nature of what the impact would be on council. The city manager's office does a lot of communications outreach and support, a lot of time, and some resources are spent in that. We would reduce the scope of those resources, reduce some of the publications, maybe reduce the frequency of some of our external meetings because they all come at a cost of running space and it supplies it to support that. And lastly, which is on the top list is we work with and we were talking yesterday about how do we get information from the state to us and us, information to our state about what we want them to do and what we know they're doing. We have a state legislative strategist that helps us stay in line with what's happening. They're cluing us in on things and they're also help us advocate for. So we would look at reducing that contract or changing the scope of that. Again, these aren't all, last year's stuff was a little bit easier. The prior year's stuff felt like, okay, we didn't want to do it, but that was easy. Now we're really in that place where I don't think there's anything on this list we want to do, but things that we can do that wouldn't be completely transparent to the public, recognizing that some of these would. So that's your first preview of the types of impacts we would have and what we would do next is then develop more comprehensive. You haven't seen the finance director's overview, including that schedule within the budget document. We'll detail these out a little bit more. It'll have a little bit more narrative about the impacts. You're not getting the full scope here. Some of the stuff sounds big, but it might be small. Some of the small stuff might be bigger than you think. So we want to be able to provide some narrative, some more narratives behind that to get us ready for May 28th. I can pause here. This effectively ends our staff presentation. Well, not on a very high note, I'd say. Oh, sorry. But anyhow, thank you. Again, we're not talking of an $8 million or a $12 million gap, so there is good news there. And we're not closing operations anywhere, so that's great news. Good point. It's all perspective. Thank you very much. And thank you for the presentation. And to your staff and the staff in the audience, we had a nice full day of presentations yesterday and really great work that was highlighted. So I really want to echo the comments that were sort of kicked us off by our city manager in that regard. In terms of sort of process, we had the schedule sort of laid out for us is to at this time kind of, before we go too deep into some of the details, because I have a feeling a lot of us have questions about what that could mean, that I would propose that we'll go ahead and maybe see if there's any sort of questions in regards to some of the, maybe the earlier content, and then open it up to public comment, then we'll return back, because I think a lot of the deliberation, decision-making kind of more in-depth questioning will lead to sort of the afternoon discussion. And is there any, does that feel okay? Okay, Councilor Mathews and then Councilor Brown. Yeah, I have I think a pretty quick procedural question. So just for the benefit of the public, all these suggestions are new to us too. Absolutely. Act. And looking at them, I realize from the department's points of view, these are all things, oh my gosh, we don't want to do these, but if pushed, here's what we'd suggest. And to my mind a quick review, almost all of them look like we got to discuss them. And these are suggestions coming from people who know their department's work the best. I would really like a lot more detail about what we're currently spending on these. And most of these I look at, I will entertain, reduce, but not eliminate, et cetera. I mean entertain, yes, eliminate, but not reduce, I said it wrong. Can we schedule some significant chunks of time with you in the next week? Absolutely. Kind of what you're anticipating for this. Yeah, I mean, again, we recognize this is your first glimpse. There's no way you're positioned to say yes, do all this or no, don't do any of it. We need more discussion. I think doing some more intimate one-on-one meetings, letting us produce more content, some more materials to get that out to you so you can get a bigger sense of what the impacts are. Those are all things we want to do between now and May 28th. And another question I guess for city manager, would it be appropriate to meet with the department heads particularly on their take on these things? Yes, absolutely, that would be fine. And I think what we want to get from you today, hopefully is just a sense of, is this the overall numbers for each of the departments? Obviously within those are a variety of things and you might have questions about those and want more information about those. And as Marcus pointed out, there's, we can adjust those somewhat. And then as you're suggesting, that would be totally appropriate to meet with the departments if you'd like to do that or we can set up special meetings to provide you with additional information on those as well. But I think just getting a sense of, that this is kind of the target for those departments, recognizing too also that this is just 2.2 million, we've got the 3 million. So, and then I'm sure also council members have other suggestions and ideas that they want to bring forward. So we want to hear those as well and then get a sense of how you feel about these, get a sense of what else you have in mind so then we can then develop a plan for the next time. And I'll just say that and that will be the conversation we'll have after our lunch break. Okay, council member Brown. Thank you. Just another procedural question for members of the public who would like to comment to us. We have, I think 11 to two, that's what I've been telling people based on the schedule. We saw 11 to two with a lunch break scheduled for public comment. I just want to make sure that that's honored if we don't take up all of that time and we begin deliberations of people who show up later and thinking that they could comment, well, will they be able to still weigh in? Public comment? Yeah, because there's, so people think it's 11 to two if they are taking a break from work to come over. I mean, I don't know that that'll happen, but just in case I just want to, so members of the public who are tracking this or watching from home or their workplace understand what to expect. Yeah, if there's folks that are in the audience here that want to comment and we are able to get through public comment before lunch, my schedule says up to 130. So we'll have 11 between approximately 11 and 12 for public comment and then return after the lunch break to entertain more public comment if there's folks that are wanting to speak at that time and then begin our council deliberations around 130. But if you have somebody who comes in between 130 and two because of the information that was shared. That was just what we talked about in budget in our subcommittee. So I was telling people 11 to two, but I'm sure people will figure it out. Okay, thanks. So I think we'll definitely want to get into some of this, I think, absolutely. And I believe that will be after our lunch break. So why don't we go ahead at this time, maybe just have about a three minute break for our council. And if those who are wanting to speak to us for public comment, please line up to my left and you'll have up to two minutes and we'll at this time just have a short break. Three minutes. Council meeting back into session. So thank you for in the short period of time for lining up to my left. I apologize for not mentioning this earlier, but if there are members of the community who would like to address our council just very briefly within one minute, I want to invite you to speak to us first and I'd be happy to have you sort of step up, say your statement within the one minute timeframe and then we'll go ahead and move on to those who'd like to address the council within two minutes. So anybody interested in a one minute comment here? Excuse me, Madam Mayor. Council Member Glover. Thank you, I'd like to, just because budgets are so important and I know people have taken time out of their day to come and be here with us to share their perspective, just to offer them a little bit more time, I'd like to make a motion to extend public comment to two minutes and 30 seconds. Okay, there's a motion. For two minutes and 30 seconds by Council Member Glover. I'll second that and I also just want to make a comment on for years and years, the city has had a three minute standard for people who come to the microphone and it's been eroded over the last several years and I would like to see a restoration. So I'd support three minutes, but two minutes and 30 seconds, I support. Council Member Brown, quick comment. I'd support that given the number of people, although I see now I see more people coming into the room, but given that we don't have a huge crowd, it seems and the time that we've allotted it does seem like it's appropriate to give people a little extra time, prepare for two minutes and you usually go over just a bit. So I'd support that two minutes and 30. So we have a motion and a second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Sorry. I was just going to make a comment that I think that we've been over the course of the past year, we've had, sorry, over the course of this year, we've had a lot of issues with managing time and many of our meetings have gone resulted in 12 to 13 hours. And I think that given the fact that we've been extending time and having issues around managing the time of the meeting, I'm not going to support this at this time and stay with two minutes, so. Okay, Council Member Glatter. While I understand Vox and Maricombing's statements and concerns about previous council meetings that have gone for extended periods of time, those council meetings were consumed with not only important issues around homelessness to provide people the opportunity to speak, but also were compiled throughout an entire day of other issues. This meeting is only scheduled until 4 p.m. to my knowledge and we have the allotted time already put into the schedule for that level of public comment. So I would implore Vice Mayor Cummings and the rest of the council to make sure that the people can have an extra 30 seconds to express their perspective on the budget, which is a huge issue for Santa Cruz. Okay, Council Member Matthews. Briefly, I'll oppose the motion. I think we have seen that people can express themselves quite fully in a couple of minutes. And also, many of those who speak in public, in oral communications also have written to us, have met with us personally. So there are many, many other opportunities to meet with us on budget and other items and so I'm going to stick to the two minutes. And I'll just remind the community and the council that as you saw in the calendar, this is the first and we'll have many more opportunities in the next several weeks to discuss the budget. So it looks like it will likely be on our agenda. So we have a motion by Council Member Glover, seconded by Council Member Cron, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. That fails with Council Member Brown, Cron and Glover voting in support, Matthews, Vice Mayor Cummings, Myers and myself voting against. So those who are interested in speaking for one minute, please self-select and you're welcome to come up and you'll have up to one minute. As soon as we're done with the one minute folks who are interested, then we'll have up to two minutes for the remainder. Good morning, Mayor and Council. I'd like to acknowledge your dedication and hard work as you grapple with the many challenges our community faces. The mayor has expressed her wish to see community health be a foremost consideration in every city endeavor. How does bringing more traffic congestion, noise and pollution into the heart of our downtown contribute to our health and sense of wellbeing? It does not, whereas a well-designed town commons at that location could. I'm talking about lot four and funding for the garage. How does it look to spend $41 million to house cars when housing people is much more urgent? I realize the money comes from different sources. So please hear the many voices who have said no to this garage on this site for many years. Help preserve what is special about this place. Thank you. I'll have up to one minute as well. Hi, Council. This is Deb Tracy Pru from Santa Cruz City Schools and I greatly appreciate the challenge that's before you being from an entity, Santa Cruz City Schools as well as all public schools, we don't generate revenue. And so we're at the mercy of the state and taxes. So I highly encourage Council when you're making your deliberations to not cut off any possible revenue generating development. Also I will say that I fully support and mixed use space. We need housing, we need parking and we need a 21st century library. Additionally, we have our district office here in town. We do own some property, we do have some parking but we are currently paying Holy Cross for overflow parking. And I'd much rather pay the city of Santa Cruz in the Catholic Church to help our staff and faculty come to meetings and training. So I just wanted to let you know that and good luck. Thank you. Okay, were you interested? Good morning, Fred Geiger, Santa Cruz. You're probably familiar with the Santa Cruz climate action plan passed by the city council and the city's efficient vehicle policy as a result of this climate action plan. So you're also probably aware of the budget emergency you declared a year ago roughly and the $3 million deficit that's upcoming. So how are we doing? Well, we're not doing too good. I see a lot of stuff in this budget that is either unaccounted for or is not progress. How about fuel consumption? How's the city doing on fuel consumption? You don't know. I don't know. Who does know? Somebody knows they pay the bill. Why don't we know? Why don't you know? Why can't you track it? Are we making progress? We're going backwards. I can tell you this, we've got a police fleet with dozens of cars getting less than 18 miles per gallon. We don't buy the Ford Fusion police-approved hybrids that get 39 LA, Detroit. Many jurisdictions are using those. Why not? They're heavy duty. They're tested by these departments. They're used and they're successful. I see in our budget we have a- Your time is up, but you're welcome to leave the comments if you like. You guys spend more time talking about our time. So just to make sure there's clarification, anybody who's interested in one minute, okay, we have one minute and then we'll go to the two. There you go. Thank you. Ma'am, I was speaking under the two minute rule. We'll give you an extra minute. How's that? Okay, we'll go right ahead. Hello, council. My name is Yonika Strauss. I'm the director of Bikes Santa Cruz County and we put on the Open Streets event each year. And I'd like to urge you today to not reduce any funding for the Open Streets event. We've been receiving $15,000 from the city of Santa Cruz for the last two years. And before that, it was actually 22. So two years ago you reduced it to 15. We were able to find alternate funding sources, but at this time that 15,000 is critical for the future of the event. We do already maintain a pretty lean budget. And so reducing that even more would be would be a big significant drop for us. This event serves more than 10,000 people. 51% of event attendees have said their favorite thing about Open Streets is having a safe place to bike and walk. 32% have said that it has led. Thank you. And you're welcome to leave your comments if you like. And we've received your emails. Okay, you'll have your additional one minute. Thank you, sorry about that misunderstanding. I wanted to mention this $68,000 Tahoe that's in your budget replacing a compact Toyota Tacoma. And also the fact that what you're looking at for vehicles is not a need list, it's a wish list. It's like what would these people like to have the city pay for them to drive around? Well, unfortunately some of these people don't appear to be very enlightened. You can replace that Tahoe with a Minivan or an SUV, holds eight people for half the price, gets about a third better gas mileage. So I'm urging you to take a look at these vehicles in here. I don't know what's going on as far as any kind of monitoring or compliance with the Climate Action Plan, but please do better. We need action and accountability on this. Thank you. Hello, my name is John Hall. I'm a member of the Downtown Commons Advocates and I'm here to express my concern that the Council avoid having the tail wag the dog, that is making non-budgetary decisions by default in a budget document that might commit you to a course of action you need to consider more fully. As your staff has noted, the city of Santa Cruz is experiencing a budget crisis. Others, including consultants addressing this Council have pointed out that the construction of a 600 car garage is not necessitated by demand. Over the period covered by the budget, the city is committing to spend $32,369,000 for a garage, $32 million. My sincere hope is that the city council ultimately will decide this is not a good use of city funds. The money can be spent better by renovating and or building a world-class downtown library on its existing site or elsewhere than Parking Lot 4 and creating a permanent farmers market facility in Downtown Commons on Parking Lot 4. Parking Lot 4 is a location superior to any other for the farmers market due to sunlight, traffic, size, and safety considerations. I therefore request, and there you have it specifically, that you keep your options open by first on CIP page 154 for the farmers market structure, eliminating specifying any location and Cathcart Soquel doesn't exist as a location anyway. Second, on CIP 150 for the Downtown Mixed Use Project, eliminating 2020 allocation funds from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and Measure S. Taking these simple budget actions will ensure you the latitude to fully plan how to best create a great downtown library and a great farmers market in Downtown Commons. Thank you for your attention. Good morning. I'm Dana Bagshaw. I live in downtown Santa Cruz. It's obvious that we need to make cuts to our budget. So I was looking over the budget. It is really awesome, but I tried to focus more on public works and transportation. And the items that came to Fort that I noticed the most were things like improvements in the intersections to improve flow of traffic. Now, what we need really is to reduce traffic, not improve traffic flow. If those intersections is for bikes and for pedestrians, fair enough. But if you use that as a cover for adding another lane for cars, not a good investment. I also noticed roundabouts to improve the flow of traffic. I happened to volunteer at the Exploration Center by the Wharf and I see terrible traffic jams at the roundabout. To me, that's a waste of money. Another, and speaking of waste of money, expanding the width of the bridge over the highway one. That is another place where we just, that's a big expense and all it's going to do is encourage more cars. So I would cut that from the budget. I noticed that also that in public works, there's a lot of line items for storm damage repair. That is only going to increase with time. So it just tells us that our real imperative is to find ways to cut carbon from the budget. Thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Pauline Seals. Council Member Meyers referred to the climate crisis. Well, what we've seen so far is less than the tip of the iceberg of what's coming. And what we are doing is woefully inadequate. Modestly, we need to be reducing greenhouse gases by at least 5% per year. This would put us somewhat close to getting to 50% reduction by 2030. Probably we need more better than that. But that would, as a round number, that's not bad. Looking over the items in this budget that were listed as climate change related, I seriously doubt the amount to 1% of our greenhouse gases. Some of them are great. Safe fruits to school, excellent. Improved lighting for the ballparks, sure. But that's not the big problem. The cars are the big problem. And we have to get away from that. Dana already mentioned the fact that some of these traffic things are speeding the traffic up when we need to slow it down and improve bike safety. So that people get out of their cars, walk or bike. They're not gonna do that when the cars are whizzing past and the car is right next to the bicyclist. And the buying of the gas guzzling vehicles, as Fred pointed out, is really a very bad idea. Existing vehicles that need replacing can be repaired until EV alternatives are available. There are already some EV pickup trucks available right now and many more will be coming. And this would save money and get us on a climate future. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mayor Watkins, members of the council. My name is Benjamin Eichert. I'm the director of the Romero Institute's Green Power Initiative, where a local nonprofit dedicated to fighting climate change globally, but especially here in California and even more, especially here in Santa Cruz in the city and county. I wanna speak specifically to the items already referenced about the purchase of new gasoline-powered internal combustion vehicles for this city. You know, in 2018, unfortunately, global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at their largest rate since, I believe, 2013. We're at a point now where we actually need emissions to be declining, and instead they're going up. And this is very concerning. So I wanna speak, you know, Santa Cruz, I believe, should not only be doing its part, but should really be a leader, an example to the rest of the state, an example to the rest of the country. And so I think that one of the ways that we can do that, and there are many, but one of the ways we can do that is to implement an immediate moratorium on the purchase of new gasoline-powered internal combustion vehicles. And number two, aggressively investigate zero-emission alternatives like electric vehicles. And I would encourage you really also to explore those possibilities with Monterey Bay Community Power, which I know is preparing to offer incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles, and may also be able to come up with some really creative ways that the city can help eliminate entirely emissions from the vehicles that it operates. Thank you very much. Hello, my name is Dr. John Conway, and I'm an environmental scientist and a resident of the city of Santa Cruz. I'm here today to ask you to set a better example of sustainability for the people who you serve and for all future generations of Santa Cruzians. The science is unequivocal. We are causing a climate catastrophe. We are burning fossil fuels that are causing this and will result in rising tides, extreme fires, devastating storms, saltwater intrusion to our already depleted aquifers, disappearing crops and disappearing forests. All this and more lies in our future if we do not take this dead serious right now. So to know all this, to be in a position of responsibility for this city and its people, and to intentionally choose to lock in years more carbon emissions from an unsustainable vehicle fleet, for example, is simply unconscionable. Are we in a climate emergency or not? It's far past time to start acting like we are because we are in one of our own making, largely from driving around cars like that have been included in this budget, using taxpayer dollars. We are living in an era of climate change. Welcome to the Anthropocene. Every single decision we make now must now be made with that in mind. I appreciate the challenges of working with budget constraints, but please, I implore you as a scientist and as a lifelong Santa Cruz resident to rework this budget, to include electric vehicles instead of internal combustion engines, and more broadly to pass policies supporting electrification, carbon-free power, divestment from fossil fuels, and environmental justice. Because climate change is happening right now, and if we don't take rapid drastic steps immediately, we are placing the entire future of this city in jeopardy. Thank you. Hi everyone. So I'm up here because I think the council needs to take into account of a public health crisis that is currently wrapping through Santa Cruz and the rest of the United States, and that public health crisis is the fact that on half of the nights, I know I personally and plenty of other people have a hard time actually going to sleep because looking forward into the future, we realize that 10, 15, 20 years down the line, we're looking at something that we have really no idea what to expect, but I think that there are a few things for sure that we get to look at. And one is a recession caused by climate change that has no ending, because typically when recessions are solved, it's because people trust that the economy is gonna go back into order. But with climate change, all we look at is inevitable decline. And so when you have a never ending recession, you also start to get to have riots. And you have rising food prices as well because farms stop working at the same level. So I wanna just suggest that it's not just disappearing shores, but also kind of a disappearing civilization that we might be looking at. And I unfortunately have the benefit of living through all of this myself personally. So last night I had about maybe two hours of sleep and I continue to have about two hours of sleep every night doing so. It's hard for me even to focus on doing any kind of work that gives me a future in 40 years because looking at a retirement based on a pension is almost like counting on a tricycle to take you halfway across the world. I mean, it's just not enough. So I would ask you to look forward to helping the people in the city and kind of all around the world in making a budget that reflects the carbon realities of what you can actually do here in Santa Cruz and is also in the United States. I mean, if you presented this budget to people here without actually saying, we don't know how much we're spending, we don't know how much we're taking in, but we're gonna do these things that just sort of hope for the best. I think people here would kind of laugh you out of the room and ask you to either do what you would have to do to figure out what you can actually spend or find someone who can. Thank you. Hello, thanks for listening. Thanks for being here. My name's Megan, I'm 43, live in Seabright neighborhood, and my daughter really wanted to be here. She said, can you put on the back of your side, mom, that I wanted to be there too? Because she knows a lot about what's going on with our climate, probably more than a lot of people know. And I guess I just started learning about two years ago and I just want to implore if you can take the time out of your life to really look and see what's happening. Like, I think things would be changed here because people would really face the facts and know that we need to be reducing our carbon emissions by drastic amounts that no one is really willing to do unless they really face what's going on and know that my daughter, she's already like, I'm probably not gonna have kids, right, mom? Because why would I? Like, she's thinking that way because I'm telling her the truth. And most people don't want to hear the truth and I feel sad. I can't believe I'm in this position to tell my daughter the truth about what's happening. And I'm not just scaring her doom and gloom, but this is the reality. So I just implore that people take time to research and know what's going on and create allies and create people that they can cry with and then through those tears really face, like, what's mine to do? And how can we change strategically and huge structural changes that need to happen dramatically in order to create a future that we can all live in and cope in? So I just really want to look you all in the eyes and say thank you for listening to my heart. I feel like I'm speaking for the future generations and just appreciate you all being here and all that you do and all the time you put into it and all of the many issues that you're thinking about. I know this isn't the only one just for me. It's like, well, if this wouldn't, we don't look at this one and there's no, we have to solve this one also. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening. My name's Shelly Kniep and I'm here today because I really am wondering what kind of world your children's children are gonna be facing. She just said she doesn't know if her daughter's gonna have children. My daughter's not. She doesn't want her child to suffer through what's coming up here. On the budget matter, you said that it looks like we have lots of revenue from the Boardwalk. The Boardwalk isn't gonna be here because of climate change and how water is gonna rise. It's not gonna be here. So that's gonna be gone. We're gonna have higher costs of fires as evidenced by what's been happening in the state of California. We're very vulnerable, especially in Santa Cruz, all around us. I noticed that there's $9.9 million being appropriated for scenic trails, but 0.4% on solar. And you said that we have a loss of gas taxes. I suggest that you raise them. People in Europe pay a lot more money based on taxing oil and gas than we do. It's time to raise it. That would get people into electric cars and would give you more money. I see that you're cutting energy exploration. My husband was a co-author for the Kyoto Protocols on how much energy conservation would do to reduce global warming. And it ended up that it was 8%. You don't have to spend a lot of money in energy exploration. Just find ways that you can conserve and reduce your energy usage. He's been in this business over 42 years. It works and it pays itself back. I would like to ask two actions of you. Number one, please read the book Falter by Bill McGibbons. It will wake you up. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. I'm Brett Garrett and I'm hearing wonderful comments this morning. Pretty much everything that the previous speakers, I think all of them, I pretty much agree with me. And I hope you'll take these comments to heart. Many of my comments are written. I think you received copies of this piece of paper. I have very serious concerns regarding the downtown mixed use project, also known as the library garage project for lot four. It's budgeted for $32 million on page CIP 150. It's a very controversial project so it needs a big disclaimer in there saying the garage depends on being re-approved by city council or better yet, remove it from the budget. Many reasons we don't need a new parking structure of this size, transportation to man management, parking management as described by Patrick Siegman recently. Current trends, automated vehicles and climate change says we need to be doing something other than creating infrastructure for cars. And speaking of transportation management, I didn't see any line items in the budget for transportation to man management. I know it's in there, but maybe it should be itemized. The farmer's market structure item is rather confusing with possible errors. It shows a million dollars estimated actuals for the current fiscal year, but I don't think it's happening yet. And the location is confusing, Cathcart Soquel. I agree with other speakers who talked about too many gas guzzling vehicles. And in addition to my written comments, I just want to offer some low hanging fruit for increasing revenue. Our parking permits downtown are too cheap. I believe they couldn't be increased much more than what is planned for increases, except in cases of special needs, of course. I don't understand the philosophy of offering a deep discount for more parking. We need a broader discussion of how parking funds can be used. Thank you. Good morning, council members. My name is Vivian Rogers. I'm the director of the friends of the library. And I'm here this morning because my board members and quite a lot of my volunteers throughout the county asked me to come here. They given me some notes. Hopefully I'll get through them all. They first say thank you for dedicating your time to creating a better future for the city of Santa Cruz. They understand that right now you all are facing some very hard decisions. And they find that your work is very commendable. But for that same reason, they ask you please do not act hastily in cutting any funding to the lot for parking lot or where the farmer's market is and where we hope our mixed use building will be. They ask you please retain the funding in your 2019-20 budget to keep options open for potential projects on the slot. This community needs a thoughtful and feasible decision on the future of the downtown library. And if you cut the budget today to lot four, you will end that ability to look at it creatively and could likely result in a downtown library that's half the size of the current one and definitely would result in cut of services throughout the community. So the friends ask you do not limit our city's possibility for a great downtown library or for great library resources throughout the county. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, I'm Susan Cavalieri. Thank you for letting me speak. In September of 2018, the city council passed the climate emergency resolution. Also in 2018, the IPCC issued a report stating humans have about a decade to dramatically reduce emissions to limit warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade. Several days ago, another UN panel reported mass extinction of species linked to climate change, which also threatens humans. The fiscal year 2020 budget does not acknowledge a climate emergency. We must have dramatic changes in transportation, energy and land use in order to change the trajectory of the catastrophic future we face. Please heed the warning of scientists, listen to constituents and make changes in this budget to dramatically reduce emissions in Santa Cruz. Budgets today and in the future are climate documents. The co-chair of the panel, which released the report on extinction reports, people, and I quote, people shouldn't panic, but they should begin drastic change. Business as usual with small adjustments won't be enough. Thank you. Hello, Gail McNulty. I live in Bonnie Dune and have three children. Evie's 13, Jack's 11, Henry's 7. Evie attends school in town and Jack will join her next year. We love Santa Cruz and we spend a ton of time and money here. Well, I've been shuttling my kids to soccer and junior guards, worrying about what they eat, reminding them to brush their teeth. Their future has become less and less certain. Most of us feel growing despair, but while we're rushing from one thing to the next, avoiding difficult conversations and numbing our souls with chai and yoga, our climate is getting scarier. By the time Evie, Jack, and Henry are adults, it will be too late to avoid climate-induced economic and humanitarian crises, increasingly catastrophic fires and storms, leaving more of us homeless, making it difficult to ensure our homes, longer droughts, crop failures, food shortages, unless we make dramatic changes now. Passing a climate emergency resolution was a nice gesture, but our houses on fire and our children are trapped in the decisions we make today. We need courageous action, not gestures. The United Nations estimates there are more than 65 million refugees now, many displaced by climate-related disasters. Our friends in Camp Ross are not just today's problem, they're the front lines of a growing divide between the wealthy few and the suffering masses. Living here, it's easy to forget that low-income residents and communities of color in California and around the world already live with dirty water and smog-filled air. In March, I attended an interfaith call to moral action on the climate crisis at Martin Luther King's Church in Atlanta, with El Gore, Reverend Barber of the Poor People's Campaign, and many other leaders. Climate catastrophe may be the greatest moral issue humanity will ever face. Our glaciers are melting, we must thaw our hearts and forgive one another to band together. The sea is rising and we must rise above bureaucracy, pull the emergency brake on this business-as-usual budget and dare greatly. We don't need a new convention center or library and we certainly don't need a new parking lot. We need to save beach flats and protect our children's future. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. No, it's okay, brother. Thank you. I'm holding this one because I cannot be wearing all my hats today. So this is a support of what is at the core of myself, okay, climate change. But I'm here today to wearing the hat from the Tenant Sanctuary, and I'm here to ask for the city council to release the $15,000 that you promised that we will have in order to start the services, providing help to the community and to the tenants in this town. I wanna let you know that even though you have no make good in your promise, we are already starting, providing three times per week a clinic. We have trained 25 volunteers and the staff is working with the hope that we will have the money that you promised at some time. The lawyer is right now refusing to start working with those because we have no money at all. So just as a reminder and asking politely, if you can please release the money that you promised, it will be very appreciated in the community. And just to, in the other hat, I wanna say that we don't need the new parking lot and we don't need a new library because all of them are gone in 10 years. And you can also look at that for the U.S. Geological Department and the maps that they have in there with all that is already under water in 10 years. So thank you for your time and for listening. Thank you for doing your job too. Good morning mayor, council members. My name is Robert Singleton with the business council. Just wanna encourage you to not do anything hasty with regards to the funding, the parking funding from lot four. If you look at downtown parking right now and the status that it is, you know we have a 1200 person waiting list for downtown employees to get on there. We expect to have a new clinic opening with Kaiser soon that expects to see around 40 people an hour as a brand new facility. We expect to have around 600 new housing units downtown in the next five years. And we expect to be losing about 200 spaces from surface lots. So we need the money in the parking district to help balance that demand. But really what I wanna talk today about is kind of how this project is kind of a linchpin project for the future of housing in downtown Santa Cruz and especially affordable housing in downtown Santa Cruz. Now, if you talk to anyone who develops housing affordable or market rate, you can talk about the biggest bottleneck and the hardest thing to manage is the parking requirements that are assessed on housing development. Right now the city requires that you have a space per bedroom and all new units. And that is really hard to meet, especially if you're on shoestring budgets and balancing the capital stack from a bunch of different sources. So in order to make that work, essentially by consolidating parking, we're gonna plan for a net reduction in parking over the next five years in downtown. And overall, never gonna reach the levels that we're at right now with current parking, but we're also gonna have a tremendous impact with new housing units coming online. And by not investing in consolidation of parking, you're requiring those housing production or those housing projects to shoulder the burden of additional parking. For every parking space that you require of them is essentially a new unit of affordable housing that we can't bring online. I would love for you to unilaterally reduce the parking requirements for housing, but in spite of that, we still need to provide for it when building out these tens of millions of dollars of capital stacks. And you have to build for the worst case scenario, which is the current demands that housing has for parking. So in that context, you're essentially by allocating that money, you'd be taking money away from the affordable housing that's relying on that new parking funds. Hi, my name is Josie Buchanan. I would first like to thank staff and the city council for all the work that has gone into this budget. I know that there are some really complicated things to grapple with what to keep, what to cut. Quickly, I would like to say that I really don't think that any funds should be reduced for open streets. I think it's an amazing program that really reflects a lot of the climate conscious and alternative transportation character and rhetoric of this community, as well as that I would really, really urge you to not cut any funding for the lot four project on top of everything regarding housing that Robert went into. If we do not have parking, then we cannot really have a budget because we don't have people coming downtown. Our employees are parking here because they're being forced to commute every single day from South County. If we give them somewhere to park, if we give them somewhere to live, that's what is going to affect our climate crisis, saying you can't park here, telling them to bike here, telling them they should pay more for parking. That's not fair. It's not fair to ask the one to pay an hour of their daily wage for a parking spot. Get them a place to live. And I think lot four is essential in that. And I think it really deserves a lot more consideration. Thank you. Good morning. I guess it's still morning. Mayor and council people. I just wanted to remind, I know first of all, I just want to take a minute to appreciate the difficult position you're in. Whoa. And I did serve on a shared decision-making process when I was a teacher for the budget and it's never easy. So I appreciate all your time and expertise. Just wanted to remind the community about the fiscal emergency that was called for and encourage us to support the state's efforts to for pension reform. I think a lot of our problems stem from the pension crisis. With that being said, I have a few ideas about my important pet projects that I'm looking at. If I were to look at the budget, I would, one thing I was thinking is that consultants can be just hired from let's say planning if they come in under 100,000. I would say why don't we make that 50,000 so that you can take a look at that and see if it's reasonable. A little more oversight might actually help the budget. Also, I am in support of the bike and pedestrian improvements with Highway 1 and 9. And also the chair of the Parks and Rec Commission, if you've not already received it, we'll be writing a letter recommending instead of 25,000, moving it up to 50,000 for heritage tree consideration. And thank you. And you're welcome to leave your comments. Thank you very much. Be well. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Joe Ferrara. I've owned my business downtown for 43 years. We went through the earthquake. You should have seen this place after that. You didn't have any problem parking. We live in this town. Of course, we want to support climate change. People in support of the Lot 4 mixed use project are not against the ideas that are being put forth. That's why we live in Santa Cruz. I spent two terms as the president of the Downtown Association. I served a term on the Downtown Commission. We spent a year that I chaired a task force to try to find viable ways to pay for the next parking structure. It involved representatives from the public, from the farmers market, from city staff. And we were all able to come together and discuss this. I don't see that happening right now. I don't want to give you all the same quotes that you've heard already. You know what the information is. Some of it is misguided. Some of it is accurate. You need time to figure that out. But it's going to take courage, as one previous speaker said, to deal with all the forward thinking you're going to need to do. Right now, there's not enough parking to take care of the employees downtown. There's over an 800-person wait for the Locust Garage. And we just got a call. Another business wants 50 more, and they were told, you're going to have to wait at least two years. If those businesses can't stay here and be profitable, we lose them. We lose them. We lose tax base. Tax base is flat right now. You lose tax base. None of this gets paid for. None of it. So you have to be careful in your examination of what to do. I fully support the idea that we need this parking structure. Because what about customers? Nobody has mentioned the fact. You've talked about people who work downtown, people who try to shop in my store. One guy has his wife circle around while he's bonning stuff, which is not helping climate change. Thanks. Good morning, mayor and council members. My name is Beverly Deschaux. I'm the president of the Electric Auto Association of the Central Coast. Our organization has been in existence for just about 50 years, promoting the use of electric vehicles. And it's finally catching on. In light of the climate emergency, not only that exists but also that the city council acknowledged and passed a resolution about, there is absolutely no need ever to purchase another gas-fired vehicle. All that is any kind of vehicle that's needed for the city can be bought as an electric vehicle. And when you pay off your solar panels, you'll be plugging them in for free. They'll be free to the city, no cost, and no emissions. And those people who have electric vehicles say they hardly notice on their electric bill that all of their transportation use is almost costing them nothing. I have one. Maybe $5 a month, so there's a budgetary concern. And there's definitely the climate. So I would urge you. I'd be happy to consult with you. I keep up on what's available. I don't always read the whole article, but I know what's available and can find it out for you. So I encourage you to consult with me, consult with us, as the electric vehicle community. I think that's all I'm going to say. Thank you. I'm Nancy Cruzo. And I have seven to get through, so I'm going to try to be coherent and quick. So the first thing is about homelessness and what we've been dealing with recently and what we've been doing. I look through the budget. I spent all night reading the budget. And I can't really find a long range program that makes any sense to me that actually will solve any of the large problems. It feels like we are in a reaction state and we are spending a lot of money on very short term solutions that help a few people. And I would like to see some really bold, innovative policy changes. And some wise thinking, and look at the programs being offered and the models being offered. And look at the thousand people living outside being hated more every day. Because they don't appear to be getting any better or improving. And I read next door, so I know the hate is rising for them. I do appreciate that this is a huge problem. But I think it's only really bold steps that will make a difference now. The second one is for funding Janus, our only treatment center for addiction. And they turn people away every day. They turn away homeless people who then are scorned on next door because they don't get help for their problems. And I'm so tired of reading it, but there's no talking to people who believe it because they believe it. So we really do need to do something about that. We're seen as providing for these people and we're not really providing. There's a lot more to be said about Janus, but they need some support. You have to be kidding me. You're welcome to leave your points if you want with that, Sim, we'll be happy to look at it. Yep, thank you. Okay, next speaker. Good morning, council members. I'm Rick Longinati with the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation. And I want to suggest to you that all over the country and the world, people are discovering that if we're trying to get seriously about reducing our carbon footprint, we need to reduce our auto dependency. That starts with not building projects that increase auto capacity. So we're not widening roads anymore. We're not expanding intersections. We don't want to build a huge new parking structure. So the good news is that we don't need a new parking structure downtown. We need to resolve some spot shortages. According to the two experts, these are nationally recognized experts on parking that you met with on March 19th. So just to remind you of their conclusion is that we have an excess capacity even at the peak Christmas week parking census. The excess capacity of nearly 30% on that peak hour. And on the weekends, that's even more, it's upwards of 40%, empty spaces in garages. Weekends are a tourist town, that's our time when we want to attract visitors and we have an excess capacity. The other conclusion that they reached was that parking demand is not going to rise over the next ten years. Now, city staff might disagree with those conclusions, that's fine. But if they do, they need to bring forward some kind of contradictory evidence or some kind of reasons why they think that these nationally renowned experts were mistaken in their conclusion. And it's not just, anecdotal, I couldn't find a place driving around today, I couldn't find a parking place. Or the Locust Street garage was closed. Because as we know, when the Locust Street garage is closed, there are spaces open elsewhere. So, if we're not going to spend 87 million over 30 years, then that's just the garage portion of this project, that's a 2.9 million per year expenditure. Then we have a lot of money left over, 10 million for the library. Thank you. Good morning, council members and mayor. My name is Jim Mulheran, I'm a research associate at UCSC Sociology. And I wonder if there's anybody here in the council or the staff who has not heard of Greta Thunberg. Anybody not here of her? This is a chance for us to listen to you, so we don't generally engage with a dialogue here. Sorry about that. Well, let me just say a few words. She's a school student. She's now 16. She'd been doing school strike. For months and months. And she's galvanized hundreds of thousands of students, mostly in Europe, to strike one day a week on the climate. And what she has mastered is political will. And what I'm hoping from you, following Greta, go look at her in the YouTube videos, there are many of them now, meeting with the Pope, talking to the EU. She knows what the situation is, she has done her homework as high as I have. And what I want to in particular recommend for you is to learn from her political will given the situation that we are in. And in particular, pursue electric trucks, small change. If you can't do it this year, save the money. Do more repairs on what you've got. And move the city, if necessary, first with a hybrid, you can get a Ford F-150 hybrid now. And if possible, wait, there are at least three or four manufacturers in the wings to bring out pickup trucks this coming year. Thank you. I'm crying all the time, I'm really hurting. Ever since Trump came into office and without energy dominance of oil, this is killing our planet. We gotta change right now, there's all these people all the time. We're talking about finding places to park. It's ridiculous, ride the bike, walk more, get out of your cars. We don't need any of these cars all the time. And if we do, how about going to some auctions and buying some cars that have been repossessed, taken and buy them cheap. Have city people do that instead of buying brand new vehicles. Certainly all the buses need to be converted. I went to an event at Seymour Marine Lab on the Polar Crisis. We're dealing with polar bears. Nobody was there that took the bus. I was the only one that took the bus. The bus went right there. People, all these people are still driving here. They can get on buses all the time. It's ridiculous. And taking away bus stops so people have a hard time sitting. Okay, now that we've destroyed these people's lives at Roth Camp, how about creating a long-term solution to set these little short-term solutions, these temporary shelters with all these rules. Too many rules, are we gonna do that to people in houses? Go to their house and tell you can't do this and you can't do that and can't do this? This is ridiculous. These people are scratching for their lives. We push them over the edge of the cliff. We need to make a nice, good transitional camp and show the ways to move forward in this and spend money a lot more efficiently on ways and help them and help the community all together. We could work on these little houses, modular houses, your village, keep you growing food. The management of these grounds is ridiculous. I'm over at San Lorenzo Park. This guy comes out with a gasoline blower. Wow, noisy. Blowing a bunch of leaves and dust around, hardly doing anything. Going into the bathroom and doing this. We could be doing a lot more efficient things with our workers than doing that. We'd be going for restoring that to the system. Thank you. That's a hard act to follow. I'm Casey Byer, CEO of the Santa Cruz County Chamber of Commerce. I rode my bike from South County this morning to get here. I got to my office and the elevator to our building, take a look to the fourth floor, was not working. So I helped a disabled person get up to the second floor so she can go to her counseling. So I'm sorry I'm late. You were wondering why the employees and employers are not here. They're working. We have over 600 member companies that I represent and over 23,000 employees countywide. They're working to create the tax base that you're talking about for your budget today. And there's conversations and emails that you're receiving from a select group of people. They're saying, we don't need any more parking downtown. We don't need a long-term plan for use of other city property. They're misleading you. I'll say that again, they are misleading you. Read the report from your own city staff. Read the work that the last city council and the last work has been done for the last eight years in this community. What are the lack of issues that are facing most of the employees in this area? Lack of affordable housing in the downtown. Inability to get from South County to workplaces in the downtown. And what you're doing by some of the questions in this proposal is you're restricting the opportunity to look at city development properties that you can be used for mixed use uses and other viable uses in the community. So don't sell to yourself short. Think about the 23,000 employees that are not in this business right here. They're asking representatives like myself and other associations to speak on their behalf. Don't mistake them. Thank you. I believe that you'll be our last speaker or we have one more speaker. Is there any other member of the community who would like to address the council before we close for now? My name is Reena Dubin and I'm very concerned about the libraries and particularly the downtown branch being adequately funded. And for us as a community to have an adequate downtown library. Right now the library is not serving the needs of our community. It's a mess, I can be happy to talk with you in detail about all the problems that are going on in that facility. It needs money and care and also we as a member of the downtown library advisory committee, we studied the issues in the downtown branch specifically to try to understand what it is that we can do. And we did conclude unanimously that the only solution that would meet the needs of our community is to move to a mixed use facility. You've been listening to the budget and I'm kind of surprised at some of the bleakness of it. But luckily the voters have overwhelmingly supported libraries. We had passed the measure S fund overwhelmingly. So the voters really support libraries and we want to make sure that the city council also is supporting the library in the way that it needs to be supported. Just one last note, I consider myself a progressive and I consider this city council progressive. And libraries are the most progressive aspects of our society today. They are the only place that people can come, no matter what they believe, no matter what their income is, no matter what is going on in their lives and be able to have services for them. They don't need to buy a cup of coffee. They're aren't going to be harassed if they're behaving in a decent manner. So really, we need to preserve the libraries. We need to preserve the ability for everybody to be able to have Wi-Fi, able to have access to early childhood education, early childhood classes. And there's a lot of things to support about the mixed use facility. Thank you. Please, you'll be our last speaker. Thank you. I'm Cynthia Berger with Santa Cruz Tenants Association. There's a short supply of widely accepted, I'm going to read something, sorry for not looking at you. There's a short supply of widely accepted impartial data about the scale and scope of displacement in Santa Cruz. Specifically, there's no comprehensive database to quantify the number of families forced out of their homes in Santa Cruz through evictions or rent increases. This lack of information has hindered public dialogue and functioned as an impediment in the evaluation of current housing policies. Equipped with a non-partisan data driven analysis of the city's rental market, elected officials and the general public will be well situated to make informed decisions about housing policies tailored to the city's unique circumstances. The policy, the city can address this information gap by implementing a simple, easy to administer ordinance that gathers data about the most salient pressures in the rental housing market. State law already requires that landlords provide tenants with a written notice in order to terminate a tenancy or raise the rent. And the city could mandate that landlords provide a copy of these notices. Importantly, such a policy would not regulate whether or how a landlord is able to evict a tenant or raise the rent. Landlords will simply have to notify the city when they do so. In some cities, they simply have to send a cell phone photo. By collecting this data, the city would be able to precisely answer important questions like how many people are being evicted. What are the primary reasons tenants are being evicted? How large is the average rent increase and how often are rents being raised? Are there specific neighborhoods facing greater displacement pressures? By simply collecting data that's already in the hands of the city's landlord community, we could begin to answer these questions. Data collection policy could be easily crafted to ensure maximum compliance with minimal city oversight. Could incentivize landlords to voluntarily comply by best find at any rent increase for eviction notice. That's not provided to the city within a specific time frame, we'll be null and void. Finishing my sentence, thank you. And you're welcome to email us as well. Okay, so that will conclude the public comment for now. We'll at this time break for an hour and return at one o'clock. I just also want to remind those in the audience, as well as those who may be watching at home, that you're welcome to email us or reach out to us individually to share your perspectives with us. And I want to thank those who are able to make it in person today as well. So we'll go ahead and adjourn until one o'clock and we'll see you then. Thank you. All located dollars to the- Point, so we'll go ahead and resume our special meeting here today on our budget. We concluded our 12 o'clock time with the end of public comment. And I'm wondering if anybody in the audience here wanted to address the council before we move into deliberation and recommendations. Okay, please step forward. You'll have up to two minutes. Dear city council members, I respect the commitment you have to our city, given the many pressing and important issues you are dealing with. I am here as a mother, a former journalist in town, and a new member of Extinction Rebellion, Santa Cruz. A few months ago, I was volunteering for Citizens Climate Lobby, calmly going about the somewhat slow and laborious business of trying to influence Congress to pass a carbon tax bill. Thinking that, after 2020, we could turn this global warming ship around. I was not aware at that time that a sea change of science and reports from the Arctic were indicating we have now entered a period of non-linear warming due to positive methane and other feedback loops released from the Arctic permafrost as ice melts. An increased warming coming from the loss of albedo or the reflective capacities of the ice and snow that keeps sunlight from further warming the planet. As recently as March, scientists in the Arctic watched in surprise and horror as one of the largest ice sheets in the Arctic began to cav and fall into the sea. Times have changed and the science here is moving rapidly. The IPCC report from November is quickly becoming obsolete. Santa Cruz not only faces sea level rise, but possible mass power outages, as well as increasing threats to water supplies from fire and drought, and even food security. As Midwestern and global grain belts experience increasing weather extremes that threaten food supplies for everyone. Academics and researchers like Guy McPherson and Ben Dell along with many, many others are now positing that perhaps our window of opportunity has actually closed. I know you are both busy and part time, even Tiffany is part time. Santa Cruz, your time is up, but you're welcome to leave your comments with us or to email them as well. I'm asking for a citizen's assembly to address the issue. Your time is up, thank you very much. Okay, so are there any other members of the community who would like to address the council at this time? Okay, seeing them we'll go ahead and return to the council process. And I thought, and please city manager Martin Bernal or Marcus feel free to weigh in. I thought what we could do is have our council ask some clarifying questions in regards to the presentation. And then we could shift into the document that I believe will be presented before us in terms of potential areas we want to adjust to help us move forward with adopting a budget by June 11th. And some recommendations, does that seem accurate to how you anticipated this going? Yes, I think if there are any additional questions in the presentation, then I think we can go through the reductions department by department. And answer questions and then again get a read from the council as to, okay, these are fine. Or we have a question on this one and we'll return back and then we'll keep an ongoing list. Marcus is prepared to track all the various changes as we go through each of the departments. So are there any questions from council members on the presentation we had earlier? Just however, in general, however, any questions before we move forward into looking at the reductions? I understand the plan. So were we thinking of going back today to those lists of departmental cuts? For more detail, is that what you're thinking? We, I'm not sure we're ready to open them up and get down to exactly what the dollar value or the exact impact is, but we're looking for those headlines of those items that we just went through that we can pull back up on the screen. Are there some on there that we should absolutely stay away from? Or are there ideas we should add to this list that we're not including? We want to come back May 28th with a very strategic aligned list. And what you have before us in the presentation was to get to that 2.4 million. And still, there is still a gap to meet the additional cut. Okay, okay, thank you. Well, if I could just proceed with that. Let's just take police and fire for starters, because that's the first one on the list. At least I'm looking at the columns, yeah. Yes. There are two items there. We have noted in the other column, 352,000 from fire, 282,000 from police. But it doesn't really tell us much there what those cuts are. So at some point I'd like to go through them and get more detail. I'm not sure if we want to take up everybody's time. So to the extent of the private security, please we'll be here shortly, I'm sorry. The areas, we've heard their proposals in the past and they haven't changed. They feel the private patrols on Ocean Street and around the Wharf area are just not as efficient as they should be. And the bang for the dollars aren't there, and that could be close to $300,000 in savings by re-engineering those services, providing substantial savings. So that's the order of magnitude. It's very similar to proposals they presented maybe a year or so ago. Council and some business owners had some concerns about reductions in those areas. I think I'm paraphrasing now for the chief and his team. We just haven't seen the effectiveness of those particular patrols other than the public perception that their eyes on seeing somebody's there. I get all that, but just to take this one for example, let's say they have 300,000 in cuts. Is that reduction or is that elimination? That would be reducing patrols in those areas, but it could also then end up after they look more they can come back and say, we might keep a little bit of in the wharf and maybe reduce in Harvey US. I'm just throwing out there for example, what we're representing is, we believe we have a firm proposal. But we're moving really fast on a lot of this, so there might be some smarter evolutions of this. We would start with the wharf and start with the lower ocean as a primary reduction area. I mean upper ocean? I'm sorry, upper, yes. I'm not sure my issue is still resolved because these are cuts that are really, really important to people, that and all the others. So I have neither sense of the order of magnitude of what these things mean. All right, so when police gets here, we'll have them talk about the alarms. All the others, too. It looks like we, no. I am Patricia Dutch from the police department. So we're talking about the order of magnitude. Should the proposed cut be included, it would basically be the entire first alarm contract. So eliminate is what we're talking about. Correct, now we can certainly entertain other scenarios and to spread that burden around elsewhere. There's no painless way to do that for sure. But the entire amount of the contract is both the neighborhood patrols, the wharf, as well as the prisoner watch. So accompanying the prisoners as we talked about yesterday, instead of having our officers hang out for hours at the hospital, as well as some special events support. So that would be all of it. Okay, well, let's just just start there. I'm not in favor of eliminating it. But potentially to reduce it is what I'm, okay. Are you anticipate going through all these one by one? Thumbs up, thumbs down, or sideways? Yes, that's. I'm just trying to get care. I don't know about another way of doing it. I mean practically speaking, we also recognize, again, this is your first time. And so this context is helpful for us to understand where your concerns at, where your pain points are at. Council Member Brown? So I just want to make sure that I'm clear as well. We have proposed reductions to consider. Some of us, maybe all of us, have other ideas about potential cuts and additions. And so I want to make sure that, because I have a lot of things to say. I want to make sure that there's an opportunity to do that. If we're going to go through them one by one, I can weigh an unforced alarm right now or we can wait and I can give you all of my suggestions. I just want to make sure that we do this in a rational, coherent way. One of the things that I want, or I think at the end of this session today, is that we leave with some direction for our staff into how to bring back a budget that accounts for the 3.2 million shortfall. So that we're fiscally responsible. And so what I interpret what the staff did is go to their departments to get input from them on what they think would help sort of buffer the experience. And so ultimately at this point we could go through what their recommendations are, as well as entertain other ideas as the policy makers here essentially. So Council Member Brown, Council Member Glover, and then Council Member Matthews. I understand that. I just am wondering, do you want each council member to give the full list of our considerations one at a time or go department by department? I'm fine with going department by department and then going into other proposals at this time. But if that works for- That would be better, department by department, I think that makes sense. Because then we can have the staff here answer questions or respond at the same time. Okay, so we'll start with that then. So I think going back to the original kind of question brought forward by Council Member Matthews in reduction to private security patrols. What I'm hearing is interest in entertaining the reduction, but not necessarily complete elimination. Is that correct? In terms of your interest, Council Member Matthews? That's mine, one out of seven. Yeah, Council Member Brown. So I just, with police and fire and the staff recommendations that we have before us, I agree with Council Member Matthews. I think particularly for the prisoner watch and some special events, for sure there is going to be some need and if we eliminate that, there will be additional cost to the budget, right? So we're not actually going to really be saving necessarily. So I think some kind of partial consideration is warranted given what we're hearing about the effectiveness of the overall contract. And what I'd like to do too on this one, maybe we can skip this one for a little bit because I'd like to have Andy here respond to it. Because our conversations, it'd be interesting, not interesting, I think it's necessary for you to hear about the operational impacts of that because we have had conversations about that. And I just want to be clear that everybody's clear about what it actually means. It does mean cutting some of these things, but I think the police department, they brought it forward. They felt they could manage it, is my understanding in our internal conversations about it. I'd like for him to be able to clearly give you that outlook. So as soon as he gets here, we'll do that. So we can skip this one and just move on to the next one. So under police and fire, we also have the first responder fee. At this point, does anybody, I mean, I'm supportive of that. So, House Member Brown, Matthews, did you have something on the first alarm now? Did you want to? It was on police and fire. Okay, so maybe we'll pause any conversation on the first alarm security patrols, but move on to fire at this point because we'll wait for Andy to be here. So we'll have Council Member Brown, then Council Member Glover, back to Matthews, and then Vice Mayor. Supportive of exploring first responder fee. Council Member Glover? Yeah, so I mean, with regards to the private security patrols, we heard from the chief yesterday about there being areas that it could be reduced in and where it was providing more of a visual sense of security as opposed to it. As well as the weak data that they've been collecting from First Alarm in general. So that does warrant an analysis of the weather and not to reduce those. Because I agree that there are places for it with regards to the prisoner watch and other kinds of stuff. The other stuff around police and fire, which I don't notice on the list, and those brought up by community members is the fleet and the proposed purchase of additional vehicles, especially gas powered vehicles and the perception of it being more of a wish list than a needs list. So I'd love to get a critical analysis of the fleet, the proposed purchases, and then any comparative analysis that's been done to the cost of maintaining the vehicles as opposed to purchasing new ones. And then what's been looked into with regards to electronic or electric alternatives. And then in terms of the proposed first responder fee, is there consensus amongst the council to explore that moving forward? Okay, Councillor Mathews and Vice Mayor. Yes, but here again, my question is when we look on the general fund budget solutions, when we look at fire, it shows 352,000 and that I read as 352,000 in cuts. If we don't see any fire department cuts here, all we see is a possible increase in revenue. There either cuts our revenue, so it's a solution, not a reduction or an increase. It could be both. So in that case, 352 is a placeholder for the first responder. For example, that's a one to one. Other departments are not one to one that way. So, and again, this is just for clarity. So, the solutions, when we look on this graph here for fire, it should show 352,000 income, maybe. Whereas in police, we're looking at 282,000 in cuts. Yeah, I think you're correct in that, like the title of that slide could, instead of saying budget reductions, budget solutions, it's misleading. You're right, the first alarm will be a reduction of service. The revenue, the first responder will be an increase in revenue, maintaining existing services. Vice Mayor Cummings and then Council Member Cronin. I'm supportive of exploring the first responder fee, but very cautiously because I feel like it's another expense that's added on, especially if people are experiencing a crisis with regards to their house catching on fire or what have you. And or if they're having some medical issue and it's another fee on top of what they're already experiencing, I think we have to be pretty careful with that. We have a fire chief here. I think we can have Jason explain a little bit more of it, because I think it involves also insurance coverage and things like that, and there's exceptions. Yeah, I just wanted to add my question is, can you just like start from the beginning, what is the first responder fee and how did that come about as an idea? So, it's a first responder fee and it does not go to house fires or people experiencing a vehicle accident or rescue. It's not a fee for service for the array of services that we do. It's really tied to the fact that the fire service as a whole has evolved beyond just fire suppression. Yesterday in the presentation, we talked about all the different services that we provide. And specifically within there is ALS or paramedic level care. We are part of the continuum of care within the county as far as when you have a medical event. Our paramedics are there to provide that level of care, because we generally are able to respond faster than what the approved ambulance provider does within the county. And then you're transported to the hospital and we're part of that care package. And that includes 12-lead EKGs, it includes medications that are involved with that. And so the first responder fee is something that other jurisdictions within the state have taken on, that we have an ambulance provider that is billing you for that service. We are supplementing their times or stopping the clock for the penalties for those times for providing that. And so the idea of a first responder fee is not an additional charge that we can bill everyone for ALS level care. It's not going to be for rescue, it's not going to be for fires. And that is generally accepted for insurance companies, which are large corporations where it's a fee base. Think of it as when you go to your doctor and you pay a copay. So we are part of that care continuum, and that fee would be charged as part of that. And then the city can adopt a very lenient collection policy for how they recoup that cost. And generally speaking, most large commercial insurance companies that's a fee that they readily accept and that they pay for. When we were looking at doing ambulance transport as a whole within the county, we really explored the different models that are out there as far as funding mechanisms and how those fees are generated and what we are allowed to charge. And looking at our pair mix, the number 350,000 is fairly conservative given our call volume and our existing pair mix here within the city. So it wouldn't be a fee for someone on the sidewalk, someone in a hotel, someone in a vehicle accident, it would be a fee for ALS services that are delivered as part of that care. And that are billed to commercial insurance companies. Thank you for the clarification, Councilmember Kern. What does ALS stand for? Advanced life support. So yesterday, I talked about within the medical world, we provide both advanced life support and basic life support. Advanced life support generally involves drug delivery, whether you're in cardiac arrest or an overdose or a diabetic who's low on sugar. So IV medication, and then also some of the more advanced tools that we have, such as 12 lead EKGs to determine whether or not you're actually having a heart attack in the field. I assume you, the fire department goes to Sunshine Villa quite a bit. Yes. And so when my mom was there, I remember trying to race over there to beat the ambulance every time she fell. Because every time someone falls, they have to call an ambulance. And it was like bills were like $3,600 for the AMR. How much would we be charging if we got there first? What would the fee or the cost be then? Are you charging the? So generally, if there's no transport, there's no bill. And that's even with any, and that's changed a little bit with AMR. But for the most part, unless you're transported, there's not going to be a fee associated with it. And we have some rules about how we can leave people, as far as whether they have implied consent, informed consent, or they even have the ability to consent to denying that transport or that treatment. And I don't know the particulars about your mother. But obviously, we do go out on a lot of what we call public assist. But we're not transporting. We're just maintaining the person until AMR gets there. Yeah. And so if there's a transport, then the city would get reimbursed. If there was ALS level care associated with it, then yeah. So if we went out and all we were doing is we're assessing, generally speaking, there would not be a bill associated with that. It's for actual treatment delivered within the ALS realm. Thank you. Okay. Thank you for the clarification. I think unless there's any additional questions, Vice Mayor, I'm sorry. Vice Mayor Cummings. Sorry. My last question with regards to this topic. Currently, do you have any sense of how often the fire department actually does transport? Or do they provide that service at all currently? No, we were engaged in doing that, and that's probably a bigger conversation. But each county has a local EMS authority, and as part of that dynamic, they award what they call an EOA or an exclusive operating area. And by law currently, that provider that wins the contract is the only one who's allowed to provide transport and is the only one who's allowed to bill for transport. We are billing for services that we would render as part of that. Currently, we are supplementing them and not receiving any compensation for that. Thank you. So it seems to me that there's consensus if I can tell amongst the council to explore the first responder fee under police and fire. We'll come back to police and discuss security patrols when Chief Mills- Actually, I think Dan is here for that. And I'm sorry about that. I think they were expecting 130. Oh, no, it's no problem. Good afternoon. Hello, Dan Filippo, Deputy Chief, Mayor, Council members. What questions? Sorry, I was at our other staff meeting, so I missed the questions. There was just some questions around your recommendation or your department's recommendation in regards to the reduction proposal for private security patrols. And just wanting to learn a little bit more about what that looked like or entailed for us to consider. Okay, so I know there's some figures that were at yesterday's presentation, but just to be clear, so it's about $230,000 for the patrols of the neighborhoods that include the Wharf, Ocean Street, the Harvey West, and then at times some of the San Lorenzo River as any one of those different areas, the other areas are less impacted. And so that's the budget, that $230,000. We have $15,000 that is for the custody watches or the watches that ones are somebody at the hospital and instead of having an officer sit there, first alarm will come in there, watch the person until they are medically cleared to be booked into jail. And then we have about $30,000 that's set aside for all of our major events for Halloween and New Year's Eve. And to be honest with you, most of what that funding is for is we get security lights or we get other equipment that needs to be watched so it's not vandalized or something like that and then security is watched. So any reduction in that would impact how many eyes we could have on any equipment that the city is borrowing or renting. So the biggest reduction that we would look at is the reduction of the private security patrols in those different neighborhoods. The impacts are, as we've continued to struggle with this model, having private security is an extra set of eyes but you don't really have an immediate need or immediate ability to make an impact sometimes because they can ask somebody to leave for whatever they're contacting the person but they don't really have the legal authority to make the person leave so that could generate a further contact. It would, especially for the wharf and for upper ocean, that would impact. I mean, I think the community is very responsive and very supportive of having that extra, just the presence, I think just the feel of the presence. For us, that would, where our impacts are the staffing is, is we don't have that extra set of eyes out there that can directly call us on our radio and say, hey, this is what's going on, is if an officer is clear, can they come and respond? That's the real reduction in that we would have, that reduction of service. As we're talking about cuts though, we feel like we would continue to try to provide the same service as far as making sure that staff's available. I think with our neighborhood policing teams as problems arise in a neighborhood, we're able to direct what resources we are in a more kind of strategic, not just a continued presence but more of a strategic presence. And that's what we would have to do and keep in place if these cuts were made. For the council that's newer, this isn't the first time that we've recommended when cuts come in. This seems like it would be a service that we feel like we could cut and maybe back load with, it puts a little more burden on us, but we feel like we could where other cuts, you know, I just don't know how we would do some of the programs that we do if we made those cuts. I mean we just physically need to have the funding to do those programs and I think that this would be a little bit less, to us, less significant. I don't think it would be less significant to those community members by any means. I think there would be some very strong opinions about keeping those patrols. Okay, thank you Deputy Chief. Any questions? I think maybe there was a couple questions by, well I'm looking to Council did you have additional questions now that we have our? Yeah well the first one was to get another report back on the impact of the private security patrol so thank you for that. I really appreciate the breakdown and the positives and impacts but also the ability further to be potential reductions. My other question was about the fleet and some of the community members came and spoke a little bit ago about the concerns about the plan for a $68,000 truck and they were talking about that specifically with the police fleet. I haven't had a chance to check if that $68,000 truck purchase was in fact for the fleet but I wanted to get your perspective on vehicles, vehicle purchases, the realistic possibility of focusing on servicing the vehicles instead of purchasing new ones and then the transition from gas-powered vehicles to electric. Perfect, so as far as the $68,000 fee for a particular vehicle that I'm not aware of because what we've asked for is the replacement of three of our patrol vehicles and we roughly budget around $50,000. Now I do know that they were adding one vehicle to be a command vehicle to basically be like a mobile command post where it has all the drawing boards and that adds to you know because you have to have more equipment and that adds to so that may be that individual. So I should know the individual. I know that we ask that we roughly budget about $50,000 for each vehicle and then that goes through public works and then through the leasing program and all that is where the individual fees come out and then we get a total like a year authorized to buy I believe with this year three emergency vehicle replacements or I'm sorry this current fiscal year was three emergency vehicles and an unmarked. Let's talk about our fleet. So our fleet has we have obviously the marked emergency vehicles that lights and sirens and all that and then we have vehicles for our investigators. We only have two admin vehicles that's that several people share if they've got to make court runs for paperwork or down to city hall. Most of the people do walk to city hall so that's good news but when you look at when you look at our emergency vehicle fleet I believe it's 31 vehicles that are that are emergency equipped. All the other vehicles that are in our fleet are we'll consider them are non-emergency. Those 31 vehicles other than our transport van which is a large van all the other 31 vehicles are shared. They're shared vehicles across the entire staff so that means when we put in I have to have a vehicle that can be used by every officer for every given assignment because they're shared they're rotated. We don't have like oh this vehicle is just used for these people and that's their only assignment. With our staffing every got every car is basically got to be equipped to go out handle calls for service take people into custody transport them to the hospital or jail or wherever needs to go. So for that reason as far as electric vehicles I'm all in support. If I could get an electric vehicle that was large enough I would. You made a comment or across someone grown about you know the the size of the officers so when we're sharing vehicles I have to have a vehicle that when we put the screen in between the driver's compartment and the passenger and it's it's called what it is it's a spit screen and all that so the officers aren't going to get anything on them while they're transporting somebody that may not be happy that they're going to jail. I've got to have that buffer when you put that screen in place that really limits the driver's capacity of a car so if I have a very small car not everybody's going to fit in that. When you look at vehicles or agencies that are using all electric vehicles those agencies I heard earlier in the community portion somebody mentioned Detroit LAPD absolutely if if I had if I could add to my fleet I would add vehicles if they were specifically designated for specific duties I can tell you those larger cities have whole divisions that don't do a police officer's job they may be police but maybe I'm the dare officer and all I'm doing is driving to schools and I'm never transporting anybody I'm the community watch officer I'm coordinating all these community groups I may be in a marked vehicle but I'm never taking anybody into custody I'm never doing that police officer work yeah have at it just our size of our agency we don't have that so one of the things I did ask for for this year or our current fiscal years is we're adding a Chevy Volt to our investigations unit I will say all of our most of our support vehicles are hybrids I added a Chevy Volt because I think that's more of a hybrid why didn't I go a full leaf or something like that because you know what they may still have to drive up to Santa Rosa or something like that and I need something that's going to actually get them the distance depending on what that duty is so I'm more than willing to explore those all-electric options I just don't think with our current fleet size and then having officers that have to do a multitude of jobs and that car has to share that I just don't see strictly because of currently what's on there unless you want to buy a full-size Tesla we'd be totally happy with that I just think the price tag on those is a little bit is not going to meet the market value of what we can get so does that answer your question thank you yeah I can just add in there I can remember from around 2002 get my first real exposure into managing a fleet or being part of fleet decisions and understanding the purchase price of a public safety vehicle is different than the final price because of the light bar sirens customization the onboarding computers and systems that are integrated in with other regional agencies there's a lot of equipment that goes into the vehicle once you have it so I think in the budget we have 65,000 that's not the price of the just your average go to the lot and get the vehicle that's a low price and then it takes a lot of effort to outfit them to get them into and we do try to swap information share like if that light bar is still functioning and working then we'll try to you know switch it over there's some things like it's electrical equipment so think of how long your smartphone lasts it gets weird out I failed to answer one of your questions and that was on continuing to maintain them versus buying new ones you know right now we we are running out to about 100,000 miles doesn't sound like if that was your personal car remember these are cars that are driven on surface streets 24 hours a day going from start stop start so it does get to a point where the maintenance cost trainees go out uh water pumps all the other stuff the electrical system starts going out because of that constant draw on it so we do part of the reason is I mean we don't just go oh automatically this car needs to go because of its age some cars are older and their maintenance records are lower as they start to get higher you get to a point where you're paying more to keep the car on the road than you are and that's that's where our when we're managing our emergency vehicle fleet that's exactly where we're at so it's not like an automatic now there's a new lease program so I understand it is more of a rotational but prior to that is that we would run the car as long as that cost per maintenance mile worked great thank you councilor crone and then councilor mayers you mentioned that you had 31 emergency vehicles and a transport van how many other vehicles are there I can get back to you on that I I'm sorry I do know the number um are we talking 10 more 20 more 30 more it's um well we at least have 10 more um I would say probably up to about 20 more and with the chiefs of the vehicle with our investigations units about 10 and then you have the two support vehicles uh for our administrative staff that they share and but so just one volt I mean can we can we get a plan you think to transfer to transfer or to move toward all electric on those that aren't emerging non-emergency so the only reason I bought one volt is because the mileage remember we're talking about mileage versus maintenance costs it's the same thing for my my unmarked units as well so the only vehicle that was up for replacement was that one vehicle and I replaced it with a volt the plan is if next year public works comes they hey these vehicles are costing us a lot of money we suggest that you rotate them out of the fleet then is my intention to buy either a hybrid or a Chevy Volt if if I had a staff vehicle I can look at an all I mean a Chevy Volt is all electric but it does have a gas motor so I I get the difference but yeah that that would be my intention the only reason I bought one is that was all I was authorized to actually replace this year and it'd be great if you could get us the gas you know how much you're spending a year in gasoline and diesel if you have that that'd I heard that question so I know that number's out there because every time we that is something that goes through our fleet cost with with public works but I know as soon as I ask how much so there there should be a means to find out how much we're spending in gas on that but that it's kind of a that's one of those costs that when we're putting into our budget it's kind of like hey this is the three-year actual of the cost of the vehicles now we actually get that number from public works and that's what we put into our budget as far as basically I and that's what it's off those actuals but any vehicle I should say hey this is the maintenance cost and the fuel cost I know we can get that I know you're kind of joking before about the Tesla but what if the analysis was done and you know you buy in bulk from someone like Tesla or something like that you know there could be a savings at the end of the day if we know how much all the other costs are are you do you have to buy Ford Explorers no I mean we the reason we bought the Ford Explorers there's a lot of testing that goes into each vehicle for it to be rated currently the only vehicles that are rated for patrol use other than the Ford Fusion being the electric hybrid are the Dodge Charger the Ford and the there's a Chevy out there that that's it none of the other cars are rated for law enforcement code three driving and that that high pursuit that all goes through the insurance institute and the California Highway Patrol and they come out with their studies and say these are the vehicles part of the reason we stick in those ranges is because the fleet pricing comes from the fact that the state all these other law enforcement agents are buying that particular vehicle and they're and they're trying to buy that vehicle they only do us vehicles they don't look at other I know that the CHP was looking at a Volvo for a while but yeah I don't I don't know why we're not looking at Subaru's and all that but thanks councilmember brown yeah well thank you for being here and racing over to answer some of our questions my question isn't directly related to the police vehicle budget but I think it I mean I just like to make a recommendation that we save some time to have a discussion about vehicles in general because these cross over a lot of different departments I see some confusing things in the budget where there's vehicles related to city council so I would like to have that broader discussion maybe not when we talk about each department but just later if that's I think it would make it more efficient just just an idea thank you thank you okay and so then in regards to sort of the proposal before us with the reduction of the private security patrols to council individual council members want to weigh in in terms of direction and where we can find consensus at this point councilmember Glover yeah thanks I would support having an analysis done of a report provided by the police department of the different locations and the areas that they feel are not the highest priority for there to be security patrols for the opportunity to reduce the the budget associated with that okay does that seem council member Matthews I don't know how the others feel it seems like the custody watch is just a smart use of resources and the major events seem again as close to a no brainer as we get I certainly would entertain some I think significant reductions there seems to me particularly the beach wharf area and upper ocean are in high demand I I have a question I don't need to get it answered right now I'm under the impression that there have been some matching allocations whether it's from businesses in the area I don't know Dan if you know this I I mean I could speak a little bit just because I feel that or having that with some of those folks with Harvey Bester are matching the opportunity to get so let's call it a copay so potentially a reduction but not elimination again we don't need to get into a long thing on this but I understand the value between actual impact and perceived benefit and I just think the perceived benefit I think there's some benefit it's just so important to those areas that are most beleaguered and feel like deputy chief has talked about well we'll backfill this with neighborhood patrolling but what we hear is the frustration well we tried the neighborhood policing but they were called off on the regular duty because we're short 20 active officers you know so anyway I'd like to try and strike some kind of a yeah I think that's fair and I assure that that comes with reminders yeah I just yeah I think I think let's get a report back I do know that the beach and wharf area is an important area for tourism as well as residents I know there's a lot of problems in the beach volleyball court area so I just think we need to know more fully about where the surfaces are and make sure our community understands what what we're potentially looking at in a little more detail so I'm comfortable with having a report prop back okay looks like good so shall we move right along to the next column which is public works operations and engineering um I don't know if we want public works I I don't know I don't really know much about what this what this actually means but if you want to speak to it or if council members have questions we can go ahead and do that Mark Dettel director of public works I can just give you a brief overview of what that is um really we have three groups that we've taken the reductions from in operations we have about 125,000 in in reduction majority 65 or 63,000 in reducing facility maintenance and remodeling uh 50,000 in reducing flood control vegetation management street striping and signage and then uh seven and five thousand in energy project reductions and some of the swift courtyard work that we have to do um in engineering we were we're looking at reducing other professional and technical services 30,000 reducing street smarts funding 15,000 in reduction to bike and pedestrian projects another another 30,000 it's for a total of 75 and then under parking we we are going to delay the meter hood replacement which is 10,000 we're proposing to raise the beach meters by 24 percent in the summertime um which we can do without coastal commission approval um and then increasing residential and guest permits um the the beach meters would bring in about 137,000 general fund dollars and the residential and guest permits another 20 uh 23,000 in total so that gets us to about 370,000 questions okay council member brown vice mayor Cummings so um thank you for clarifying some of that I have a perspective on various elements but in terms of the beach meters the increase um and then the the residential parking permit increases you you've costed that out and those my understanding is though it's 24 percent which I support um and then for residential it's a nominal increase yeah they're currently 25 I think it goes to it goes to 27 or 28 dollars so a little over two dollars a month yeah no it's a year it's a year I mean a year yeah so two dollars two dollars a month because it's 20 it's 24 dollars oh I see what you're saying I'm just talking about what yeah it's it's a pretty I'm just wanting to show it's a nominal they haven't been raised in I think 10 years right yeah I mean when I paid my 24 bucks to you know for downtown parking all the time I thought wow that's a really great deal it still would be a great deal at 27 so I absolutely support that I mean it could go to 30 it's up to you it's really a council discretion uh vice mayor and then council member that was actually my question okay um in the parking and traffic those all sound like go ahead to me um frankly I benefit from the parking permit it's been 25 for 10 years put it up to 30 it's not big bucks but you know we haven't adjusted that one um the street smarts you have reduced here how much would remain for street smarts um we still have about 30 000 that we from measure um measure d but we're also working with the regional partners uh Watsonville the county and looking to bring it in revenue from them also to supplement so it'd be a more regional program so it would be some reduction but also some offsets is that what you're hoping to we're hoping to bring in more than the 15 maybe close to 30 000 so that's a 15 income that you know that's a 15 reduction actually okay well I just support that that's that's a cut but not an elimination of a program and on the bike and pedestrian it says crossing yeah it's a reduction to bike and pedestrian projects it's probably 30 000 um that may be some striping or it may be uh green green lanes those type of things it's really general at this point because we don't have specific projects identified is there something left in that fund yes there is mainly with measure d um projects so we it won't affect the major projects but it's really just maintenance efforts at this point how much remains in that I will I will get that for you okay I'm just trying it doesn't eliminate it but it but it does reduce it and then um you ran through all those others in that middle column operations and engineering um and just like it's not clear what does reduce support for emergency or higher priority engineering services mean um it we have it we have it unspecified dollars for consultant fees for projects unanticipated projects that come our way that we have to deal with or we can deal with uh simply and quickly we will have to come back to council for um approach for those again and I I think I'm going to have this question a lot of things it says reduce what are you looking at in terms of reduction and what remains for facilities and um maintenance and remodeling we're reducing it 63 000 there's probably you know the 50 000 left um but that'll just the nice to have so we'll kind of have to wait basically is what what it would be so well I'll just say without knowing much more those kind of reductions which it's just uh gotta tighten the belt but not eliminate it right those are things that it seems to me to make sense for but I I kind of want to know what are the numbers in those two columns we'll provide that to you as far as what the what the balance is so councilmember brown vice mayor Cummings think councilmember glimmer than councilmember just to finish up with public works my comments I um you know I tend to agree with councilmember mathews uh wanting to have that information about what's left and it sounds like um you're looking at creative ways to maintain those programs um while making some some reductions I just want to say I actually I don't support any reductions to um bike and pedestrian projects at this point I mean the small reduction I mean that's like one vehicle we're talking about you know if we would make those reductions that are very significant to bike and pedestrian safety green green lanes etc that's like one or two vehicles in our big budget so I wouldn't support those reductions I think those are critical and they should be prioritized nice mayor Cummings just wanted some clarification around the um third item in the second column with reduced flood control maintenance including surrounding vegetation control just some clarification on yeah we spend boy it's um I think last year we spent over 150 000 on the river salarans of river maintenance as far as vegetation removal um we also have sign maintenance and striping that we're constantly upgrading so we looked at the overall effort on that budget and um found our reduction that we could find to make it so it again it's not specific we'll have to identify the areas that that we'll have to reduce or you know do what we have to do within the budget uh councilmember crone lover and then mires I mean no councilmember clever crone and then mires excuse me thank you uh hello mr deadall yes good to see you again um so uh just since we're doing these one by one um can the I'm open to discussion and I want to learn more just about the reduction support for emergency or high priority engineering services just a quick yeah we have typically budgeted between 50 000 a year for unanticipated projects we'll bring in consultants if we have to do a design um of a we'll have a road failure or something like that if we have a geotech that we have to bring in it just gives us some flexibility to manage that manage those unanticipated problems um what we've done it we didn't eliminate it we just reduced it so that we have less of a buffer we can still get the critical ones done but we'll have to come back and get authority for more uh funding if we need it great um so I support that absolutely um then uh I'm not in support of reducing the resources to explore energy projects because I would imagine and correct me if I'm wrong but I'm assuming that that means exploring alternative energy programs in ways that we can move away from our reliance on fossil fuels yeah that's seven thousand dollars um it's really just to oversee um potential potential other options for energy reduction that's correct great I'd in fact I'd love to see that increased uh but um then with the uh reduction of maintenance for the surrounding vegetation control can you talk a little bit about that uh again that majority of that's San Lorenzo river and we we have a uh maintenance program that takes place early August um we do a lot of vegetation management um we'll bring a contractor in down in the river they'll cut all that vegetation back so we're preparing the river for the winter season as it comes forward with with the flooding we'll we'll do as much as we can but we're just going to have to read you know look at areas where we're going to reduce that all right what I'd love to see uh with that and also I'll talk about it later with parks is oh first of all I'd love to see a report on some of the consulting fees that we have been paying with regards to vegetation control and other kinds of stuff like that because I'm always interested in finding ways that we might be able to incorporate community involvement and through volunteerism in some of those services as opposed to paying outside contractors um I support the increase of parking meters in the beach flats area um I am uh hesitant to increase parking rates for residential people especially because of our cost of housing here in Santa Cruz if we have required permitting uh on streets because they don't want other people parking in their neighborhoods it seems uh difficult especially if someone's moving into that neighborhood to increase their rates for parking guest permits maybe but I'm not in favor of residential rates and or I'm in favor of increasing the rates on people of over a certain income level so I need to understand if that's feasible so that they're scaled or tiered parking payments is that something that's usable I don't know that you could do it on income you could do it on the first permit is one price second permit is additional could be a higher price if you want to do that so someone who had six cars well they only can get five five cars they would pay a much higher price for that last car if that's if you wanted tiered that's probably the only way I think you could do it great I'd love to explore any options on how we might be able to just to make sure that people of lower incomes or with less means aren't being hit with the same uh costs as other people uh with the streets march uh program or the outreach campaign I'd love to see the data associated with that so the amount of issues and street dangers that existed before the implementation of streets parks program and then the resulting years following just so that we can understand the efficacy of it and sure you're not where we want to put our money um and I uh do not support the reduction in funding for a bike or pedestrian crossing since we want to keep our community safe something that did stick out to me though uh which is not on the list was the potential increasing of uh downtown parking permits specifically for companies because I know that came up in uh our presentation for our study session with parking and that we were severely I mean in my opinion undercharging corporations like amazon and other large-scale corporations that have deeper pockets uh while making our own staff play kind of musical chairs with parking spaces so I'd love to see uh how we could increase parking permit costs for large corporations those are not general fund but that's something that we could be looked at thank you council member and then council member Matthews thank you um I won't repeat I support um pretty much everything that's been um said so far except I like the idea of tiering it um you know in fact leave it at 25 possibly for the first one so you're not dinging you know low income people because they're not going to have more than one car I don't think usually um but then putting it up like 30 and 35 for your second and then your visitor one I I didn't know you could have five like what is the what's the third fourth and fifth one it's typically they're all 25 typically the first three are um for use of the resident and then the two guest permits are allowed so you could have up to five permits per per parcel I would love to see a tiering of five dollars each for the you know as you go out similar to like having car owning cars I think you should be paying double when you have a second or third car um in registration fees but um the other issue is how much does it cost to park at a meter now in the in the beach area um I believe it's a it's a dollar 50 an hour to park in the beach area um which in the limited time parkings and that actually doubles after two hours in the area like cow's lot where it's two hour minimum we don't have time restrictions but it increases by cost but if you park at the boardwalk it's $15 so I'm definitely the cheaper alternative if you you can find a spot right that's what I was wondering if because I I'm I support getting up to um the market in that area because that's when they're used they're used by you know folks coming to visit the boardwalk most of the time I think um and maybe you know more better than I if that's true is it mostly terrorists that are using those meters it is and we if we go over 25 percent then we have to go back to coastal for approval for that but we can raise it 24 percent at this point so is it 24 percent on top of a dollar 50 yes it would it would be that rate it would be 24 percent uh on top of the dollar 50 so we get in close to two dollars an hour close to two so I mean and people are staying for eight seven eight hours I mean if there's typically I don't know what the typical boardwalk visit is typical boardwalk stays at three to four hours three to four so he might be running those parking spaces three and four times a day or just three times a day on busy weekends yeah that's what I thought too but just it's good to get some verification um yeah and as far as the funding for biking pedestrian I totally would not want to see money coming away from that thanks thanks mayor council member down and then council member Matthews I think we're gonna say the same thing here yeah I'll I'll let you go ahead well in terms of multiple parking permits for a single parcel um at least in the downtown where we have both lived a lot of those are houses with a bunch of students or you know divided up and so it's not one family with five cars a bunch of people so something to consider I would just add so in terms of the question about tiering it's like which tenant gets to pay the lower fee you know I mean I just think it we're personally it's they're already pretty low so even as a low income person with a permit in the downtown it wasn't a huge stretch for me so okay so I just simple so in terms of kind of consensus I share the proposal to increase it um you know okay modestly um and you know we could export a different time for an increased tiered system but I'm not sure if that would actually get at the equity piece which I know is sort of the intention behind that request is sort of what I'm hearing also and would you I think even it simple makes a lot of sense just for the operation and implementation um we right now we have some properties with limited number of permits available and when you have multiple tenants trying to students trying to jockey to see who gets the permit it's always kind of a challenge for our parking office staff could be something to explore in the future councilmember clever yeah so I just want to clarify as I understand what um people are talking about so we're facing a situation right now where we have $25 parking passes and people can have how many um a total of five per parcel up to five per parcel okay and so we have the potential for those people that have let's just use an example if someone has five cars I'm not sure how many people have five cars um but instead of asking people that are affluent enough to have multiple cars to pay more which would then go into our funding we want to maintain we want to gradually increase it by a small percentage and then just have that across the board so that people that want to have multiple cars under their name don't have to pay additional money I I find that hard to understand because why are we not taking advantage of the opportunity for people that have enough money to have multiple cars to pay additional funding into the city since we're in a deficit I just don't understand the logic between like why resists that okay uh Vice Mayor Cummings um I had a question with regards to what was in the department summary for public works okay there's a line item for off-street parking that goes up by a million dollars um from the estimated actual this year going into 2020 and it looks like it also went up um well it didn't go up by as much in the previous season so I was just wondering if you could speak to why we're seeing a million dollar increase that's basically we just increased the parking rates um based on the project coming forward um so we're seeing increased revenue from those increased rates so that's really that's revenue projection is what is that what you're looking at as far as it says fiscal your request 2020 um it goes from I'll let me grab my book okay sure councilmember brown um I was just going to respond quickly to council member Glover's question maybe I can but it looks like our city manager is interested in doing that um and then I just had a suggestion if I may the I mean the most important thing we need to hear from council now is whether you're interested in increasing parking revenues and it sounds like there's a consensus uh with respect to that with respect to the actual rate structure and all that I mean that that's going to has to come back to you anyway um so I I don't think you need to resolve all that I think in the interest of time um but it will come back to you so there will be an opportunity to uh for the discuss it if you wish so just a suggestion did that cover what you were yeah I'll just say I'll talk to you offline about because I share your commitments and so I think it's just maybe clarifying we can talk later I'll get back to we'll go back to my coming and then to council um if there aren't any other questions I would do I will talk a little bit about fleet if you just an update on philosophy so okay did you did you get um I'll get back to him get back to him at a different time okay let me let me research okay councilmember Glover thanks the the reason why I brought it up and I understand that their future meetings have to do with all this but if we don't give direction to come back with the analysis of the potential impact of the different fee structures then when they come back they're just going to come back with an analysis of if we increase it by five dollars or whatever it is so if we're giving direction it seems like we should be able to explore all of our options on how we might be able to generate additional revenue for the city even if it's a direction that we don't take we need to have the data in front of us so I would encourage the staff ideally but also my colleagues to at least encourage the data to be compiled so that we can make an informed decision councilmember Matthews understood but we're asking all this to come back in a week and I think we have to do some focused effort here okay so in terms of sort of consensus moving forward I think there's a shared consensus in that regard in terms of the increase and then I don't know if we if you have what you need or if you want us to individually go through and see where the majority of the council falls on some of the individual proposals before us if that would be the most helpful approach at this point that would be great okay yeah okay do you I think we've heard from certain council members councilmember Myers I'll share sort of where I am and I think we've heard from councilmember crone and councilmember clever about what about these individual things that you like you were suggesting you wouldn't support reducing funding for this or that I just want to make sure we get a tiered when he comes back I think an obvious one would be five dollars per vehicle like so we have one vehicles 25 don't change that and see what the numbers are and 30 dollars for two the second 35 for the third 40 for the fourth 45 for the fifth we've got that down okay thanks appreciate it yeah yeah we can look at that when we bring it back do you want to share sort of for you yeah I'll just make a couple quick mark I had a question about the flood maintenance um a subject I know a little bit about I'm just curious how do we um how do we rectify the maintenance that keeps us within the O&M operations and maintenance requirements by the core right we will have to do there are minimums that we will have to do right and we'll look we'll have to look at where we take that funding from we may have to go to the overlay fund for some of that which is hurting right now with the flood control overlay but we're optimistic we're going to get a reimbursement from the core so we'll see if from the bridge credit we're still waiting for that's been 12 15 years um but as they close out this project it's supposed to come to us so it might bridge our gap until we get through um this year anyway that's kind of what I'm hoping okay yeah and I guess I would just kind of suggest um it does seem like the the use of the heavy equipment the ripping especially has been effective in moving sediment which is really what we need during a flood I'm less excited about watching all the trees get cut down every year so I don't know if there's a way in that so I guess I would lean towards even though it's uh can be optically weird to see a bulldozer down there I think that you actually receive quite a bit of benefit in terms of flood control plus I I think over time we've learned that actually um utilizing that kind of equipment actually can mimic what typically a storm flood would be doing so we're getting a lot of diversity in the habitat there so maybe there's a way to kind of cut because I know a lot of the hand works very expensive um that's where a lot of your cost comes in um I think with parking um I just think uh simpler is better I think you get into a lot of complication and you may price people out and I don't know um so I think just try to try to find a good level that people will uh subscribe to um I would be disappointed to see both the street smarts um and the bike and pedestrian funding get decreased I'm hoping that we can at least hit the highest priority projects with the bike and ped improvements if we did do reduction and then with street smarts I agree it would be great to see if you can kind of extend our funding by matching with with other jurisdictions so we get better bang for our buck thank you that would be a county-wide message too so it helps it's helpful thank you um others want to share or I'm happy to sort of one last question another question with the increasing meter rates in the beach areas maybe I didn't hear correctly is that just during the summer would that be year-round and I believe that's a summer increase because the majority that majority of the revenue comes in that four months right I was just one to know for clarification thanks do you want to share any areas of support for the reduction proposal um similarly I'd rather not see reductions to the um bike and pedestrian crossing um I having lived in the beach flat area and been affected by the um the way that the permit structure is I'm happy to see the tiered structure come back but I do understand the concerns with um if you live in a house with multiple individuals all of whom are renting if the parking rates go up depending on the individual that's kind of not fair for the people who are living in that household and so um I'm interested in seeing what the tiered system looks like but I think it's going to be difficult um to um make that argument that we should that people who are coming into a house later at some point are therefore negatively impacted if they have a car because they just came in at a later point in time and and then are subject to paying more for parking um and then um um the higher priorities for um engineering services it'd be great if we could um I'm sorry for the reduced resources to energy exploration it'd be good if we could keep that money there because I think long term we'd actually save money by finding more energy efficient um projects in the city and um and as I mentioned before just wanted to know more about the reduced flood control maintenance and vegetation control I'll just share I too um would like to hopefully not see any reduction in the bike and pedestrian safety efforts and ideally there'll be a way to offset any potential reduction that would accompany the street smarts outreach campaign I understand um based on sort of the conversation today that the proposal for the increase in the um the permits uh it would be a small increase and to potentially tier it could also have unintended consequences for folks that I think could potentially not necessarily meet what I think is the intention behind wanting to have a tiered system um and then in regards to the resources to explore energy projects just more understanding of how that fits into our broader efforts around um those types of resources resources or um energy put into that as a city in general does that kind of give you what you need does everybody feel they had their opinion expressed council member crone and then council and then vice mayor just on this or the entire you know public works budget and stuff are we talking about that as well because I had some similar questions about vehicles and vehicle purchases and how many vehicles public works has how many are electric can we go in a in a more aggressive direction toward electric vehicles you know how much do we depend on the internal combustion engine can we actually make a shift of two electric I think if I remember correctly council member brown offered to have that conversation after we sort of conclude the individual elements and to revisit it at that time but to have it today when is that going to was that correct yeah I mean I would just add that is not to suggest I don't want to ask the question of each and every department but if we're going to be asking it of each and every department I'd like to maybe try to have a discussion and see if there's support on the council for having that question asked across the board council member Matthews and I think you're the department that does the vehicle purchase so I'd be happy to talk about that a little bit yeah our focus actually I'm just going to pause here really quick vice mayor did you have I did have one additional question around the the residential and get in the residential permits is there any possible way of tying for example with this idea of doing a tiered system to tie to the individual so if I as an individual own three cars and want permits for each of those vehicles that it then goes up for each additional vehicle that I personally own rather than it being tied to the property we can check on that that we'll look at that when we do that right up the tiered system for you we could also deal with the student issues you show a student ID when you go to the parking office you know then you don't pay that you know if that's an if that's an issue I personally think that I'd like to try to persuade students not to bring a car to Santa Cruz okay did you okay I was just going to comment that it's not just students who are renting I mean it's a lot of professionals and people who live here long term I mean we know how difficult it is for people to rent in Santa Cruz and so it's not just students who we're talking about just want to point that out okay um basically the our philosophy is to try to get the most carbon-free vehicles that we can and public works we've actually we have seven of the Leafs or six of the Leafs in the pool that's something that we started many years ago on a Leafs program because the pool vehicles um Leafs they're just around town it seems to work pretty well we have multiple Priuses um just as far as we've tried electric parking scooters unfortunately the scooters really weren't they didn't really work out as well as we had hoped but we were willing to try that we've tried hybrid garbage trucks we've had with mixed success with those we're actually I think we've tried cng we're hoping for an electric garbage truck that's really where our next focus will be um we as far as trying to encourage we do encourage when a department comes in for a vehicle we do explain what's available to them we try to encourage them to get a electric or a hybrid or something like that without if it meets their needs um PD has been replaced replacing the Crown Vix which we're very happy with I think we're almost through with those there's eight mile a gallon vehicles that so even if they're using an SUV it's still getting 18 miles a gallon so it's much it's using fuel but it's using much less fuel than they were using before and so we're we're moving them towards more efficient vehicles um we fully support trying to be the most efficient vehicles that are out there we are waiting for an electric pickup truck that's actually um kind of meets the market and can meet the test there's a lot of talk about them but they really aren't currently available at a reasonable price right now there's Ford's talking about maybe making the f-150 electric well that'd be great well we we it would fit the type of use that we have so um right now we we do have we we actually are also getting two electric trolleys so those are replacing the other trolleys the issue for us right now will be charging stations and there's a limit on charging stations at the corp yard we are working with uh pg and e to install more charging stations we're supposed to get a multiple charging units there if they follow through with the program that we've signed up for we're optimistic there Monterey Bay community powers in fact the meeting today was just talking about more charging stations and funding um the cal vip going with them and installing more charging stations throughout uh either the city and the whole region so um i think charging stations are a current limitation this is an evolving industry and we're seeing both the types of vehicles and the charging networks kind of evolve and and we're we're actively watching it ready to implement it as it's appropriate well if we're going to talk vehicles now then i'll just have at it um i would really like to see um and i'd just like to hear from my colleagues about their interest some people have raised it um really uh uh fuel costs broken out by department okay um um we've we've heard from the police department that that information can be made available through public works i'd like to see it for all departments um and then i'm just trying to understand in the capital outlay summaries we've received by department and activity um i think the Chevy Tahoe was already uh raised as a question which um deputy chief flippo answer i think answered um however um i'm just not understanding why the city council has vehicles attributed to it at all um and so and why if it's if so what they do um so that's not really a budgetary question but i see um under activity 7862 it's capital um three in the capital outlay uh section um of unnamed vehicle to replace a Ford Taurus at $47,000 and two Ford F-150 standard cabs replacing uh Fords at $34,000 each can i get a i'd like to understand what that is um and why we're replacing um again potentially smaller vehicles with these either larger vehicles or are more less fuel efficient push that's one um activity 7205 um which i think is on capital i can't remember which okay capital um four uh Ford Ranger is um being replaced with uh i believe it's unnamed but i think it sounds like a F-150 at a 50 increase cost and then um the Ford Rangers in general being replaced by full-size pickups and that's kind of on and on typically though um they're not making the Ford Ranger anymore and typically the the we don't put a lot of miles on vehicles but we put a lot of years on vehicles and um most of the at least in the general fund the average replacement life of a vehicle non-public safety vehicle is probably 15 to 20 years um public safety vehicles or you play we look at them very closely if they get 100,000 miles or 10 years so that's kind of the trigger because they can be put in a high speed situation and we want to make sure that they're safe um so that's kind of the replacement trigger we look at for a general vehicle they can go 15 years um they typically have under 100,000 miles because they're mostly local trips we are currently talking with a potential lease company with with enterprise to see if that makes sense for us um it may just because you'll have newer vehicles more efficient vehicles but we don't put the miles on on them so after three or four years they may have 10 or 15,000 miles and if they so we're we're trying to work out the details if it makes sense or are we paying too much for a vehicle a new vehicle to sit there so we're looking at that there are benefits but but there are cons too much appreciated if you if i could just understand city council vehicles i can jump in on that one thank you the city so there's a joke here i'll be a little lighthearted the city council oversees everything so we put your head your name at the top of every page so it's but it's it's a mistake it there's a very first page of the capital outlight starts with a shared copier cost and city council as a header was continued on every page from there forward i'm i'm usually pretty good at recognizing your jokes but thank you for clarifying had me stump i thought we were going to actually achieve some serious savings here okay are there questions at this time council member um i think that's even why it's more imperative to move toward i mean how many vehicles are in the from the fleet right now that's a good question you say overall i'll ask our operations manager sound like we're about a 51 vehicles for police more or less a copper public works operations manager we have around 800 vehicles in the fleet we have another 200 assets that are things like stationary generators that sort of thing lawn mowers around 275 of those are passenger vehicles or light pickups of those we have six leaps i believe we have 12 priuses we have a couple of cng vehicles i think we have around 30 alternative fuel vehicles all together every year around september we look at our fleet we have a computer maintenance management program spits out reports we have somebody working on one today for fuel consumption by department we go through the list and we look at four things we look at the age the mileage the repair costs that have accumulated in the last three years on a vehicle and the fuel costs in the last three years of a vehicle and we weight each of those and we come up with a score for each vehicle and then we go to the departments to which those vehicles are assigned and we ask them uh is there any reason why we shouldn't replace this vehicle uh do you have another vehicle that you'd rather replace and if they do we subject that to the same test same point test uh thinking behind that being we weed out the vehicles that have excessive mileage which really is police vehicles for the city not unusual to have a 10-year-old vehicle of 40,000 miles on it and then if they want something else we try to accommodate that most of the passenger vehicles people are pretty flexible on almost everybody wants some alternative fuel vehicle we get that we we're believers the problem we have is fitting that in a capital budget because they're 15 to 20 percent more expensive and then with the electric vehicles it's the chicken and egg thing we don't have capacity so do we buy electric vehicles or do we buy electric vehicles and find capacity we were offered this program by PG&E to put in 16 charging station is at the courtyard at zero cost to us except for the charging stations themselves at around five grand a piece that's a no-brainer so we're going ahead with that uh PG&E's kind of leaking oil at this point we're not sure if they're going to be around when this thing's ready to go but by all indications they're sticking by it and so they hope to deliver it by November so that's kind of an overview about how we look at our fleet and try to keep it current so it kind of sounds like you're looking for direction from the city council to say yes go for those electric vehicles pay 20 percent more if that's what it takes i don't know if the council is ready to do that but i know that the community is ready to do that i'm just looking at the numbers here if uh you have 275 passenger vehicles 20 it looks like less than 10 percent are electric i believe in california 13 percent of the vehicles now are electric and in Santa Cruz i think a bit more than that it would just be great if Santa Cruz could be the leader here in electric vehicles that the city's using but i don't know if you're waiting for that direction or no no we we agree completely and uh you know there's other factors that we have to consider as well uh the the actual physical capacity of the vehicle you know in relation to the use that's going to be put the range of the vehicle uh what do we do with the batteries when when they wear out you know there's a substantial disposal cost associated with those batteries that situation's improving that's why we went with the lease on the nissans because they took care of all that and the program that we're looking at with enterprise fleet management they take care of that as well this is something we were pretty skeptical about when it first came down the road but it we're kind of being won over uh it's going to enable us to buy more vehicles uh and in a more variety of vehicles so uh we're we're with you on that we really want to get these alternative vehicles what if we had a moratorium on gasoline vehicles we're gonna have a lot of iron sitting in the yard doing nothing well i mean we had that you can use those until they're they're done and then you only buy you would only buy electric yeah um we still have to buy parts and keep these things in service but if that's your direction we can look into that um also if you bring back the consumption of each department of gasoline could you also attach prices to numbers of dollars amounts to how much the gases we paid for thanks keeping in mind that the the gasoline market right now is pretty volatile to that's that's why i'm that's why i'm pushing electric yeah yeah i haven't been to the gas station in six months i mean just you know just i'm looking at the prices keep going up and up and up okay well um i'll just briefly add that in sort of the interest of time you know and the intention of the day i think what i'm hearing from the council is really wanting to have a better understanding of energy use costs associated work the work that we're currently doing on um energy efficiency strategies and and then maybe as policy makers we can discuss any best next steps um councilmember uh brown matthews uh vice mayor Cummings and Glover i think i'm covered okay along your lines um i don't want to get into a moratorium on purchasing gas vehicles per se i i i give a whole lot of credit to what your efforts are already you understand the imperative to be as energy efficient as possible bearing in mind the range the function etc etc so um this has been very interesting it kind of affirms what i think is true um and i know also from metro we the buses we have a goal and a desire to be all electric the technology is not there yet we have a staged and and you're replacing these things on a um a formula whether it's age or mileage that makes a lot of sense so uh i think the review's been good some kind of summary of this might be helpful just in terms of conveying it to the public because on a lot of these vehicles once the staff has gotten to explain well these are the reasons yeah it makes sense so that would probably be reassuring um emphasizing our goal in the long run is to get off of fossil fuels vice mayor i'd just like to follow up with that just by seeing if we can get some more information about because you mentioned and i'm looking at one of these lineups for example that the crown fit gets eight miles per gallon and the replacement car will likely have better fuel efficiency so i think understanding fuel efficiency with the replacements will be very helpful additionally um i think it would be good to have information on what vehicles they're replacing so for example if we're purchasing a new truck does that previous truck have 150 000 has it been you know having issues in terms of maintenance which is a reason why we're replacing it um just so that the public and council members have a good understanding as to the rationale as to why we're replacing these vehicles some more to come addition council member clever and then council member crown yeah i just wanted to make sure uh because i didn't hear it reiterated in some of the summaries was just looking at the increasing of downtown parking permits for companies like amazon okay um council member crown council member matthews council member mires would this be the time to talk about um pedestrian and bicycle protection going across the one and nine uh interchange there that's i notice there's something in the budget over this but and i just want to make sure they're you know that we're going to get the pedestrian because it's probably the most dangerous intersection for for a pedestrian anyway yeah we have the the bike path that actually goes on you know the the safest way is to actually to go around that intersection um with the intersection redesign there is an improvement for pedestrians and bicyclists in the one and nine improvement is there any way to encourage in that interchange where the bike would then like maybe where the ross camp is now or something go that that way to catch the um the the bike lane because a lot of people don't realize you know because it's so it's removed from the street so they don't know that the river levy is there i'll talk to chris about that yeah i don't maybe signage or something like that in a path i'm just bringing this up because some people were looking through the budget and they said hey what about that that intersection is it going to be safe for bikes and pedestrians i know it is a there's an there's a shorter cross i mean it's there is a little bit of an island that helps people but um we'll get more information on that okay yeah i mean we've spent a lot of time talking about this intersection and um and the council did approve an amended domain action to allow for this project to go forward um my understanding of the design however is that the the bike lane is kind of the minimum standard the four foot that's what the the design proposal is unprotected and given that i mean we do have an alternative that i also want to encourage people to take but given that that might not happen um that people will be crossing i'd really like to see pursuit of increased safety measures there um we could do more than the minimum i think we ought to consider that and i just jumped out to respect we're approaching 230 from a time check yeah we're on the first we're on the first slide we've got a few more to get through we have a lot more to get through i think as we've said a couple times we recognize there's a 260 million dollar budget behind the scenes that a lot of these things might be prioritized to come back as an informational item or report backs or additional direction but if we can be helpful to get through this list and absolutely thank you for that on that note let's go ahead and switch gears thank you um to our next bucket which is economic development um and we have bonnie here if you want to say a few words about what this means for your department in our community good afternoon mayor and members of the council um so the reductions that we have before you today um are listed on your screen the first is our facade improvement program and i should just start by saying we don't want to reduce any of these but these are the ones that we felt like we could manage a reduction based on just based on the overall projects and it's part of it's a capacity issue too so we did have i will say 50 applicants this last round for facade improvement program we did some very extensive outreach um and we had some translation services provided in the beach flats and had a really good response and so we've been working through those so i do want to preface that by saying i don't want to reduce any of these um but we do have only so many projects we can handle a year and so just looking from a capacity basis i felt like this was was one area that if we had to reduce we could um the facade improvement program over the last couple years have become has become a little bit harder for us to manage because of some new state regulations around prevailing wage dropping that minimum down for 25 000 and then anything that has city funding and it triggers prevailing wage and so it becomes more cumbersome for the applicant to go forward and so we've had fewer people respond to the program we've made some adjustments to the program and also created a signage program which are smaller five thousand dollar grants that don't trigger prevailing wage that has been very successful so we're trying to balance those two programs going forward um so that's our facade improvement program a reduction of our graffiti contract um this is a fairly long large contract about 60 percent of it is funded through the general fund 40 percent is funded through enterprise funds the majority of the general fund funding is in our department um and so the portion that we fund is everything that's not covered under uh you know other enterprise funds whether it's you know storm water you know just other things that get tagged on public property across this the city we do across uh allocate those across the departments but everything else that doesn't fit comes to our department as part of our budget um so we overall this roughly is I think it's about a 21 percent uh reduction to the contract which we would do and I think instead of having the 24 hour response we try to take care of everything within 48 hours so we're looking at how we could still be responsive and have a slightly smaller contract so that is that is that proposed reduction um we also have proposed a reduction to professional and technical um services that one's not actually listed up here but that is looking at some of our geotechnical support um it's related to some of our property management so looking at the um for example uh under the metro project a couple of our key projects we need to do uh phase one environmental we need to look at the geotechnical both for like sky park and some of those um and so those are just a timing issue can we fund some can we delay some can we fund some can we adjust that within the broad within the budget um the reduction for temporary and contractual staffing we're hoping that by filling the vacancies our recent vacancies that we won't need the temporary staff line as much as we've relied on in the past where we had you know we've had five um retirements within the last two years and that's had a pretty big impact so we've had a large number of vacancies and really have had to rely on some temporary particularly where it comes to property and asset management um so and then finally the reduction in public art um and this is and just to clarify there's a distinction between this and the art funding that we provide for community programs or at arts council this is specifically the funding that we budget as part of economic development and this uh specifically funds our overall program management arts arts promotion mural matching grant program um sculptor scrap um the rail trail arts all these are great projects I will say that um we have a you know one person's you know small but mighty um arts program manager who does an incredible amount with the budget we have um a number of projects that she's working on now and we do have some funding carry over from the previous year which is why we thought we could absorb a slight reduction um for the upcoming fiscal year because we're still carrying forward those projects that she's working on um so that summarizes the reductions before you and I'm happy to answer any specific questions that you have customer brown and then maybe I'll just go around yeah I always get to go first I look um so um I think you actually answered the question I had related to reduction in the public arts uh program but I just want to put it out and I thank you for clarifying on all of these items I just want to put it out there uh for to take note of for future discussion this is a longer conversation but you know I'm really interested in um the you know the relationship between the graffiti and public art in our community and a member of the public who's actually here uh the intern who's working with me uh alerted me the fact that the city of Berkeley has this really I'm just going to say it now because I don't know when else I'll have an opportunity to say it um the city of Berkeley has a program where they actually contract with graffiti artists for certain um high uh graffiti um locations and um as there is and they sign and so as a result because of the graffiti community uh at least much of it um actually respect they respect each other um it actually has led to um uh reduction in graffiti overall so not just um you know so reducing is not just covering it up after it happens but creating spaces that don't that are not as prone to graffiti and it's something that I'd really love to explore in the future so I'm going to put it out there now so my colleagues know it's of an interest of mine and I'll um follow up with you Bonnie if to kind of talk about that for the future yeah and I will say at yet a future point we can have uh Beth Toby our arts program manager come forward she actually does done quite a bit of work in this area great thanks yeah uh just quickly if we could get an idea the reduction you propose in the facade program would be from what to what from 100,000 to 70,000 and um the other thing that you mentioned was um just because of external requirements it's it's morphed over time and I'm wondering if um you said there's just the capacity of how many you can manage but also it's it's a 50-50 match now isn't it I mean I love the facade improvement program I think we get so much bang for the buck out of it could we go to a you know 40-60 match or you know 50-50 isn't magic it there's a certain sense to it but just stretching those dollars a bit I support this I mean still you can do some good project for this right one of I one of the things I should have said that we're trying to also do is to really encourage some of the larger projects because you can have in one building you might have you know three or four sometimes as many as five businesses and the more that we can have participate the more we can leverage the funding so we're just we're also just being strategic on the projects that we're doing going forward um so I'm fine with that um in terms of the graffiti contract you're talking about going from what amount to what amount on that so the total contract is about 115,000 and so we would propose to reduce it by 25,000 which is about 21 percent 90 I'm a real fan of the graffiti project and to my mind removing tags is 100 percent different than graffiti art and you talked about going from a 24-hour response to a 48-hour response I mean that's ballpark yeah ballpark yeah well I I'm happy I'm okay with some reduction but no further than that the reduction in public art as I understand it was basically a one-time reduction understanding that's right structurally I don't think we could support that over multiple years but this year I think we can because of the carry forward of some projects that we already have that Beth is working on we think we can we can support that so that goes from what to what that would go from 100 to 70 so it'd be a 30 percent in that one well understanding that that's not a cut in the actual program that's right I could support that and then the reduction in temporary and contractual staffing is from what to what there it's a it's a reduction of 40,000 I don't have the exact total of that FYI for all the other departments that's kind of what I'm curious just to get an order of the magnitude of the cut but as I understand it there by your ability to fill some positions now you think you're going to need less of that yeah it's around 25 percent and I hate to interrupt this and I appreciate the precision but we also recognize that we have a bigger gap to fill and so just just saying conceptually those numbers could change we might I mean I'm not saying those would be the changes but we might come back and say we need more from graffiti for example or more so just putting out there that we're at 2.4 million now and we have a bigger number to get to if I may uh Marcus so your interest is having is is the is the consensus amongst the council overall somewhat comfortable with what's being proposed most definitely that's what you're looking for yeah okay so I recognize the then those are important questions to get answers and we're analyzing at that level of detail obviously as well I just wanted to ask about the professional and technical services right so what's in that a lot of what we funded and just looking at last year specifically what we funded out of that is geotechnical so we've done a number of studies we tap into this for professional and management sometimes also for appraisals but for site characterizations for various projects whether it be like skypark and looking at the additional borings we may need to do so some of our contracts specifically include you know environmental surveys and and site characterizations sometimes it might include an additional boring to get additional data of for example the vapor that we have at skypark or looking at some of the properties downtown when we're considering going forward for acquisition we'll do at a minimum we'll do a phase one sometimes we'll we'll go a little deeper to find out what that risk is for purchasing that site and so this all comes out of this this line item in our professional and technical we you know usually have a little more in this in this line item then oh then we'll spend we usually have a savings at the new the year because we budget for okay if this project goes forward we'll need to do these three things and so we'll budget for that but we don't typically spend it all every year so we felt like we could absorb it here but those are the types of things we fund out of it and if all the projects did move forward at once we yeah it could be a challenge for us we've also just looking at the other things we funded we funded some storm drain analysis at the tannery that we needed to do we actually had a housing contract out of there as well this last year for related to the housing blueprint subcommittee okay i'll just say i just appreciate the context that you provided in relationship to some of these being carryovers or the management of the program or potential for partnership etc so in terms of my position i you know i support the package that you've presented and how you want to move forward okay councilmember mires yeah i'm i'm also generally supportive but also um a little bit um you know the success of our small businesses in santa cruz relates directly to our sales tax which relates like directly to our ability to um you know have success with our budget and the for our community and so um i you know i understand and i think you've selected done some surgical thinking on it and i appreciate that um i i think especially with the facade program and the kinds of things that we can do especially i'm glad to hear that you're doing more work in beach flats i mean i hate to see these kinds of small businesses not be able to get assistance from us so i think their success is directly related to our policy decisions so thanks for the surgical reductions and hopefully we won't have to do more thank you hello thank you for uh the information uh so i support the reduction of the facade program the graffiti contract interesting to know the quantity that's associated with that just as far as funding goes um along the same lines as councilmember brown um i know that berkeley the program she referenced in berkeley but then also there are other things that i've seen where they partner with local um graffiti artists to go and just convert all of the negative tags and the positive tags and makes it so there's more positive art so but interested in looking at the ability for us to implement that um while still making a reduction to that program i'm firmly against uh reducing funds for public art i think those those are super important um as when we get to community support also we'll talk more about the need for community engagement and community expression um so uh really want to see more diverse art i think is something that i would love to see instead of a reduction in public art and then um for the facade program specifically and the temporary contractual staff i have a note here so that i need some data so just the efficacy the response the impact of the facade program has it in fact supported businesses and has their income or revenue increased from their use of the program and then um the contractual staffing just the list just like from public works a list of uh history of contractors that we've used and the costs associated with them and i'm not sure if it's feasible between now in the next meeting but maybe between now in the third meeting um the bids and that goes for all the different departments the bids that were associated with those contractors that they went with um so that we can look at the alternate bids and how they went thank you and thank you for going down the line the sod improvement program is that money always used even completely yeah not not always it used to be used every year um completely when we had the new state regs on prevailing wage which were really you know tightening up and lowering that minimum that triggered we really struggled and then we also had some challenges with the department of industrial relations and just getting responsiveness so the time it was taking to go through the program meant we were getting fewer people through the program a year so the last two years i wouldn't say that we fully spent the funding we'd love to and that's one of the reasons we did considerably more outreach this year and have been working with department of industrial relations to really refine the program and try to be as up front as possible and proactive with them so we could get all their questions answered so things could be a little more streamlined and the question that um customer glover was asking about it doesn't sound like there's going to be a reduction in the actual amount that you're spending in the art right because you're carrying over some money because we're carrying forward money and but even though you're doing that i would still um uh support carrying over the money and increasing that public art budget um the uh the other thing was the rental assistance programs do you always use that money it's it's budgeted right now for 22 there's there's two programs it says 20 and 22 000 is that money gets and the last year we have spent that and we actually amended it um to increase the amount of funding for helping people with security deposits yeah we have both the yeah the emergency security deposits and emergency rental assistance um is the the warf master plan is that anywhere in economic development uh yes where is it in the budget i don't see it right here uh we haven't budgeted any new funding for that that's bond funded so that would be on the cip side okay and is it when you say bond funded what what do you mean meaning that we have some of our uh former redevelopment bond funds set aside for future that was one of the approved projects when we issued the bonds but we haven't you know we we need to go forward with the eir and so we weren't anticipating moving forward on that or spending any funding related to uh implementation of the master plan because we need to finish the eir first thanks thanks a lot and i support council member brown and council member glovers if we could look at that berkeley program and um you know get artists graffiti artists to actually make positive tagging which would be a great thing we'll look we'll look into that good council member brown and then council member brown are you following up on this no it's okay so um it's now the time to talk about economic development cip it's not on the list of recommended reductions here but i just have a couple of comments that i want to make sure again i think so and then i mean we we have um you know a number of other departments to get through this is general plan here are we going to do cip separately are we doing we don't have we're prioritizing the time on the reductions or budget solutions um i think if there's a general question we have on cip i think going a few minutes with a quick question and answer if it's deeper than that maybe just out of sake of timing we can come back at a future meeting and schedule those for a deeper dive it's really um i mean i just want to ask the question why given that the um the council will need to be looking at and and i think we have coming up on our next agenda uh consideration of just further discussions about library alternatives um on page 150 and 154 of the cip we have um uh two items the downtown mixed use project early phase design and development of the downtown mixed use project to include library parking housing and commercial uses on the city-owned parking lot four i don't have any issues with the funding being there however the description of what it is to be used for seems a little premature to me okay so that yeah this was based on this is actually last year's budget based on and the descriptions based on council direction from the fall um i will say we budgeted so that we could allocate it across the funding sources that were approved for the project um but we haven't this project has been on a whole pending further council direction so i just want to be make that clear and then on page 154 farmers market structure construction of farmers market structure on city parking lot at cathcart and so cal i know that's also based on previous council direction however there is no cathcart and so cal it's i understand i mean i'm just trying to make it clear that we um we could also say parking lot seven it's just it's we were thought it'd be more descriptive to have the street names um but we can modify that well it's just inaccurate but it's i know it's nitpicking front street isn't it it's it's front and cathart there is no okay okay okay thank you for the clarification okay thank you uh bonnie okay did you have another question yeah i was just in general um because i know that marcus was hoping to move more macroly through all of this so we're not asking about specific reductions but it would be great to get a list for all the departments of the proposed reductions if it hasn't already been sent out because i don't believe i've seen you you're seeing this for the first time we recognize that right the finance director's message that we're going to be finalizing we'll have the detail more detail with that list beautiful and i see we have lee butler here and team for planning and community development thank you and good afternoon mayor and council members lee butler the planning director and with me i've got sarah dilly on her principal management analyst and uh we took an approach um when we were looking at these cuts of first looking at protecting our staff members at making sure that the positions that we have wouldn't be affected we then looked to see how can we have the smallest impact on our customer base both internal and external and then how can we um cut where it has the least impact to our staff workloads and so um in looking at that uh contract staffing was one of the things that we decided um we would we would have to um be experiencing significant cuts in um i'll i'll focus on two areas primarily of the contract staffing cuts um the first is in our advanced planning division and the second is in our building division our advanced planning division has a very large workload a lot of backlogged items as we mentioned in our department presentation 10 new area plans 10 updated plans 25 zoning ordinance amendments and some of those updates require us to go out and get consultants to help us prepare those either through the expertise that they bring or as a result of the the time that those plans would require um the sea bright area plan for example has been on the books for some time and and based on other priorities um that has continued to get pushed back and that's an update to that existing plan that in and of itself could be multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars um depending on the scope um so we would be looking at a significant reduction in the advanced planning um contractual services um that would be roughly uh 150 plus thousand dollars that we would be looking at um which is about a 46 percent reduction um with about 180 thousand dollars remaining um and that fund was cut uh that's because that's a very discretionary area uh it depends on you know the the council priorities we actually used that fund last year in our reductions as well so it has seen a year every year reduction um but that would certainly affect our ability to implement some of the priorities that the council may have so if the council said we want to go and do a monarch butterfly study or um we want uh certain tenant protections uh to be in place we we may need to ask the council where that funding would come from um the work that cpp the uh the collaboration and consensus partnership uh you know that that work is coming out of this advanced planning budget and so um there would be potential implications on the workload and what we're able to do in advanced planning the other big uh consultant cut that we would be looking at is in our building division um we would be looking at about a hundred and five thousand dollars in cuts there um under this scenario and that's about a 32 percent reduction with about 220 000 dollars remaining um these folks provide really um both day to day and technical support um whether it's um compliance uh with uh accessibility provisions or whether it's uh the the plan checks or the inspections we have teams of people who come in on a daily basis oftentimes and supplement our uh our staff efforts and um we send plans out when they come in so that um you know our our two plus our we have got two plan checkers for example plus a green building plan checker and so you know if we get a lot of projects in at one time we are committing to timelines that we provide comments on those plans and so we send a lot of those out or we bring outside consultants and we've had some substantial challenges with recruiting qualified individuals and so some of that workload um has gone to our outside consultants as well if we're cutting that then right now we do have some um some really valuable services where we have inspectors who are on the counter for example during certain portions of our um our counter hours and our ability to provide those services um would be limited if more of that workload of the plan checks and inspections are falling on to our um our regular staff um so you know if a business is looking to come in and say hey i'm looking to open my business or a homeowner comes in and want some technical information up front um the technical experts may have a smaller amount of availability there as a result um there's some smaller um reductions in um some of our legal support we've been looking about uh $10,000 in reduction that's about a 10 percent reduction and that's for some of the things like um looking at specialized CEQA assistance or looking at um the estate density bonus and getting legal support on those items um so that the the majority of it would um come out of consultant contracts those would be the the primary impacts that our customer base would see and i'm happy to answer any questions that you may have thank you for providing the context we'll start to my right this this time councillor mercury thank you very much um appreciate it uh i'm interested in the um rental inspection uh ordinance i i have um well first i wanted to ask you about reducing public counter email and phone support when you just um kind of showed me this the new counters and yesterday that's kind of a disappointment i mean is that it's it's absolutely a disappointment i think the the reality is that um you know if we've got less consultant support then some of our technical team isn't going to be able to so right now we've got varying levels of um of service that we provide sometimes it's just someone submitting an application we're taking that in we're making sure that yes you've got all the plan sheets and we'll take it in and provide it to those technical experts to review we also have services where um someone comes in and we actually have the technical experts out there so they're saying oh you know what you need to think about your mechanical ventilation in this particular project and i've done these before and this is the challenge that you'll want to look at when you hire a designer when you hire an engineer talk to them about that so that you're addressing this issue up front so it's a really great service that we provide um and they're with with fewer consultants to assist with the plan check and inspections you know there can be um some implications for um the ability of that those technical staff to always be available but certainly you know we want to minimize the impact on our customers that's one of the primary um objectives that we have we just want to also be realistic and know that we may not be able to provide the level of service that we hope to and strive to provide in all instances thanks um what i really wanted to do also was look at i think that there's a lot of hardships going on with the um rental inspection program and code enforcement um and we might disagree on that but i've seen it close up with many students that i work with and other folks in town and i just would like to see a revamping of that program where it actually um can can assist tenants um and i know you and i talked about this a bit and i don't know if um council is could would consent on this but i'm would love to see the staff come back to us um when if we could shift the program to a complaint based only um and we could codify 12 sp 12 22 which is grandfathering in um units from like the codes of that year that the units were built um as long as um health and safety aren't at issue maintaining the landlord fees that fund the program and um with structures uh being brought up to code at the point of sale which would which i think would be have a huge impact on on the sales market it would be you know uh people wouldn't be flipping home so quickly and or or possibly well we're gonna i'm gonna go down the line here okay cool councilmember clever thank you uh good afternoon lee hey so um i would love to just see more of the physical data on the reduction of contracted supporting staff and the reduction of programs that trigger specialized legal support just so that i can make an informed decision i let thank you for the brief breakdown in the beginning of the explanation but just so i can see it and have a chance to look at it i was resistant to the reduction to public counter email and phone support because every time i call the planning department on the main desk it goes to a voicemail and i can only imagine as a community member wanting to get in touch with someone having to wait through that process every time it could be frustrating um also one of the things that i've spoken with marcus about and wanted to get and i'm in this kind of more long-term thinking but additional ways that we can generate revenue through things like vacant house fees and other kinds of stuff like that uh what's the feasibility from your perspective on exploring those options of a generate more revenue that way so that is certainly an opportunity for us to explore that was something that came out of the housing voices report so that community generated process that community process generated a wide variety of recommendations and a vacancy tax as well as a out of area purchase um uh surcharge both of those were identified there is a potential for those um and it's certainly something that we could look at um i know that uh we're looking at a variety of things through the um action labs i don't believe at this point that was one of the things that was identified but it's certainly on the the longer list and it wasn't um if i recall correctly and council member browner may or walk into maybe able to jar my memory here but i don't think that uh that vacancy tax made the first cut of top priorities in the housing blueprints subcommittee recommendations but it was certainly discussed and um was um uh consideration as part of the voices report i don't remember exactly but i i do recall discussing it and i think part of the kind of discussing it as maybe not first priority for um moving forward was related to the timeline because we were talking about likely 2020 revenue but we're getting there now so i'd move it up the list you could revisit that yeah thank you and um i don't know if you have it because i i know that's on the list of recommendations but any analysis from your team as far as additional revenue that could be generated through levied fees now not taxes because taxes of course have to go through the voter process but other potential revenues um opportunities through planning that could be uh policy driven from the council it'd be great to see absolutely and uh one of the action lab items is looking at a um impact fee for um for public services uh emergency services fire and police for example and also we do at some point want to revisit our our building fees and update a fee study have an updated fee study there we did that um several years ago i think about three years ago now for the planning side of things um we also i want to remind the council because i think this was a great thing last year the council approved uh cost recovery provisions for our code enforcement division and so if folks work with us and correct violations they um do not get charged time and materials but if we get to the point where we're um requiring a notice of violation those individuals start getting charged time and materials and um in june you'll be seeing the first round of those um where council's asked to put that on the tax assessment to collect those bills for those who haven't paid so i think that was a great step in the right direction so that the people who are doing the violations are um actually paying for that service rather than the general public paying for it wonderful thank you just in the interest of time to try to get us over the finish line here um i think i'll just reach out the with my specific questions i understand um certainly where you've tried to um make the cuts um probably my biggest concern is the public counter service um you know i think uh it's important for people when they're taken alone out to do a remodel or uh you know or somehow financing um it's really important for people to be able to um access our planning department and and get decisions in a timely manner because that really impacts people's ability to uh to uh to handle that risk financially so that would be my main comment thanks thank you i would just i would just share i would share i i share the same concerns around the public counter you know impacts that could have for our community and then um i think i heard you mentioned the cpp could you explain more that's um dave seppos and the work that he's doing um to evaluate um and provide a recommendation on the rental housing task force um so as council looks at sort of long-range plans and long-range planning activities um that uh consultant budget is what we draw on for some of the priorities that the council provides and that was just an example of a recent one where we used that same fund that we're now proposing to cut and and so um in certain instances if the council says we'd like to go and do this we've been able to say all right you know we didn't get to the sea bright area plan this year and so we can fund that but as we continue year after year to draw down on that fund we'll have less of an ability to respond and particularly if there's a big project um at any one big project at the the proposed funding rate any one big project could um could use that entire amount of funding and more so it's just something for the council to be aware if there is um a desire for the beach south of laurel plan for example um is supposed to be updated if if you wanted to provide that direction we would then be asking you um where is that funding coming from if we've we've drawn down on those consultant funds and just if i if i can remember quickly did you did we um do we have a specific amount set aside for that one project at this time in this budget or is that just sort of overall for cpp um for cpp that's under the current fiscal year and we're able to that'll be completed under this current fiscal year it's about uh 40 000 dollars we're um we're evaluating yeah depending on what comes out of that um and that is expected to come back to you on june 11th um but depending on what comes out of that and the recommendations from the council that could be you know anywhere from i would say um you could say let's not do anything and that wouldn't have a budget impact or you could say let's go do a task force and have a consultant lead that and that could be you know in the range of 250 000 um that would be more than what we have um allocated in this fund and so then we would be looking to see where does that uh funding come from gotcha thank you okay just wanted to know if you could provide when when you have this the item that's reduced programs that trigger specialized legal support legal support can you just provide a little clarity around that sure so um and looking at the past five years or so we've spent between roughly about 30 000 and about 90 000 about 35 000 i think was the low end and about 90 000 on things like a big part of that is our sequel review so we have a contract with remy moose manly out of sacramento and they supplement the work that we have with our city attorney's office and um provide some of that technical expertise in review of um the um technical reports or the environmental impact reports or mitigating negative declarations and so forth so they provide consulting services um in that regard we also um work with our economic development department to um review proposals for example um we've got a number of projects coming in right now that are proposing state density bonus and um use of the state density bonus in ways that um uh we haven't um uh necessarily had here before for example in the downtown there's a floor area ratio cap instead of a dwelling unit per acre cap and the state density bonus is um used primarily typically to increase the number of dwelling units per acre and so that that account would allow us flexibility to consult with some of those experts um that um we work with through our economic development department to say all right um how do we apply this and what are the different ways that uh that this is applied um in different jurisdictions throughout the state so that we can have the best set of information that's one legally defensible and that two provides the council with a fair amount of information on the options for how they can approach those situations so those are just a couple of examples of the kind of work that we do the vast majority of it is that CEQA review um so when projects come in and we've got um questions we can ship that out and say hey can you help us out with this technical analysis thanks yeah and then I just also like to um kind of reiterate or or also agree with what councilmember crown said around the rental inspection program and trying to think about ways that we can cut costs around that if it can go to a complaint based whether that will help shift some of the costs with that program because I know I notice there's a number of different line items um for different levels of funding and the one that's under expenditures by activity the the inspection services is around two million and so just wondering and then code enforcement um also comes in almost at a million across two different fund types so it would be interesting to see whether or not that might be an area where we can see some cost savings so um just a couple comments on that um one um we are happy to look at um how that program could evolve I think you know there are some pros and cons of going different ways um and um we can discuss those further at a later time I just want to um to articulate that the rental inspection program the rental inspection service does um it's cost recovery so all of the participants in all of the rental owners pay an annual fee and that goes to fund the costs of the services that we provide so we've got two inspectors and one technician and so those um those costs are all offset by revenues that are brought in by that rental inspection service um annual fee so if we so I just want to be clear there there wouldn't necessarily be a savings even if we cut like you know if we approach that program differently and there were fewer costs that would just mean fewer costs going to the um the rental owners and and right now a single family home I believe is around $68 a year something along those lines um and then if you've got multiple units it actually scales down from there so the first one is larger and then each one is is substantially smaller following that and we've got Sarah like to clarify one thing sorry I just want to clarify for a council member coming's last comment the inspection services is building and safety at two million and then rentals to 2304 which is for next fiscal year about 401,000 the name's a little confusing so just want to clarify that and you got to do building inspection for buildings under construction you got to go do those so your reduction there is really in well I guess you ask questions about rental inspection that's self funding anyway the rental inspection is self funding us by and large I share others concerns with um protecting to the greatest extent possible customer service for projects in the works and my one question is um I understand we're moving incrementally to uh online plan check and so forth do you see that contributing some efficiencies that free up staff for more personal interactions you're smiling I'm smiling it's a great question because we're we're actually going through a lot of that analysis right now and what I'm hearing from our team is that um they may need a dedicated person to sort of manage that intake and so it may shift some resources from the counter to reviewing those plans as they come in electronically to to having some of the services that we currently provided the counter where you know we're flipping through and making sure an application is complete and able to be submitted that that would have to actually be back of house where you know we're getting those in and they're reviewing those electronically it's certainly something that we want to do both from an environmental perspective and from a customer convenience perspective and so we're working on that but um there are there are some efficiencies like routing plans will be substantially easier but um we are going to have the same amount of work in terms of reviewing and sort of the gatekeeper exercise of reviewing plans up front and making sure that yes you've got everything um in order to go ahead and accept that plan nonetheless it does seem like long run there's a improvement in customer service they don't have to drive down absolutely wait around for an hour or whatever and and huge printing costs I mean some of these plan sets are hundreds of pages when you're when you're looking at big buildings in the downtown you know you could easily have a hundred plus pages of a plan set and so that adds up really quickly at four or five six dollars a sheet so this sounds like a work in progress yes yes the move to online it is and we're starting small looking at um some of the the small applications in planning which have you know fewer reviews and then moving to the smaller applications in building and something I remember from a previous era was um when the economy slowed less building was going on and there was that was an opportunity to reduce some staff it seems to me the building scene is pretty busy right now um how how is your staffing my question there is um when the building rate picked up in the past and we didn't have the staff and currently hired we had to bring in outside plan checkers and so just in order to move things in a timely fashion so do you have the staffing now are you fully staffed you see part of this contracted staffing support was to fill gaps or do special projects I guess my question is um what are your predicted needs or your special project needs how do those things weigh in sure so we are extremely busy right now in both the planning project review and the building plan check and inspection worlds we have a significant number of vacancies in our building division we've been unsuccessful at getting candidates for a wide variety of reasons um you know the um competitiveness with the public sector and private sector and just the industry itself is experiencing challenges all of those are contributing to us you know I think we had we had three applicants for one of our recent recruitment and none of them met the minimum qualifications um so that gives you an idea of why we're actually bringing in even more consultants than we would otherwise be bringing in um what it amounts to is you know an inspector out there who um probably you know would need an hour to be doing a really incredible job they're out there and they're they're moving fast they're out there for 45 minutes um and rather than being able to to say you know what this is this is what you need to do to get this to meet the to conform this is how you need to construct it they say you know follow the plans call me when it's ready not not bad service just not the level of service that we would hope to have if we were able to get fully staffed um so um we do have some of those vacancies right now there are ups and downs and um and that's one of the reasons why it's good to keep some contractual support in our budget is because uh if if there is a downturn in the economy then we're not having to cut our actual positions we can cut the consultant budget and still keep our people on board and also to the extent you have three vacancies you absolutely need the contract and staff in order to get the work done but you've got salary savings to cover that's that's exactly what we're doing now is we're using that salary savings and we've come back with a budget adjustment to to switch those from one account to another okay and then um just in general I do uh in general support the rental inspection program it's it's self-funding and my own experience with it has been helpful and reasonable official okay councilmember brown do you have any yeah I just uh concur with my colleagues about uh my opposition to reducing public counter support and phone and email support the public I think you know having had enough messaging from constituents who and generally the the ones that we hear there's concern about non-responsiveness it comes from planning and I know there's probably a lot of reasons for that so I'm no judgment there it's just to say I think that's an important service and we don't want to reduce it any further so agreed and then I also agree about a longer term conversation about the rental inspection program given that it's not necessary to get a trigger any budget cherry changes right now I just I just want to say I support that conversation and want to flag that for the future so we have one last comment yes uh I think we're not talking about eliminating staff support you've talked about some pucks and that's what I want to get a better idea sure how much pain can we stand so I I think that's it's it's a very valid question I think what we would be doing is you know the amount of time that we have dedicated to inspectors what we the primary implication here for our customers with the amount of time that we have inspectors dedicated to the counter may need to be reduced and so if people are looking for that technical expertise that's where the the folks who are on the counter may have a limited amount of time they could still come in and get some of their questions answered but if they had highly technical questions if we were cutting back substantially on consultants those folks may need to be working on some of the paying customers requests as opposed to the free services that we provide at the counter we can certainly do a closer evaluation of that and give you some more specifics and in terms of how many hours we currently have that service available and the types of reductions that may be resulting from cuts to the consultant's budget and just the final follow-up in looking at ways to to make it more efficient something like just booking a half hour appointment I mean for consultations I mean I appreciate the that suggestion and I think you know it's it's a concern of ours as well and as we take a closer look we can see you know are there opportunities to cut elsewhere such that you know there are even fewer impacts to the customers thanks I'm Lee I was just wondering about the reduction of programs that trigger specialized legal support how does that play itself out if we're not going to go out and get the extra sequa and environmental review that we need are we going to get it in in-house some of that could be in-house the other thing that could happen with that is you know we may need to come back to the council if and as I mentioned there's been a big range it depends on the project so we spent 35,000 three years ago and got it 90 so we may need to come back if we say hey we've got these things and we need that legal support with respect to the rental inspection ordinance I'm looking for a shift of focus I'm looking for it to be pro tenant and I think we can still collect fees and still support the program but a different orientation that that isn't the way it's been going for for tenants because it's not been going well for tenants so I'm just that again I would how do we want to do this I put out four points that I would like to pursue that I would like the staff to come back to us on and say you know to revamp to relook at the rental inspection ordinance is that consensus or do I need to make a motion or how does that go I think that you know in regards to the purpose of today I think it could come back at a future time for a policy discussion but for today we're looking at specific things I don't know Marcus or for my lens I'm trying to differentiate between is there a budget difference or is that a policy change well I don't see the 40,000 that cdbg it's missing here on the budget did didn't we leave 40,000 for code compliance from cdbg yes it's not in the planning that would be in the cdbg funding economic development so would so I mean that that would be a savings if we move some of the code enforcement from the above column where it says code enforcement 71,000 and we took the 40,000 would be a savings okay I think okay so in for today's purposes it sounds like you know if we could maybe reserve some of the policy discussion or direction I guess you could do a motion if you wanted to get direction at this time but I think or you could work with staff and with other council members at a future time to bring an item forward but to get us through an additional four departments proposed cuts as well as some ideas for our staff for today's purposes of the budget hearing I think I'd like to keep us oriented on that personally then I'll just make a quick motion then and have and it's for staff to come back to us for information and if there's a potential savings at all in any of the rental inspection stuff and it would be to shift the program to complaint based only to codify SB 1226 that was adopted last year allowing the enforcement of codes in effect at time of construction maintain landlord fees to fund the program and structures should be brought up to code at the point of sale okay okay so there's a motion by council member crone okay is there a second at this time a second second by council member clever all right any further this is asking staff for direction okay council myer council for myers so staff would come back with with the report on all of those savings to be had okay so it's not a it's the motion is not directing the changes in the program it's no that we come come back to us and then if that time if the council wished we could change it okay does that feel something that you could research for us and yes absolutely I appreciate that it's it's request for an analysis because we've got lots of thoughts to share on that we've talked about yeah okay so yeah if there's any savings you can report back okay so we have emotions that councilman just clarity it's not a specific direction it's just direction for information right okay any further discussion okay all those in favor please say aye all right any opposed no I'm sorry I meant to say all at the time okay so that passes unanimously okay thank you Lee I think we'll take a five minute transition break before we get into parks and recreation so we have parks and rec finance HR and IT community support and then council so we have a lot of discussion still ahead of us so hopefully we can continue to power through maybe about a five minute break and recreation superintendent back in the back as well to answer any questions so wanted to kick this off really quickly in terms of our process and putting these together this was a obviously I think to echo a sentiment from other departments a very challenging exercise to go to I think we all feel very lean and efficient in what we do so going through this exercise certainly was a challenge to do but I wanted to recognize our staff that went through this process this was not simply our administrative staff bringing these recommendations this was our full parks and recreation team operations team that really kind of weighed in on these items to bring them to you so this is kind of a full team effort in terms of what is in front of you all today so I will really just start to kind of go through the list the finance department did a really great job sort of condensing and summarizing a lot of these points that you see on the slide in front of you in terms of our reductions of middle we actually have a number of additional items beyond just these here and I'll reference those after I go through these as well and I'll try to reference some of the numbers as as I go through here so I'll try to move relatively quickly but happy to open it up to any questions that you all might have so on the first one here the delay wharf and museum maintenance this is really a couple items that are kind of combined on the full detail to the middle that you all see the total there between the two is approximately $70,000 between wharf maintenance and that includes the surfing museum maintenance as well on the reduction of parks fencing support and maintenance that really comes from our central zone so we're broken up into geographic zones and this really pertains most appropriately to ball field fencing Harvey West for example so that the portion of fencing that's represented on the slide here that's about $15,000 but that comes from a broader item that's from professional and technical services which is 52,300 is what we've shown in our reduction submittal so that includes fencing but also irrigation tree work park improvements a whole slew of of things in the professional and technical services components within our budget reduce water and until brown out areas so this really pertains to our golf course in particular we in our submittal included golf course water reductions of $40,000 and that literally just means not watering not irrigating certain areas letting those areas brown out in terms of the turf so it's a $40,000 proposed reduction elimination of youth museum programs this is really toward let's see funds appropriated toward the natural history museum this is essentially a grant that we provide the natural history museum to provide education environmental education and youth programs in pogo nip so this amount is $20,000 so we included that again very tough one for us to to sort of reconcile with cutting but I think in all things considered one where we would need to rely on the museum to raise that money to offer those programs up in pogo nip the next one reduce staff and temps for trail sports official summer camp this again is kind of a combined item um from a couple areas so this includes our trails crew our youth trails crew in interns so that item is about 40 a little over $40,000 it would be a cut which represents about 50 percent of that program so we would reduce our youth trails in interns program by about 50 percent which is $40,000 this also includes our sports officials and summer camp temporary staff that amount is about $27,000 and what that means is that that would be a really a staff reduction so that we potentially would reduce one week of our summer camp we would also reduce the number of officials that we have assigned to like adult softball leagues for example so down from two officials to one official per game that would also reduce some of the staff that we have at those adult and youth athletic events so from kind of again a customer service standpoint from a safety standpoint and just kind of the user experience again fewer staff fewer officials in terms of adult sports and temp staff let's see you go down a reduced trail and related cleanup so this encompasses a couple different items this is vegetation management so $30,000 reduced resource management for green belts trails stormwater watersheds erosion control and invasive plant removal this would also reduce our camp cleanup budget by $7,500 that's a reduction in resources available for camp cleanups and parks and open spaces and I believe that's the the total total representative amount from the trail and related cleanup items the last one here eliminates summer ads that's advertising and bus trips this falls under our events and youth category this is about $13,000 and this eliminates commercial advertising for a lot of our summer events July is parks and rec month and it eliminates one of our summer bus trips as well so as I mentioned we have a number of items beyond what is shown here as well so I just wanted to highlight a couple of those and the dollar amounts tied to those consultants and technical services so this amount is approximately $55,000 this is a reduction in consultant services so it reduces our opportunities for hiring grant application writers biologists for environmental review in our parks and things like that so that's consultants and technical services class reductions we have a budgeted amount to essentially to pay our class instructors and educators that amount is about $14,000 and so our class reductions we proposed that as well we would reduce the number of total classes that we offer many of which are at the Loudon Nelson Community Center going down the list repair services and materials 24,000 this is a reduction of repair services operational equipment maintenance construction facility materials park signage and things like that and then finally landscape materials and you could really probably group this into the reduced trail and related cleanup item this is an additional 22,000 and this is just a reduction in budget for our ability to maintain and upgrade park landscapes at kind of natural areas within parks so very quick summary there thank you for kind of listening to that that quick summary but happy to answer any questions you might have thank you okay so we'll go ahead and maybe go down the line again but maybe we'll start here in that way and then there in that way to mix it up a bit so vice mayor Cummings if you have any at this time if you don't that's okay we can come back to you please come back I guess I can just say for now that it's I think this is one of the areas that I care a lot about and so seeing reductions in programs for youth and programs that help maintain our environment our reductions that I don't really want to see happen so I'm hoping that we can look into other areas to find places where we can make further reductions to try to maintain as many of these as possible but thank you for bringing forward all these proposals I just mentioned really quickly these are again this is a challenging process to go through I think these are sort of the lowest hanging fruit if you will in terms of opportunities for us without just completely shutting down operations closing facilities closing parks are just shutting down programs so that we this was our best effort in sort of forgive the phrase sort of nickel and diming where we could to reach the target I'll ask a couple questions real quick actually with regards to the the wharf maintenance and the museum what are those what were those maintenance items be yeah I may rely on our park superintendent here the wharf maintenance is just deferred facility maintenance so a lot of the buildings that we own the restaurants and so forth but also the public restrooms and things like that it would probably just be deferred maintenance on on those type of facilities that's the bulk of this number that's 67 000 of the approximately 70 000 that I referenced the surfing museum is much smaller I think that overall budget is probably in the ballpark of seven or eight thousand or I'm sorry I actually shouldn't say that because I don't want to I don't want to make a mistake there but the amount that we propose cutting is 1700 so a very small amount 50 000 total yeah so just a small reduction about 1700 is what we propose I think with one of the things that I would want to see is potentially at a minimum keeping the funding and for the surf museum because it seems like it's such a small amount and then you know going through and kind of looking at some of these other items as well with regards to the golf course and the brownout given that we've gotten we've had you know an incredible amount of rain this year do you have any sense in terms of like time to brown out of the golf course and what the timing might be that's got park superintendent Travis back to come up any um so within the overall golf budget we have close to three quarters of a million dollars budgeted for water and that is due to the really the increased water rates that we've experienced in recent years that's a high end estimate which would allow us to fully irrigate the course in normal or you know somewhat droughty conditions not a drought emergency so the reductions we're proposing of 40 000 to that amount really come with somewhat of a gamble if we have a wet year as we did this year then we wouldn't be spending that full amount anyway and the reductions would be actually not noticeable if however we got into that you know dryish sort of year then we would be sort of expanding the areas that we already brown out which are sort of in the fairways and non-playable areas or allowing the course to go dormant potentially at a point in the dry season also another question with regards to the golf course when do you when do you all actually water the greens or the the course itself like do you do it during the day do you do it during the night we do it in off hours when people aren't playing there i just want to reference the question about the surfing museum so if i understand you what you're proposing is it has in the budget i i'm not open to the budget page and i'll find it but a budget of 50 000 you're suggesting a cut of 1700 that's correct so again you said you wanted to preserve the surfing museum it's there and this is just for the maintenance of it so and that's i believe staff largely by volunteers isn't it uh city staff and volunteers yeah combination um so i there that's why it's i keep raising the question it's how much money out of how much total and i will find the page and reference it um page i'll find it um and i appreciate the statement that this is these are the nibbles around the edges that you think you can achieve i don't think any of us want to do so i'll learn more but it seems to be these are none of these are a huge item in and of themselves but they will add up your share of it there'll be some tweaking one of the questions i have when you talk about reducing sports officials and summer camp staff and and other things too i know this is of interest to you but the um potential for really increasing our use of volunteers well of interest and support for parks and rec so any comments on on how that might offset a bit of this it couldn't offset all of it yeah it's a good question i think that's a big priority for us as well i i'm not familiar historically with how we've engaged volunteers for officials and support at these type of things i know rachel if our recreation superintendent wants to chime in but i think that's a big priority for us on the recreation side but potentially on the park side as well and what i mean by that is uh like our adopt a park program so can we help support with maintenance and some of these things with those sort of programmatic elements but of rachel chime in on the on the athletic side i don't want to sit on realistic expectations for anyone yes rachel koffman recreation superintendent so as far as the summer camp programs you're probably familiar with we do have a junior leader volunteer program that does utilize volunteers that's a kind of lower level of um support where uh so for our temporary staff or paid staff we want people that do have experience working with children as that's really important to keep those numbers i think with sports officials that's something we could explore but again you just want to make sure you have qualified people that um have uh that background so but we do for that junior leader program have volunteers and then again for the uh i'm just thinking of ways to offset um for the adult leagues have you recently looked at fees adjusting fees in order to be able to cover those yeah hi angeli gray we're getting the whole team up here the analyst um we did look at fees in 2017 across the board and the um sports supervisor who's in tune with all the neighboring league fees and all those sorts of things we made sure that we were in line with all the other neighboring agencies so we have looked at that recently look again thanks councilman thank you and the museum just for references in the parks and rec it's um pk page 10 in the parks and rec i just have to get there there it's just for it's there under museum it doesn't say surfing museum so if you want to find it it's just below aquatics pool programs and i did have that question because the city owns the museum of natural history as well so i assumed that that was in reference to the surfing museum it says yeah yeah the 50 49 182 so i think that's it anyway um yeah don't make me just clarify the museum budget it might help if everyone's gonna have questions on and i can just go over it really quickly um yes the museum budget is a surfing museum um the natural history museum is um they have their own thing going on but just to kind of touch on what's in the surfing museum budget um it's primarily uh there's some temporary staff hours in there those are the people that actually open and close the surfing museum that's the temporary staff budget makes up uh just over half of the museum budget and then the rest is really um water sewer and refuse um electricity for the building some alarm monitoring we have an alarm out there and that's pretty much the entire budget um there's just a very small amount for miscellaneous supplies um and services things that might come up that are unexpected we have about four thousand dollars so it's one of those ones um like i think we're doing across the department is sort of hoping that something doesn't go terribly wrong when we're chipping away at these budgets but that's what's in there is that helpful yeah so yeah thank you i um i don't really have questions about that i just wanted to clarify where it is um so i'll just say as a general comment i i don't it's really hard for me to support any cuts in parks and rec budget as we know parks and rec in tough times is the first to get cut um and you know and often we we don't make up those um those cuts in the when times are better so i have a really hard time cutting anything from parks and rec and particularly when we're talking about youth employment and you know small amounts that actually um put uh youth to work i mean they spend that money in the community there's sales tax etc there's other benefits um that can't be quantified for for they're having um access to those programs so i just really have a hard time supporting any cuts with the exception of the golf course um so um i did owe the comments that have been made by my colleagues um with respect to looking at the fee structure for um for leagues and all of that i i mean i just think given that we subsidize the dale aviega golf course i'm real okay with uh the water the proposal for brownouts um but i also think it's time to reevaluate the fee structure for the golf course we subsidize at the tune to the tune of three hundred thousand dollars that go a long way to plugging the the hole in our budget right now in the general fund um so i'm you know i'd like to see if others would would consent or and or if a majority of my colleagues would like to see that come back to us relatively soon because i think that um will help um buffer the parks interact budget for this year it just needs to happen i think um so um i i think that's all i have for now yep i think on the golf course really quickly and again happy to dive into that answer more questions either now or later this evening however that works out best one thing i think that's really important to us that we've talked about internally is is really creating essentially like a five-year business plan on the golf course a lot of different uh a lot of different pieces to that puzzle um and so i think um that that subsidy is a big chunk certainly um water is uh the park superintendent mentioned is a huge component to that but i think kind of the most comprehensive uh sort of view of the golf course and kind of where we're headed and what that could look like we think could be in the form of like a business plan that we could bring back to the the city council um in terms of sort of cost recovery targets and really what the numbers look like and what that means i appreciate that and that's great i just at the same time that we're talking about cutting youth employment positions right here and now thinking about you know five years down the road um it's for the golf course to get um subsidy free it's just hard to for me to think about in terms of the values that that i hold and the public i represent can you speak i guess a little more to that subsidy so i'm just trying to understand a little more i know that i know there is you know the parks commission so i'm just trying you know but i know we were renegotiating leases and some other agreements as well as shakespeare and just trying to understand a little bit more broadly what when we we talk about that subsidy yeah and i'll ask the team here to jump in if i make any errors here i know some of its water so yeah so a big a big chunk is water three quarters of a million dollars um annually is water out of that budget but um so in the budget you'll see um really our annual our annual budget for the golf course is approximately two million it's a little over two million dollars the the revenue that comes in from the golf course which really is one of our larger revenue generators of any of our operations within parks and recreation um there are a lot of opportunities with that and so you'll see the trends over time over the past five or six years that that subsidy has been anywhere from 300 000 to um what we put in the budget the proposed budget for 2020 is up to a million dollar subsidy and so i i want to just kind of pull that out and hit that head on and the reason i say that or want to recognize that is because that that is the um that's sort of the fail safe number that's the that's the very conservative number that we put in there that we could subsidize it to that degree now if you look at last year the actuals the uh so not the budget but the actual expenditure and the actual revenue that spread is about 300 000 and if you look at the years previous to that it's in that same ballpark 342 000 359 000 um so that's that's the approximate subsidy um uh in those years between the actual expenditure and actual revenue now when we're looking at revenues we're that's the golf course but that's also um kind of the sum of the of the revenues that we bring in from the golf course so that's disc golf um and other sources of revenue from the golf course and kind of the multi-use nature of the golf course what i would say i think in terms of the golf course again being a revenue generator is if we didn't operate it as a golf course we wouldn't necessarily have that source of revenue so when we're bringing in a you know million and a half dollars in revenue per year now i think we have a lot of opportunities to increase that if we didn't operate it as a golf course i think we would still have very high budget dollars to maintain that property to preserve that property um without the revenue side of it so my concern in talking kind of long term sustainable financial sustainability uh my uh my fear my red flag if you will is not having that revenue but still a big expenditure and my concern is that we would subsidize it by far beyond three to five hundred or more thousand dollars per year just by maintain having to maintain that property um so that's a couple details there happy to yeah defer to the city manager on this as well just to add a little bit too i mean the the other approach that we've used we've had a plan to uh and a goal to make the golf course self-sufficient for some time and it's been you know that subsidy has been reduced you know somewhat over the years there are a number of factors that play into that um and we've done some work uh in terms of the fee structure in terms of the we've actually cut the maintenance staff in the golf course in the past um and so uh and we expect to have some debt service it'll be paid off and said the parks department has this plan to try to eliminate it uh here and i think the challenge is that it can't be done you know in one year overnight without some dramatic risks and or cuts so for example if you wanted to do it on the expenditure side you'd have to cut and lay off maintenance workers um would be because that's the really where the cost are on the city side um and then uh alternatively you could raise uh the fees but that doesn't mean that people would pay them and necessarily that would increase revenue you the concern is i think is the fees are raised in a way that's not competitive it actually wouldn't result in increased revenue so that's that's the challenge with respect to to to the golf course again i think everybody agrees that to the extent that it could be self-supporting we should do it it's one of those that we have the opportunity to do that but it's not something that could be done you know in one year necessarily i think quickly to build on that too i think on the expenditure side so water is a big is almost half of the the budget uh for the golf course so we're taking steps currently so i'll say that our water consumption has not increased uh but the water rates have increased which is the result uh in that high budget number but what we're doing is actually working very closely with the water department to find ways to save water so we have the a well project going in very soon um and that's a project that pays for itself in in about 14 months so i think there are a lot of opportunities for us to reduce water consumption and therefore reduce cost on this getting getting us much closer uh to that break even yeah i just um i guess i would just state that um having uh recovered another museum in the community that was literally um the the lights were turned off and we were left on our own and we now have built the organization back to a million dollars it is not easy to to recover from just shutting a facility down there's a lot of services lost i understand golf may not be for everyone but there is a golf um constituency i think in santa cruz uh that is one of the few public golf courses left on the central coast um and so i understand it's expensive and there's there's certainly subsidy and i'd like to just see a creative approach before we sort of say and and i frankly i'm also worried about losing jobs there um so um and then just in terms of my other so i just just slow as we go um it's a big target but i think i think it's important to really understand the business uh planned side of it um overall um coming from a parks commissioner perspective i know how much the department has worked on its budget cutting costs um trying to get things um as lean and mean as possible i share your frustration this is not the department that i want to see having to do cuts um and according to this chart we got you are cutting the most because you're the most um supported by our general fund so again when people are paying their taxes and being here as residents um this is one of this is one of the places this is the department nearest and nearest to everyone's hearts and um you know i'd love to you know personally i'd love the idea of trying to get our pool back i mean we're losing these public facilities that are really important to our youth they're important to wellness they're important to our community and um so i'll let it go at that today but um uh i i would like to relook at some of some of what you've come up with because i'm not completely sure that's where i want all the cuts to come from thank you hello tony uh so a lot of interesting things to look into here um some notes that i put on my page is that uh so for the wharf maintenance can you talk about that last trev's come back up thank you as uh as dr elli alluded to the budget that would be cut is the materials that we use for ongoing maintenance projects so that includes everything from the actual structure of the wharf with the the pilings the uh the decking that goes on top of it money that we use for paving projects for repair projects to the the buildings roofing the restrooms that are mentioned the the fencing that surrounds the wharf really the whole physical structure of the wharf itself and then the adjacent beach areas okay thank you uh and with the reduced parks fencing support and maintenance could you just talk a little about that because fencing of parks is an issue that i have in general um and so fencing support what does that look like and yes so the $15,000 figure is not entirely for fencing that's uh one of the items that would be affected and those are fencing contractors that we hire in the central zone primarily to maintain our ballfield fencing at harvey west park okay thank you um and i was just doing some research a little earlier with regards to brown out of the golf courses in just different areas of california do you see any drawback as the parks department to having a brown golf course i think it's largely an aesthetic item uh i think to some degree you know as travis mentioned we'll look to do that in areas that are you know non-greens non-fairways kind of off toward the the woods edge if you will i think i mean the only thing i could think of is potential fire risk but i don't even want to be careful about overstating that i just think um that could be a small piece of it but i think primarily it's just aesthetics okay yeah thanks because uh and the research that i did it doesn't show any negative aspects per se as both sides what you mentioned the aesthetics that go along with it and that balls actually get a little bit longer roll on the fairway if it's brown so that might help some people's games uh so i definitely support um reducing water and looking at how we can do that especially knowing that there's 750 thousand dollars approximately every year that's spent on water and our desire to conserve water and uh my concerns about the golf course not being the most equitable way to distribute those funds um definitely not down for eliminating youth museum programs we need to get people involved i did want to know the cost and impact associated with that i'm sure that'll be in the report we get for the second uh meeting um the reduce trails and related cleanups what kind of volunteerism do you all implement with that work thinking more about the trails or the cleanup both uh for the cleanup work we have engaged a number of community partners in volunteering for example in sycamore grove we held a large cleanup this fall that was largely volunteer-based so it is an element but we don't do the majority of the work that way we do it in-house or with contracted services um and just really quick and i mentioned it before i believe that this is specifically for camp cleanups or is it cleanups for the community like you know like walking around and picking up trash or cleaning up trails so that they're more accessible and there's no debris or fallen wood or all that kind of stuff yeah the the the volunteer project that i referenced was a camp cleanup in sycamore grove so where we have a concentrated area of debris then we can schedule a you know one day team project to take care of that do you have volunteerism for uh and do it does any of this money i guess is a better way to phrase it is does any of this money go to maintaining trails and cleaning up parks as opposed to just camp destruction yeah the uh the other piece is the uh the trail work which we do again through a variety of means contracted services in housework and then volunteer work that's conducted for example we work with the mountain bikers of Santa Cruz who have regular dig days in our open spaces where they'll bring in you know anywhere from 10 to 50 volunteers to do trail improvements on the hiking as well as mountain biking trails in the open spaces great i i'm always and i say this to every department where i think it's relevant is the input in corporation of community members in that volunteers uh to bring down those costs associated with stuff um that's it for now thank you thank you councilmember thank you um i was wondering about the reducing uh the for trails what is that that's not maintaining the trails or or what does that mean uh let's see i'm trying to see how these are combined if you're reduced trail and related cleanup i believe so that is the trails crew that's our youth trails crew um and that is summer jobs basically or just correct yeah yeah so essentially it's our our teen intern program trail maintenance program um uh that are really staffed by by youth and and um yeah teen interns in the summer yeah um the uh supposedly parks and rec had a heritage tree fund letter from uh commissioner brown did that get to us i i believe so yeah we get it well i'm sorry i didn't see it okay thank you um uh is that how does that deal with the budget is that in there or yeah so this is a good question so the parks and recreation commission uh we did a budget uh review in the month of april or april meeting uh the commission decided to make a recommendation to city council to double our current heritage tree uh grant program budget from 25 000 to 50 000 um that was just sort of a a broad recommendation from the commission that did not we didn't factor that into do we need to cut somewhere else or where would that additional cut come from but i think just a broad statement uh from the commission in terms of a recommendation to council to consider doubling that budget so that's not in this budget right now that is not 25 no and um as far as street trees go i heard there was some idea about planting a bunch of trees up bay street um we we've got a program ongoing yeah we've planted i don't know the number on bay street specifically probably 70 or 80 more trees 500 redwood trees up bay street is that true 500 total for the for the city this year is that included in the 15 000 in the budget yeah those are already yeah in progress i believe that's from i think that's a grant funded yeah is that a cal trance cal fire and we were gonna do a like sort of like gis uh tree count how's that going and where is it at i've never seen the results of it or is it over or is it still happening it's it's just getting started which is why you haven't seen the results yet so that was also funded through this cal fire grant we received to uh conduct a whole inventory so we have finalized the rfp and that'll be going out shortly and uh the timeline would be ended this year great thanks and i um want to underline what councilmember mayer said about the pool i think that we really i really want to see that something move forward and and get the pool you know much you know extended hours um it's you know it's it's there it's maintained but um you know people aren't using it uh or can't use it um now i want to really dig into could you put that um uh thing up i want to dig into the golf course a little bit um because i just i just don't uh it just defies you know maybe we'll have to vote on this or something but you know why the golf course can't pay for itself and here's our fee structure right here um and why can't we you know rearrange some of these fees and cover the the you said 300 000 although you said revenue 1.5 and i see 2.3 and expenditures that's 800 000 not 300 000 yes so a couple questions there so i think in 2018 the actuals let me pull this up really quickly um let's see 2018 actuals actual expenditure uh at the golf course was one million eight hundred and ten thousand uh actual revenues in 2018 1.468 1.468 um so a difference of 342 000 was that that net so we we so this new fees haven't taken effect yet is that it that's correct so on this screen here the utility fees have taken effect so the four dollar utility fee uh and the two dollar utility fee for disc golf and for junior golfers uh otherwise the the new rates have not taken effect and what is that what's uh how's that been have we taken in more a bunch of revenue or what does it look like we project out yeah from the utility fee this year we've brought in approximately 96 000 from the rounds played and it has not impacted our numbers negatively and um the city manager mentioned about competitive you know who we competing with with this golf course where are people going to go yeah it's a good question i think pasta tmpo is obviously our closest uh neighbor um not a public course what's around cost of pasta tmpo i think approximately 275 275 yeah i was gonna say 250 what's around cost here for us 35 is that what am i reading that right it ranges yeah 45 for a non-member mm-hmm i just don't see not getting that up higher uh i i'm all for maintaining the the junior card you know i don't think we should raise that at all actually um because i don't think two dollars is you know i'm all for young people playing golf but i think people who can pay for it should pay for it and i would love to see this these fees up some more to cover the 342 000 that we're in the hole last year um respectfully disagree with uh my friend martin Bernal about uh you know five years no we cannot wait five years we we need to do it in one to two years we need to like make this money up because um i don't support any of the cuts to the programs that you have come up with and you know and i i appreciate the work that you've done and i'm sure you've you know wrestled with this quite a bit but some of those affecting the young people i would prefer the the golf course um paying its its way and it hasn't for a long time and i think something dramatic i mean if there's a risk involved let us know what the risk is but i mean it'd be up to the council to say yes let's get those fees up some more and cover that 342 000 or whatever we're projecting it seems like we might be projecting more because of the the water rates it seems like this is the first year we're really carrying the water right carrying the water okay uh under the new water rate the full the full cost yeah uh i don't believe so i think it's been 30 30 okay so we do have a good idea of what and and so if we project out the four dollar utility thing does it seem like we're going to cover that 750 not 30 utility fee not just from the utility fee uh from an increased rate potentially assuming that that uh our number of rounds which were 50 000 uh last year uh stay consistent well i would definitely ask to go back and and for this come back to us and take another look at the golf course fees and if we can um deal with those numbers and and get them up a little more and see how much we're talking about uh we might lose a few rounds but also we might gain some some money to pay for itself so the city attorney kandahi did you have something i was just going to say that i think that i'm perfectly appropriate discussion and and for the council's consideration but that feels to me like a separate agenda item specifically relating to golf course fees as opposed to adjustments of the budget i suppose you could also make adjustments to the budget as to the level of subsidizing the golf course but what you're proposing sounds to me like a separate agenda item okay because i would propose that we don't um unless unless the the golf course is is balanced i wouldn't uh want to even tip to fund this i'd put it on hold and let's let's let's let's get it balanced so so if i'm hearing you correctly tony um proceed with caution in regards to how to move forward with this specific component of this agenda conversation in regards to the financial kind of well i i just see um setting of the amounts of fees or rates or charges as as sort of a separate uh discussion from you know an overall budget funding discussion um i think it's it's fine in the context of the budget discussion i don't i don't have any problem with that at all um but i think if that's the the direction that the council is interested in going it it ought to agendize that as a separate discussion okay yeah i would i would prefer that too okay my last question has to do with vehicles i don't see anything in the uh in the capital outlay is there no public are you not buying any vehicles this year that's a good question it'd be through the public works department uh through their fleet program in terms of those recommendations uh that my copper and mark deadl referenced earlier i don't know off hand travest you know i think there are three or four uh pickup trucks that were scheduled for yeah placement can you get us just a list of those pickups thanks yeah any vehicles actually sure thanks yeah thank you so i just had a few comments myself um one i just want to echo council member mires and council member crowns um interest in supporting the pool and i think every budget hearing since i've been on council i've been wanting to see how we can go about trying to get creative about that so i think there's work to be done there um it's hard to also say that at the same time of having to cut in you know services and programs um i will just also share um sort of the sentiment by council member mires that sometimes when you do eliminate a program completely it's really hard to get that back up and going um and then in regards to just all programming um i you know i appreciate the trimming here and there just to be mindful about trying i mean my interest just to kind of keep it broad would be to do as little as we can to um not have an impact on programs um and then kind of work around the edges in terms of the other stuff and i know it's really difficult and um your you know parks and rec is does incredible things for our community um so i mean i guess i'll just leave it at that for now in the interest of time i know that we have a couple other council members with interest so council member brown vice mayor coming to then council member mires i know this is tedious um to continue to be talking about the golf course i'm so looking forward to the day when um i don't feel like talking about it every time we have these kinds of budget discussions i'm just going to express my frustration that anytime we raise the concept of the golf course becoming self-sustaining or um not wanting to subsidize it that the immediate reaction there is there replies we get uh tend to tend towards oh well if you want to close the golf course and that is with all due respect to council member crown it sounded like you said it will so be it but that is not my intention at all so be it i i said on hold until we get a balanced budget so i have no interest in closing our public golf course it is one is a beautiful golf course you know golfing for the people i absolutely support it i just think that it's given that we subsidize it we don't subsidize a whole lot of other parks and rec functions in the same way to the same tune and so i i just i want to say you know i mean i'd i'd be willing to make the motion if no one else is going to make it that we direct staff to come back with um an analysis of of increased green fees uh or you know increasing uh the share of cost uh for maintaining daylight via a golf course um from the the consumer so i'm not sure if i i'm gonna get any support for that but i want to just make it as a motion i'd like to see that come back as an agenda and i'm to have a full discussion um because i think there's uh some real opportunity there and i don't want to wait five years um either i'll second at least a motion by council member brown seconded by vice mayor Cummings i know um council member Myers had an additional comment i did too okay i just wondered um council member brown in the kind of the interest of sort of more of the global approach would you accept a friendly amendment that fee structure and business plan comes back so that we sort of get that global sort of evaluation okay sure uh yes absolutely um i'll just add because i you know again i just want to get this out there um you know uh um our city manager martin you suggested that this is something that can't be addressed in that's something not something that can be done within one year the subsidy has been reduced we're hearing it actually has increased for this fiscal year um and it's not something that can be done in one year this is something that has been talked about every year i've been on the council and nothing has been done that's why i'm trying to get a little bit more aggressive in um demonstrating how interested i am in seeing this happen and hope that we can get support um on the council to to come back for that discussion thank you um just really quickly uh just to be clear you know from the staff perspective we we want this to be self-supporting too and if it could be done tomorrow that would be incredible that would be awesome no one is opposed to making this be self-supporting as quickly as possible um i'm just trying to relay the staff work that's been done with the fee analysis and we did a fee study and what i'm hearing is what can reasonably be done but we can look at that certainly again that would be wonderful no one is opposed to doing that um and so our goal is to make this self-supporting as quickly as possible we'll go back and do the analysis on the numbers and i'm just hearing that it you know it's just something that's not going to happen so i'm just relaying that so just to be clear it sounds like you've been working on it and you're thinking maybe it would just be accelerating that process yeah that's right and just to be clear i think on the and uh angel is digging into this to be very specific but in terms of i just want to be clear in terms of the the budgeted numbers and then the actual numbers so 2018 which is what we're looking up right now the 2018 budgeted numbers showed probably an 800 000 to a million dollar subsidy that's what we planned for in the budget to be safe but the actuals it was a 300 000 spread so we saved a half million dollars so even though for 19 fiscal year 19 and fiscal year 20 we're showing in the budget uh a million dollar spread a million dollar subsidy that very well may come in again like 300 000 or something like that so we're finding uh these savings any way we can with um really any way we can water savings to uh personnel savings so on and so forth so the other thing i want to mention too is with with the golf course discussion obviously this is one operation within parks and recreation and i think a little bit i don't want to throw the pool under the bus here but i think as we're looking at the broader parks and rec budget i would almost um uh recommend if i may respectfully that that we look at sort of a business plan if you will at a variety of our different enterprises um uh within parks and recreation because really we subsidize everything within parks and recreation um in the subsidy that we provide at the golf course is actually one of the lower subsidies uh that we provide the pool uh if we ran the pool year round it would be um nearly a double uh double the amount of of our actual subsidy of what we've provided um at the golf course now again we've got some work to do and we can come up with some creative ideas but i want to bring that broad context to the council so that we're not just looking at the golf course in a vacuum but looking at everything different areas that we subsidize and where we can diversify revenue within the department as a whole wonderful i look forward to learning more about that okay by some aircomings and then council member matthews just one more comment with regards to the golf course i think it'd be really good um to also because one of the things i heard earlier was that you all water when the golf course is not in use but specifically is that during time is that generally during the night or twilight or dusk hours yeah i think early early morning and then twilight probably overnight okay great i was just curious because i know that a lot of water can be lost if we're watering during the day to evaporation and so just making sure that that's also you know incorporated into how we're cutting costs and saving water um additionally i wanted to one more question i had was the urgency with replacing the ball field lights and whether or not that could be something that could wait potentially a little bit longer he has a good question so this pertains to our capital improvement budget i believe the the harvey west ball field lights that are 30 years old or so they we worry about the safety of those lights and then talking about an environmental impact and energy use impact those lights are kind of their old school light bulbs essentially burning coal and so what we hope to do with those lights is get replace those lights with new led lights that are much more energy efficient but also get them into a condition that's much safer their old wooden poles that that we would just worry about the general safety of those so that's a big chunk within the the capital improvement program i think it's approximately i think between seven and eight hundred thousand dollars to replace those lights but we would get some return on that with energy savings and so forth so can we wait possibly but it's a really critical item for us it'd be also really good to understand what those cost savings would be with regards to energy savings by converting those now versus waiting thanks thanks council member meyers and then council member brown and then council member crown director leid i believe that you mentioned that you mentioned something about grant writing so i just wanted to double back on that did you mention that these cuts that are outlined would include removing the grant writing contract that i know you've been trying to get for three years that's correct correct okay so so just a statement in that there is billions of dollars that were approved by the voters of california that are for parks and open space and environmental without a grant writer it's very unlikely that we're going to receive those funds i know we get some per capita funds but i just again again when we're looking at your department in particular those resources actually can be uh a cost savings for some of the things like trails and other things that we're talking about today so i'd hate to see that hate to see that good cut thanks council member crown and then council i think i believe council member bink yeah i want to follow up on uh vice mayor comings uh really would like to see those stats on what the new lights would show us versus the current bill that we get for electricity and also what would it take to do that project over a couple of years could you do half could you spend half that money um this time and do and the other half next year um the other thing is where's the the quimby funds where are they located in this budget uh it's a good question i may rely on angela for the quimby funds um in terms of actual page in detail uh funding source for capital projects but there's two cp projects for parks and rec about 95 000 in total using quimby funds they've already got some existing projects that are balls got quimby allocations so is all that money the quimby 95 000 already spent or can we backfill some of this uh instead of during these new 95 000 allocation recommended so that can certainly be reallocated but is it spoken for already or yes it's already for 2020 capital projects correct it's for proposed new projects what's that new project going to be what is the cliff street walkway uh so there's kind of the the wall that's collapsing on cliff street where that tree sits so it's uh replacing that item and then skate park coping hit mike fox council member brown yeah um so with my my zeal to discuss the golf course i um i forgot to mention i also am very much interested i agree with uh council member mires point about grant writers and the possible funding available out there um really important so i just want to um support that and then also my interest in uh trying to reopen the pool i think we now i've heard from four council members here who have said as much um so i'm maybe perhaps i was a little premature in the motion i made i'd like to um i don't know if the best way to do that would be to withdraw and read why don't you withdraw to withdraw and i'll make a new motion okay so we have the withdrawal by council member i would suggest that you make a motion for reconsideration and uh adoption of new a new motion language in one motion and we didn't vote on the matter that there we haven't voted there was not a vote on the vote no we haven't voted my apologies yeah feel free to withdraw the motion every day i just want to i'll just so with that um so i'd like to make a motion to direct staff to return uh tony what would be a reasonable amount of time for this kind of i'm adding the pool so um what would be a reasonable amount of time to return by a couple of months probably yes 60 days or so so um so probably not before our uh break august um return in august my august like that first meeting in august maybe okay yeah that'd be great okay thank you so motion should accept your return by the august 13th with one an analysis of the fee structure and business plan for the dale aviega golf course with an eye towards self-sufficiency and two um uh explore options for returning the harby west pool as a year on facility for our community um this exploration may include new operational models new programming infrastructure modernization and community investment and i'm actually stealing that from council member mires who sent it to me but i thought maybe we could just add them together and and get this moving okay so okay so we have motion by council member brown seconded by vice mayor okay um thank you for your presentation all those in favor please say aye any opposed okay that passes unanimously okay we look forward to hearing more in august so we'll go ahead and move right along to um our next bucket of uh reductions which is finance hr and it there were no reductions that we uh clearly are having a hard time here with okay revenue enhancement through yeah all right who wants to kick us off for uh some of the context and or uh is there another way you'd like to present the information i'm looking to you marcus we rosham boat and i'm bigger so i won all right so my list of reductions so uh i am not entirely general fund so my my target goal was uh about 81 thousand dollars um and so all of that though comes from the administration side so not workers comp not benefits or anybody who's affiliated with working in that division so the things that come from my budget are all of our training programs all of our professional development most of my the majority of my staff uh all of my recruitment team and all of our efforts to do recruitment all of our labor relations so anything related to negotiations uh investigations compensation studies uh any legal advice that we seek outside um when we have grievances or arbitrations that requires outside attorneys as well so the the international that's and professional development for my my employees so um what i propose to put up is approximately we'll actually have to just say when i first came here we did a really thorough job of reducing our consultant agreements almost to the tune of about 250 thousand dollars over my first year here and we went bare bare bones so i'm really at the extreme bare bones when i talk about any of the consultant fees um that i'm trying to cut so approximately 71 thousand is going to be for anything that relates to if i have an investigation that will come up that i can't um that i need to farm out we're going to have to figure out how we're going to pay for that whether it's charging the department that that generates from because usually uh my my department of there are some things that we can do internally i've that i'm able to conduct those investigations but some things we need to farm out larger uh we also will get reduce our budget in terms of any type of high level recruitment we like i said we had 122 recruitments uh last year so sometimes we need to farm some out so we can get caught up particularly when it's a mid-management level recruitment sometimes we need outside resources where a consultant may already know who to tap into and have a wider network so we'll reduce that or ask the department if they really want that route to pay for it themselves and sometimes we also have special studies that are requested by the departments for classification analysis that might be far reaching that's much larger than what my staff can do with our bandwidth so we'll we'll utilize outside help so those are going to have to be reduced and those requests will have to be minimized and they happen quite often you know whether a particular position to be in a unit or whether we need a new classification um we get those requests quite frequently and then also within terms of individual staff training within my staff department what i'm proposing is to eliminate $10,000 and what i'd like to do is eliminate the conference trainings attendance and so forth from my my leadership team and but still have my technical staff attend because that's important for them so that's my uh total of my reductions thank you i think we'll have isn't you're all bucketed together do you want to do your presentation then we'll ask questions individually do you want to hold your just two questions of hr it would be helpful for me if it just did i'm on a roll let's go okay great yeah okay so um anybody have questions instead of going down the line maybe we'll just see if there's any questions specifically comes from Matthew similarly to others so you're suggesting a 71 thousand dollar reduction in your department 81 81 excuse me um that would encompass activities including some recruitment some consulting some classification studies and some whatever the other thing uh some individual for my my staff but what i would look at is the my uh leadership team and rather than us attending or going to training either utilize um local resources sometimes i can get others to help pay for attendance but it's more important i think for the other staff members to attend and then leadership actually leadership Santa Cruz which is interesting is i pay for that at my budget for others to attend i won't i won't do that anymore um i love leadership Santa Cruz for our city staff and i know staff from many different departments have a pay have and i'm on the board so it pains me to say that i didn't realize it always came out of your budget um but i i think to the extent we can continue to invest annually and it usually it's a couple of city staff a year i think um dissipate that's that's really good um but it can come out of your budget so what i'm looking for so that's 71 or 81 000 out of out of a total of what uh my um some my gosh actually what part is general fund funded i don't have that breakout Marcus do you have that off the top of your head my total budget is seven million pretty it's a pretty two million that's a pretty tiny amount out of your total general fund it's still it still hurts because i'm two million yeah yeah but i would say anything from here going forward if we have to go deeper i'm looking at bodies that was the question and i'll just echo that maybe not the elimination of leadership santa Cruz but if maybe the reduction so that i don't know if that's possible to have you know if there was a whole bunch of folks but a couple can apply or something like that what i was going to propose is that each department rather than my department pay for it that if you want to send somebody you your department actually has to propose in the structure i okay i support because every department has a training and that would i would suggest you allocate it for that program and very very reasonable and appropriate okay is that what you were suggesting also yeah and then i think in the past a couple of year is a good rate and many institutions do that congratulations for being on the board thank you and soon you'll hear our announcement from your executive director i ran into that person okay is there any other questions for lisa at this time thank you very much okay you got it here for Laura is already there go Laura hi Laura Schmidt with information technology so our 134 thousand dollars that you see on our line item for it is four percent of our budget so that was the requested scenario for us to come up with marcus had to summarize three departments in one so we only have one line item up there but the first reduction that we would take should we have to is reducing the number of pcs and laptops that we replace next fiscal year so that's around 83 84 thousand dollar reduction citywide so it would come out proportionately out of various departments the risk there is this year was the last year to remove windows 7 from our environment because microsoft is end of life in that operating system and when they end of life they don't give security patches for it anymore so this set of pcs and laptops for this fiscal year were to put windows 10 throughout the city we can mitigate the risk by choosing which laptops and which desktops that we leave on windows 7 and target ones that are of lower use and what we believe is a lower risk to leave at windows 7 the other elimination that we would do is there are uninterruptible power supplies of a smaller form factor throughout the city so these are key work stations our servers where if the electricity goes down the ups sits there as like battery backup so we would eliminate preventative maintenance on the smaller form factor ups is scattered throughout the city we would still maintain the maintenance on the large ups is so the big one downstairs for the data center here the data center at the police department at the water plant that type of things that would maintain so it would be the smaller form factor ones that we would eliminate preventative maintenance on and then the third possible cut would be a reduction in our contract for professional services for the people that man the phones for our help desk so that would be the phone responsibility of our technical support services side we would still have the internal staff on the technical and the field service side but somebody being there from the hours of 730 to 438 to 4 to answer the phone we would stop that probably around mid-year to meet the rest of the reduction to get to the 134 that's the summary okay thank you comes friend so just want to ask the question so there would be no phone technical support you would still be able to so we would still have our field so we have a first tier of call to the 555 number now and that is a person that just does phone work and they are there on a pretty constant basis sitting somewhere answering the phone and then at the second then if they can't immediately answer the question and resolve it on the phone it goes to our next level to your support and those are our it tech specialists one twos and threes and they have a deeper level of knowledge and troubleshooting skills and we have those people assigned by departments so robert ran our is the one that covers the city council he also covers finance administration hrit city clerk city managers so he's your field tech in that sense and then he has a backup to him as well those people would still be available and you could still call a phone number you're not going to get a live body the ticket would go into the queue on the phone number or the ticket could come into the queue through email or what employees are likely to do because we very organically are able to find people to help us is you would probably call your field tech that's been assigned to your department so there's still going to be help but the wonderful compliments that you guys gave us of our you know immediate response there's going to be a service level impact to this level of cut for our department and you won't get as immediate of an online actual person to respond to you but we will still have our field technical professional deep knowledge support to be able to give you so it will be impactful to the employees though and we recognize that but um we we don't have a lot of other fat in the budget to be able to trim because we have a lot of operational overhead in our licenses our hardware contracts and our software contracts so thank you laura thank you okay i apologize council but i have another meeting i have to attend this evening so i'm gonna have to leave now okay we'll behave you're all in good hands okay marcus thank you so our our biggest proposal is to further expand credit card recovery fees we feel this is again i've probably been more of the road block because we see the internal control process of allowing more people to pay back credit cards and not discouraging it creates a lot of efficiencies in our operation we're at that point now where we've just got to gamble and see if it impacts consumer choices we don't want to go back to cash and checks but we realize covering a three percent cost on all these transactions is not the best thing to do anymore and most government agencies already passed this cost on we're more on the smaller end of the few agencies that don't fully do that across the board so places where this would touch is business license emissions tax payments parking lots tax payments some counter payments such as planning parks and recreation where we're where people are touching our fees in those places at counters there'll be a convenience fee attitude that would be our biggest expansion it would could yield about 140 hundred fifty thousand dollars annually in cost recovery that we're paying now two other proposals that we have is reducing courier pickup and i won't say which sites because there's custodial and risk things about the thing where our armored cars show up but we have armored cars that comes a couple different spots uh different times during the day every day and so we might look at reducing one or two of those sites and consolidating where somebody would walk across the street and we'd have a consolidated pickup we still have i still need to do some further analysis on that it's not a place that i feel great about doing this was an expanded service we did years ago from a employee safety and customer safety perspective there is there might be some opportunity they're reducing the site are doing it every other day pickup type schedule the last one is relocating finance so we're we moved offsite um years back to make way for a consolidated payment counter center our eventual come home is is library admin space the library is always looking for a new place to go and there's other big projects that we've talked about in reference today earlier today but we're we're waiting for that space to open up that's our return home in the meantime we're downtown at high rent space so there's an opportunity for us to relocate and move somewhere else around the city a couple blocks away or a couple miles away a couple miles away is where you get a real savings a couple blocks away you're paying a a lot of times around the same rates but there are still a few sites so it's it would be us prioritizing really looking to find a new location and candidly we we need to do that anyways we're out of space we moved in with the idea of having a split department for a couple years and it's taking a little bit longer to get back to our our home with library so we've brought everybody together now we've got everybody squeezed in and so we don't really fit and we've got about eight vacancies we need to fill and we don't have we have place for two not eight so we've got some spacing challenges anyways so our priority would be find a location that's a lower cost to provide some savings so that's that's the impact so moving for low cost that sounds good moving for space sounds good but to get a lower cost means further away from city hall and there it's the that's the impact we're assessing okay thank you for the clarification i mean i'll just briefly say i think for the credit card cost recovery i think that is the trend and it's the convenience and you kind of make that choice in terms as a consumer of how you want to move forward with that so i'm i'm supportive of that and uh yeah i appreciate the work any other council members by smear coming i had a quick question about the credit card cost recovery or the recovery fee is that a flat rate or is that a percentage of it's generally a percent every now and then depending on the transaction there's some nuance to it but it's generally a percent and almost always around three percent utilities have a lower rate so utilities are about one percent okay i've councilor crown and then councilor mafios just a quick question on the business license tax you and i have talked may be ripe to raise that i don't know if it's a subject for the revenue committee but um is that something the voters don't have to go through that we can we can raise that ourselves and the tax it require voter approval it would okay it would thanks okay i support the ones that you've laid out here okay thank you okay we'll keep moving so community re support i'm not sure who will be presenting on that is that you city manager well i i mean i i think i could speak to it okay okay i'm passing out my okay i'm wanting to request that i've already discussed here we go okay markis and martin okay well she said i was down i'm going to go hi good afternoon council members i'm sorry so you just called on me to dressies okay i was en route um so i guess i'm here to speak to the community support column as well as is the council clerk and city manager column all right so we have a number of things in here and i do want to say that as you've been going through all day these are all varying degrees of pain and difficult choices and they don't feel good to anyone so i just want to state that out and i know particularly these topics which really resonate with you in the community are especially hard to tackle so i just want to acknowledge that um as you work through this process so there are a number of reductions we have identified for your consideration to meet this first tier of cuts and they range from some contracts we support externally as well as other things we fund internally and some internal support so first we have reducing community programs funding this is something that was also brought up last year on the community programs budget is about one point one eight million dollars this is the city has a long history of providing these grants to a variety of programs um the proposed reduction i think would be commensurate with what is being proposed for reductions across the organization about four percent which is about forty five forty six thousand dollars across the board and that is not uncommon to how we as the city have dealt with reductions in the past when we've had to make contractions to our budget typically there's been a corresponding reduction in the community programs budget so that was put forward for your consideration um the next one is reducing the CPA VAW budget they have about thirty thousand dollars annually and um it's a minor reduction being proposed maybe five thousand dollars i know councilmember brown this is an issue of particular importance to you what that wouldn't do is that would not compromise the city schools training that we partner with to provide the training in middle schools what it would do though is absolutely limit the ability to do special events they like to do some end of year grants when they have some extra resources and so it certainly impairs some of their activities but it would not um it would not compromise the ability to have that program in the middle schools the next one is reducing the homelessness coordinating committee funding so that is about a fifty thousand dollar reduction and what that is is is you recall in twenty seventeen when the council adopted the homelessness coordinating committee recommendations at that budget hearing council said let's actually invest in this if we want to do if we want to implement these recommendations we need to have funding so council allocated a few pots of money to advance these recommendations you set aside a hundred thousand dollars to help do shelter and you also set aside fifty thousand dollars for just the general recommendations implementation so the recommendation here would be to eliminate the fifty thousand dollars that we would use not for a designated purpose but forever um is is needed in 2020 to help advance those recommendations now reducing any homelessness funding is of course fraught with some peril because need could dictate what has to happen so it could be a real cut or not a real cut but it is something we put forward as an option for you to consider um we still do retain about a hundred and seventy thousand dollars for winter shelter and that's our jurisdictional share of the hap funding as well as another hundred thousand dollars so the budget isn't free of homelessness funding but it just that's a reduction of fifty thousand dollars uh the next the next line is for the hopes program and many of you may not have the a lot of history with this but this is a program that's evolved from the downtown accountability program which was a meshing of the city the county the courts in the da's office to try to get to low-level recidivist offenders in our downtown in particular move those people into a place where they have an alternative to um to jail get them into shelter and treatment programs and that program evolved from DAP the downtown accountability program into PACT and then the most recent evolution is the hopes program and that is mostly a county program we help fund it and a lot of our contribution helps fund substance abuse treatment and right now the current budget is about three hundred thousand dollars the proposal here would reduce that by a hundred thousand dollars and the good news on that is that you might recall the county was very aggressive a few years ago in being one of the first in the state to apply for expanded drug medical and we were successful so what it means now is that if you are an indigent person in our community you're receiving medical you we the county can get reimbursed for drug treatment programs whereas before that was not an eligible reimbursement expense it now is and so this is wonderful because we're seeing that the necessary investment in substance use disorder can go down because the state is paying for that so this hundred thousand dollars and I did confer with the county on this so I'm not surprising them right now we think is is doable and they could still affect their mission and it won't impair the program too much that the next one I know will be difficult and this is a suggestion the open streets donation currently that's in your budget so councilmember crone you asked earlier about the council budget this is one component of it it'd be an eight thousand dollar reduction from the fifteen thousand dollar budget and then moving over to the if there are questions I'm happy to answer them councilmember Matthews yeah could you just go over the amount reductions in this column again because I wasn't writing fast absolutely and I talk fast so the first one the community programs that was about a four percent reduction which is about forty seven thousand dollars off of the base budget of one point one eight million dollars cpva delby was about five thousand and their base budget is thirty thousand dollars can you get these written out for us or something I mean you're saying all these things and I don't I'm not following okay I'm trying to find them in sure are you um councilmember crone difficulty with the program description or the numbers you say you're reducing homelessness funding reducing cpva delby hopes program 300 to 100 open streets 8k comes from the council but I missed some things in between okay so I'll maybe start all over yeah I don't see that I don't see that those numbers that you're saying up there just saying reduce right and we and I'm providing more context I've been hearing your questions this afternoon about wanting more context so I'm trying to provide a little bit more of that so you can assess the impact of it do you want to just go through them one by one and state the amount I'm happy to do that yeah absolutely okay so then starting at the top the community programs funding that proposed reduction the percentage of that was about four percent again being commensurate with what we're proposing right now with this this current round of cuts that's about forty seven thousand dollars the cpva delby that was about five thousand dollars a homelessness coordinating committee funding was fifty thousand we're what page is that on yeah so the that the homelessness coordinating committee budget is found within the city manager's budget um so what you will see is you will see a master roll-up and it will be within you're not seeing a line item budget but what you would find that in community programs and services I stand corrected it's it's in our non-departmental budget so I don't know exactly where that is in the larger budget document so I will have to follow up with that I'm very happy to do that compared to what absolutely and actually something I can provide to you that might be helpful is I have um a summary of all of your social services investment I printed out for you so this might help as you're talking about all of these so as that goes around I'll kind of describe what you'll see the information first you'll see the table that looks like this and this is um the social services investment in total so you can see everything that ranges from the community programs grants at the very bottom to external contracts to our investment in the homeless action partnership and other things so this is a nice summary sheet of your total social services investment so that's the first sheet the second sheet is a line item budget for the community programs so you can see what every program received from the city and that has like the blue um blue top on that as well as on the back the set aside funding that was approved for fiscal year 19 and then the final sheet is just a greater description of the set aside funding in case you wanted to look at that so maybe that helps um a little bit because I know there um what's difficult about these is some items are in the city manager's budget some are in a non-departmental budget so that can be difficult to track so I thought like this master summary would be useful to you okay so I think where I was is I'm on hopes again so councilmember crone going back through the numbers that you were requesting um the the hopes was one hundred thousand dollars is the cut is the reduction yes the open streets eight thousand all right good okay so then I'll move on and thank you for and just please do interrupt me if it's going fast it's a lot of detail and so moving on to the final column of your afternoon looking at the council clerk and city manager reductions the first one is reducing the state legislative strategist and I was mentioned earlier by the finance director we have a citywide contract to have legislative advocacy in Sacramento so this is a firm that we can call upon to track bills to attend committee meetings to share information to set up meetings for us and legislators offices or help to advance whatever legislative agenda would benefit the city and what we're suggesting here is that we do an rfp we renegotiate that contract and get those costs down we think this is very doable this would be a savings of about 15 000 dollars uh then the next one we lose in that like what what kind of information have been getting maybe it's worth more than 15 000 absolutely and so this is where the rfp I think will be very helpful we it's good general best practice to bid rebid these every five years and I think we're on the eight or nine-year mark so it's just a good practice just to say just to reassess what do we need what level of service do we need do we need an on-demand retainer is there another financial arrangement so we would want to try to retain as much as we can but get a better price thanks for coming I would also like to know um whether or not we get reports from this individual how often because I don't I don't think I've received any information um regarding this person and the work that they're doing and so you know I think that the idea that we're going to go back and look at this contract as it could because um if having not received any information at this point it makes me wonder you know is this what's this person's role and is it worth keeping absolutely the wonderful question and and staff use it kind of on-demand and sometimes we have very intensive periods like when we were working on especially flooding and river levy issues a lot of intense work sometimes very little work and also what is the information flow from the strategist into my office and across the city that gets harder to manage too so I completely agree ask what is what's that overall budget currently right for that contract it's uh citywide I think it's about 80 something thousand dollars that's where Matthews and is some of that a portion to across it is yes um the majority of it is uh enterprise funds so I think there's about 30 000 dollars in the general fund of this so I I'm suggesting a cut in the general fund portion of about 50 thousand $15 000 but there would be a corresponding reduction across the other funds too through through if I'm hearing yeah okay great okay okay continue on okay the next line is reducing our communications and outreach budget so we do have a budget that exists for us to do work such as producing events producing collateral materials creating information it's also helpful for consulting work like right now I'm very delighted we're embarking upon a social media consultant to have us do an assessment of our social media presence um and the the over 40 different uh social media channels channels that we work within and a priority of this council has been to speak in a more unified voice across the city and so this is work toward that so that consultant will be paid out of that it helps produce like the city hall to you events the state of city events which we did not do this year and other things so what I'm recommending here is or suggesting here is we could reduce that by about 20 000 that would leave us with 30 so there's still funds there because there there is important communications work that we need to do in our community our issues are enormous our community wants to know more we need to do a better job here and so I would like to preserve funding here so that we can do do better work on that um the next one is reducing travel and training and this is a small amount um I think it's mostly in the council budget um again to councilmember crowns question from earlier what's in the council reductions I was 24 000 so eight from open streets I think eight from this the travel and training which leaves about a balance of seven um thousand dollars there and then the next line item is another eight thousand dollars out of the council account and that leaves you about five thousand five hundred thank you um so we can go ahead and hear where sort of council members are on everything and I know council around you have a proposal um I don't know if you want to kick us off but before maybe if you can before you do just I want to sort of briefly speak to the communication strategy and I appreciate the um insights into the importance of it I think that's uh something we've talked about as long as I've been on council in regards to the high need here in our community um and how we are interfacing with not only immediate kind of crisis type situations but also really thinking about our strategy citywide in terms of how we're communicating our um efforts and hopefully preventing any kind of uh miscommunication or misinformation so I would like to see that as a priority personally in terms of what that could look like in terms of an investment at the city level in terms of um communications so I'll just sort of I'll say sort of just say say that um I don't know martin uh city manager Bernal did you want to say anything here uh yeah only that uh you know it is it is correct that uh based on kind of the scope and size of our community that our communications function is is very under resourced uh comparatively speaking uh and it has been an ongoing challenge uh for us uh you know um a year or so ago we did do an analysis sort of comparing how other communities like us like Berkeley for example Santa Barbara and others how they staff up uh and they certainly have uh a communications uh group uh within the city manager's office typically is what they do so we are underfunded there and uh it's definitely an area that we can do a lot more work in and if the council is interested in us looking at uh sort of creative ways to try to boost that up and uh within the overall resources of the city we can we can do more of more of that work if there's an interest in doing that I'm interested in that and I hear what other council members have to say okay council member brown did you want to share your proposal or yeah thank you um Tina if you're still here for um for walking us through those uh proposed cuts and to understand where they're at and also providing the additional information on community programs this is not really a proposal this is just as I was kind of walking through the budget and thinking about my priorities that I really want to make sure get funded I put together this list and I fired it off this morning so you can see foster grandparent there twice in my because it was a pretty quick so you can cut one of those off but in addition now I see based upon um the additional documentation that we've been given that foster grandparent actually is in the budget and I didn't know that so um you can just cross them both off because sorry foster foster grandparents funded so let's just we can cross both of those off women's self-defense it wasn't clear to me that that was still in the budget you can cross that one off and open streets it wasn't clear to me that that was still in the budget I um personally don't support the reduction so I'd like to maintain that at the full funding um we'll see where we get so that and then meals on wheels feel uh is in for 4600 also and again we didn't see these before now um my proposal was um $12,000 which um based on my conversations with their director would um help that would cover their rent their cost to rent loud nelson for the congregate meal program this is something they struggle with and um the county is now uh the the big funder of meals on wheels our share at 4600 it was zero but at 4600 is really limited and given that we receive rent from them and for the service they provide I mean it's just so critical I think it would be really important to support them um through that uh either elimination of their rent costs I mean I think it's in my you know in theory two transaction costs you know if we just eliminated their rent it would be no transaction you know we there's a way to do that that might even be some additional savings that was my thinking um new wave of vista center I'm not sure because it's not clear to me if the cdbg um changes that we made because those weren't have not been finally approved are in this budget but I do want to make sure that that is there um when the final budget comes back to us and so now so and then I'll just make if I if I could make a couple of comments about the other the additional um items so um tenants legal services I passed out along with this draft draft of my priorities uh the scope of services that the long-awaited scope of services we do have it uh to release the funding that we've already allocated and uh it's regrettable that um this has taken so long and they are um have already started work as a member of the public suggested this morning and they're paying out of their pockets to have the phone line to answer the phone line to print materials community printers provided in kind for them to print materials you know they're really struggling to get up and going without any money um the of the person who will hopefully get paid to be a staff for this program is currently I believe working one of her many other jobs so couldn't be here I with this scope of services hope we can really get that money released um ASAP um and I would like to put a placeholder to fund that project um in the new fiscal year as well for 60 000 um and so I'm putting it out there I think it's a very critical service uh we've heard so much about the struggles that that tenants face renters face in this community um we have uh discussed and discussed and studied and uh you know brought it to the ballot ways to provide some relief to tenants this is just a really concrete immediate way that that tenants who are actually um needing assistant legal assistance can get help in the immediate um to provide them with some relief I find I feel very strongly about this this is a way to fund as um CRLA or um California Rural Legal Assistance community partners have suggested to also be able to provide assistance to tenants who may not be served um because of their program guidelines um Project Homeless Connect is like this amazing program that I'm you know I've learned about because we have a volunteer you know a day an event in the city it used to be at the um Civic Center it was at the Warrior Stadium they've now moved to the Portuguese Hall because we don't provide them a rent-free space to do that it's an amazing um event where um all kinds of programs come together I mean we talk about a navigation center and wanting to have that as a year-round service um this is like navigation day and if you go and you see it happen it's amazing what you know individuals get walked through and and uh uh connected to all of these services dental I mean it every I could go on but it's just this really amazing thing and I think we should be supporting them they've been creative in how to continue to make this happen with reduced support from the city um and so I'd like to fund them as well I'm suggesting 5k but they have said that they'd be willing to accept anything we might contribute for this coming year and I think it should be an ongoing priority for us we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on homeless services some of which um questionable uh results this is a proven demonstrated results and it's a small ask Janice of Santa Cruz I'm raising this now because it is um you know it's an issue that or this is a program in our community that kind of speaks to this broader I mean we we continue to get constituents saying you know when with respect to the Ross camp for example the you know all these people need what they need is to you know they all need to go and get um you know the the percentage of whatever the percentage is of people in the Ross camp who need drug and alcohol um substance use disorder services well when I talk to Janice workers um they say they are they turn people away every single day from the Ross camp people who are indigent it is one of the only programs in our community that provides substance abuse services counseling services to indigent our indigent community they are in a major struggle which you'll be hearing about I am hoping to bring an agenda item um later this month to discuss the how to support the workers there they have requested um actually a $5400 increase which is a 15 percent increase over the current portion of funding that's allocated um in the the hopes for for the hopes funding um so I think that's a reasonable ask it kind of raises uh just it's a small commitment that the city can make to a program that is vital to achieving the the kinds of outcomes that we talk about and talk about at the city and um and really don't support financially I know this is not the city's traditional role the county provides a significant amount of funding for Janice um but I think it's time that we make some kind of commitment uh to that program they also are just for the record very low paid pretty close to minimum wage for critical counseling services um so in terms of the you know bang for the buck I mean I hate to I think these workers are exploited I'd like to see them get paid more that's an issue a broader issue community conversation but at least we could support them and and let them know that that the services they provide are um you know respected and acknowledged in our community um and the last one that I'm going to highlight here is um and I've been working with um council member Matthews on this um UCSC long-range development plan county city committee um with uh with the county supervisor Ryan Coonerty and his staff this is something that um came out of the measure you vote um close to 80 percent of the voters in the city um supported an advisory measure regarding UCSC growth and we think it's very important to um to try to invest in some an advocate position to and it would be a one-time um funding allocation to um be more directly involved in uh the long-range development plan um discussion moving forward so I'll just I'll leave it there um thank you for letting me take the time to hold forth um and we'll see if there's support for me or all of these moving forward thank you and I I'll just to conclude I understand that we're talking about cuts today and so I want you all to know that I take that very seriously um I'm not I've not ignored the the financial reality um I I believe there are other places that we can cut in our budget um and there are significant revenue enhancements that we can consider that won't solve our problem for this um fiscal year but um we I'm not going to do any more coulda shoulda woulda but I think that that's it's very important that we consider those revenue enhancements um and put that on the agenda and I have a motion to make or actually I think my colleague the vice mayor has a motion to make regarding that a little bit thanks do you want to go ahead and do that now okay vice mayor coming I think one of the things that we've um been discussing today around cuts is the need and just throughout this whole um budget hearing process and learning more about the current state uh status of the city's finances is that um there is a need to increase sources of revenue um within the city and so I'm going to make the following motion to establish an ad hoc revenue council subcommittee for the purpose of exploring and recommending revenue enhancing options for city council action with the subcommittee members to be recommended by the current budget subcommittee with the subcommittee members to be appointed by the mayor I'll second that okay thank you we can go ahead and vote on that now and discuss that if if you'd like for for the purposes of moving forward in terms of other actions do we have any further discussion on forming a revenue committee sounds member chrome can we add to the charge of the revenue committee and what you're going to look at as part of the motion because I was uh would like to um the revenue committee to consider uh raising the hotel tax taxing vacant units a real estate transfer tax looking at the business license tax looking at an uber lift tax uh and also taking up the golf course and making it you know being part of that discussion and making it revenue uh really returning it to an enterprise fund it should be if I could just um for sort of um the interest in how this has gone before is that there will be an opportunity to explore all types of revenue measures and I'm I believe city manager Bernal we've done polling and all of those types of things come in come into place I don't think this will have to be the opportunity for council members to express what their interest is in terms of a revenue measure but I think we're going to that will be all encompassing as the as the committee moves forward is that it's feel accurate yeah correct typically the the committee explores all the various options uh by doing some research and analysis we'll do some typically do some polling so yeah so it's not limited to anything it's really looking at all the various options and doing some analysis and coming back with recommendations okay I'm not limiting it I'm just making sure that I'd like to make sure that these are all considered by the committee and I see he's accepting my um I just I'm not sure if it's appropriate at this time in terms of what and I know that our city attorney isn't here in terms of the specificity in regards to how we're kind of um convened in terms of our budget process so I think the it's appropriate if if I may for a revenue committee to be formed and I think it's won't be that will be the beginning of the conversation of what they could pursue that would be sort of just my instincts personally council member bram and then councilor matthew just a quick comment on that I agree with the mayor um however I I do want to stress that um some of these actually were not pursued some of these suggestions being made by council member crone were discussed at the revenue enhancement committee and they were not pursued they were not pulled for they they were not pursued and um I think I've been very clear um over the during these discussions that progressive um revenue enhancements measures um are a priority for me I'm I'm sensing that there are priority for other council members and staff and I so I just however we make sure that those get considered this year I want to make sure that happens if and if it doesn't happen in a motion and then it just gets ignored I'm going to come back again and um you're going to hear about it again and I really would love to stop talking about it I think this this there will be opportunity for council members to weigh in on what they'd like the revenue committee to explore I think that's totally appropriate I don't think that that has to happen right now what the proposal is is to explore forming a revenue committee so when that comes back I think it'd be very appropriate for council members to express what their interests are at that time so councilor matthews and then council member glover a question about the intention is the revenue committee intended to focus on a revenue measure for voters or fee increases and other ways of if I could I would this is just a question yeah I think you know in the past if I recall correctly the revenue committee was primarily focused on what it could be for voters but if the um interest of the council is to also look at other fees and increases I think that's certainly appropriate as well um city manager pronounce yeah I mean it's it's uh whatever is the pleasure of the council but typically it's focused on um revenue measures about measure but but we could do both if that's what the council wishes okay so to my mind it'd be clearer to keep it restricted to that because my understanding is there's work in progress right now in different departments about examining different fees so I have no idea specifically what's in the pipeline on that score I look to Marcus is that correct that there's still some fee adjustment yes I mean you heard fire's concept today there's three other fees being looked at there's uh concepts around the action labs there's several revenue ideas there it could be totally appropriate for the revenue committee to you know get a report out of all those ideas so comes into that place that makes sense then if that feels but in terms of the purpose and focus your look at both revenue measures and potential fee increases well if I'm hearing if I'm hearing you correctly you're if I'm hearing you correctly councilor matthews you're really saying um the revenue committee could be um really purposeful in trying to look at what type of revenue measures they'd like to bring forward their hands full on that and I think these others may be on different timelines and so maybe just working in concert with knowing more about what's happening for fee revenue as well I'm not necessarily making that the priority but staying in line with that as a as a revenue option and in any event I think the language could just say including but not limited to and then open book there okay okay I think it's okay councilmember Glover um so it's been mentioned a couple times in response to councilmember Crohn's request uh but when is this time that council members will have an opportunity to weigh in on the committee because is the motion right now to explore the creation of a committee or is it to form a committee because it was to form a committee because if it's to form a committee then there needs to in my opinion to be some very specific outlines as to what the committee is going to go on otherwise I can't support voting for a committee that's doing unknown work so uh one solution if there's some conflict because it seems like we're talking about it in great depth even though we were supposedly not able to do that because it's not on the agenda and the city attorney is not here so to avoid there being any continued conversation about a revenue committee and the structure I would advocate that we make a motion to explore the creation of the committee and then prioritize it for a short agenda item on the next-age city council agenda so that we can uh have an open transparent conversation so and I'll be able to provide our input as to what we'd like to see the committee function on uh because I think that that has continuously been overlooked or pushed to the side even though there's been requested if I understand quickly the motion before us is to have the budget committee look at this process is that correct so perhaps one of the solutions could be that any council member who is interested in expressing what they hope the budget committee set forth in their recommendation for the revenue committee take that into consideration at their next budget committee meeting I I think that would appropriately get to what I believe is the broader interest from uh outlined by council member crown expressed by council member glover but I'm sure shared amongst the entire council council member matthews so the budget committee who's on it budget committee is currently council member brown vice mayor Cummings and myself okay and so you would then discuss this and bring forward to the council an agenda item for action is that correct possibly I think that seems appropriate or some sort of ratification yeah that's right okay in some form and and then any any interests for consideration could come to the budget committee that's when we would and I'll we can solicit that through email does that seem appropriate okay I just want to ask the maker of the motion if you accept it to come back to us as an agenda item on the city council so we can then give some charge and mission for the budget committee to explore and make sure folks feel okay about it I actually would prefer that um the but the ad hoc budget committee take into account the information that you all want to see the revenue subcommittee work on and then we can bring that all forward at one point in time with recommendations of people to be on that so I would say that what would be good is if council members could then provide their input as to what they want to see the committee actually accomplish and then we can take that information to the ad hoc committee and come up with the scope of work along with the membership of that committee okay all those in favor please say aye any opposed okay that passes unanimously okay so we'll go back to the proposals for the additional funding or recommended funding and in the context of the final kind of few areas under council clerk in community support and city manager I believe we had council member brown share I think we can just go ahead and maybe go to council member Matthews Spice Mayor Cummings and then does that feel appropriate and everybody can have their turn okay council member Matthews do you have I'm trying to find the pieces of paper okay and what's on what do you want to take a moment yeah I do okay there's one where you had this do we want to start on this end then and see okay council member current do you want to share anything so we're just discussing what council member brown is brought forward or any direction for our city staff here in terms of how we're going to try to move I had a question for Tina about the cpba w do we know has that group taken a position right now on the woman self-defense classes because I hadn't heard that but I I um I think to my knowledge and I will certainly follow up and get you something as soon as I can within a day or two but the commission was relooking at the most efficient way to provide these services yeah and so I think that they're in that place of looking toward it but the money is preserved in the budget however they wish to go forward so I don't know the exact point in their process I know that I'm I'll check in with minzo here at my office when I see her tomorrow about the details and I can get that to you and what is the budget the cpb about 30 000 um yeah so I you know pending that I would like to keep it in here if you know depending on because it's a commission and they have points of view and maybe they won't vote for it I also wanted to know about the force to grandparents we have 5k here but we have 3400 in the uh in the the city I guess it's community programs is that is that what you intended 3400 3400 I imagine there's been some discussion with them so yeah it was five thousand two years ago but 3400 if I'm assuming that was and if I could clarify Madam Mayor so what I provided here was to show you the FY 2019 set aside funding so what you did in your last budget cycle is that you allocated the base core fund and community program funding and then you also said we want this 45 000 set aside fund to serve as an innovation fund for emerging needs for new programs for other things that didn't fall into the multi-year core rfp process so that gave the council that fluidity and flexibility to respond to community needs as they might change year over year so the list you see before you is what ultimately the community programs committee recommended for the current fiscal year that we're in right now and there was a very simple letter of interest process this list came up with so however the community programs committee moves forward they I believe they may wish to do another letter of interest process so I would just say with caution the programs on here represent last year's funding decisions so if I'm hearing you quickly are we do we have 50 000 or 45 000 allocated for a set aside then correct okay so it's the the money's there but the process hasn't been hasn't ensued yet so that could likely ensue but we have a placeholder for the dollars there we do okay okay and it is inclusive though of that four percent reduction that was proposed that's something just to bear in mind thank you okay so yes I um totally support the project homeless connect and I think Janice if we're putting our money where our mouth is you know it's providing services that really are needed um and I think we should be providing more than this but I'm going to go along with the recommendation um also uh I see the considering harbour west pool 400 and council assistance I think that um council is it's part of the whole thing folks talking about social media and getting the word out and having some sort of messaging I would see this as a fund that council members can draw on that would take the place of a principal analyst for example we would cover the benefits and this would be you know if council members wanted to draw on this fund or not uh I would put it maybe at 150 25 000 where each council member could be limited to 25 000 in getting assistance and we're just buried with you know right now email and communication is very difficult and often I encounter people who never heard back from any council members and I always think that's kind of sad but um so I'm definitely supportive of that um and the UCSC LRDP advocate uh is something that's been discussed in the measure you committee but also um and the LRDP the community advisory group that council member Matthews and I are on we've discussed that some with with folks who are on there as well at least I've talked to you know three others who are on that and they uh think this is a very good idea and if we want to be serious about you know approaching the university that we needed somebody to be working in Sacramento and that it's a good reason we should definitely be hiring someone and working with the county it's another opportunity too for us to work with the county on this really significant issue um okay and just if I could maybe for clarification council member brown would you be open to the set-aside funding maintaining with the more of a competitive process for current needs as opposed to the specific programming that you which wouldn't necessarily preclude them from receiving that funding I mean I think there was that's where I found that there was a disconnect potentially yeah thank you there was a disconnect there um well given that I've um you know uh I'm no longer on the community programs committee and won't be having opportunity to weigh in at that level uh you know I'm okay with leaving it there for now but when it comes back I'm certain if it's not in there then I'm gonna bring it back again that's reasonable I mean just to remind everybody there's a nine to one match that foster grandparent gets so every dollar for every dollar we provide they get an additional nine dollars um so it's kind of talk about paying for your buck um that's really critical to me so if you want to pull that one out right away I mean I think that's totally reasonable but I just think that the process I think that ensued really allowed for current needs or other people to apply so it's fine just it's fine to pull it for now I mean I want to get us there and um you know I certainly don't want to see us go further into the red but I will bring it back if it's not on the community programs committee list when it comes back to us I just want to add could we also attract staff to look into the whole notion of a rent for meals on wheels and see if there's if that's a better deal if we could just relieve them of their rent rather than just give them 12,000 that's reasonable okay council member clever yes so as many of you know I am completely opposed to cutting community support and community programs those are the things that help us to make the people within our community be able to succeed especially those that are less fortunate underserved and or vulnerable so not in support of reducing community programs funding not in support of reducing cp-vaw budgets not in support of reducing homelessness coordinating committee funds I'd need to look at the efficacy of the hopes program and how that's working and if it is in fact deterring people from the criminal justice system actually getting them into services if the data is not strong on that then I would support a reduction to the hopes support open streets I'm mixed on because I understand the importance of having a day for people to be open on West Cliff and enjoy it some people say we should make West Cliff open every day of the year so that it's an open street so that may be a conversation to have at some point with regards to the proposed city manager and city clerk budgets the legislative strategist I need to see the data on that and the contract agreements the communications and outreach I think would be further detrimental to the organization since in my opinion we severely lack at communication and outreach in the community already as it is so a additional cut to that would be difficult I feel that there's a lacking of training in general so I don't think we should be reducing training special projects and services I have to look at what that is specifically to be able to support it and then with regards to council member Brown's suggestions definitely support tenant legal services um outspokenly support the Nueva Vista community resource center to make sure they get the maximum amount of funding that is possible homeless connect is an incredibly important program that has an impact on many lives and I know the people involved with it I think it's uh I think it's something that should be supported Janice especially I support the sentiments that have been shared so far about walking the walk and not just talking the talk it's unfortunate that it's coming to the city to have to be providing additional funding for Janice when I truly believe that and I think jurisdictionally it should be coming from the county that needs to be doing more to support Janice so hopefully this body will be encouraging diplomatically the county to step up their game when it comes to mental health and substance use disorder support meals on wheels definitely into looking at the rent opportunity to support that program because it's super important and opening of the harby west pool we already give instruction to that council assistance I think would be a game changer for a lot of the way that the community interacts and engages with the city council especially since we are only allotted half time to be able to serve the city so would encourage and support funding going towards that thank you yeah council member mayors well I'm feeling like we're we're not we're not cutting I guess my comment for this evening is um I I'm not quite sure how we can keep all of this I appreciate um council member brown's list and I do want to look at this and also just understand a little bit more about all of the organizations and I really appreciate you putting these down all on paper I do I am very intrigued and want to support if if possible the idea of having someone in Sacramento working with us on the LRDP I do think that you see you know across different communities that have University of California's in a California campuses maybe there's a maybe there's a way to look at that collectively and maybe there's a way to get a person that might have be very well versed but maybe there's multiple jurisdictions that might be interested in that I don't know we should be creative about that I'm not sure who is lead on staff with that I can okay I think again we took care of the pool I'm really of a mixed mind I guess on the assistance this is a really busy job on top of having another full-time job and if I had a council assistant I truthfully I didn't think I could tell him what to do I'm that busy so I personally it's not something that I'm going to use because I can't I can't manage another person on top of you know two full-time jobs right now so it's not something that I would really benefit from the thing that I think I benefit from the most is having some of the training that we've been able to do through like the league you know maybe attending some national conferences on key key kinds of subjects that we're looking at but I guess I'm a little bit ambivalent about that and so I'll just leave it at that but I certainly will continue to cook on it till we get together again okay thank you I'll just briefly say I think you know in general with well I guess just in general in general we are at a time where we have to if we're not cutting something and adding something we won't have a balanced budget so just sort of keeping it in context of that and I think the more we add the more we add so how are we going to make that up and I'm interested in being fiscally responsible and being able to have the city in a good position knowing that that hurts a little sometimes a little bit more than others can hurt a lot but I think if we don't the risk of it hurting even more so with extreme cuts and lot and less services to our community that is a it's a heavy price to pay potentially in the future so it's sort of the nice to have versus the must haves and I and so I think just in general I appreciate the four percent kind of overall like I think how do we all sort of weather that storm a bit so I recognize that hurts you know and in terms of the proposals for the various programs that are available to the community if we already allocated that set aside funding in our budget I think that's appropriate as a placeholder for emerging and continually needed services such as meals on wheels or foster grandparents if applicable so I support that process in suing I think in terms of the tenant legal services how I recall us leaving it is the option for that to come back when we had the cpp sort of proposal and looking at their contract or what the what that how that fits and mirrors that so I think that that was already kind of discussed it's going to be kind of revisited at that time it's my was my it's my recollection or understanding of that and then in terms of the council assistance I think that just goes back to you know nice to have how are we going to pay for it type of thing so that would be sort of just my general comments at this point okay vice mayor Cummings and then we'll go down and revisit any of these well I share some some of concerns as was brought by councilmember Glover around reducing the community programs especially those that go towards supporting a lot of our homeless population and people who are less well off in our community so it would be great if we can see if there's other areas where we can make reductions at this point in time one of the things I was going to ask is whether or not the finance director and with the park or the public works director and some of the departments can consider we're reaching out to find out whether or not some of the vehicles that we need to purchase can be maybe purchased next year just as a way of saving some of the costs so determining you know and I know we mentioned this earlier but like what is their current state in terms of you know could could we potentially put off purchasing all of them or some of them to a later point in time in addition to that as I mentioned previously the state legislative strategist I think it's going to be good to try to renegotiate that contract to see if there's potential for cost savings there and then I share some of the similar sentiments around reducing communication because I think that being an institution that has a strong connection with the public is something that's very important for us especially when we want to make sure that we're being transparent with what we're doing and so I think that you know trying to maintain that as best we can or seeing what you know more specifically what reductions would happen around that I think would be helpful as we adopt the final budget special service I actually had a question around the special special projects and services can you provide us with some context in the council budget yes absolutely so there is a line in there's a couple of line items in the council's budget which are undesignated monies that the council could choose to appropriate for whatever use comes up throughout the year so there's currently a line item for eight thousand dollars another one for five thousand five hundred dollars and in many years that is hardly touched by the city council instances where the council's used it in the past is safe for Thanksgiving dinner there's a there's a Thanksgiving dinner put on for homeless individuals in our community there's been a request of the city can you please cover the costs of the refuse the dumpster containers and that's an enterprise funds we can't just waive those fees and so the council for year over year has paid for that and so that's you know in the order of a thousand dollars but but that's it so it's really just this account so you have some flexibility for any needs that come in throughout the year but it's never had a designated or specific purpose I'd have to go back but I don't recall it ever being drawn down at all so and it's been about five thousand dollars for many many years we bumped it up one year and then it wasn't used and so it was put down to eight thousand dollars so does that help and I can grab more data if you need it that's great because I think that given the information you just provided that would be an area where I could definitely see us reducing the funds and that um with regards to what council member brown brought forward I'm very much in support of um all the programs that she brought forward and having had discussions with other people in the community as well I think that these are some of the items and programs that are in very much need of funding and so seeing how this fits into our budget as we try to see where we can make some cost savings I think would be good because these are very important programs that I think are going to provide a lot of help to a lot of people in our community um as mentioned before the harvest pool that's a conversation that's already moving forward um considering funding for council assistance I'm interested in looking into that as well I think that um being someone who works full-time and does this position it would be good to have someone who could um help on some of the various items even with drafting reports and working with staff on certain items so um that is something I'd be interested in also finding more um in finding out more information on and then just looking at our budget as a whole with these items incorporated into it to just see given the areas where we've been able to make some costs um what would the deficit look like or how close we would be to balancing a budget we'll go ahead and have council member matthews maybe share um her because I know we we kind of stopped there and went back there and then I think Marcus maybe you can respond to after we hear from council member matthews is that appropriate okay go ahead okay um going I guess I'll go down the columns first um under the council um I think we all agree that uh renegotiating a contract for a legislative strategist will result through an RFP and savings so that's keep it but um observe savings there um I do support um the communication funding tentatively if we can preserve that because I think we really do need it um I support actually reducing the travel and training and reducing the special projects I think we've got to walk the walk you know um in terms of the list that uh sandy presented um women's health defense class I think we agree that's already included in the budget um tennis legal services is there a carryover from what was allocated this year um I mean it's not it hasn't been spent well it hasn't been appropriated so we currently have no funds appropriated in this fiscal year the contract or the the funding was approved in the prior fiscal year the contract did not get to execution it got resurrected again this fiscal year and there's some back and forth around the scope of work we're working with the tenant sanctuary is there right and I think Casey's working on it and and so what we're trying to do is just square that with what they originally posed and council acted upon which didn't exactly square up so we're trying to bring those pieces together but to answer your question in this year's budget there are currently no funds appropriated so that would have to um there would have to be budget adjustment to do that and I my recollection is there was a an initial recommendation I think from the homeless committee for 15 000 and then that was increased by council action to 30 so uh and I think much remains to be done I I would personally prefer to keep this on hold till there's more discussion and with the proposed scope of work that's just been presented this is all new news and allocate something but not at the 60 000 level it seems like it doubles every time we see it I know you have comments on that in terms of the Nueva Vista increase that's part of the um cdbg which we don't have here and that was accommodated in the um it was a community programs committee I think um that recommended a cut in cdb allocation for code enforcement and that that money was to go to um Nueva Vista and some other programs distributed to other programs that was actually a full council discussion excuse me okay um so that direction that has has been made yeah um and that uh I'll have to figure out how that squares what's allocated for inspections and code enforcement in the planning department budget I just forgot that was a full council thing so um that's that's been done and I that would be my understanding that cdbg uh action has been taken yeah so you don't need to include that one here excuse me so that we'll come back for a final hearing you have the first initial public hearing on it so the decision is not final so I think that's slated for your may 28th meeting oh okay so that that's not final but it's it is outside of the general fund community programs and presented here probably headed in that direction so I think what I'm saying is correct it okay this one just to clarify if I could this was these were my requests and so they don't all necessarily have to go in here I just wanted to make it clear that that funding is a priority for me um but assuming that it does get ratified um through cdbg it doesn't need to be in this right here so you can take the new wave of Vista it's actually Vista not Vista you could just take that one off um make that um deficit shrink just a little bit more we've it's growing and growing but you know every little bit helps then um the set aside the the sheet we have here is the fiscal year 2019 set aside um we are in the third year of the core program which are designated allocations in their third grant year and the set aside was a one year and all these organizations understood that was a one-time allocation and um how is the community programs committee anticipating handling the set aside my understanding is that we um in the budget have that 45 000 still there and since the community core the core process has been extended an additional year it seems to make sense to me to still have that kind of um buffer so that when the rfp comes back out for those that didn't necessarily um catch it the first time to based on sort of this newer process could still be able to get some support knowing that the rfp for core will likely come out over the next year is that seem accurate and so and that could be some of the community programs committee which you know as you as myself for you and uh council member clever can think about then so is the thought that we would allocate a certain amount for set aside and it would be a new process de novo yeah which would then eventually come back to the full council at a certain point to have any kind of input on the specifics of that and that's where i'm thinking something like um project homeless connect and janice any of them meals on wheels could come back on that um meals and wheels is already on here some of these understood clearly it was one time and that was fine so um i i think um we could do that set aside i would suggest a somewhat smaller amount for this you know just going by the playbook but it would still be it could accommodate the um suggestions here as well as as others that may continue and others may arise so that'd be my suggestion on how to handle the um project homeless connect janice and meals on wheels suggestion here um for the ucsc l rdp advocate um this is actually uh we have a description of the proposed uh program and um i'll distribute that i mean we both have what we can distribute it's not it's not a lobbyist up in sacramento working with other communities it's it's splitting the cost uh 50 50 with the county um since we have both been parties in ucsc growth issues to fund an organizer that would work specifically with students it could be other community organizations to um have uh our voice heard in sacramento um and it's it's somewhat flexible in terms of the um exact program but really organizing around the concept of do not expand the campus until there is infrastructure housing etc in place to handle that that's the theme and you know we we pass ballot measures and have committees and so forth but the idea is to get um short term some paid organizing to um have that more consistent message so uh we'll distribute that concept to you 50 50 share with the county so mark added that no that was great thanks in terms of our who is pool yeah i think we've sent that off for more information um i personally don't favor uh adding the council assistance uh we're not succeeding so um we'll have to come back but okay so marcus i'll kind of just kick it over to you at this point in terms of where we're at in the process and what you need moving forward so do you want to help help us in that regard what what you see that may just mystically appeared in front of your eyes is a tracking tool we've used in the past it's been helpful just to track down make sure we're capturing your primary topics uh ultimately like may 28th we'd probably get down and start taking motions on these things i think today we're collecting information i think it's too premature to start voting on yes and no on anything so just by way of example i've listed the things that you've talked about your interest in in in more investments it's got a tracking number at the top that yellow band that shows the current projected deficit based on ups and down changes going down a little bit further we see this one million nine line of one million ninety six five hundred that's the net of the 2.4 million where we started today with staff recommendations not that we you haven't told us no on everything but down below i've listed the items that some things were clear like across the board not interested in other things where we need more information to come back on so i'm just tracking on the things that we need to get back to you with more information and so for the time being they're off the list and then we'll present back and may 28th is when we will kind of finalize are these are any of these coming back to the list of proposed solutions so if that makes sense um look we're tracking the ads we're starting with the 2.4 million proposed we're tracking the items that need a little bit more time on the reductions or solutions in addition we're going to be working in parallel bringing you more solutions and we've also got a tab that we'll be watching some video and coordinating with our fellow colleagues around here of the types of items where you said you want more information on this that are the other thing and trying to keep track of those as well so one additional i'm sure that you captured it somewhere but one additional sort of solution i heard vice mayor Cummings express was the vehicle postponement purchasing i don't know if that wasn't there i haven't added it here because i didn't want to start moving it's on my no problem no problem just i i took a note okay so maybe we'll go ahead and come back and then i had vice mayor Cummings council member mires and matthew brown and i'm sure we'll have others want to weigh in here at this point okay oh no i'm sorry i started with you and then you i had a question marcus is there any way that council members can get copies of the budget in an excel spreadsheet format um in case we were you know we wanted to highlight different areas where we wanted to see why things were going up we can leave comments um and we can you know save it and label it with our own names just because as someone who works with um budgets often i find that sometimes going through each of these and kind of highlighting and scribbling it can get really messy and it might be um helpful and easier in terms of like if we're going to have meetings between now and the next time we look at the budget wondering if um some of us could have a spreadsheet that we're working with rather than having to input all these numbers into a spreadsheet which would take yes no uh i'm pausing not to say no i'm pausing for how many four different ways not six i can do yes so i think we can get you the yes so look for the most efficient way to get you the data so you're looking essentially not the all the narratives you're looking for the the numbers schedules in an excel format by department general fund all funds capital improvement program um it'd be good to know like if it seems like for example capital improvement it's not something that's going to be very feasible i mean looking at the general fund and and where we're making most of the the budget adjustments i think is probably the best um spreadsheet to have access to so if i could if i could maybe uh essentially it seems that you've created that spreadsheet here perhaps you would just want to share it with us so if offline we want to tinker with any of it that could be a useful tool is that feel is that feel appropriate yes well i unfortunately because of because we don't have access i can't see all the tabs are actually included there but i think ultimately um what i'm interested in is that there are different areas where we've seen very high increases there's some areas in the budget where it seems like um it's unclear whether or not it's a typo or it's an actual increase and so just as an example um in for example economic development there's affordable housing trust the fiscal year 2019 estimated actual was 1,779,000 and the fiscal year request is 117,000 and so i think going through and being able to have a spreadsheet that has for example these estimate estimates of the current year what we're proposing for the following year being able to you know make notes of those and then be able to bring those spreadsheets to you with comments i think it could be a little bit more efficient additionally if we're adjusting numbers to see where we can do cost savings um i would actually like to you know be able to move those numbers around personally to see and then to be able to bring that to you um i would so there's a lot of things i want to say but i think i'm still in the yes i'm trying to figure out the best way to get to the yes the most efficient way to get to the yes so i'm hearing what you're saying since you the budget by departments so you can see 18 actuals the 19 where the current year is and a 20 proposed and you can do some analysis where 18 was actually or 19 it might be going where 20 is and you can see some of those deltas that are happening um correct yeah um so yesterday one of our quiz questions was how old is our financial system so let me i mean i guess with our team on again yes is there i guess my where my pause is how fast can i get to yes is it tonight probably not is it friday that might be a challenge monday it might be more realistic i hear what you're saying and i recognize that it would be helpful and we can and we can talk more i mean and my colleague right here is just saying Marcus if you just let me roll out our open gov platform you'd already have that so and i'd be interested in knowing at what level of detail you want that to come um and we we also recognize you're very busy this time of year as well so if if if you want to work offline maybe on what could be possible i think that makes a lot of sense in the meantime we can definitely go through any because a lot of times too even if you had a spreadsheet it's difficult to assess because you know sometimes you'll see a huge difference in number and it's a like a one-time allocation that you wouldn't know just from looking at the numbers so you right and i think that that um brings up the point of being able to highlight those and and then have a conversation about what's going on with the right exactly we'll be able to leave comments in the different fields so that we can go through and actually ask you know why is why are these numbers so far off is that a typo is it a one-time payment usually it's something like that one i can explain probably that one with 98 percent certainty and that's the nuance of this like inside baseball details the those those particular funds have projects built into them and some rollover funds so what you're saying is accumulation of prior year budgets that aren't fully spent and it rolls into our estate main actuals that column should actually be left over budget for for projects because it just by default says what has been spent on those projects and anything that's left falls into that column as a formula again 20 year old system so in the case of projects that column is better labeled what's left in the budget not what we plan to spend this year so there's some nuance in there that i recognize you'll be helpful for you to see those trends and then be able to highlight well what's going on with this one and what's going on with that one and i think if any individual council member wants to sit with you to discuss some of those nuances i think it's totally appropriate boba and budget i got it okay council member mires then council member brown matthews i just want to make sure i'm understanding what you have in front of us so this morning we started with a with a budget solutions goal of trying to get keep this 2.4 but we have an additional 800 000 to get to our full deficit is that correct so our full deficit is 3.2 currently it's 3.2 and so that number right now would say so we've gone up 448 we've gone back the other way 448 000 so now we're at 1.2 million that we still need to make up is that correct to get to the 3.4 the 1.9 is now narrow new delta so i started with 3 2 before we started the meeting say we had a 3.2 deficit staff proposed 2.4 million dollars so then we dropped down to 800 000 deficit well since then some things have come either off the 2.4 or questions okay so that move that number's moving this is now our moving target very hypothetically because we haven't taken motions we haven't said yes or no one thing so this is just it's just showing you how this tool could work later especially may 28th with when we say yes to all these ads you can quickly see what the new gap is so it's live and it's just constantly i had a question about so i'm and i don't if this is difficult it's not but i'd like to understand a little bit of the ramifications for next year's budget honestly because i think what we need to be it's one thing to maybe look at offsetting or delaying something but again this is a compounding problem this this is not going to stop with this 3.2 it's going to keep going next year and the year after so i just is it would the what is this paper the most which is which is a way to get it maybe the numbers over the next two fiscal years is that readily i mean i know it depends on but let's assume we get down yeah i think i think what's what's helpful to the finance director and our finance team is we're starting to get some surety of the types of directions we're going we'll be able to finish our forecast models because we haven't been able to say okay you know credibly what kind of trajectories are we doing so i think we're getting a strong sense of that today and that's helpful what we're going to be doing squeezing in not necessarily full time eight hours a day thursday and friday because we've got stuff to go in we've got to update the finance director's overview which has those out your forecasts so you'll be able to see okay based on what we're seeing now if we replicate that for years 21 22 23 you can start seeing how those years are moving so it'll be the finance director's overview that'll give you that multi-year you can kind of get we'll get a sense of that okay and then the final question i had was it won't be good right now um the other question just the other question i had around there's a lot of i heard um and i think vehicles are something to look at my understanding is we don't purchase these vehicles we're just we're in a lease we're in a leasing or do we actually that's a nuance internally so uh we purchase them outright yeah we don't try to debt finance anything okay so we just purchase them out okay but we're we don't operate so we're not yeah we're not leasing them and well there's we're looking at leasing there is i think public works is exploring there's different models of maintaining and supporting your vehicle fleet that can provide you the most current fuel efficiency the most current safety standards so there are programs now that are more attractive to leasing that are hybrids of traditional leasing programs so enterprise is an example of a company that has buys a lot of vehicles because of the rental car and so they they can offer you the i'm talking too much i get excited about this but it's interesting to think about a different way of of maintaining supporting your fleet and lowering overall costs of maintaining your fleet and getting the most fuel efficient and access to better vehicles okay good thank you okay council member brown council member matthews and then council member crown yeah i i just wanted to uh this was in response to council member mire's question about the overall deficit number and kind of what's happening here so i i just wanted to suggest so thank you for um putting this um attracting this for us um but you know the 400 thousand to reopen the pool is in there as if it were going to immediately be budgeted for and then lead to that deficit but we've already suggested we want to explore it so i mean i don't want to take it out like i feel torn i don't want to take it out because i want it to like i want it to be a priority but it's not necessarily something that we're going to be voting in this year's budget um to fund right so right and we'll go through we'll go through to make those distinctions you're correct that's not one that would be immediate because we are having some discussions about that and that'll come back there's something that'll come back to you so yeah that's just an example of no i think it's not just as bad as we think i just wanted to make sure just in general what yeah but i think um as we do this yeah we i mean we still have a hundred thousand dollars we haven't touched so that that was mostly my comment but thank you councilmember brown okay and then i maybe if i could just on that and then we'll go to councilor matthews for clarity so you what we began today we had a 3.2 million shortfall you brought back some recommendations to help us and get to 2.4 million no we brought 2.4 million of reductions that left 800 000 of a deficit so now beyond 800 000 this is where we are yeah and just again i'm recognizing that we didn't vote on these things but for example um when we were talking about the police department that was our first early topic this morning there was a request to come back and better understand the patrol the changes to patrols so i like no it's a i realize it's a conservative number so i took that out recognizing that we didn't vote on that i'm just right it's more of demonstrating how this will work on may 28th then don't read too much into that number yet but it's still potentially you know over a million it's the order of magnitude i mean it's the order of magnitude that we're looking at over a million still okay i just wanted to make sure we're really clear on that okay yes okay councilmember matthews things um do we anticipate um another meeting besides may 28th going directly to june for final adoption seems to me i think a lot of slug a lot of stuff to slug i mean i'll just say in terms of the final slide here i know that you have sort of some recommendations that one included a potential special meeting i made open for that yeah frankly so we have a lot of work to do clearly before we can get to june 11 so i think that would be on the table for a potential option yeah um i do agree to take the harvey west pool off this um because it's it's not immediately headed to next year's budget but also in talking with tony um he described to me some interesting talks being held with county parks and and i don't know what those are it was kind of an offhand conversation but that may have some some really good opportunities to get where we want to be i agree not at this price in our budget so um there may be additional information from other department heads i am eager to hear their comments on our comments because i think there's there's still a lot of um there has to be made okay council member it occurred to me the heritage tree recommendation from the parks and rec commission is that part of this it was uh 25 to 50 thousand dollars no we don't have that it'll be great if you could put it in and also are we going to talk about the cip or is that we're done with that said that could be a separate part yeah i think this is the point to direct us what other information what more conversation do you want to have if there are some questions we'll let us know if you want to if if we need to do a deep dive on some projects we can bring those particular projects back um somebody brought up the farmers market canopy is that already in the budget or just a placeholder or if the as i understand it's a placeholder it's more process because the council needs to provide direction on that project so their placeholders essentially okay any other council input at this time okay so i mean i think i guess i'll just end by saying i think you know i appreciate the work of the of the staff and the departments and trying to sort of take that softer hit throughout um it's hard it's no matter i mean no matter which way you cut it it's hard and so i think it's not only us looking at reductions but also having some restraint in the additions unfortunately because there's so much we can do so um at a certain point we'll want to get to a place of being fiscally responsible and having a balanced budget and so how do we get there i think is our work to do um so i think we've given you a lot of content to explore and we'll continue this discussion any final comments council member so should we count on a additional special session let me should we build that into our all um we'll talk and determine how that will we'll uh go through go forward i think we discussed potentially the 14th i don't know if that's going to be possible but definitely the 28th and then most likely a council special right see next tuesday is too quick okay come back um but possibly the tuesday after or or maybe even after may 28th get something placeholder may 28th in between meeting in june 11 something before after we're not able to get it all done on the 28th we'll absolutely put a placeholder in for me and i recall that staff said they were working on the further recommendations for reductions they just didn't have them so those will be really important it's been so hard for us to swallow even the ones that have been suggested that's going to be even tougher we have meetings tomorrow scheduled so we have meetings tomorrow scheduled okay um those those are already looking to be harder so your instincts are absolutely right these were these are the thin twigs these are starting to get some pretty thick branches for so which makes me think again we're going to need time to process that and yeah make those decisions when will we have those suggestions would that be at our 28th meeting the 28th for sure that was a plan yes we want to get i mean our goal is to get it to you a week or two in advance as early as possible i think the minute we're ready to release we release so we'd get it in writing and then we yes oh absolutely yeah this this was a nuance in this we're sprinting right now and trying to catch up so but i but i think what i hear the intention behind your comment uh councilor matthews is just really wanting to make sure we have the appropriate amount of time and timing in place and i you know we'll work offline to make sure that happens yeah in terms of scheduling additionally we built in some local room i mean the the council doesn't have to adopt a budget until the end of june um but so there is someone on there okay and we're going to get a spreadsheet on monday was it i i will do my best to get it by monday don't hold me to monday but it'll get there as soon as it's ready could even be faster thanks okay thank you very much and we'll go ahead and adjourn our meeting all right