I'm going to move to item number one. Actually, we're going to move to item number one. Actually, we're going to move to audience comment. Anybody in the audience who would like to address us on matters not on today's agenda are now would be the time to do it. Anybody? We'll close the public comment. We'll go on to item number one. This is a request for City Council direction and the recruitment for the traffic and parking commission vacancy and commission chair, Terms. Thank you. So, good afternoon. Honorable Mayor Gold and City Council. Staff is seeking your direction today on two items. The first is regarding the recruitment for Traffic and Parking Commission Vacancy. Resulting from Commissioner Pamela Hendry's resignation. Miss Hendry's first term was scheduled to end on June 30, 2019. City Council has two options to fill the vacancy. First is to open the recruitment now and leave Miss Hendry's position open until the replacement is appointed and seated, however long it takes. And second is to open the recruitment now, but appoint the most recently retired former TPC member to serve through June 30, 2019 in the interim that the recruitment is going on. Staff has reached out to the most recently retired TPC member, Jeffrey Levin, who has agreed to serve should the City Council choose this option. Staff is also seeking City Council direction on the Commission Chair and Vice Chair terms. Ms. Henry was scheduled to become the Vice Chair in January of 2019. With her resignation, the next most senior TPC commissioner is Jacob Manister. Per municipal code section 2-2-107E, a commissioner shall not serve as chairperson. If such commissioner's term will end before such commissioner, he's able to serve one complete year as chairperson. Mr. Manister will be able to serve one complete year as vice chair from January 1st, 2019 through December 31st of 2019, but will not be able to serve one complete year as chair since this term is due to expire on June 30th, 2022, 2020. In the past, commissioners kept serving as vice chair or chair if their terms did not allow serving for for one complete year. And that concludes my report. Okay, so thank you. So let's do them in order and deal with the first question first. Before that is there anybody in the public would like to address us on this matter. So you know we'll close the public comment and the first question first, the Pam Hendry replacement. She got a really good job and so she's resigned. Sir? Yes. So first congratulations, the Pam Hendry, the caliber of the people that we get willing to work free for the city that she is now the, or will soon be if she hasn't started yet, the treasure of United Airlines very amazing. But as regards appointing Jeffrey Levine to serve out Pam's position I think that makes sense and he has agreed to do it just the first issue for now. Yeah let's get through that and we'll come back to the second. Yeah and I also send my congratulations to Pam. I don't think she would have taken anything other than something as significant as a job she did take. Jeff has maintained an interest in traffic and parking issues and since he is willing to serve until we appoint somebody, I would support that. Thank you. Thank you. So again, congratulations to Pam. It's definitely our city's loss, but she was amazing and congratulations. Just clarification on the Jeff item and maybe that is moving into the next question. But is the goal that he finishes out her term or is the goal that he stays because something that Councillor Member Friedman just said made me wonder what the direction is. Is it that he finishes out her term or he stays there until we have a replacement? He's only got until July. So for me, I would like to keep us on cycle. We've gone to this January, July cycle, and she's only got until July. So I would expect to replace her by July. Okay, so that's the goal is because I got confused. The report was a little confusing to me, and I actually called Mattie to help me understand it and I still don't understand it so hopefully we'll explain this more because what I don't understand I know this is the next part of it is why then would we have to if we're trying to keep everything on schedule and have everybody's terms stay the same why would we be changing that later but in terms of Jake Manister, which we'll talk about. So in terms of Jeff filling out Pamela's stay, that's fine. Great. Raise your back. Congratulations as well, too. And, you know, Jeff did a great job. Welcome back. And I agree, too. I actually had the opportunity to congratulate Pam and I know she's really she would have loved to have continued I think she's done a great job but obviously this is a great job that she could not refuse. So I'm fine with that and I think that makes a lot of sense. Jeff for his part has become a very strong advocate ongoing advocate for reform of the disabled placard ordinances. We're lucky that he's willing to do it. And hopefully this will give him a bigger platform to continue that. So I'm in favor of that. Part two was the, and I'm going to ask the city attorney to address this first. Part two was the question of timing of chair, vice chair, and what that looked like in the ordinance. And really what is the rule that surrounds this? So I believe that Miss Syred Regus addressed that. That is the rule. So if you want to amend the rules, you can do that. But the rule currently says that if you can't be the vice chair, if you can't complete your term, you can't be the chair. Correct. So I think the issue is, Mr. Manister can complete his term as vice chair, not as chair, but not as chair. And does that have anything to do with the fact that Pamela Henry left? No. Um. That's why this confused me because it doesn't sound like there's a good sort of he wouldn't have been in the mix if she stayed right because she would leave that I believe that was the sort of it but in terms of where he sits she would have been right her leaving changes the order. Except that now that we have somebody that's taking over her spot. I mean, so if she had stayed, he wouldn't have been the chair. You wouldn't be the vice chair next year or there. And therefore would not have been the chair. Okay. Okay, you go over that one more time. He would not have been the chair of the draft. Okay. Okay. You go over that one more time. He would not have been vised to. I'm not the only one that didn't understand this. So what happens is the order gets compressed because we lost somebody in that position. Excuse me, excuse me, please. Thank you, sir. He got moved up in the rotation because she came out of the rotation so but jake would have been vice chair the year after but he wouldn't have been able to be vice chair because it was only a bit of six months well he wouldn't have been able to be vice chair either because that he wouldn't have been able to complete the year he wouldn't be able to do so he would not have been vice chair at all. Assuming the PAM had continued on and it had taken vice chair, Jake would have been next in line, but since I think, but since he couldn't have been vice chair for a full year, he would have been passed over to the next person. Yes, correct. So with that being said, that's how I'm understanding it. Then why are we having this conversation? Because Jake asked that we revisit this rule and see if- Oh, revisit the rule. Revisit the rule and see if it was something that A, he has experience as a vice chair and chair in the past. And he kind of said, well, it doesn't say anywhere that that has to be immediate. They served immediately in that capacity. So the fact that he had previous experience in those. But I'm just, yeah, so he asked that we revisit this and I felt that because we were going to discuss Pam's replacement that we at least have an opportunity to have a conversation around it. Either we want to change it or we don't. What would be the reason to, I mean, we wouldn't only be changing it for this commission, we're changing the rules for everybody. So why, what, what, maybe, Lordis, or whoever wants to answer this? Have we seen any reason why we should change this? Forget about this particular instance. Has this been an issue in other commissions? In the past, no, they just skipped. Like if they cannot fulfill the full one year, then they just don't become the vice-chair or chair. And I guess similar to what Councillor Member Friedman said, is if Pamela had stayed, he wouldn't have been able to be that either. So I'm not seeing a reason why we need to change a rule that's been working. I haven't heard of a reason because this is a rule that we would be changing for all. Well, let's go around and see if there's any appetites to change it. So, Council Member Mournall. For clarity. With the rule ordinarily preclude Jake from becoming vice chair, because he wouldn't have two years left, and he couldn't go from vice chair to chair. No, he can still serve as vice chair. But there'd be the disadvantage then of putting in place a chair who would not have had the experience of being vice chair for a year. That would be the disadvantage then of putting in place a chair who would not have had the experience of being vice chair for a year. That would be the disadvantage of that. Well, the idea, I think when we set it up, was that the vice chair year gave experience so that when you served this chair, you kind of had some sense of what the role was. We saw it as a training opportunity. Well, I don't really have strong feelings about it. I mean, if it involves a total change of the rule that would say that in a circumstance in which somebody departs and because of that departure, somebody would be a chair for just six months at I don't see a major problem. Well, the idea was to line things up as much as we could. Oh, no. He's asking to stay to lengthen the term as opposed to just be chair for six months. Yeah. Okay, so I was envisioning it as he would just be chair for six months. If we were to structure it that way, would that change when people have the opportunity to speak? Does that change anyone so you as because that's the way that I respect her and get. He would be vice chair for a year and then chair for half a year. But it wouldn't lengthen his term. So I guess the question then comes to be what happens next. We ought to just walk through that. Next person would be chair for a year. Or just because chair is for that commission is on a calendar year, suppose. They're all in January. We change them all in January. All the commission's changed in January. Yes. I mean, so I think that's my issue. This is in July. The commission's changed in January. Yeah. So I'm in January, some in July. Russian Jarosch, in January. Yeah. And when does TPC change? TPC change in January. Yeah. So that's. Everybody is. So how many commissions do change in July? And how many in January? So architectural commission changes in July. Charitable solicitations commission changes in January, cultural heritage commission changes in July, design review commission changes in July, fine art commission changes in July, health and safety commission changes in January, human relations commission changes in January, planning commission changes in July, public works commission changes in January, planning commission changes in July, public works commission changes in January, recreation and parks commission changes in January, traffic and parking commission changes in January. So I didn't keep track of the numbers. I'm half and half. Is it half and half? But given, I was picturing a different set of circumstances speaking of that. But given that it would also change the regular order of rotation of the chair for the parking commission, I don't think that makes sense. That does not make sense. Okay. So Larry, I have a question. The way the ordinance is written, is there any ambiguity at all as to the fact that he has served previously as a chair in terms of not completing a full year? I don't think there's any ambiguity at all. I mean, the rule is, as Ms. Rodriguez stated it, which was if you're not gonna be able to serve for a full year, then you don't assume that rule. And that was my question, because I think that was, that was an issue that was raised. Well, if that's the interpretation, and that's the interpretation. Do you? I already stated what I thought. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. it. Okay. Item number two. This is the fiscal year 2017-18 year-end General Fund available balance. I'm going to go to the council. I'm going to go to the council. I'm going to go to the council. I'm going to go to the council. I'm going to go to the council. I'm going to go to the council. I'm going to go to the council. I'm going to go to the council. I'm going to go to the council. I'm going to go to the council. I'm going to go to my job. I get to come and tell you how much money excess we had at the end of last fiscal year. So first let me let me just watch your appetites. Go over the revenue for last year and all four revenues all four major revenues. So all four the cities major revenues. On the closer to the mic please. Is that better? So all four of the city's major revenues did quite well. Increases over the prior year were 13.9% for property tax, 12.8% for hotel tax, TOT, 5.6% for business tax, and 4.1% for business tax and 4.1 for sales tax. Now last one, think of that gain in the context of Amazon taking over so much of sales going on and removing it from brick and mortar and it's really phenomenal. So the four major revenue sources can probably 78% of the total general fund revenue in the prior year. The general fund revenue has increased as a whole 9.4%. And that's perhaps a little skewed in that. A lot of that is reimbursement money from Metro for work that the city fronted the money for and then they reimbursed. And that wasn't budgeted for. So I'll go on and show you a little more detail on that. So this is a look at the revenues, the big four, and then all others. And you can see that bottom one, other revenue, that includes that Metro reimbursement I was talking about, which is substantially responsible for that 22% increase there. But all the other revenues perform very well. This is looking at a little differently, instead of looking at it one year versus the other, this is looking at the budget versus the actual. And so the property tax was 11.2% over budget. Hotel tax was over budget by 11.4. Business tax 5.1, sales tax 1.7. So then the other part of the equation is expenditures. And as we always tell you, we budget revenues conservatively. We budget the expenditures kind of liberally. We include in the budget every dollar for personnel, we were fully employed for the entire year, which of course never happens. We always have vacancies. And so you can see that the revised budget was 22.1 million and the actual expenditures were 205 million. So we spent 92.8% of the total budget. And this is by department. And I should note that the tourism and marketing looks to be over budget. That was just really an accounting thing. There were some expenses approved by Council that were put into the 2019 budget for the summer bold. But because we needed to pre-pay some of those things that got credited to 2018 actual expenditures. So there's no overage on budget there, just to be clear. All right, and this is looking at it by expenditure category. And this shows you what I was just talking about with the salaries and benefits. We've spent only 94% of the total salary and benefit budget. Services and supplies, we usually run a little under budget on that because a lot of those services get budgeted one year and get started, but the work will extend into the next year. And so we end up, you know, with lower percentage spent there. Overall, we spent 93% of the budget there. And to look at it without the internal service charges, the general fund actually spent 91% of those other charges expenses. These are the transfers out during the year. Basically investments at the City Council chose to make from excess budget. We had more revenue budget than expenditure budget at the beginning of the year. Some of these are like the infrastructure as the usual transfer that we make to support infrastructure activities. And debt service is the debt service of the infrastructure fund. Stormwater, that is the subsidy of the stormwater fund. It does not produce enough revenue to support itself so the general fund has to support that Lease of the water fund property that's the property that That is leased to I believe the motion picture Academy and The general fund because the city entered into at least and it's not serving the water fund in that way the general fund because the city entered into that lease and it's not serving the water fund in that way the general fund subsidizes the water fund for that Then we have various transfer these are the investments the city council made the Campeo reservoir funding That was sitting in the general fund from prior years ear marks and that got transferred into the CIP in this last year. The oil well plugging came up mid-year and about $8 million for that. The City Council chose to fund Beverly Gardens Restoration by about 2.5 million. The Third Street Tour Bus loading zone that was a mid-year appropriation. Public works emergency generator that I believe that was actually funds identified as available balance for the prior year. HR investigations was a mid-year funding. The Paco law enforcement grant that was a grant that had to be appropriated so we transferred it and then it would be reimbursed once, once we have eligible expenditures. The city council in the mid-year put 1.5 million towards security cameras, CCTV at the BHUSD. And then there were some vehicles that were purchased from other funds from the general fund and transferred to the vehicle fund. That's what that 212 was. So you can see during the year, this city made investments of about 29.3 million to other funds and other activities and projects. So at the end of the fiscal year on June 30, 2018, the total general fund balance was about 208.6 million. There are various reserves that I think the council is probably familiar with over the years we've gone over these. The economic and contingency reserve which is established in the City Council of policies as as total of 40% of the general fund revenues There's the budget stabilization reserve which is 12.5 million There's money earmarked for property acquisition for water fund that was for the the Water Enterprise plan for a water fund that was for the water enterprise plan. There was money and therefore retiree medical and funded liabilities for pension unfunded liabilities. There are long term receivables which we can't spend those yet. Although they'll be received in the long term. And then there's a reserve for uncombrances, pledges for the city to pay vendors, and so we deduct that. So the total reserves were about 181 million. So when you deduct that from the 208, you're left to 27.4 million roughly. And then we look at the appropriations made to date in this fiscal year, new appropriations in mid-year, those amount to about 11.5 million that leaves 15.5 million available for the City Council to use on projects. And we identified, recommended based on council's priorities and interests 15.5 of that. Two of those the council's already taken action on. At your, at your December 18th meeting, you appropriated the $2 million to improve the city hall tower. And 6 million to augment the oil well plugging activities. In addition, based on council's prior interest, we recommend ear marking 4 million for land acquisition, 3 million to reduce the unfunded liability for the pensions, and another 500,000 for the budget stabilization reserve. And I have in here a description of each of these. I think you're all familiar with these, so I don't wanna take too much of your time. Of all those. And there's the math. Basically the 7.5 million is what would be recommended that the council earmark at this point. Fantastic. Thank you, sir. I have one public comment on this. If anybody else, I don't see anybody else, would like to. You two can have three minutes. Mr. Gingold. On the subject of fun balances please. Before I start Mayor Gold I did put in three cards one for none agenda and I'm I understand that past. I did put it a card to comment on picking a replacement for the traffic and parking. I handed it to Jackie. I spoke over here. I spoke here for a minute. I sat down and I realized when it wasn't going to happen, I went across the hall. I tamps time stamp, the yellow speaking card. Michael Dunlath be waiting there. He was on the phone 632. I do believe I was here on time and entitled to speak on item one. I want to speak on item one. I don't want to pass. I'll deal with that. On the balances, Mayor Gold, you gave a state of the city speech. There was such a tremendous surplus in the balances. Revenue's were up 10%, the balances were up 10%, TOT, hotel up 10%, sales tax up 10%, that the city has so much money, yet your goal this year was strategic planning to see how this city could bring in more money. And even though Red L Drive is packed, this Council commissioned a rowboat to count the people. And it says that you need more money. And I'm not sure why you do if the balances are so great in our general fund right now. There wasn't a lot for that strategic planning committee to come up with because everything is working pretty well right now. But you put in an idea of your own mayor gold and you wanted to suggest that tearing down the parking structures at 333 present, one on Camden, one on Beverly Drive, and build underground parking so that you could put in retail stores above ground, and city could get into the retail business and the commercial real estate business. I spoke and said that wouldn't be a good idea. You admitted that it would be one year with no parking there, which would have put pine there, hardware out of business, and all those other shops. Evan Meyer said he wanted to keep that area like it is. When I brought it up, you said you didn't remember saying it, if and maybe you did and then you didn't. But it isn't the staff report from Cindy Owens that the city wanted to do retail there, even though there was, we have such tremendous funds already. And with the strategic planning, your goal was economic sustainability, how we could keep business going in the triangle, and everything's working there. Also, the Secretary of the Board says, I didn't want change. When the staff came up with ideas, it seems like it was approved last week, but when it said, it's one of the correct, when it said they wanted dog friendly and I said they wanted drinking fountain They wanted drinking fountain there for dogs which you approved and I don't think that's gonna keep the area clean. Thank you, dude. Okay, with that I'm gonna close the public comment and we're gonna move on to councilmember comments and questions questions and comments Starting with councilmember Wonderlake Well, you're a year in terms of revenue. we did so well that it actually looks kind of odd. And it raises questions about sustainability and raises questions about setting up false expectations. So I do have some questions about some of the particulars. Do we know why the property tax revenue went up so much? Was it an oddity that the, there's a distinction between the value for property tax purposes and the actual value of all the properties in the city because for property tax purposes, it only changes with a transaction appreciably. So was there something odd this last year about that it was older properties, properties that hadn't turned over for a while? That all of a sudden was. So I think that some was old to properties, properties that hadn't turned over for a while. That all of a sudden was. So I think that some of the new projects, the large developments, came online at least partially. I think that like some big projects, they actually take like two, three years to actually fully value them. And so they do parcels along the way as they determine a certain amount. So that's probably a factor. You know, the property values have just continued to increase and maintain their value here. But I would suspect that there was some oddity behind that number as opposed to something that we could reliably count on happening year to year. Right, and I think, nice thing about Prop 13 is it kind of freezes it there and a lot of people are frozen and so the value may increase but the city doesn't realize a benefit from that until it changes hands. There's a little buffer there. Right, that's what I was referring to. The report also mentions supplemental assessments. What are supplemental assessments? So that's if you sell a property mid-year between the tax year, you actually get an assessment for the remainder of the valuation based on the purchase. And it's actually, it's not all, it's actually pooled by county and then distributed to each taxing entity based upon its share of the total of the directly assessed. And then what we did well in almost every category, but also for the business tax and the report refers to the strengths of the leasing rates. Just anecdotally and by walking around, I'm sensing that vacancies are increasing. Do you have a perspective on that? I, whether or not we should anticipate strong leasing rates going forward? You know, I'll have a much better opinion after middle of next month going forward? You know, I'll have a much better opinion after the middle of next month when we see how the business tax registrations come in for this year. I do not know. I do not know. I wonder, Lecce, you're absolutely right. I've noticed also quite a few vacancies in the retail sector. We get quite a bit of our business tax from the office sector. We need to check and see what the issues are related to that. And as you suggested, we will be providing the information on the vacancy rates and the city as part of our monthly report. And then other revenues, as I mentioned, I think a lot of that has to do with reimbursement since that means other revenue may be up, but our expenses and those similar categories are also up. So that's not really a net increase to the city. But you put all that together. I think it shows that there are good reasons to continue to be prudent, good reasons to try to keep our reserves strong because at least I personally am somewhat nervous about prospects for the future and whether or not that might be a downturn. So I think this is a good time for us to be thinking about doing things prudently and being concerned about financial sustainability for the future. For expenditures, you showed the increased relative to budget. Do you know what the percentage increase relative to year-over-year for actual says. So I don't have that. I can provide that to you. Okay, and then moving on to the recommendations. I think the recommendations that you've cited for using our available reserves are ones that make sense. And- With those back up so we can also- Two. Thank you. Of the 15.5 million, the two with the asterisk near the top are ones we've already appropriated funds for city hall tower in the oil well plugging and the other three uses. Land acquisition for unfunded liabilities and for additional stabilization reserve all of those make sense to me. Thank you, sir. Councillor Mellon. Thank you and I also believe that we need to be cautiously optimistic about these numbers. I don't think that any of us here feel that we are going to see results like this in the continuing future. So it is very nice to see it, but we need to be cautious, and I think that's what we're talking about. Sales tax year over, well, the overs and unders, 1.7%. Do we see that trend continuing that sales tax revenue is going to be impacted? Well, you might recall in the budget, in the current budget, we actually projected a decrease in sales tax revenue for this year. And you know, sales tax data comes in so late, we haven't seen any reports on the current fiscal year yet that should be coming in the next couple of weeks. So that'll give us a better indication. I think that I can also go on my own experience and know that's anecdotal, but there's a lot more online sales. People are taking advantage of the convenience of that. And so I think we can expect to see more of that go that way. The thing is that some of that tax still comes into the pools and we get a fairly high share of the pools for our actual population and footprint. And is there a number assigned to that percentage or is that just? What floats it changes every quarter it's based upon our cities share of the the the direct allocation the site of allocation and then they use that ratio to to share the countywide pool and we are tracking that in terms of percentages and that seems to be going up. That is our, well, the hard number, the actual dollars are going up, but is the percentage going up? It floats up and down the percentage. But what I'm saying is that for our population, in terms of sales tax per capita, I believe we have the highest in the state. And so that then helps dictate how we get such a high share of the pool. Going to the general fund expenditures where the percentage used, all of the percentages were expected based upon what you said in terms of allocating for the full amount, but a significant variance is in public works. Any non-departmental but that the amount of that money is negligible compared to public works. Do you have any explanation as to why that is such a big variant? They have a large number of vacancies that they're working on filling. The city actually has a prioritized the recruitment process based on public safety first and then different elements so they work with HR in making sure that the critical positions are filled but some of of the non-critical positions may end up lagging behind. That's why we have a higher percentage of vacancy public orders. And in terms of the oil well plugging, the transfers out. There was already $8 million that was transferred out. Correct? 7.99. That's correct. And then another $6 million is allocated to that. So we're looking at $14 million at the city is spending on that project? That's far, yes. The agreement that was approved by the council is that the city would be responsible up to $8 million. That's my question, but that's that's that is. So yeah, we are administering the project and managing it and then once the project is completed The city's responsibility is kept at 8 million at this point And other than the fact that I will see you in a couple of weeks at Galen Center Thank you. Thank you very much so I too am cautiously optimistic. I think that we are probably the envy of most cities in the United States to have these type of numbers. Yeah, okay. Certainly in California. So I'm proud to say that, but with that also being said, is humbled by the reality of what is also occurring, even with the optimism that we all share. You know, years ago when I came on the council, and I remember the mayor and I at that time, there was so much vacancy throughout our city. I mean, literally, as it's looking now what was going on then was kind of scary. It's not something that I remember seeing in our city ever. And I'm happy to see that we don't have that, what we had then. But I also recognize that we have to be aware of what we are seeing, and we need to be as proactive about that as well. We can't just rest on our laurels of, you know, the cautious optimism and where Beverly Hills and will always be Beverly Hills, because that's not the reality. You know, the world is changing and as you had talked about even in terms of online shopping, you know, brick and mortar stores are fighting that and we have to fight that as well. So we have to be, I mean, currently, you know, property tax, you know, people still want to live here. Great police, great fire, great schools, hopefully. higher grade schools, hopefully. But we also have to be a place that people feel that they can be successful in business here, as opposed to just opening up an online shop. So for me, I think that's a priority that we work towards with the businesses and the residents to ensure that. In terms of one other question, I absolutely support the recommendation, but I have a question for our city manager. One of the items that we have talked about in the small business task force was infrastructure. I know that there were some conversations, for example, with Bruce Meyer, Evan Meyer, and some other land owners about supporting the infrastructure, whether it be the parking garages, the sidewalks and such. And clearly, we need to make sure that that's a priority as well. I mean, especially if we're talking about leasing and we're talking about retail, we have to have great sidewalks and great garages and such great infrastructure. How does that interface with what we're talking about? Absolutely. This will be discussed as part of the operating budget because it's recurring expenses. We have at least received direction in the past from the council that when we have year and fund it's a one time expenditure so it needs to be allocated to a specific project. at least received direction in the past from the council that when we have year-end fund It's a one-time expenditure so it needs to be allocated to a specific project and we will look into that in terms of infrastructure So for instance side walk replacement project we can do that in terms of maintenance and cleanse in us and pressure washing and all those other Operational activities. It's an annual recurring activity so we need to address it as part of the budget process when we bring it to the table. Okay, so that will be something that we will discuss that will be a priority. Absolutely. Because to me, I think they're all influenced to each other. Absolutely. You know, if we don't have great sidewalks and we don't have great parking garages and we don't have the infrastructure that's what we expect in Beverly Hills, then I think it will, one will influence the other. Okay, so with that being said, I support it. Thank you. Vice Mayor. So I'm glad and I do support it continue, fiscally conservative approach towards revenue and towards expenditures. I think we see that that served us well over the past few years. And so we're generally been faced with this situation. And that's good. That's the whole tent of it. And so we budget our expenses with sort of not the least amount that could be spent, but what reasonably could be and hope to not exceed it, but hope to that we don't spend as much. And when it comes to revenues, same thing, hope to be able to exceed it, but not count on it. So I think that approach needs to continue. I think the recommendation is fine and I support it. Thank you. Talk for a moment about Metro, both revenue and our expenses. What's the lag in that? Do we get paid on a timely basis? And how does that, depending on the moment in time, will you create this report? How do those things line up? Because this is cash, it's not a cruel. Yeah, I wish to resort here. So the reimbursement expenses are charged on a monthly basis to Metro. They have, I believe, 60 days. And I think we're working on reducing it to less than that, but 60 days for them to review the information and then discuss any questions that they have and then provide the investment to the city. So far, they have adhered to the MOA and their responsibilities to reimburse the city. There is what we call, it's a form, I believe, Form 60, which is their budget that they approve every year as part of their board approval of their fiscal year. And we submit those in the beginning of the year. And they make sure that our expenditure is consistent with that budget process. I'm asking, I guess, a little bit more granular question in terms of the timing. So when we report that our metro revenues are high, obviously there is an expenditure offset. That's correct. So it may falsely inflate depending on the moment and time. The revenue is all based on what our expenditure is. Exactly. At the time that the expenses are paid to the consultant exactly. So what I'm asking is, in this particular projection, are you assuming that all of the expenditures have been paid? As of, for the year, for the fiscal year. That's a year and so. Even if the expense comes in after the end of the year. Even if the check comes in after the revenue comes in after the end of the year, we're assuming that we're flat on that. Yes. But some of this revenue will carry over if there are still work that needs to be done this. If it's net zero, all I'm saying is if it's net zero, then that's fine. But we shouldn't think that there's extra money in here. Absolutely. Because ultimately it will be net zero, even if it's not at this moment in time. So I just want to make sure that as we're looking at $15 million, we're not going to15 million, we're not going to have either big expenditures or the revenue is coming in after the fact. That's zero. Okay. Why would the parking citations down so much? I know that might make people happy, but I'm just going to care. Yeah, I think it's a lot of it has to do with the hiring of the traffic control officers, their training, and then their focus on Santa Monica Boulevard and Metro activities. A lot of their focus and priority was on that part. And there was some rollback on some of the enforcement, but I have talked to the chief and in fact we're back up right now. So in next year's budget, when you budget other expenses, which I think this is in, you're going to presume that we're going to be back at full board. Or are we going to budget it based on what was this year's actual? Well, we will work with the police department on figuring out what their estimated revenue expectations for next fiscal year based on their enforcement process. We have received a lot of complaints over the last fiscal year over lack of parking enforcement. So there was a shift in priorities to make sure that we address that issue. So I'll have to discuss that with the chief. Okay, and then I'll come back as part of the budget. Part of the budget process. And lastly, well two things. One, we actually budgeted our sales tax, flatter or negative. So huge turnaround. I mean, we plan on. It is lower than previous years. So I think that's something that we have to keep in mind as we move forward for the future. And this may be a timing issue because maybe we'll see. The reserve. So the reserve is attacked at 40% of revenue. Correct. So, and I know that's been a long standing principle that we've tacked at 40% of revenue. But the reserve is really there to kind of keep the city going in a bad time. Why wouldn't it be pegged to expenses. The Burr annual budget is X. Then, I mean, that's really what we're, that's real, I know I expect to have more money in the bank, I get that. Right. But is it practical matter? I believe that it was based upon if we had a major earthquake or some sort of thing that would keep the revenue from coming in, that's what we were focused on to replace that. In fact, what we heard after the fires in the Bay Area and in Southern California, there was quite a bit of impact on the city's reserves that were affected by the fires, just from debris cleanup. So we have to make sure that we have sufficient fund to address this issue got forbid of anything happen. So we also put something aside for emergency purposes for one time expenditures. Based on revenue. I mean, it's kind of like deferred comp. Yes, I mean, I know that I had heard from folks in Sonoma during the fire. It really almost cut their reserve in half. So these are the kind of things that we want to make sure that we keep. I don't know, I'm not sure if it's fun. So I know it is, it is, we've always kept expenses less than revenue. So we are actually being conservative by. Well, there was a time where there wasn't true where we were talking about intersecting. When we got on the council, you were on the council. We were talking about the year in which it was going to intersect. And Rodwood talked about it. Yeah. And I think we- Oh, we can go back to that. We are very prudent about our budgeting process and we make sure that our revenue is always exceed our- I think a big bank account is a good thing. Maybe we should be clear in that some part of that is in fact purposes. And- Is that included in the policy, I believe, but it is included in the council policy that there's reference to emergency. Yes. Yes. Yes. I mean, because we're actually actually keeping 40% of our revenue and sex in excess of our expected revenue. So it really is kind of interest on our interest, which is nice. It's an amazing place to be. I'm just I just want to, it's normally you would, well, 40% of what you expected is revenue. Now we have even more than what we expected is revenue. Additional money in the back. In excess of what we, so at some point the question I guess becomes, we really need to have in the back. And I think that's the opportunity for us to invest in these time, one time expenditures like the land acquisition, like covering our unfunded liability and projects that come across that are unexpected like the oil well and also the infrastructure for the city. So these are what the elements that gives us that opportunity to invest in. I think the policy states that of the 40% 15% I believe it's 15% of its revenues could be used by the council to support programs that will provide future revenues or save the city funds, just investments that will have returns. So, always 25% would be held for the emergencies, but the other 15% of it could be used for investments like that. And I believe that might have been, I wasn't here then, but when the city did internal loans on the parking facilities, I think that might have been part of the justification. I don't have that background. No, I'm sorry. So, Don, let me understand that better. You open an interesting door. So, 25% of the revenue has to be kept essentially as cash in order to cover the contingencies that Maddie's talking about. I'm guessing. Yes. I'm trying to paraphraseencies that Maddie is talking about. I'm guessing. I'm trying to paraphrase what I think I heard. Yes. 25% has to be capped to cover the contingencies Maddie has talked about. 15%. We could do other things with if we so. The way the policy is written, it would have to be investments that would return, that the money would return back to the city and or you would identify savings that would be used to restore that. So as we sit here today, all of it, the 40% of it, all of it, is invested the same by our treasurer and his committee. Right? We don't distinguish the 25 and the 15. No, it's all. That's correct. So actually a council question is then don't get indigestion. But if we really do have the opportunity in a safe sort of way to use that money for things that would either make more money or benefit the city, is that something we want to talk about? You just want to leave it sitting there at the bank. I'm going to get you to get you to don't. So that's if the question is and I'm asking, if the question is, should we like with the parking structures, you know, invest general funds in a parking structure which will ultimately return that money to the general fund because it generates revenue as opposed and we don't have to issue bonds, that's certainly a council decision. But in terms of what you can invest in to make money to make interest, that's very limited. I was in looking at Sears. I was. No, no, but speaking specifically to the. Hey, I mean, if there were things that we wanted to do that in fact would generate fund that would be the money we could use to do that. If that's the compensation that we wanted to have and obviously it's not for today but if there's council interest in having that conversation perhaps we could have that at a later date. So. I think we have to be cautious about going beyond the expertise of the city and doing things for which the city has a direct connection. There's a lure to earning more in your money, but just as one counter, look at the Orange County bankruptcy. We never want to be in the position of trying to explain to our taxpayers that we lost money because we invested in something that did poorly and we're not professional investors. He's recommending sears, so I think we'd have a lot of explaining today. No, I said sears. Although if you blotted for a day, you would have made some money, I think. And if you bought another different day, you would have lost money. And so I think, generally speaking, it's good that we have a relatively restrictive investment policy. You're talking about specific things that would be closely, there would be a close nexus with the city. Sure, we can talk about those things. But just more generally, to try to capture higher risk investments or things like that. I was actually talking about that. I've gotten shut down about that a lot. So I've given up on that, but these would be things like if we needed another parking lot, I don't know that we do, but if we did, you know, and it's not that we're free but if we did, you know, and it will end up not to have a free. For example, using land acquisition, that is kind of what we're talking about. But this is not that money. This is actually extra money on top of that money. So there's 15 percent. It's a big number, 15 percent of what? $200 million or something. It's a big number that's sitting there getting a half a percent interest. Would you spend the money this way if it was your own money and your own bank account? If it was thinking something that I thought we needed. I mean from my perspective and I'm married to a money manager so I live this every day. I think that we're in the situation that we're in why we can be so proud as a city is because we've been really conservative and really took little risk because of that. So I think, no, well, but I think what you're saying is using money that we're thinking maybe can make money. And what I'm saying is an example here of land acquisition. The reason why we would buy land acquisition is because we think it's an investment that ultimately will be a positive for the city. And in terms of land acquisition, we've been looking for a long time to buy property in the southeast so we can build a parking structure that ultimately would revitalize the area ultimately help. So I think we might be talking the same language in that regard but I guess where I'm cautious is about is I don't think that we are necessarily equipped to gamble. I'm not far from it. I'm not suggesting gambling. That's not what we're doing. I think the policy envisions that type of thing where you would purchase land for a park instructor to generate additional revenues through development that would occur around that. So you'd get increased property tax and sales tax. And this is free wearing and it's probably beyond today's agenda. But for instance, is this beyond today's agenda? This money gets what? Half a percent. Maybe half a percent. It's better than that now. It's a little over 2 percent. 2 percent. How many outstanding bonds do we have on the parking structures? I don't have a lot of money. And what's the average discount rate for those bonds? And what would it cost us to prepay that? Would that be a better use to this money so that we cut that entire interest expense? Yeah. We're probably paying more interest on those bonds than we receive on our own money now But in the long run those bonds run out some 30 years The likelihood of us getting only 2% of our investments Next 30 years is probably not that right out there as an example I don't know if it's a good example out there as an example. I don't know if it's a good example, but it is a way that we could invest this money potentially. That would be not gambling, but would be some other use of that 15%. Now, down the road, depending on what interest rates are, may or may not be a good idea. I don't know the answer to that. And I'm not actually suggesting we necessarily do that. I'm just asking the question, does the council want to have a conversation about things that might look like that as an alternative for some of that 15%. That's the question I'm asking. Yes, Lester? Certainly willing to have the discussion. I money is king and I like the fact that we have the reserve, but I'm certainly willing to discuss it. I'm always willing to have the conversation, but I think there's going to have to be a lot of convincing for me to be willing to do anything. All right, a lot of explain. Well, you know, I do think it's good to have to be a lot of convincing for me to be willing to do anything. All right, I'll just blame it. Well, you know, I do think it's good to have a certain amount of cash, but I have long said, and I think we maybe should do more that we should do some land banking. And within our city, and in some cases outside of it for potential municipal uses, that's always, it's sort of like maybe a company buying back its own stock and investing in itself. And there's so much that we can do for our residents and for our community with shared meaning city-owned resources. So that I think is something that we could invest more. And I think obviously you don't want to buy at the top of the market and take risks. But I look at it if we're doing it in theory, even though it maintains value, we should be doing it for long term. So that's a yes. So yes. Okay. So maybe for another agenda, we can bring back some thoughts about what. And maybe engage the city treasure in that conversation to see what his thoughts are to. And maybe his group of sounds great and I'm okay with this too. I just add that past performance is no guarantee of future results. That's a fine print. You've been talking to him too long. I'm sorry I'm not a fast talker so I couldn't do that. All right, point, point made. Okay. Command performance. The next two items are our not so new city auditor. Mr. Luna, welcome to your first presentation to us. We would add one of the marching bands, but. Is the auditor get a different color than finance and public works and. You know, not too sure that's what I found. Good afternoon. It's a real pleasure to be here this afternoon. Honorable Mayor, members of the City Council, Eduardo Luna City Auditor, I'm here to make my initial presentation on the Action Plan for Building the Office of the City Auditor. I just wanted to just let the City Council know that I presented this action plan in recommendations to the Audit Committee in December 20th, and they generally concurred with the plan and recommendations. When we talk about building the office or establishing your framework, I wanna send around three main elements which includes guiding principles, assigning audit resources and also implementing an audit approach. I'll cover these elements specifically in the next slides. In terms of guiding principles, the first thing that we need to do is to establish admission statement. It provides a foundation for the office and importantly communicates to the public and the city officials in management what we stand for. And what I'm proposing is the following mission statement which is to advance accountable, efficient and effective government through independent and objective audits that ensure the community receives the highest quality services, and ensure that public funds are expanded in a transparent and appropriate manner. Together, it's important to also develop the Valley Statement. This Valley Statement helps communicate to the public again, how the audit office, specifically myself and future staff will conduct ourselves in that we are here to be honest brokers but more importantly to be able to ensure and communicate that we'll be working collaboratively with management. But also these valley specific valley communicates that we're here in good faith. And this is something that I'm going to try to carry and impart on each of the audits here, which is acting with high ethics and integrity, independence and objectivity, providing timely objective, fair and accurate reviews of city programs, proposing achievable solutions after identifying areas for improvement, and working collaboratively with staff to achieve results in improved governance, and herring to government auditing standards, and fully committing to every project. And the third component of the guiding principles is following auditing standards. There's two main bodies of standards that are usually followed in this civil government. One's called the yellow book, as you can see it's yellow and the second book is the red book, which is the International Professional Practices Framework, which is followed in the private sector, nonprofit and also government. My recommendation here is to follow government auditing standards. It's closely in line to the values of the office, but it also, it's the majority of the cities that have audit offices in California. Do follow the yellow book. In the key reason I want to stand behind the yellow book is that it believes in stands behind public reporting, which is something that I'm trying to believe in. The other elements in the red book are also very similar, that there's a lot of overlap. Some of the key differences in the red book, it talks a little bit more about communication with audit committees and also in proposing an engagement of risk assessment processes. So my goal is also to incorporate some of the best elements from the red book together with the yellow book. And then the third component here it deals with putting together the mission statement of value statements and auditing standards in an audit manual that'll be the key for us to be able to ensure that our audits are done in a consistent manner. It helps really focus on the four key standards, which is independence, professional judgment, competence, and quality control and assurance. And it ensures that a results or could be relied upon by the public. The other part of that deals with an audit standards plan, which is a very detailed plan that helps demonstrate that we have complied with government auditing standards and then finally ensuring that we undergo peer review every three years. In terms of the audit process that we are proposing here, It's very similar to what most audit offices follow. There's really three main phases of the audit, which is planning the audit of the initial stages. When you start with an entrance conference, you establish initial audit objectives. You perform a risk assessment and develop an audit program that focuses on addressing areas of greatest risk. You move towards fieldwork where you're testing, ensuring that controls are working. You are able to develop a finding, then you finally move on to report writing, which you start with a draft to the department. You hold an exit conference, issue a final draft, and then finally, at the end of the process, you issue a report. a final draft and then finally at the end of the process you issue a report. In terms of audit resources, this is where really the key is going to be for the office is we put together the guiding principles and then we start talking about how many resources we think we're going to need and what I have proposed is hiring two performance auditors and an executive assistant. This is kind of based on kind of doing a survey of what other municipalities have and would also work best for this organization. And this would allow us to do anywhere from two to four audits per auditor. So we're looking at potentially being able to do anywhere from six to 10 audits per year with this, in addition being able to rely on outside resources as well. In terms of budget and staffing, I estimate that we hired cheap performance auditors and executive assistant. This current fiscal year, we're looking at about $236,000. And then I'm hoping to bring back a specific request for authorization and appropriation for this at a future city council meeting. And this item will be discussed shortly after in the next agenda, which is this additional audit staffing will necessitate more permanent office space in the city hall complex. And then the other part of the resource that we'll need to consider for the future, and this is something that I recommend is establishing a fraud hotline for the city. It's a tool or means for a city employee or members of the public to confidentially report any activity or contact related to or involving city personnel, vendors, resources or operations for which they may suspect this is a fraud waste or abuse. My intention would be to operate this hotline under California Government Code Section 53087.6. And also being able to report suspected misdades through online or telephone reporting, but my plan is here to bring back a specific proposal for the City Council to consider for funding this program. In terms of audit approach, you put together the resources and then we're able to start thinking about what we can audit and what I am proposing to do is Submit an annual audit work plan that's going to be based on Organizational risk assessment and this is creating a model that looks at financial risk to the city Looking at potential fraud risk to the city as well as my personal judgment But also more importantly taking input from the City Council in management. And my proposal will be to bring this forth each year to the City Council for their approval. And important things also once we establish this work plan is that there might be a time in the future where you may need to modify the work plan. And I'm proposing that we create criteria that would give an opportunity to modify that work plan. And the three criteria that I'm recommending would be changing the work plan for any issues that involve health or safety of residents or employees. Issues that involve significant fiscal impact and issues of personal integrity. Those are three criteria that I think they would merit changing the work plan through the year. It would also bring forth any change to the City Council for their approval. And then for this current fiscal year, I think we do have limited capacity and proposing one or two audits that we could initiate. And my plan there is to go back to the audit committee to work on identifying what those audits may be. And then the other part of audit approach, it's really key. It's going to be establishing our communication protocols and expectations. First and foremost, every audit report will be a public document and my plan goes to distribute the audit reports to the City Council management and made available to the public simultaneously at the same time. Everyone gets a report. The addition I also plan to issue quarterly update reports that will communicate to the City Council and the public with the activity of the offices is up to and turns out member reports and progress towards completing our work plan. In addition also we would propose submitting an annual accomplishment report that would highlight the number of reports and recommendations and other issues. Recommendation fall over report we'll talk about in a few moments. And then finally tying this together with the public web page, we'll share information on the audit handbook, public audit reports in the description of the audit process, biographies, of audit staff, and ways to reach us as well. And also the other part of it that's important to do is establishing performance metrics and what I'm proposing is establishing the five metrics and this includes a percent of staff meeting education training requirements, the percent of audit recommendations agreed to by management, estimated direct financial impact, a number of percent of plan audits that are issued, and also average staff hours per audit. Then finally, the last part that I'm recommending is establishing a recommendation follow-up process. And this is where I'm going to propose creating a process that I'm going to follow up on every previously issued audit recommendation every six months. I'm going to propose testing and verifying that recommendations are implemented as reporting and they're reporting on the progress that previously issued recommendations because as we issue audit reports and we make recommendations that there's an agreement to implement we need to communicate back to the City Council and the public if those recommendations have been implemented And here I have I can go through the specific recommendations or I'm happy to entertain any questions that you may have Okay, well, let's stop there for the moment If there's anybody in the chamber would like to address us on this now would be the time Being none will close the public comment and councilmember Warren Before you go to councilmember wonder was in their Committee report Seeing none we'll close the public comment and Councilmember Warnley. Before you go to Councilmember Wendruth, was there a committee report? Can we hear that first? Is he here? That's you. You're right. My comments are going to be pretty similar to the Audit Committee report, but with Councilmember Friedman also. Great. Thank you. So I'm excited about this. I think your mission statement is right on. I think the value statement is right on. And I think you've put together an excellent program. I'm looking forward to starting to implement it. And that's pretty much what we said at the liaison meeting also. I do have a few specific comments. One is I think transparency is key to this office that transparency may hurt initially, but it's the transparency that gives the long-range value. So I would always err in that direction. Something that I mentioned before at the liaison meeting also was I like the concept of a fraud hotline, but I think fraud might be too narrow of a name for it because there's other sorts of issues that the hotline could address also. So maybe it's in your report, you mentioned fraud, waste, and abuse. So the description is broader than fraud, but I think calling it fraud might be misleading people who pay attention to what it's actually called, as opposed perhaps to calling it an auditor or a hotline or something like that, something more accomplishing. And also when you're right up about that, you spoke about two ways of implementing it. One would be to have city personnel involved with literally implementing the hotline aspects of it answering the phone, taking the messages, things like that versus a third party provider. My preference would be to have the city handling that. I think there's a better chance of making it a user-friendly, resident-friendly process if we're doing it ourselves as opposed to a third party provider. And you also spoke about an intake committee for finding the direction of the issues that come up, whether or not this really is a fraud issue, whether it's a waste issue, who should deal with it. I think we have to think about that and try to come up with some more specifications for that, because one of the structure of the office is that the office reports the City Council and part of that was we need want to be in a position where a department that might be a subject or a department that might be impacted by an investigation shouldn't be making decisions about that investigations and and so I have some concerns about that with the intake committee as well. So I guess I'd like to hear a little bit more about how that intake committee would work. I think the appropriate you've set upon the appropriate level of staffing to begin with with two out of the res and an assistant. But I think that does go against one of the performance measures that you cited. One of the performance measures that you cited. One of the performance measures had to do with the percentage of staff meeting continuing education requirements. But with so few people, I would hope that all of them would meet the continuing education requirements. So maybe that one would wait until when and if the department became larger. This is just a suggestion. But I mean, I like the one in that area that's more directed towards the peer review of the department. And at the very end of your report, you broke out four categories for potential audits for the first year. You probably won't have the ability to do audits in each of these categories. But here would be my suggestions for those for categories for the audits within those categories. One category you mentioned was health and safety. And within that category, I would like just to look into the emergency evacuation plans for the city in connection, especially in connection with the recent fires that have been affecting Southern California. A second category was significant fiscal impact. And there, a different one from the ones that you have listed is really, has been at the top of my list for a while. And that is that the city is engaging in some areas in which we're spending a lot of money and which are new areas for us. And in particular, I'm thinking about fiber to the premises and the oil wells. And I was thinking perhaps an audit of either one of those programs might be worth files in early audit. For efficiency and effectiveness we hear a lot about code enforcement and I'd be interested in that area. And for person in the organizational integrity one of the examples that you have there that resonates with me is the BHPD citizen complaint system. But again thank you for putting this together and looking forward to working with you. Thank you, sir. Councilmember Freeman. So, Councilmember Wonderland and I were on the liaison and Councilmember Wonderland has summarized a lot of what we discussed. One of the things that I learned was why the yellow book was called the yellow book and red book was called red book. And it was so obvious, I guess I should have known that. But I'm pleased to know that we are going to do transparency. We are going to do is incorporate some of the Red Book principles and use the yellow book. That was something that we had talked about when we started the City Auditors Office. In terms of selecting targeted audits, I have no problems with what Council Member Wonderlook has stated. However, there may be areas that the Audit Committee and yourself may think are more pressing. It should have a priority and we'll look forward to having your report on that. The audits, I think it's important for everybody to understand that the audit, you hear the word audit and you say financial and I guess everything has a financial impact, but it's not just finances, it's not just money, it's efficiency, which ultimately leads to costs. And that's something that is very obvious. And I just want to make sure that everybody understands that. It's not just crunching a bunch of numbers, it's looking at efficiency. numbers is looking at efficiency. And those are my comments. Thank you, sir. Council Member Barkley. Thank you. So I have to say as I was sitting here listening to your report, I was thinking, boy, this was a great hire. I really was. So I want you to know that I I really impressed what you put forth. I also thank the committee that was working with you, but from my perspective, I think you are right on the money for lack of better words for what we really needed in the city in terms of transparency and audit. So I completely support your vision and I think we are really on the right track. I wish we had done this before but I'm glad that we are now embarking on this. Just a few questions regarding the fraud hotline or whatever the auditor hotline. I agree with Councilmember Wunderlick that we should have a broader perspective. I think the auditor hotline is better because I think it will embrace many types of calls. How will you prioritize them? If we do get many calls of tips and such, how will you be able to prioritize which ones you need to attend to sooner than others. Certainly. First, I think the issue of branding this hotline, whether it's a fraud hotline or an integrity hotline, really needs to be revisited and it's something that we'll look at the proper name for this hotline or this call mechanism. I think the fraud hotline may not working this place, but we'll definitely come up with a better name for it. With regards to calls, in terms of, it's been my experience that we'll get a multitude of calls. Some of the calls may not be within the purview of our city, may actually fall into a different jurisdiction or a different level of government. Those would be referred out to the appropriate organizations. And within the calls that would come into a hotline, our calls that maybe are not really related to specific misdeeds specifically. It could be related to the customer service or some other, you would refer those to the appropriate departments for immediate action. But for the calls that are related to some potential wrongdoing is that we would make an assessment. And it actually opened an investigation review into each matter they came in. We'd want to track down specific information, talk to the person making the allegation, and opening up a case for each matter. And basically sometimes information would come in from my previous jurisdiction where there was complaints would come in. It would not appear to be very serious, in fact they were. And it was taking each complaint seriously. And that's kind of, you just have to wait for the calls to come in and treat them in the uniform manner, but also knowing if it was something potentially seriously that you would accelerate in shift gears and be able to commit the resources that are necessary to say through. So for the caller, are we saying that this is an anonymous phone call? You know, it could be anonymous. I mean, we were open to accepting all calls anonymous or not anonymous, because it's been my experience, some organizations will only accept calls if the person gives their name. Sometimes I've found that people may not want to feel comfortable sharing their name, but they do have enough information to do it. I basically, it's been my experience, we take everything in, we review that information, we review the complaint, and we look into it. So Larry, my question to you, given that we're a city and public records requests, and this is meant to be transparent. How does that fit in if there is an anonymous call, or not an anonymous call, and it starts to get looked at and I'll use an anonymous you know person who's calling because they for whatever reason they they don't want to let anybody know that it's them are they indeed really protected from that? Well if they don't want anyone to know and they don't give their name then they're protected because we don't even know so and we don't have any record of who they are. If they do want to give their name there are certain provisions. The evidence code provides a provision for people who report crimes that may or may not be the case. Also, you mentioned it before and I'm forgetting what code section it is that protects. Certainly. Yeah. Certainly, the government code has strict reporting requirements with regards to our hot lines. The only information I can make public is when a complaint has been substantiated. Because oftentimes what the risk is, is if you have an armistone complaints, someone can make a complaint in bad faith. You don't initially want to publicize that bad faith complaint. So you want to be able to review it, investigate it, and if it's nothing there, you close it. But if there is something there, that's when you do publicize it. So when it's substantiated to be fact. Correct. So that goes to my next part because the whole point of this is we're trying to really help us perform better in all arenas. So if there is a situation that we find can be done better. So whenever you do substantiate an issue, that's when you'll give the report and that's a public document. That would be the case or some other cases what I found is that maybe the allegation wasn't substantiated but the department can take corrective action. In examples of that, that we would see times of how maybe there was poor customer service or there was a city vehicle that was driving too fast. And the departments would instruct the supervisors to use that as a learning moment for their staff. As you go back and remind them the importance of treating customers in an appropriate manner, driving safely. So again, even though it may not be semi-seanchated, you need to try to use that as a teaching moment to improve that service. Okay, and you had talked about a six-month follow-up? Right, so what I've done in my entire career in terms of local government auditing, we had a process where we would follow-up and re-auto recommendation that we made. And it involved working with the departments of actually tracing, tracking and verifying that in fact recommendations have been implemented. Or being able to obtain information and when they expect the recommendations would be implemented. Being able to communicate that information back to the city council and the public on the progress. So the public can have confidence and the city council can have confidence and in fact that recommendations are actually being implemented. So there's a checks and balances which is great. My last comment is on the recommendations and I support your recommendations. The first one which council member Wendell called out as well, which is the under health and safety of the emergency evacuation plans for the City of Beverly Hills residents in use of wireless emergency alerts. I think, and I don't know if I'm splitting hairs here, so I want to clarify. When you say emergency evacuation, to me, even before that, what has always been a concern of mine is the notification. First, you have to have the notification before you can have the evacuation. So, I've always, you know, we're always trying to make sure that people, you know, what we're doing, whether it's from a council meeting to anything. So I would ask that we look at the notification first just to make sure that we do we're doing that as well as we can before we look at the evacuation because I think that comes first. But aside from that I completely support it and welcome on board. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So I also support the waste fraud abuse outline. I think that's important to Be able to have something like that in fact That's a lot of what the city controller in Los Angeles does is to look at waste fraud and abuse But it's great to be able to have residents or anybody call in and discuss it now We heard Maddie mentioned the word whistleblower. What provisions do you have to listen to internal complaints from within staff, potential whistleblowers who may not feel comfortable going to staff to other staff or to their supervisors or whatever? Is there going to be also an internal hotline for kind of a whistleblower hotline. The way I operated the hotline in my previous jurisdiction was open to anyone, employees and members of the public. But would we make it clear that on the one hand it's waste fraud and abuse, on the other hand it's also for whistle blowing. It was one of the same in that you would want to be able to inform employees and members that they hadn't any concern to be much more than a fraud hotline became an opportunity for them to share information with regards to issues that they felt were inappropriate. It's also important that when you maybe hear something from staff, perhaps anonymously, since you're directly reporting to the council, there may be an issue you want to bring up to discuss with the council that we maybe should address if it's a personnel issue or whatever. And I think it's important to have the ability to do that too. It's certainly one of the reasons I think that we've decided on this reporting structure. We heard performance, this is not just about numbers and it's also about performance audits and I agree to me that's an extremely important part of this job and I guess that our goal is to get from performance audits the ability to be more efficient whatever it is. It's not gotcha or whatever. It's simply, here's how we're doing it. And with a fresh set of eyes and people who are skillful like yourself and the other auditors who are going to bring on board, perhaps using best practices from other jurisdictions. And even ones maybe we hit upon ourselves to try and be more efficient. And I think that that to me is an extremely important part of what you're going to be doing. But I also think, and I think in many cases we do retain rights to do kinds of performance audits or audits when it comes to some of our third party suppliers. We contract out and we spend a lot of money on some of these contractual services and I almost would just do it in terms of Where do we spend the most money and that's where the prioritizing should be? Are we you may be able to look at that and compare what we're paying for certain services to other options and you may be able to say Guess what? You're overpaying or here's what you could do to save money. I think there's probably a tremendous value when it comes to looking at our big suppliers where we spend a lot of money and where we may not be as aware of the internal workings. And I think in many cases, we probably do have the rights to do some sort of an audit, but beyond that, as said in terms of performance, maybe you'll be able to compare certain other options. Just to add vice mayor, in fact, we have worked with the City Attorney's Office to add language in our agreements that would authorize the auditor to. And that's a very good point. In all of our contracts going forward, especially the ones for a lot of money, we should have that language there, because we have this resource now. I agree that some good ideas for potential performance audits or in general are some of the ones that you've listed, code enforcement police. Beyond the waste fraud and abuse or whistleblower hotline, we talked about the notion of a kind of an ombudsman for residents. And I think it would be important to add that element as well. And residents who are calling and asking for help or need something to be able to, then you can, your department can be able to hopefully direct them, put them in the right direction, but sometimes people need that help. And you know, that kind of, I won't call it necessarily a conserved service, but the notion of an ombudsman or ombudsman is the word, to help residents or businesses when it comes to dealing with city government. And I think it's good. I think, you know, that to an extent you should become kind of, we all are obviously involved, but a point of contact for people to feel very comfortable with. And I think it could serve that function. And I'm glad that, you glad that this was Council Member Wonder look suggestion way back in the day. It's a good one. I think it organically brings together a lot of things that we've been discussing about transparency and about service and about connecting to residents. And thank you for getting us to this stage. And I think we all look forward to moving on to the next stage. Thank you. Thank you, sir us to this stage and I think we all look forward to moving on to the next stage. Thank you, sir So thank you. That was great a couple of questions And maybe a comment. I think in the issue of the 24 hour hotline Are you anticipating that a person answers at 247? There are different mechanisms for staffing this hotline. You know, if we've had it internally in terms of city staff, we probably may be limited. In terms of 9 to 5 coverage, there are services that are out there that offer 24 hour, 7-day a week coverage with multiple languages. Other services are strictly also online reporting. Perhaps there's an opportunity to augment online reporting with a number internally. Well, my preference would be if we're going to, I like the notion of multiple languages. I do like the notion of 24-7. I don't think we can do this in-house. So I would be inclined under those circumstances to look outside. I know councilmember Warren's a lick thought he wanted to keep it inside. But I don't know that we have those resources. Your expectation in terms of your expectation in terms of a report back to the council. So now you've done a report back to the council. So now you've done a report. It could be either a report that was scheduled or a report that was triggered by a phone call. You've done your investigation. You're prepared to give this report. How is that done? Is that done as a study session? Is that something that's protected in closed session? How do we manage that? So I Suppose it is possible that there could be some reports that would come to in closed session But I don't think that would be the normal subject of the report that would come to a closed session, but I don't think that would be the normal subject of the report. So it would be something that, I mean, you could put it on either agenda, the study session or the formal session. I don't know if the auditor has a recommendation, but or the city manager. So the expectation would be that on a regular basis, you would present the results of, maybe just when you're done with them. So let me ask you the question. How would you anticipate informing the Council with full council of the results of your audits? So, certainly, would be it is one first issue of public report to City Council, City Management, and posting it on the City's website in addition, having the mailing list to distribute the report. It's just a written report. Written report. In addition, my expectation would be it is to return to a study session much like you do with maybe the outside consultant audit reports is present a brief overview of the findings and recommendations to the report in a public meeting at a study session. There may be some matters that actually do reach a level where the council would want to hear the details of the report, but it's also possible, I would imagine, that you're going to find things where there are no substantive issues and or whatever have been corrected along the way. Is your anticipation that you're report them all back or? My goal would be to present and post them on the City Council agenda whether we had them in a specific session or perhaps an item for your information or you could pull it if you like. I would give you depending on the issue because there might be some reports where things are going well, there's nothing significant do you want to be able to least Communicate that information to to the council and the public So it is possible that there will be certain folks who call you a lot Is there some are you gonna track that if somebody is somebody who calls your office on a regular basis? And does that change your, on the 12th or the 15th or the 30th issue? Do you deal with that differently? You know, what my expectation would be is that, you know, from time to time, I would get calls, I would get letters, and, you know, we would record those entries. If they're calling for specific audits of a future program, you know, we have a work plan that is set. But those are issues that, for example, that we can use in planning for future audits or engagements at some time. But again, it would be creating a mechanism to record them and also respond back. Thank you for your input. We'll look into the issue. But in some cases, I found that people have reached out to me with some really good ideas that we were able to actually audit. So we have to be open. I'm anticipating that that's true. But I'm also anticipating that some people are just going to want to talk to you. I'm hoping to talk to them. Especially if you're around 24 or 7. Just a comment. I think we have to define weight and weight and abuse. What exactly we're talking about. I couldn't find a good acronym for it. As best I got was off AWF, but anyway, I think we should define it. And in terms of setting priorities, I do think that on the priority list, should be things that we've had a problem with in the past that we want to ensure have been fixed. So, you know, I don't have a problem with anything that's on this list. I think they're all important. But I also think that we've we've have a history, you know, and there are certain things that we've sort of had issues within the past, and it would be nice to know that those issues have solved permanently. So for me, setting priorities, I'd like to see at least one, or maybe two of your audits look at things that have been previously identified as problematic and making a determination that they are in fact better. I would be kind of like that. Other than that they are in fact better. Other than that, thank you very much. And we're going to let you move on to your next agenda item. Early, thank you. Same color. No. the same color. No. Isn't the same color. Confusing me. It's not intentional. Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor. Members of the City Council. Today we're here to discuss recommendations to reconfigure office space in the library as well as the second floor of City Hall, which is the floor that we are, of course, on right now. So why are we considering this reconfiguration of office space? As you just heard, the City Council has indicated support for the City Auditor to implement his action plan, which includes the addition of three staff members. Office space does not currently exist for these staffs. There is a desire to create a functional space for the city auditor's office. Over the last year and a half or so, the rent stabilization office was established and more recently limited term staff were made permanent and one additional staff position has been approved. So when all is said and done, the rent stabilization office will be up seven staff members. These staff are currently sharing space with community services staff. So the goal is to relocate those community services staff so that rent stabilization staff can be altogether in one office and have the rent stabilization office. The community engagement special event staff are currently spread across the first and second floor of City Hall. The first floor of City Hall is already pretty tight. The staff are pretty tight down there. And recently three new code enforcement officers were added. And so we need to find space for those folks. So the desire is to move the community engagement, special event staff up from the first floor to the second floor and create a combined office for them, which will free up some space on the first floor for the staff, the new code enforcement staff. Finally, a number of community services staff members have already relocated out of City Hall, so the desire is to relocate the remaining city community services staff, so that the community services staff in this area of town are all located together in the same office space. So it's important to note that this reconfiguration provides office space directly or indirectly for 14 new staff members, as well as creates more functional useful space. So just a couple of benefits of this reconfiguration, there are benefits to the internal working, so it creates needed space for new operations and staff. Combining teams together can lead to improve effectiveness and communication amongst teams, but most importantly, accessing services and way finding is substantially easier for the public. The rent stabilization office of City Hall could be configured. The options are based on the same size as the one in the previous one. The first one is the one in the previous one. The first one is the one in the previous one. The first one is the one in the previous one. The first one is the way in which the second floor of City Hall could be configured. The options are based on whether the Human Services Division of Community Services remains at City Hall or whether it moves along with the other community services staff to the public library just across the street. I'll speak to those options in just a little bit. So just to give a little orientation to folks who may not be quite as familiar with the second floor of City Hall, this is North, South, down here, the main entrance into City Hall is here, and we are currently in Council Chambers, which is right here. So the desire is, as I mentioned, to for sure, relocate the Community Services Registration Office and the Administrative Support Staff to the library, as well as the two staff members who are currently working in Room 200, which is on this floor, that they are sharing with rent stabilization. The department director and assistant director and department clerical staff have already relocated to the library, so it makes sense to have these support functions such as registration and administrative support relocate to the library. It'll lead to hopefully staff efficiencies because you're combining staff together. So for example, when we have registration for our classes every quarter, we register 10,000 people in excess of 10,000 people every year for our classes. When registration takes place, that's a really heavy work time. By combining staff together we can augment staff as we need to for those busy times and then diminish the staff as that ebbs off. The relocation of the community services staff to the library from City Hall was discussed briefly with the City Council in mid 2018. At that time, the City Council asked some good questions about whether it would improve customer service by moving the registration office to the library. So in response, staff conducted a survey of participants who come into the registration office, which is currently on this floor, to try to determine the convenience of relocating those offices. Interestingly, most customers who came in, almost 75% indicated that holding registration at the library rather than at City Hall would be more convenient for them. Many of the participants who registered for the classes indicated that they're regular visitors to the library that's been registered for the classes indicated that their regular visitors to the library and that they generally park in the wrecks for parking structure across the street, which is closer to the library. So they indicated that actually having the registration at the library would be more convenient for them. Okay, so I mentioned, we'll talk about the options related to whether human services moves to the library, whether it stays at City Hall, but for now I just want to acknowledge that human services is located here. And there is a conference room that is shared between human services and the City Attorney's Office, which is next door. So that'll become important as we move along. Again, the pink areas here are the rent stabilization office. This office, for example, here was originally designed to be for the director of community services. So it was designed for one staff member. We currently have four staff members in there. And so the space is very impacted in that area. And by moving out these two staff members for community services that would allow rent stabilization to be a little bit more spread out I guess. Finally as far as the existing plan for second floor city hall the community engagement and special events team is currently here at the north eastern corner of the second floor. It's a small office and so thus the request to relocate those folks. So now I'm going to go to option number one, which is the option where human services stays at City Hall. They do not move to the library. So in this scenario, human services would stay here. The City Auditor's Office would move into this office, which is currently the community engagement and special events office. As you've just heard, the City Auditor's Office would be comprised of four staff members. And so we think we could fit four staff members in there and likely add a wall to create an office for Mr. Luna. Let's see. This would displace community engagement and special events. They would move into this area that the community services registration and administrative support currently occupies. And the room 200 would be taken over fully by rent stabilization. So that's option number one. This is option number two. In this option, the Human Services Division of Community Services would move to the library. So they would vacate this space and I'll talk about where they would go to in a little bit, but sticking with second floor of City Hall, we would have community engagement and special events still move into this area. Rent stabilization would still take over room 200, but the City Auditor's Office would move in where human services currently is. The benefit of this space is that it's larger and there's already an office that's built there. Additionally, you have the shared conference room here. So if the auditor's team needs to meet with city staff or with members of the public, they could take advantage of having that that office, that meeting space that's there. Who goes into the special events that has now moved? You have the current? Yeah, the current special events office. Who will go there? So that, we've talked very briefly about that. We certainly could take any direction from city council. At this point, we're always looking for meeting space and City Hall. And so the idea would be that for the time being this 500 or so square feet, we would just remove the cubicle barriers that are in there and we could use that office for meeting space for the time being. Okay. So where does human services go and where did the community services staff go that would be moving out of City Hall? So we're going to take a quick look at this is the second floor of the library. So this is where community services administration is in this area. This is meeting room north. We have meeting room south. If you continue down here, you go to the auditorium. So that just kind of orients you as to the different spaces that are on the second floor of the library. So currently there is a relatively large lunch room that's on the second floor of the library that already has walls in place. So just kind of keep the lunch room that's on the second floor of the library that already has walls in place. So just kind of keep the lunch room in your mind. And then there's this community services admin space which we would be touching as part of this project. So this is the existing second floor of the library. This would be option one where human services does not move out of city hall does not move to the library We would take that lunch room and divide it into office space that would accommodate four staff members and the community services administrative support team would move there together So they would be co-located they do the you the hundreds of agreements that we have every year prepare our budget, overseemed team Beverly Hills, et cetera. So those staff members would move there. The community services registration team would be co-located with the current administrative team that's at the library. So we would combine those staff members together and they would be able to back each other up. As part of this option, we lose a conference room, so the idea would be to reestablish a conference room here and have a couple of offices for the recreation managers here at the library. This is the second option if human services moves to the library. It's basically all that I just told you, but human services would move into the space that is essentially currently meeting room north. So it is this space that's here. As part of that location, there is this interesting little stairwell that was walled in at the library in the late 80s, early 90s. So it is literally, it's a void that's walled in. So as part of this project to accommodate the human services staff, we would need to open up that wall, establish a floor, and get rid of this stairwell to know where that was walled in. And just to finish out the floor plans, we did have a lunchroom on the second floor of the library. We would reestablish a smaller lunchroom on the first floor of the library, so that people have a place to take their breaks and that sort of thing. So I wanted to talk a little bit about relocating human services. Many of the human services clients are actually based at the library. We have a lot of families, seniors, people that are living on the edge, people that are homeless or close to becoming homeless and patrons who are mentally ill. And so a number of the calls that human services and the class team get to help people, match people with resources that are available are patrons that use the library. The library is a place that I think a lot of people feel is more accessible. Maybe the city hall coming to city hall, sort of a rarefied environment, checking in with a ranger. People may not feel comfortable speaking about why they need to speak to human services, what the services are that they need. Additionally, from a practical standpoint, the current human services office here on the second floor of City Hall is a bit more conducive to the auditor's office. There is already an office created for the auditor there. There is that meeting room, which I think will benefit the auditor's operation. The costs of the two options are on the screen. benefit the auditor's operation. The costs of the two options are on the screen. So option one is where human services stays at City Hall is about $945,000. Option number two where human services moves to the library is just over $1.1 million. And the reason for that difference in cost is because of that mysterious stairwell that was walled in in the late 80s by unwallowing that, we capture a couple hundred square feet of usable space. So that is what the difference in the cost essentially is. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions. We have staff from the other offices here in City Hall as well. Should you have questions of them? Thank you. Is there anybody in the council that would like to address us on this matter? Seeing none, we'll close the public comment. Council member Warnowit. With option two, we give up meeting room north in the library. What's that used for now? How frequently is that used? Yes, so we have three rooms that we rent or that are used at the library by the public. So there's meeting room north, meeting room south, and the library auditorium. They can either be rented or they can be used by various community groups or city staff for meetings. We did a study to see if there was any time, and this was mid-year last year, so I haven't looked at it since, but we did a year's worth of data. We looked at our meeting room north, south, and the auditorium ever used at the same time and over the course of that year period, they were not ever used at the same time. So our feeling is that we can use that space without having an impact on the meetings or the activities that take place in that space. Okay. It seemed to me that option two is a better fit with our uses and it does gain the square footage of that walled off square well and square well. Square, square well. And so I think that's the one that I would favor. Thank you, sir. Councilloron. I also agree that option 2 looks better. The difference in cost is $170,000, which is $150 a square foot to gain to square feet. It just makes sense that the orders office next to the attorney's office makes sense and the use of the facilities at the library makes sense. The only concern I have at the library is whether or not the airplay between the children and using human services, whether or not that would be an impact, but I think that's something that probably could be worked on. And thank you, Councilor Robussy. Thank you. So firstly, I think that was a wonderful report you gave. Very thorough. So great job. Thank you. Just a few questions. Firstly, if you don't mind just breaking down for me in terms of the different offices, the city auditor's office, rent stabilization, the community engagement special events office, and combining the office space for the community services, human services. With each office, how much interface do you find the public has with each office? Oh goodness. So I can certainly speak to community services. We have probably a hundred patrons that come into the registration office every month that really varies depending on whether it's registration season or not. But I'd say that's probably an average. And then with human services at very, it just really varies depending on who, you know, who is in need, what kinds of clients we have, that sort of thing. I think we need to have Susan and some of the other staff speak to the patients that come into their operations. OK, so before they come up, a question for you because you had mentioned earlier in terms of human services that sometimes you have people that come in that have special needs and such. Here at City Hall, we have a ranger. What do you feel is provided in the library that is a good screening for if there is any sort of issues? Yeah, so a few years ago, the City Council generously approved a Ranger to be full time at the library for all the hours that were open and so They are stationed at in the lobby at the very front And they are able to observe everyone that comes and goes when they're not making patrols and and rounds and that sort of thing through the library We have established number of protocols in the library. So the Rangers, when they're in the library, wear the wireless Phosera communication devices. So at any moment they're able to communicate with other library staff, have them come down and help. They also can call the PD immediately so that they can respond if there's an issue. One of the benefits of, and I didn't put this in the report, but one of the benefits of having human services move to the library is we think we can configure the human services office in such a way that one of the senior rangers from Greystone can also move down to the library. Human services not only does social services in the Human Relations Commission, but they also oversee the Ranger Program and the Ambassador Program. So we would be able to bring down one of the supervising rangers to this area and they would not only be a presence here, but they could provide backup if assistance were needed. And if this all moves to the library, does it change in any way the hours? So where it would change the hours is potentially in the registration administration area. So the library was designed in such a way that you can open the administrative area of the library, the administrative area of the library, the administrative offices of the library without opening the library proper. So the library currently, most weekdays, opens at 9.30, but we are here, city hall staff are here at 7.30 if not earlier. So we would be able to open the doors of the library to the library administrative area, which could potentially allow people to register for longer hours than they do now. Okay, so that's what I was looking for. I was thinking based on the reconfiguration that there's a positive in that way as well that we are gaining more time, more hours for being able to do more business. Is that correct? Yes. We need some time to build that up, but I believe over the course of time we could do that. Okay, so if Susan and Huma want to come up to address my question regarding interfacing with the public. Good afternoon. Hi. A rent stabilization over the course of the year sees on average about four, five people a day. However, now we're in the registration period and that opened on January 2nd. We have had 40 property owners register so far, not all in person, but it has increased the number of on-ite people coming to the office. So it's been closer to you know between four and ten probably a day. So based on your experience thus far and where we're moving towards do you see this proposal as a positive? I think it is a positive for a number of reasons. It helps right now. Of course, we don't have permanent staff for rent stabilization, but they are all kind of huddled in what was the former director's office. It would give more space. They have a conference room there and they do talk to both property owners as well as tenants in that area. So it would be a benefit to rent stabilization. It would also be a benefit in community development to move the folks that are there on special events because with the addition of three code enforcement officers, we really are pressed for space. And that would be a great space adjacent to where existing code enforcement officers are located as well as I have to put in for community services. Just having been in a space where everything's on one floor and now rent stabilization is upstairs it's just the difference between having different parts of your department in different areas is a different experience. You have to reach out and make an effort to make sure that everybody's included. So I feel for community services being as spread as there are. And I think there's a benefit to having them co-located. Great. Thank you. All right. Who are? Great. Pamela. Hi. So one of the things is currently, as Susan was saying, that the special events and filming permits are downstairs outside the permit center. And when we have approximately five plus public coming didn't ask for permits or dealing with the permits or and the staff has to come out to the permit center and meet with them. This way by moving that group into this community services registration area and admin office then that public can come. There's a space that they could meet just like when they used to register people for classes there. Then that interaction can happen like that with those that are coming in and applying for permits and special events. So we have about five plus a day that come in, it gives that space. Also moving into that space, it allows the community outreach manager or as we're calling it, community engagement manager to have a private space. There's an office and so that allows her to meet with the public and different entities in a private space. Great. So thank you so much. So then my last question is for Nancy, thank you. So from your perspective in a nutshell, how do you see this as the more preferred alternative between option one and two? I mean we're always happy to do what council directs. I personally feel that option two is the better option for a couple of reasons. that it option two is the better option for a couple of reasons. As I have a couple of extra slides because I thought this might come up, we would be able to relocate one of the senior rangers in with human services, which not only I think will benefit the library, but it'll allow, I think, the ranger to integrate more with the rangers that are out in the field, provide more supervision and training. So I think there's a lot of benefits to that. I think if we leave human services here at City Hall, there are a bit of the odd man out. It's an operation of community services that's sort of a little island here at City Hall. I think it makes sense to have the staff all located co-located together. As I mentioned in my report, you know, libraries are obviously far more than a place where you just come and get books. People come to libraries to do all kinds of things, look for a job, learn how to improve their English, help their children learn and grow, those kinds of things. What many libraries and ours is no exception, our experiencing is that there are places where people come that need assistance, and it's not necessarily information anymore. And so you can see all over the country, libraries are hiring social workers or relocating social workers to the library because it's the place where people come for help. And it was interesting I was thinking about this and this morning I got the Ranger Report, the Rangers do a report every day at the library. And just yesterday the Ranger noticed a family of eight that were in the library occupying the chairs in an area of the library. He suspects that they may be homeless and that we should connect them with human services. The family was seeing exiting the library together at 920, which is right before we close. Everyone had a backpack and a puffed jacket, which to me means they might be sleeping in the cold, they might be sleeping in their cars, they're carrying what they own on their backs. The youngest is probably eight years old and the youngest is 45. So just yesterday is an example of why I personally think it would benefit having human services that sort of social worker aspect at the library because this is a place for example that this family felt comfortable coming to get services or coming to, you know, be together. So that's my recommendation. Great. Well, I wholeheartedly support it. I support recommendation too and I want to thank you. I think it was a really thorough presentation. Great job. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. Thank you. I do agree it makes sense. We do see people who sometimes at the library who need help. But is Jim Lotter around? I'd love to have a word. Oh, I suspect that he's watching in his office. So if you had other questions, we could carry on. And he could. Yeah, I'd love to. Other questions, but suggestions the space where the currently. The community engagement and special events are I think that's an opportunity I don't know that I would clear it out I think we could perhaps figure out. Another appropriate use it's it's useful to have certain functions here at City Hall. And my feeling is that we shouldn't just leave it as another space, but we can perhaps as there are staff adjustments and that sort of thing. Absolutely. In fact, we were discussing that this morning there will be, in fact, some adjustment needed when we do the upgrade for city hall tower. For example, yeah, for example, so that may require moving some staff. Right, no, no, ultimately when that's done, we'll gain space and that's good and important. We'll be able to, you know. There are more people. Well, not necessarily, we have a lot of people who are off-site, but we may have more room for some people, but for example, I imagine in the tower, we talked about meeting space. They'll be beautiful meeting space with great views. So we'll be able to use it for that. I just would like to see us not just take down the barriers and figure out a use. It's also something that's convenient for a lot of the council members. We come in that way. We can stop by. I'm guessing that the city clerk does not need more space, but there's certainly always a use that we can figure out. There's so many functions that we have. So that would be my feeling there. Ed Wartow, I just wanted to ask you briefly. You had a minute. You've seen these and you are what are your thoughts? What are your, I know. So briefly, you had a minute. You've seen these and you are what are your thoughts? What are your, I know, what are your preferences? What are your... I had an opportunity to tour both spots and I think the space for option two at the end of the hallway would work best. You know, puts me on the second floor, the fact that we have existing offices. Well, this other one would also be on the second floor too. It's maybe 160 feet less, where it's being nice. Exactly, but also the fact that proximity to a shared conference room would be very important as well. Okay, so you like it. Maybe you could also do an audit to see if we could get the price down from over a million dollars to renovate it. I mean mean that seems pretty expensive to me. Okay, appreciate your take in. He has it that Mr. Lada is out on a call so he's not in the office currently. I'm sorry about that. No, but like just a quick question. Is there AA meetings that happen? Yes. And where did those go? We have AA meetings that have. No, it's City Hall. Oh, it's City Hall. Not that I'm aware of. Okay. Are you sure? No? No. Okay. Why did you think it rocks bearing? Okay. Because I seem to remember hearing that there was something here at City Hall as well But if you say no then no, we have them at the library Roxbury, La Siena. They're at the library. Yes Okay, so at the library are they affected in any way? No, they made this change No, they meet in meeting room south They might need to move to the auditorium temporarily for some reason, but we would to host them at the library one way or another. OK, thank you. Sorry. In a worries. OK, you know, I'm guessing Jim is supportive as well. And you've spoken with him. So I'm supportive as well. As said though, I do hope that we can find an actual office permanent use for the space that's currently being where Huma and Co are now. And that would be my recommendation. So I like option two. And with that, I think you have not only consensus, but unanimity. And thank you very much. Well done. Yeah. And with that, we're going to move to closed session for those matters on the closed session agenda. Thank you.