Yeah. I'm going to go to the other room and get some closer to the station. I'm going to put a little bit to the bathroom. the I'm going to have a five-hour break. Let me ask. Do you know how to set this for maybe some of the recording? Just to see if it is. Okay. There's something you should do. Yes. Thank you. I'll go with the call. Yes. Thank you. I'll go call the Thank you. Thank you. Another call from the people who need first, especially here here Greg Norm here and John's here. Let's stand for the flag salute. I'm not sure if I can say that. I'm not sure if I can say that. I'm not sure if I can say that. I'm not sure if I can say that. I'm not sure if I can say that. I'm not sure if I can say that. I'm not sure if I can say that. I'm not sure if I can say that. I'm not sure if I can say that. I'm not sure if I can say that. All right. And it's a good job of like for which it stands one condition under God, individual, literally, and the best moral. All right, so tonight's meeting is a working session on the budget. I'll call for public comments. Stephen Blacking to turn the road. Talking about the general fund reserve. We just spent $770,000 last week for One Road's project. There's five of them to go. The next so-called double project is really only one. You look at this area of it that's equivalent to what the single projects were. The only thing double is what envy five charges. So you've got looking at $4 million. Do you want to commit using $4 million from the General Fund to finish the roads? That's something that needs to be addressed sooner than later because it'll keep growing. The $384,000 projected surplus next year is the Stealth Trash Tax on the Residence. 164,000 increased in franchise fees. Most of that is where? $144,000 in administrative cost. Below the contract, so it was going to be $104,000 in a and adjusted. It's most been a lot of inflation this year. But it's hard to believe if there's one full-time equivalent dedicated just for trash for that administrative cost. Then there's a number of dashes in the budget. I don't know if that means zero, or the information is coming later. The goals and priorities part of the agenda is very important, and that's deserving of at least one meeting by itself. I don't know how you can dress them all tonight. The budget and the priorities are some of the most important work that you'll do and needs to be time carefully spent. Thank you. Thanks. Any others? We don't have, we don't have anyone on the line anymore right. Okay. Let's go ahead and move into the first item review the general fund reserve policy. Thanks, Mayor Council. This one before you is our general fund reserve policy. We've made a couple of changes to it over the last couple of years. So this is just a review of it. It does get included with the budget when it goes forward for you guys to adopt in June. And as part of it, we have made a couple of changes related to like the classification of unreserved classification as that isn't used quite as much as it was before. There are some other ones which considered non-spendable, restricted, committed and assigned. Those are the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the government, the the number of part of it. Sure. So as the referee said, we brought this to Council last year for review and we promised we would bring it every year for review. So since I'm working on the budget, I thought this would be a good time to bring it up. We currently have 3.5 million designated in the general fund reserve. If you look at the table on the staff report, it does show the breakdown of everything. We have about 1.8 million in the, an assigned 3.5 General Fund reserved in the designated site of it. We have 500,000 that's dedicated to infrastructure, 550,000 that's dedicated to equipment, 400,000, which is dedicated to facilities and then 50,000, which is dedicated to liability every year. For the designated portion, we do add 50,000 every year. So this is going to include the 50,000 that will be added for the current year. So since we're bringing this to Council for review, please let us know if you all feel comfortable with a 3.5 million in the reserve or if you want to increase it increase it by a percentage leave it as is decrease I believe last time it was said at 3 million and we increased it last year to 3.5 million yeah that's Brian I was just gonna say that that was my recollection to you. Yes, to increase it. I don't know your thoughts on what's going on in the economy right now and the value of a dollar and where that's going. So I mean, you're on the finance committee with. I mean, I'm very, very conservative on what it comes to cash and things, but I mean, we set this up some years back and it's been a long time ago where 3 million was worth a lot more than it is today and today's dollars and 3.5 doesn't represent what it was originally when we set it up. So I mean it's sort of just a goal and it's it's it has to be there for real hard economic times or something that really happens where we have to take action on something but I guess I would lean to move would another 500,000 but thoughts from the rest of the council. Others? something but I guess I would lean to move it another 500,000 but thoughts from the rest of the council. Others? The only thing I know about the designated is we did talk during the HCD process on the housing element about reserving, setting up a reserve to bolster the assignment of the Haas Hand of Facility as a place for multiple family residences, whether we need to, that's a two-year timeline on it, so I don't really feel compelled to have to do it at the moment. But at some point in time, I think that is a good idea to allocate a million dollars, designated million dollars for that issue. I don't think it's going to be necessary, but might not be a bad idea to look good. If I recall correctly, that was offsetting so that we would have money in case we had to provide some type of loan or something for the sewer correct. Yeah. That was M.I. okay. Yeah. You meant Harvard? Yeah, I meant Harvard. Yeah, okay. So maybe we do that. That's a good suggestion. And maybe we take the other, instead of putting 500 in the general fund, maybe we start a separate set of, just set aside for. That's fine. I had forgotten about and I'm glad Greg brought it up, but maybe just leave the numbers as is. And if you want to start setting up for something over there tonight, can I guess It's your Michael It I was curious whether 50,000 and is enough each year based on inflation and seemed to me back in the the millennium, in the 90s, we put 50,000, but that was just for the fire truck. We just put 150,000 aside. So I don't know if that's enough each year. I think what we were hearing, let me just make sure I heard it right. We were talking about taking 500,000, increasing the general fund reserves to $400,000,000, carved out for, so we'd get a head start on just setting that money. I mean, just ear market now for that, not that it's going to be spent on that, but that we have the money set aside in case we do have to front money to a developer to do that. So that would just be a line item in the budget then? Yeah. Yeah. I'm fine with that. That's my thought. Senator Nohrm? Yes, I'm going to always refer you later on, but I would say it's probably a good idea right now. Okay. You get that, Angie. Sorry. So the non-touchable money is 3.5 plus this additional 500. 500 for for housing perhaps. That's right. So it's not touchable? Well, we would have to, the council would have to make a decision whether or not we want to spend it on something else. Until we figure out what's going to happen, I know there's a lot of moving parts with that land over there. You know, some of the stuff that you and Brian are working on, you know, it might, more than likely, we will probably never need it, but it would be good just to have a line item in case it becomes an issue to show that we were serious about. So that we were serious about that issue on the housing element. I think it just demonstrates good faith, that's all. That's the whole purpose of that. I don't think we'll have to intrude on it, but on the other hand, it's a demonstration. Yeah, we're moving that direction. Easy to do. Do. So, and see, what are the implications of doing that, right? We've got other designators, so I would take it. This would just be another designator on this list. That's correct. I would just add another line item to it. And then what does that do? Just help me understand them. What does that do to our budget itself? Does that mean that there's, we have to find that money and set it aside? Or? Well, we said it aside, we're gonna reserve it here. So essentially, we just have a little less to work within the general fund. Okay, got it. Okay, so does that cover then what you need on the reserves? Any other discussion about any of the other designations here? We've got roads, equipment, obviously our civic facilities. What's, what's, we're not pretty, do we know what's kind of coming up on the equipment side and I know we've got the new engine coming in Are we aware of any other Ear term liabilities in the space As far as like equipment over there for department well for public works for city staff or I mean I would assume it's everything right. Yeah, our vehicle fleet is. Obviously, the city hall side, we have the truck that Michael used to use for inspections, which is pretty much dead because it's an old hybrid truck, so you can't replace the batteries anymore. So that one sort of works, sort of doesn't work. I'm probably the only one that drives it. Our Prius is getting a little older. We do, in the budget itself, we are line-iting. We do have some money from AQMD. We'll probably be able to buy another RAV or hybrid type vehicle with that funding. On the fireside over there, the vehicle the brush and sprector uses is limping along and nearing the end of its life. We just had to do some major work to it to keep it going. Chief Martin the bar chief's truck, is being limped along right now as well. Obviously our brush patrol and our U-SAR are older. Fire department, they're looking at the option of using the 774, covereding that from just a regular bar truck into more of the U-SAR, or search and rescue type vehicle, and doing away with that box Usr that we have today There's a need we've looked at a potential for doing like a box squad So you can theoretically put the two paramedics in a separate vehicle that would then Follow the fire truck on calls and then if we do transport to the hospital that can follow out to the hospital and come back. Not necessarily have to take the engine to it. Equipment-wise, there are always stuff aging out, additional radios and things that are always being replaced. The ICBAs all the time we do have a lot of the turnouts are getting ready to hit their time limits and the near future turnouts are going to be a big item to replace. But it sounds like we have two issues. We have city vehicles and fire department vehicles that are probably our biggest expense. Have we looked at generating a kind of a multi-year plan for replacement? We've been trying to work with Fire Department and looking at what vehicles are there, what needs to be replaced, and try to get an idea as to what those dollar amounts are. And looking at a couple of options, especially on the fireside, maybe trying to purchase some vehicles that are coming out of fleet for the county. So we're working with the supervisors office to look at that option of potentially purchasing some of those vehicles as they come out of out of service of the county, but still have life left in them that we might be able to pick up relatively and expensively to sort of put us on a program to be able to do it. We just, haven't replaced vehicles in a long time. I know when did we buy the RAV 2020 before? Well, the last vehicle we bought on the city all-side or the last vehicle we bought in general was the RAV, which was probably 2019 or early 2020. I would for the city vehicles and the general purpose vehicles,'d look into. I there's several grant programs out there for electric vehicles. I for a perfect community for. Electric vehicles because we're so small. You know, mostly what that vehicle does is start and stop and you don't have to worry about range. So I would really suggest that we look and maintenance costs are almost zero. Yeah. Model electric vehicle. You know, you can charge overnight when the rates are down. You will cost where they're at. Maintenance costs where they're at. I would, I would strongly suggest that we look into the investigation. I have a structure behind City Hall. We've looked at it a little bit, we haven't moved forward with anything on charging stations in electric vehicles. We've looked at electric vehicles. I know there's I know there's several grants out there. Even I know a lot of folks are going with even the electric pickup trucks, the lightning, the four lightings and others that seem to be very low maintenance. You know, with what we do around here, it would be a good explore to keep on going cost down. I would think that there's probably some deals on things like Tesla's that we could get right now. It might be good options for the city. Other thoughts? I think the QMD money for a member has to be used on those type of vehicles for us to spend it. Isn't that correct? Electric or like plug and hybrid? Yeah. I would think that it would be Hoover. We don't have maintenance facilities in the city. We have to contract out for those. We don't have fuel facilities in the city. We have to go off the city, or we're not like Lahab or other cities, where they have their own fueling stations and can get that discount. You know, electric vehicles are so inexpensive to maintain. And like I said, you can fuel them right here and they're ready every month, not like we were under before seven here in the city. It'd be something we should really, really do the cost benefit analysis on to see if it does pen out over time. You know, one of the things we might think about in terms of the public works department and equipment is we might want to use smaller gym type vehicles. They cost around $14,000 a piece. I like the one in my driveway. They can be equipped with a locked bed box. They charge well. They're small and maneuverable. And they're hecka lot cheaper than buying a replacement truck plus. We've run on electric fleet of yard spotters at our front panel facility for seven years now, and our cost of maintenance comparing them to our diesel equipment that did the same job is one tenth of the cost the cost, one-tenth. So, and their light, so the tire wear is greater. So, I mean, I think these, you tend to see them a lot in, in plant communities, the maintenance people run around in those. And unless you have some really heavy work to do, that's a cheap alternative. And John says, no real maintenance issues at all. So not a bad idea, I think. And then if we could, Rafferty, I think Greg, you brought this up on a note that I saw, but I think really sometime this year year we really need to work. Maybe as part of this process, Angie, we really work on that five-year plan. That's realistic that brings, I mean, Steven brought up the cost of roads. Got these vehicle replacements that we need to look at. There's some other cost pressures in the city right now that we should look at. We should look at a realistic staffing plan. We've got some other projects I think that we want to do. I'd really like to look at our city policies given what's happened over the last few years. I have some money set aside to do a policy review. Make sure our HR policies and our employee policies are up to speeds of them because there's, look at how much money we spend on those issues settling lawsuits and settling other things. That's a lot of city money that could have went to roads or that could have we could have bought a amount of money we've spent on some of this craziness over the last few years we could have bought a fire truck. One thing I mentioned, I've had some communications with Angie during the day and I think I've shared most of them but one thing I'd like to see as we think about the budget going forward is we know we're under saft and so while we don't as a matter of accounting principal carry unfunded positions in the budget I've the mass that Angie prepare a work with rafferty and prepare a list of potential 100% staffing for the city given our current level of effort. And that way we could perhaps, as we think about the budget, we can see where and how we could allocate for those positions. And right now I think it just doesn't have to be part of the budget formal process. But for the council I think it would be a good thing to keep in mind as we move through our funding. Usually as we look at staffing it's especially like in a five year plan. Yeah. You look at a couple different models. You look at fully staffed and what that looks like. You look at what I'll call your realistic staffing plan where you've been. So, like, you know, we're realistically where you've been at and usually that's about an 80% cost of, because you always have people, especially at the city, you always have people coming and going in different roles. And then what I would call the least, if we had to save money, and we chose staff to do it, what is the minimum? So there's a minimum, there's a most likely, and then there's a fully staffed, and those are the three options that you would bring in for a budget. So especially like you do a five-year plan so that you could get what the different models look like for staff. I guess I don't understand. So are we asking them to do that or are we thinking about doing that in the future? I don't think we need to do it as, I mean, my opinion. We should do the budget, but I really, I know we've asked for a couple of times, and we haven't seen it yet though, which is really a five-year plan. And it's going to take the fire department putting together, you know, their cost estimates is going to take staff putting together for the city, it's going to take us putting it together for staff. So I think there's three key components, city costs, which would include city roads, other infrastructure costs, staffing, and then the fire department. That sounds like a really big task. I mean, maybe we should focus more. I mean- The roads seem to be a- But I don't know how you focus more unless you look at the entire picture. Well, okay. I mean- So are we asking them to do that? Or- I'm proposing it. Or we're thinking about, once we get through this and get through housing then we'll address it or Well we're on that subject. I've always kind of wondered we I looked into franchises a moment we have contractual relationships on franchises we have contractual relations for other things I don't know if we build in Cola or whether we even project it. So every every year the cost of living increases, I don't know what the contracts particularly say about cost of living increases. But if we're going to project out five years for for staffing requirements, it we should be projecting our potential revenue growth based upon whatever growth factors are inherent in our agreements. And if they're not there, then maybe we need to re-address the agreements in some fashion. Like I mentioned, the Frontiers laying, Fares Cable all through our city. And at least as far as we know at the moment, we haven't projected what their franchise fee will be. So it's kind of one of the things it's inherent in businesses if we're going to look out multiple years we're going to see whether we have increased it built in and if we don't we have to build them in because the world doesn't say static we know that with the cost of asphalt. So do we have a franchise fee with any of the utilities that operate in our city? We do. We receive fan-traced fees from Southern California at us in where obviously spectrum and so-called gas. But not from Frontier. We have to double check it. I don't believe we do with Frontier. But do we know what? So what do those look like? What do those represent? The dollar amounts to the franchise fees? Oh, for each individual company? Yeah. I don't have it here on the top of my head, but I'll have to check because we get for so-called gas and Edison, they just do one annual fee. And it's based on the CPI. I don't have it handy here. And then where it's every. Yeah, where are the one with where? Oh, it's every month. So it fluctuates. It's been fluctuating between 10 and 15,000 monthly. So with where, if I remember correctly, that fee was due to the wear and, you know, obviously they're bringing in every week, every day, they're bringing in 40, 50, 60,000 pound trucks. And that was to pay for the wear and tear on the roads that those large trucks, which is unique. I think unique to wear, right? So that's the reason for, I recall correctly, Brian, why we came up with that fee, right? That was four, because they were the only franchisee that theoretically was on a routine basis driving heavy trucks through the city. And then what was, I mean, off the top of your head, what do you think we're getting from Edison and from SoCal gas? SoCal gas I believe we got about 26,000. Edison I want to say 87,000. Is that based off of usage, billing rates? I think it's our customers. I think it's up to their gross receipts, the customers. Okay, gross receipts. I'd be happy to volunteer to look through each of our contracts that relate to revenue and develop a summary rather than spending money on taught, I think I can read them and develop a summary that we could use as a Black line for what we need to do. That's a great idea Greg is make sure I mean I know we had the little gap like for example with the habitat when it came to their There you know what they need to pay us for the fire services and we kind of neglected for a few years to charge If you good to look at those Great idea to look at those franchise agreements and see whether or not they do have a nescalator in them and if not we really should sit down. And especially with the ones that have PUC rates, they can't, it'd be hard for them then to change the rate back to our, not like it's a tax, right? It's a franchise fee that they have to have to pay. So, yeah, I mean, a good catch on frontier, because you're right, they did. I think they've just about completed the build out of their fiber optic network in the city. And that's going to be a very, very large revenue base for them. I'm happy, I'm happy, I'm happy spectrum customer. But it would be interesting to look at the triggering event for the calculation of the revenues for those people who are sending builds for residents. To the extent that they're going to increase their service cost to our residents, we should have the functional ability to say, no, we're going to say with a static percentage of whatever that franchise fee, whatever that license fee is. But it should be adjusted accordingly. There's no sense that the people should take a hit for greater expense without us getting a comparative amount. So spectrum frontier, where, so-cal Edison, so-cal gas, is there any others that? We get anything from Amazon or UPS? Or is, do they even have a business license? Well, I mean, UPS is just a delivery service. Amazon is a retailer. That's a good question. Does Amazon have business license in other cities? Nothing I'm aware of. You eat sales tax from Amazon deliveries up here? Probably not. That's not an interesting concept. Amazon's a retailer doing business in our city. Are we getting? Well, it depends on the sales tax. It totally depends whether it's a federal standard of the state standard. If the taxes is repaid to the location where it's delivered, which is where it should be paid, we should get it if not the other way. The other thing about Amazon and the public carriers that are coming, Amazon is not a public carrier, that's a private company. And so they're using our streets to deliver goods. Now, under the state law, we can impede a state licensed or a federally licensed motor carrier to come into our city and deliver stuff. That's why every now and then we'll see actor, a truck that's got a built lading for a house in our city. But on the other hand, I'm not sure that applies to Amazon. I don't know what that would look like ultimately but I would guess that in any one day in the city there's 300 Amazon trucks in vans in here. Well I can tell you you, you know, between Chewy and Amazon, my wife. Chewy. My wife has, I mean, daily deliveries from Chewy, which is another retailer just like Amazon, doing business in the city. So, would you think that would be worth spending a couple of bucks on Todd's firm to just spiff all whether there might be a way that we could require that to be a franchise? Well, I think it's a data query, right? I mean, it's a data request to Todd as to say our other cities have other cities figured out away to capture the sales tax revenue of online retailers delivering to the city. Yeah, we can we can definitely look into that a little more with Todd and throw it out, tell us or for other cities to see anybody else's. Because where's that I mean, where's that sales tax going to? I mean, it's have an online presence. They're delivering in the city. Well, I told, I tried looking into this a few years ago and it was, because the Fed's passed something that said the sales tax is the point of delivery. And so then I tried to figure out how much we get. And then I, Don Tilly and I ended up talking to some lady consultant and what she told us was all the revenue goes to LA County and then it's distributed to the cities based upon the ratio of their on-premises cash registers to all the other cash registers. And so I gave up. But it was just a little... Well, it's not. I don't know. Given, I mean. Do we know how much we get from sales tax? We get something from LA County? We do. We do get a check every month from the county. It fluctuates. And it doesn't give any information as to what business it's for. It just, they just send a check. What's the, what's the, can we ask for an accounting? I'm assuming we can probably ask for a breakdown for the monthly distributions. I think we should I would think what's the range of these checks? It varies it could be 1500 to 2300 it just varies So 24,000 a year I'd be really interested to understand how the counties doing that now. Maybe we could start out if you wouldn't mind at least start. Sure, I don't mind. There's a phone number on the check. I'm sure I can just call and they can direct me to someone and that other person will pass me along with someone out. I'll go ahead. three months from now, tell us how that went. Yeah. Yeah, I don't understand. If the basis of allocation of tax revenue is based upon the tax revenue that the city generates, that violence equal protection doesn't make any sense because if tax, so Our tax revenue was from people eating and drinking at the Hoss in the Gulf Club and and whatever other sale fees they get make out of their pro shop and that's nothing that's peanuts but you know that's right that's what they were I was told but but so what's the right so if that is in fact a law you know or it or regulation or somebody's wet I mean, it would be nice to understand why it exists and whether it's rationally legal. I don't know, but it seems, it should be based not on sales tax revenue received, but people that buy stuff. So if we have 5,000 people in this city, it should be based on 5,000 people. If we do, it's got 500,000 people, that's fine. But the distinction is, sales tax revenue, actual revenue, doesn't make much logical sense, other than for the people that have lots of sales tax revenue. I know how much money I spend on Chewy and Amazon, and $1,200 seems a little shy, given how much tax I pay on those shipments to my house. Just the 10% tax that I pay on what's coming to my house. And I got to believe I'm not in the Nigma in the city. All right, get back on. One other question, the franchise fees we receive from where? Does that go to the General Fund? Or does it go to the road's directly to the road's fund? It goes into the General Fund. OK, even though the franchise is largely because of the damage to the roads and so forth, it was the general fund. Just to be clear, we don't have a fund that's roads. When we pay for roads projects, we take it out of different restricted funds, gas tax, SB1, prop, see a bunch of different funds and also the general fund. So the road tax that we pay every year goes to the general fund. So if you're referring to District 7, that's District 7. So District 7 is a fund and that pays for the roads but the fees we get from where does not go into district seven it goes into the general fund. And overages, overages, so when we run out of district seven, when we run out of special funds comes out of the general fund. Correct. I have to be very clever and kind of take a portion out of each fund to make sure we have enough for the next year. So I can't just use everything up because then we won't be able to pay for any roads. And we also earn interest too. So. OK. Thank you. It'd be useful if we had a breakdown as to how much we, instead of just franchise of visas, a total we have a breakdown on the source, wear, and Edison, and so forth. That's it, thank you. All right. So we've covered, covered reserves. We want to go through this sheet that was given to us. Is there any we want to walk through this rafordy or what do you want to? I don't. She did not come from us so I do not know what at what point to me looking at it briefly this looks like more like a work plan. Where did this come from? That came from Mayor Pro Temminga. When this is draft. Yeah this was just I've been working over the years on a list of projects or things that need to be done. And so this is sort of a supplement to Mr. Steffler's goals and work plan. On the back he had put in some more defined, measurable goals. So to get to that issue, this is, Carol's work there is based upon an idea that we prioritize goals. Right now in our overall objectives and goals, we seem to confuse the difference between objectives and goals. Objectives are overall policy things that we want to see resolved. Goals are the guidelines by which we get there. If we don't have actual goals that are substantial, then we can't measure them. If we can't measure them, then they just keep floating along, right? So Carol has taken and pulled together a whole bunch of questions that really relate to how do these rank in terms of goals and how do we measure our progress towards achieving them? Does that fair to Saban Carol? Yes, but I want to say that I guess the other people don't have your machine. His add-in, when you go to the back there's goals and work plans. So that's an item number seven so from when I maybe wait and hold this conversation for item seven. Oh for what? Item seven? Yeah. Well anyway this is- I'm talking about this document. Yeah this was more of a supplement to to yours which you had But, had certain things like code compliance. You wanted to focus on measurable increments of code compliance. I guess the other people don't have? Well, it just, it just, it goes to if we're going to adopt objectives and set goals as we have in the past, then we have to have a way of measuring. And this is just a whole list of stuff that- This is a list of stuff that- All right, I just didn't know what that was. Yes, so this wasn't really meant for discussion. Okay, got it. That's helpful. But I want to show you we've been working, I've been working in the back. All right, so I think we've got enough input on the Reserve Policy. Let's look at number six, which is the proposed budget study session. Thank you very much. We will dive into the budget and to the numbers of it. There's PowerPoint right now. We'll get it turned on for you right now. We'll walk you through all the numbers. Is this in here, Rafferty? What you're going to show up there is in here also. There's bits and pieces. But everything's in the next one. There's not really an easy way to get it. Look at that one. Well, I'm trying to get it so people will see. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. There's not really an easy way to get it. Look at that one. Well, I'm trying to get it so that people coming on against the policy. Yeah. I tell you something, I'm Andrew will kind of walk us through the, and also including the staff report are the numbers related to kind of where we're at, very draft at this point. Some of the numbers coming in the door and our projections, our start firm numbers, we're still waiting for things to come in from other agencies that we receive funding from. So as we move through this process, it will change as we get to the next budget study session, the numbers will be a little firmer as more things that we receive as revenues. We'll start to get more confirmed how much money we will receive. And also some of the expenditure items will be a little bit harder numbers that we received, what like insurance costs are going to be into other things as we move through the process. But you will walk you through a little bit of the process. Sure. I will make this as painless as possible. So I know there's a lot of information. I just kind of wanted to throw extra information to explain the different funds. And let's just go to the slides. So what is the operating budget? Oh, I got a can't see. Let's see. Okay, so the city budget is the most important document provided each year. Let me try this. I cannot read. Provided each year guiding the operations and. Priorities of the local government as a legal document. It authorizes, I'm just going to try to read off of that screen. It authorizes obligations and yeah, I could read that far. Thank you. And expenses while reflecting the City Council's policies and priorities. It acts as a financial blueprint. Detailing resources, allocations across departments and setting spending limits to ensure fiscal responsibility, yeah, to ensure fiscal responsibility. This promotes transparency and accountability facilitating the delivery of essential services to our residents. So here, what is the budget? What is the purpose of our operating budget? It serves as a legal document that grants the city the authority to incur obligations and pay expenses. It also reflects the city council's priorities and policies. Guiding decisions throughout the fiscal year. It specifies the means by which programs and or services will be provided to the community. It allocates resources to departments by prioritizing spending and ensuring that funds are allocated in alignment with the community needs and goals. It controls departmental spending by setting limits again on how much each department may use. It promotes accountability and transparency in the use of public funds. So what is the budget process? So on the staff side for the budget development, department heads submit budget worksheets with their estimates. So I print out some worksheets that have like two or three years of history and the year to date expenditures. So based off of that, Department heads will review the worksheets and write down their estimates as to what they project for the upcoming year. Then we have meetings, City Manager, Finance Manager, to review each department's request, then I will compile all the proposed budget and play around with the numbers to see if those numbers are okay or if they're too far fetched. Then revenue forecasts are prepared. So those are all estimates based off of trends, history, kind of the economy, what's going on in the economy. And then once we get through that, then we present it to you. And this is where your role comes into play. So, city manager presents the proposed budget. We have two study sessions, one in April and another in May. And then we have a public hearing in hopes to get input from the community. Then council reviews, revises and adopts the final budget at the June meeting. And if the budget is not adopted by the deadline, we do finalize the proposed budget that becomes our upcoming budget and then we would have to amend the final budget. So here's the budget process again. We have admin preparation, City Council approval, then the financial implementation, then after that we have our year end audit and then we move into the financial report so that kind of all ties in together. In February we hold meetings with staff holds meetings with department heads to discuss the budget needs. March and April is when we have the budget study sessions in May. We have the second study session with more of the final numbers by May will have the hard numbers. And then on June 9th is when we should be adopting the fiscal year 2526 budget. General fund. So for this year general fund, the expenditure budgeted amount is 6,199,306. Some highlights for the expenditures. We have our annual contribution with CJA and it is estimated to have an increase of $61,662. In regards to public safety, LASD increased their deputy sheriff service unit to 4.5% and the liability trust fund will increase to 13%. Last year, the liability trust fund was 12.5 and I believe the deputy sheriff service unit was 3.5 if I'm not mistaken. The projected revenues will be 6,583,863. Those are compromised of property tax, franchise fees, development fees, administrative fees. of right now our budget is balanced. Then we'll move on to the restricted funds and that's where I've in the staff report, I've kind of elaborated what each restricted fund is and where it comes from, how we can use it. All the restricted funds has guidelines, so we have to make sure we go by their guidelines. So we have the fire tax and we have transportation funds which consist of gas tax, SB1 funds, And then we have local street and roads, which receive from Metro which is Prop A, Prop C, measure R, measure M. We also have measure W monies which is for the Safe Clean Water Act which is funded by by Ellie County. We also have the street assessment district seven, which that's strictly for roads projects. And then other revenues that we receive, we receive monies from AQMD, TDA, CDBG, the recycling grant, SLS and PEG fees. Fire tax. So here's a breakdown of the fire tax. Revenues, we are projecting with the transfer in to be $2,154,000 or $222, and our expenditures match our revenue. Transfer in that is money being transferred from the general fund is a loan to the to the fire fund and we're projecting that amount to be 642,346. And again, these numbers can change. It just depends on what goes on throughout the year. The capital improvement project. Right now we are estimating our projects to total 4 million $74,524. Of these, for the street, street assessment district, we'll be using 917,619. of the Transportation Funds, which include Gas Tax, RMRA, Prop C, measure R and measure M. That total is 842,163. Then we have CDBG funds, which will total 124,643. And out of the general fund, it will be 497,267. Also, I just want to note, we were awarded money for HSIP, which is a local highway safety improvement plan. So this amount was just being carried over. This is the amount awarded for the guard rails along Hustienda, the guard rail improvements and the traffic signal. So we anticipate receiving the reimbursement for this in fiscal year 2526. So our next steps would just be to continuously monitor property tax. I believe I got the final numbers today. I just haven't had a chance to get to them. Also monitor development fees, resource extraction fees, investment earnings and just restricted funds. And then the budget adoption is scheduled for June 9th of 2025. And then now we just recommended First City Council to provide staff input and direction with regard to the budget that was provided. And again, just a side note, general fund, our revenues are estimated at $6,583,863, which is an increase of about $68,000 from the previous year. our our expenditures are estimated at $6,199, $306, which is actually a decrease of about $156,000 from the previous year. So right now, our revenue will be over by $384,557. Over compared to what, you're over here? Well, our revenue will be higher than our expenditures by $384,000, which is good. In the general fund. Yeah. Okay. So I think I know we're regging Carol want to go with this. I think I'm fairly aligned. And I don't know if this is. I'm struggling with. I know last year we approved the budget and we talked about doing additional planning and we kind of never got around to doing it. I struggle with going through this exercise without understanding what's coming at us, not just next year or this year, but I feel like I'm a little uninformed about how making decisions this year what we spend on if we don't know what are the challenges. I mean, Steven's not the only one that's talked to me about the roads. Other roads committee members have talked to me about their concerns about how we keep funding these cost increases associated with the roads and that that's just one thing. I mean, every time I'm at an event, one of the fire captains are there, and they know I'm the mayor, they come over to me and bend my ear about the expenses associated with the fire department. You just read off a lit me of vehicles that are, you know, the wheel, they sound like bailing wire inductate together to keep So there's a lot of I think there's a lot of priorities that we have And I'm just a little nervous about just going forward status quo with the budget without kind of understanding Longer term how do we and by longer term? I mean just like the next 3 4 5 years how do we? How do we, and by longer term, I mean just like the next three, four, five years, how do we, how do we fund these things given the cost pressures that we bought that we're dealing with, you know, day to day here? So, I don't know, thoughts? Well, we have the, and we often do amend the budget. We're circumstances arise that we don't understand. But I agree with the mayor that this just highlights the fact that I'm brand new. So, you know, I'm such a neophyte in this. But the end of the day, this highlights the fact that if we have some longer term projections, And to me that really relates more to the fact that certain funds will expire and will we have a replacement for those funds. I am absolutely convinced, especially looking through the budget, that we're doing the best we can with being shepherds of our money. The problem that I can't get my arms around at the moment is what's it looked like going forward because I don't know the detail of what could be derailed. We know that some income, we don't know about the severance income, necessarily what will be allowed. We don't, so to me there should be sort of an ongoing project where every quarter at the very least we're revising our projections for some set period of time, whether it's three years or five years. I mean, three years is a reasonable period of time given where we are, I think. But so to me, I would feel really comfortable if we did that. I could adopt a budget as presented as long as we had adequate notice of what we would need to do proactively to deal with changes that we didn't anticipate. Is that a fair thing, John? Is that what you're going to think of? Yeah, so you say, OK, we've got these costs coming up. And you don't want to wait till that year gets there to try to fund them. So for example, if we know we've got vehicles, we want to replace. And it sounds like we've got a lot of issues there where we've got a vehicle fund but you know maybe we see next year we're going to have to exceed that vehicle fund and that amount of money. It would be good to know that right and then project that this year same thing with the fire department. You've got a lot of options that sounds like out there. We're trying to push the county and we're trying to push the state to provide additional funding, but we should be prepared, again, worst case scenario, we should be prepared to fund that ourselves and understand what that looks like and make those tough decisions. Or start an annual allocating additional budget money into those accounts. Those are your mark to accounts. And I know we run really lean in the city, but maybe we have to run a little leaner for a few years, tighten your belts so we can afford those things without significant impacts to the general fund. So and it would be good for all of us on the council to make those decisions based off of that, those longer term projections, not just year over year projections. Because I think there is, you know, there's some deferred costs that we have in the city that we're not fully funding. Are you guys comfortable of trying to do a three year projection? Obviously projections in the future are always hard. I mean, I think it's looking at the volatility of where we are. Some of the restricted funds are tied to things that are going away. Like gas tax is going away a little bit and the state is looking at the volatility of where we are. Some of the restricted funds are tied to things that are going away. Gas tax is going away a little bit and the state is looking at the way it's replaced it but we could definitely look at the things that we know we need to put more money into. I think staffing. So let's look at staffing and I know we've asked so we've added bodies right. I mean we've said we want certain roles filled and they're not filled yet but eventually they'll get filled. And so it's saying let's go to that expected staffing plan and let's see where we're at because I know there's people asking for additional staff to be put, you know, in place which we haven't made that decision yet. So it'd be good on, so look at model of staffing which it like I said, you know, skinny, you know, the least cost staffing plan that we can come up with in case we choose to go with what is, you know, you know, Rafferty is the city manager. What are you comfortable with as your lowest staffing level and still being able to meet expectations? The, I think there's a plan staffing level which is what we offer authorized, right? And then there's the staffing level that I think we know there's a couple positions that we've been going back and forth with, right? So it would be good to see those three numbers for staffing and then look at the fire department and look at similar model, right Let the least cost model would be if we got everything we wanted from the county, if people came through with their commitments, if we got the grants, there's that skinny budget, right? Because it represents us, you know, getting additional funds from outside the city. And then there's the stuff that we need to keep the wheels on the wagon in the middle. And then there's that far end we need to keep the wheels on the wagon in the middle. And then there's that far end which is okay, you know, we decide to do what you know, you talk about the squad right, making sure we have the squad because we don't want to run the new engine outside of the city all the time. We want to try to keep that capital value as high as we can as long as we can because we're probably not going to afford another by the time we buy another one, it'll probably be $3 million for a fire engine. So maybe if we pick staffing fire department and then what's the other, you know, probably the other big one is just facilities facilities which can include roads, park, city hall, other improvements. So maybe rather than looking at all of that for this three year plan, we just look at roads. And what we think, what we think it's going to take to keep the roads in decent shape. And again, I think the Roads Committee can probably come up with for those three ideas for you about what's the lease cost, what's the lease cost solution, what do we think we should be doing, and what's the worst case scenario? I mean, I think the Rhodes is a good example of that. And I think we have enough history of since we first really got into the paving projects and things and how the costs have escalated and how much work we've gotten done and what are current PCP is what you call PCI PCI not PCI or current PCI is so I mean that I think you could come up with a fairly good projection and put a cost escalator in there and then come up with some numbers as far as where we need to go to get, you know, to keep these roads in sufficient repair. One thing I mentioned in conversation with Rafferty was I'm wondering whether we could for our repair work and get away from the prevailing wage requirement. The only way I know to do that is to become a charter city. So I would like to see whether it's rational or not the pros and cons of doing that solely, almost solely directed at getting away from prevailing wage. Because one thing we've become clear to me, as I've been here, is we lose good contractors because of prevailing wage. They don't want to commit to prevailing wage. And yet we're effectively overpaying for the quality of service we want. And we're doing that simply because we're a general law city and we're bound by that. But if we were a charter city, that is something I understand. We would not have to worry about. So, if we could give them authority to get a quick, not that any lawyer does anything quickly, But get a, uh, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, any lawyer does anything quickly, but get a summary analysis by Todd, whether we could achieve that objective, and then what would be the pros and cons in trying to do it? That's kind of a runaway problem for us, I think. I think we could get a lot better bang for our buck if we weren't stuck with prevailing weight. That's kind of a runaway problem for us, I think. I think we could get a lot better bang for a buck if we weren't stuck with prevailing wage. I think most people believe and understand that if there's a way out of it we should try, I think. I would think that I'd be surprised. It says a relatively simple question. I mean, it's up to us if we want to become a charter city. But if that, if the net gain on that is significant, and that's easily computed, you can take all the money we spend. In fact, to the backwards, taking away prevailing wage and going to what would normally be the cost for a vendor that isn't stuck with prevailing wage rules,, then you'd know what you save. And that would tell us whether it's even worth doing it. My guess is it's going to be worth doing it. OK, Angie, do you need anything else from us? Well, I wanted to talk to you. Oh, sorry. No, go ahead. Well, first, I did want to compliment Angie on the sort of new format where you broke out all these funds. I wish I'd have had that a couple of years ago. So I appreciate that you're trying to make this more understandable. And that's helpful. One comment I always make every year is the miscellaneous revenue for 2425 are $2,428 and I know last year you were able to put in some footnotes and explain. So I would, I don't know if anybody else, I would request that. So the footnotes will be in. Excuse me on the next budget study session. And then extra apt, some of those to be can change as Angie formalizes those $4. I know it's like four years we had the million dollars for the fire engine as a revenue. And it made it look like our budget was really a million dollars more, our revenues than they actually were because it was kind of designated. The third thing I did mention was I added up the checks we paid to NV5 from March 2024 to March 25. Anyway, we paid that company over $300,000, and it's kind of hard to know where all that money went. So, I don't know, maybe when Greg's looking at the contract or we can figure out I'm not understanding Carl Sagan well we've paid NB 5 over $300,000 in the last 12 months chronological months it's not the same as the budget so I think we need to focus in on that company a little bit. Because I can't tell from the budget. It doesn't sit in the budget, but on the monthly warrant reports to go to council for approval. If you look, it does show the dollar amount, but this doesn't, we don't separate by vendors, it's by account, by object code. So I don't have a way, unless it's manually to separate each vendor and what they're charging us for. So that wouldn't reflect in the process. I guess when I was looking in here under professional services, I added it up and it's a slightly different, slightly different 12 month period. But it was nowhere near $300,000. Sure, because for example, NV5, they are being charged to capital improvement, 60, 30 and professional services. So it's not just one account and the professional services isn't just NB5 there's other vendors in there. I think if the one vendor that I think we're concerned mostly about is NB5 right? Well that's it's so much bigger than any. Yeah so I believe Angie's capable of pulling their disparate payments together and categorizing them so we we can have a summary of that so we can investigate it. That wouldn't be part of the budget. That's just okay, separate. And on the, just on the roads, the current road district seven I think expires in, is it 2028? 2028. 2028. So we're going to have to justify, if we're going back to the community to reenact a new road revenue, we would have to have that election before 2028, which is not that far away. So I think we need to focus in on roads and have that in the back of our minds so that the community can voice how they feel about it. And I guess the final thing I had is how's the fee study coming? I know we're looking at, we haven't changed our fee structure for five, ten years. Yeah, we last did it in 2018. We undertook that fee study and implemented in 2019. In the process we've gone through fire department, general followed department, brush clearance, component of fire department, planning development, so planning and building fees, public works, admin stuff. We just have like a couple more line items to finish with them. We'll be going to the draft world. Hopefully trying to have it ready to be able to adopt with the budget so we can put those into effect. I don't think it's anywhere near the amount of money we need to cover the roads and I'm not trying to raise fees if we don't have to, but at least it's going along pretty well. Okay, well, those are my comments. Thank you. Norm? May comments? Not this time, no. I'll go back, back. Anything else you need on item six? We're still looking at. No, but I just wanted to add something. I know you guys want a three-year plan, but I have to make it a five-year plan. If I'm going to apply for the budget award, that's part of their guidelines. I have no problem with them. Okay. I think kind of industry norm is normally five. So that's fine. I think we're trying to make it easier by shortening it, but five years is kind of an industry norm on how you do planning anyway. So. Yeah, five is fine. And I don't know what other criteria you need, but again, I would keep it to the three criteria that we talked about so we don't boil the ocean on this thing. But I think there are the three criteria that impact the city the most. But again, whatever if you have a template that you can find, that you can leverage, that exceeds that, and that's fine, but I just wanna try to keep it somewhat minimal. I know it's not gonna be minimal, but it's done right, it's a grip of work. I just wanna, again, thank Angie for the extra work she did on revenues and expenditures and isolating it. I'm so new that something like this is incredibly helpful to me in trying to figure out if I could actually ask an intelligent question. I'll second with Carol said breaking it out by the fund type was really, I mean when we were talking about the different, when you were talking about the different ones, I was able to follow along and see what you were talking about. So that's very helpful compared to past years. Thank you. All right. Any more discussion on item six? Item seven, review, strategic planning. So it's part of the budget process. It's one of the things that's in there's strategic plan with some vision statement, vision statement, goals and things that we include every every year in the as part of the budget. So we sort of took what was in the budget currently for you to take a look at and consider to update it as part of the The budgeting process. It is one of the things that has to be updated every year as part of the The budget review and award process that Angie goes through of a year and So that's where we sort of want to include it and bring it to you guys as attention a little earlier than we normally do. So you can take a look at it and I know we've had a bit of discussion earlier about some other things that we may want to look at as part of this process. So we can do this. I do have to, I should be including this in the budget for as best practice. But I was kind of looking around other cities. They adopt like a three year plan, two year plan, so they don't have to take it back every year. Just every year they would kind of just review and say okay we did accomplish this or whatnot. So. I mean I think that gets back to the goal statement, right? If we have a five-year plan, I think one of the things council could do is look at that and provide input as to, you know, hey, this should be, and we could call it goals. We could call it priorities. I would, you know, whatever language we want to use on it, I think it's important to give staff a list of priorities that we're hearing from our constant choices as being important. You know, these are the things that people want to see happen in the city, whether it's good roads, whether it's good fire department, whether it's paramedic services, whether it's sheriff services. You know, to me, it's public safety. So one of the suggestions I have is that on this work plan, I know we've got protect, preserve, and enhance the residential character as the number one goal. I would think that public safety would be one of the core values that we might want to think about adopting. So bringing those items up out of the protect preserve and enhance that rural character is that we should bring public safety up into a core value Unless these are unless Angie these are established as some Template we have to adopt I would I would bring some of the items up out of item one We can change it around. There's yeah,, I mean given given again I think we're going to see significant costs going forward associated with what we need to do as a city to protect the city from the risk of fire and that really should become a priority for us much more than what it has been. I know there's going to be cost associate with that. I know Greg you've talked about and I know we haven't agendized it yet but since it's part of the budget I'll talk about it. The lean on homes and the lean sit there forever, are we in a sense giving those people a zero interest loan because we don't have a way to collect interest off of money the city has spent on abating their property. And again, if we get more aggressive with this, more aggressive with abatement, whether it be for code enforcement or for brush clearance, do we need to rethink how we do that and not give, not necessarily give. I think it's a case by case, you know, there's some people that can't afford it and say, hey, lean my home and I'll pay it back. And we make a conscientious decision to give them a no-interest loan versus the person that just is not compliant, refuses to be compliant. I don't think we should be giving them a zero-interest loan. I think we should explore the idea that Greg had of attaching some type of interest expense or cost of money expense onto those leans, property, so we're not getting as early as our interest law. But anyway, going back, sorry for the diversion there, but going back to the core values, I think public safety really should be the number one core value, and I think we should, I think you've got some good concepts under the goals and work plan that we can bring out into that. Into that value. And then expand a little bit on the fire department. For the brush clearance and things like that, the fire safety. Absolutely. really not spelled out under the fire department for the brush cleanse and things like that the fire safety. Absolutely. Because that's really not spelled out under the fire department in EMS. We might spell that out a little bit. I mean, I, again, I think we really need to make sure that we show a clear and deliberate focus on Fire safety in the city And I'm I'm purposely not saying brush clearance because I think there's there's definitely other aspects of fire safety specifically code enforcement that we might need to spend more money on to avoid Some of the other issues Code enforcement is one, updating codes to reflect what we need to see as a city. I mean, those are expenses that I would expect to see. On an annual basis, we should be adopting as quickly as we can the changes that are being put out by the state, but also the best practices that we're seeing in other cities coming out of the fires. Especially, again, I go back to building codes and code enforcement. I think there's a lot to be learned there, and I think that we owe it to residents to make sure that as people upgrade their properties that we as a city are giving them clear guidance as to what those best practices are. So I've circulated a listing of possible things to put into the overall objectives and goals. I think the structure should look something like we have core goals for the city. As John says, I'm sure that public safety and protection of the city is our most important goal simply because of wildfires. I think sustainability of the city is a significant goal. We have to find a way to be revenue positive in the city on an ongoing basis and from an extent of your time. So I think structurally it would be whatever we said as policy is our primary goals and then the objectives within those goals nest in and under the objectives there are discrete goals that are measurable. And I've just suggested some. These are all things. These particular documents got all stuff we're just currently talking about in various areas. So the question is to have nice words that's fine, but to have measurable objectives, measurable goals that we can meet together and we can say, hey, we achieve this much on this goal. That should be our ultimate hope to be able to get to that point. And I agree, I don't know, maybe there's only three major goals. Historically, like last year's report, when the budget came out, we had three goals if I remember quite three major goals. And that changed a little bit from 23 to 24, but they're largely the same thing. So we set those and then suggest, you know, within those major goals, there are objectives and then there's timeline goals that fit underneath the objectives. How detailed we want to get on that I don't know. But I do think we have to have, I will feel really comfortable if we know what our goal is in every quarter we can say well we moved the needle 2%, 5%. And maybe I hear what you're saying, but I think it's new. I think it's a new concept in the city. I don't know that it is. So, you know, maybe we sit down with, with Georgensen, maybe we pick one. And we've talked about KPIs. And I think sitting down with the fire Marshall and working on some of those aggressive the brush clearance issues that we've got this year and the code enforcement issues that we want him to pick up and establishing KPIs around that area for the first to just explore and see what it looks like. Maybe we pick one and we try it this year and see how it works. I don't know, just an idea. Maybe we pick two. I don't know how we how we want to introduce it to staff, but that's a it's a new concept. I'm all on board with it. You know, tracking KPIs does take time and effort, establishing goals and tracking them takes time and effort, but Should we reserve them to, for the most important things we want, we absolutely want to track and we absolutely want to get done. But one of the things we have to track is compliance with the housing element and all those requirements that they're putting on us. So that would be. Yeah. to me the longest journey begins with a single step. Compliance is always a good one, Carol. Very great. No, just to me it's just a process of creating greater detail. What I see when I look at our current objectives and goals are very nice words but they're not measurable. Until objectives can be measurable, they're meaningless. They're words, they're happy words. So my gut has always been, you know, try to develop a process of developing stepped goals. And I don't know how or when we all choose to do that but I'm highly supportive of that model and I certainly then it's our job to come back and say okay this has got to be prioritized so take the limited assets we have and prioritize this one but know that we're never going to forget the second one, the third one or the fourth one because it's equally important. That's just all I'm saying about that. I don't want to restructure the world. I just want to find a way that I can wake up in the morning and look at the report and say, oh gee, yeah, we got that done this week. Yep. So are we asking them staff to create some measurable goals in brush clearance? Is that? I'm proposing. If we talk about goals, we should define what goals we want done. We don't want to just have a bunch of goals and spend a bunch of money tracking them. I think we should have one or two or three areas that are critical that we agree or critical. And we don't know, I don't think we need to decide tonight on what those are. But if we're going to track, if we're going to have goals and we're going to track them, we're going to have KPIs. We need to define what those KPIs are for those goals so they know what to track. And then define what what we think success looks like. So what is achieving the goal look like? What does that, how do we define success in the goal? But you know, in my mind, I mean, the one area I think it's important, and this is just John, and this is what's important to me is, you know, our brush clearance and our code enforcement program associated with, you know, reducing our fire risk in the city to me. That is a really important goal. Okay, but how do you quantify that? So, that's where I'm saying I would need to sit down with Chief Jorgensen. Okay. And I would need to work with him on what he thinks that program looks like in his first year. But again, I don't think it's a one-year plan. I think it's, I think it's, what does the first year look like? What does the second year look like? What does the third year look like? And what are the, what are the key performance indicators? Because that way there, as part of the goals, He gets to also define what his needs are to meet those goals so that we as a council provide him with what he needs. For example if you want if you want abatement times reduced so one of the key goal and the key performance indicators of a well-functioning brush cleanse program might be that abatement times move from 90 days to we're saying 30 days, right? So how many how many homes required abatement? How many days did it take to abate? And what were the, you know, one of the things you always want to understand is, you know, what were the key, what were the roadblocks, what were the inhibitors to you meeting the goal? So as a council we can provide the resources needed to fix those problems. Just throwing one area out there, right? So, but it would be sitting so for that goal, we'd sit down with the chief, probably the chiefs and we would sit down and say, okay, let's talk about the 2025 brush clearance programs. What do we think are the three or four goals that, you know, you don't want to have more, usually want just three or four. Where are the key goals that you want to have for that program? What do you think the key performance indicators are of those goals? And then what do you see, what's inhibiting you? What would you see as inhibitors to meeting those goals? And I think that's a good discussion for us to have as a council in open session with each of those team leads to say, okay, Chief, you own the program. We've talked about establishing goals. We think we've got these three goals. I would take public comment on them. Make sure the public agrees that those are the goals they want to see. Have the costs associated with them up there. In this case here, the cost is going to be people that are non-compliant. Aren't going to have 90 days to screw around and get their properties compliant. They're going to have to step it up and either work with the chief on a program to get it done within 30 days or have a project plan to get it done within whatever time frame we assign I would say no more than 90 days to get a basement done on their properties. And then we tracked that right we tracked how effective that program is and getting that done and then understand when it doesn't happen why. So just just an example of one of the goals that we might want to throw out. I mean I'm sure sure you'd do the same thing at work that we used to do. And of course, Jorgensen would be in charge of that, so he'd be with the chief, and he has to sit on and write his own goals and objects to get this done, and they have to be measurable, and then the chief would be following up on it. Right, and we should take, again, for something like this, right? because it's a significant change. What we're proposing here is a fairly significant change. People aren't used to it. I would say we would want to have a discussion at one of the council meetings around that specific goal before we locked it in and make sure the public had an opportunity to comment on it. So that and that kind of lets each of us say, hey, look, we went through a public process with this. Everyone had an opportunity to comment on. So that and that kind of lets each of us say hey look we went through a public process with this everyone had an opportunity to comment on the goal and we adopted it based off of what the chief recommended and the goals and then sorry and the public input that we received. Well and they need to be developed by the employee. Oh I don't disagree I mean I think the employee develops them but us. us as the employee. Oh, I don't disagree. I mean, I think the employee develops them, but us as the board of the city, we have input. We provide guidance. We then govern. But it starts, I guess it starts at the employee, say at Jorgens' level, right? Right, right. He would develop the goal. He develops them, gives them to the chief, right? And the chief looks at them and says, okay, these are, these are the goals and objectives of what you're going to do this year, right? And then the same thing, you know, rolls it on. That housing element, that would be, you know, a rafority and our consultant on the housing development would work on those goals and make sure those objectives are understood. The KPIs there are actually pretty easy. The KPIs are defined by the dates that the work has to get done. So no, I mean, and maybe we start with those two. I mean, brush clearance is gonna be tough. I mean, it going to be a tough set of goals to define, but I think it's... In some ways it might make it... Here, we're giving Mr. Jorgensen more work because he's not in the room, right? But it might be better for him if the council, because then he could say, well, the council made me difficult. I mean, I think we own, I mean, if it's not clear yet to people in this city, we own the brush car. I mean, this council owns this brush car's program. We have told the chief on multiple locations our expectations of him. You know, when we move, you know, we put a chief in that role. I mean, you have, and I, you know, I know I've had conversations with him. I'm sure others have had conversations with him about our expectations as a council this year. This is just an area we can't mess around with. I mean, we have to get aggressive. We have to make sure that we're ready. I mean, I'm sure you all listen to the news and the wildfire season this year is gonna be horrific. They're talking about wildfire season starting in June. That in June, fuel moisture levels will be so low that we'll already be into fire mornings. So, for after you. I'm just trying. Am I making you uncomfortable or? No, I'm just trying to. Look like you're. I'm just trying to quantify goals at a work plan and like brush clearance roads, staffing, fire department. We want to pull them out of this work plan and make them separate line items for our general, our council's goals and objectives for this? No, no, no. I think we're just saying part of this. I think we're just saying one part. for the goal section assistant one part is brush clearance. It's not it's not taking any other aspects of the fire department out of the planning you're doing You want them to be a separate goal For brush clearance I'd like to road staffing make them separate. I'm just saying let's start with I think we've with two things here that we can start with which is brush clearance and the housing element as two goals. I don't think we're asking you at least I'm not asking you right now to do anything else with goals. I'm wanted to look, I'm trying to quantify, wrap my mind around how to tweak or change those to efficiently sort of grasp the goals and objectives that you want for those specific items. So we'll kind of make them their own bullet points and add it to that. Yes, for now. I mean, Mr. Captain George and I guess I should say. He cheated. I mean, he was going to, as I understand, it speed up the inspection process and try, I mean, we know how many properties were inspected last year. So, ultimately the only way to really speed up the inspection process. So inspecting all the properties, he's already significantly shronk to the timeline too, to go to a bay mint. It's going to be lots of staffing to go out and inspect everything and have lots of inspectors out there. There's some other technology we're looking at right now that may aid in that inspection component to it that he's looking at that we can bring to you as one way to Capture that initial inspection or inspections Relatively quickly and then work back from there But even now we'll require a lot of additional staffing to be able to work through and and double check and verify and then work with residents to put it into compliance and then go forward with the bapements if we need a bapement. So we can work on those ideas. He already has some definite thoughts and ideas on how to do some of that stuff to it, but we can bring that all to you. Yeah, I mean that's where the goals come in, right? So if we say we want all, the goal should be all inspections are done by August. Let's say I'm just throwing a date out there, right? All inspections need to be done by August. Well he picks. He. But again, he would pick a date. We would say that that doesn't look good. We would bring a goal in. We'd tell him to bring the goal in and then he would have to tell us, yeah, to do that, I need these resources to track that goal. But I mean I just think that's an area where we should have a very clear goal about what we want done. We should have clear performance indicators about what performance we expect to see for which line item on the goal. One of them should be cutting the weeds on the city property. In my opinion. You know, cutting the weeds, spraying the weeds, whatever we're going to do with the weeds on city property. I mean, I think there's, I mean, obviously the city should lead by example, but we have other government entities also that should be held accountable, you know, the Habitat is one. LA County with Harbor and with their part of Hacienda is another. The entrance, the North entrance of the city has been done in years somehow. I think they've been through it every year. That could be a con, is measuring the increase in clearance by the Habitat Authority. So that's another issue. I think it's measurable. I don't know if it's doable. Well, you know, according to the agreement we have with the habitat is the fire marshal sets the clearance requirements and he should be driving that work. He should be ensuring that work gets done on a risk prioritized basis so that the most risky parts of the habitat are cleared first and they don't wait until, you know, I know they were having issues with contractor issues and they didn't get to a lot of their stuff until very late in the fire season, which puts us at risk. So, um, or goats. I mean, are you getting what you need here, Raff, or do we need to? No, I think so. I was just trying to like, I look at my brain, I look at my brain, I'm just adjusting there for a minute, and I don't want to do that. No, no, thank you for that. Thank you, Greg. Okay. So any further discussion on item seven? Angie, do you have what you need from us on? No, I think I got a clear direction. One thing I do want to just discuss since we're on budget and money is the item that Greg did bring up and I don't know if we need to agenda is it, rafferty on a separate meeting but understanding really what we've got out there in the form of leans and how many dollars we've got out there. We can bring that to you at the next council meetings and then understanding of what's outstanding. And then do we need to change something in our code to be able to, I mean, I'm not sure we do this today, but I don't think we do. Do we charge them interest on that money? Is there some interest charge when it's... The county does, once we place the lien, it's in the lien to the county, the county does place a penalty on it for every year that it's delinquent and not paid. So there is a fee associated with it, but it's not like an interest, like it's, you know, three percent interest or four percent or five percent interest on the dollar amount. There is like a penalty fee that the county places on the lien amount every year. Have we looked into the ability to put? We can explore those options and look at what is, what we have the ability to do, and then what we have the ability to do once we place it with the county, or if it's something we have to re-learn every year, so we can explore some options to look at what our potential is. When the property does sell and there's penalty amounts that are put on it by the county, do we see that money or is the county keep that money? We do see the penalties and interests. I'm not sure if the county keeps a portion of it, but we do receive penalties and interest. No, I think we need to find out what that is and what we're allowed to do or not a lot to do as far as placement of interest in those counts or on those lanes. Maybe when you're talking to the county about the sales tax issue and you're on the third or fourth person, you can also ask about the, are you though? Are you the one I should talk about about leans on property tax and how that money is? I think it would be good because my expectation is we'll probably see an increase in this area. And I just want to make sure that we're not giving, you know, low interest or zero interest loans to weed abatement violators. We should not, you know, we shouldn't be doing that. Either that or come up with a, if we can't put interest on it, then what we should be doing through our municipal code or whatever we use, whatever mechanism we use to allow for us to do that, we should be looking at the average repayment time whether it's five years or 10 years or 20 years and and tacking on in the front end and amount that equates to some earnings replacement that we would see for that money. So we keep our taxpayers in the city hall. We'll explore those options and give you as more information. So yeah, maybe that's something we put on the May agenda rafferty is let's just look at that because the other thing too I want to look at and go over is what we do with repeat offenders in this space. So my understanding from just what we've talked about in the past is, you there's no escalation. So in other words I would want to explore if you if you if you the city has to abate year one because you didn't do it and then the city has to abate in year two and year three. It should kind of be like a point system where if we're constantly having to evade properties we should be escalating the penalties that go along with the cost. In addition to that I would suggest that at some point if we could legally do so, say basically you've messed up you've failed to your weed ababent for three or four years in a row. At this point, we're going to do the weed debatement at the beginning of the process and bill you for it, if we can legally do that. Because the ultimate goal on weed debatement is to get the weed debated and the money is important and is secondary. So the sooner we get the weed to baited on these from these repeated fenders the better. All right. Anything else on item seven? Angie, anything else you need us to talk about before I adjourn? No, I think that's it. I'll make whatever updates to the budget that's needed for the next meeting. And then I'll also update the strategic plans and the reserve. Okay, and then Ryan, maybe the Fire subcommittee can meet with Chief Georgensen and it's on the goals. I think that's worth a meeting, don't you? and, we'll get together on that and set it up, I guess. Yeah. And we can chat a little bit about that. I mean, I'm sure you do the exact same thing at a son that I used to do. So it's. Yeah, I mean, I've got to believe that, you know, I don't want to dictate to Mitch how to do it. I've got to believe in the fire department. They've got a similar process that he's comfortable with using. But I think we should set the swim lane for him about what we want to see as a council for this and try it. I don't know if you guys have something that the government has used for goals and KPIs and tracking but if you've got something you're comfortable with We can work with them to put it together so you can Give them some kind of Maybe let Brian and I maybe let Brian and I kind of give them kind of bring to them what we're thinking about Then we'll work the plan and the goals out and then we can yeah, I don't want to dictate to Mitch how to run the program, but I think I want to make sure that we want them to develop it. Yeah. Well, but within, you know, using our expectations, right, saying this is what the council expects. And then let's, you guys put it together and present it. Maybe to us first and then bring it to council next month because we gotta do this next month because if we don't, we're already in the June and that's gonna be kind of late. But let's see if we can get done for next month. All right, any other comments? Questions, concerns? There's a wisdom. I'll adjourn the meeting. Thanks.