the the the the the the the the the the the the the the approve the final agenda? Motion to approve the final agenda. Second. Madam clerk the roll. Council member Pricehorse. Aye. Council member Solomon. Aye. Council member Welch. Aye. Nice mayor Carr. Aye. And Mayor Moira. Aye. Members, do we have any exparte communications? Seeing and hearing none now is the time for public comment. Members of the public may come to the podium. You'll have two minutes. Seeing no members of the public. We will now move to item 6.1, the study session to discuss the five-year general fund projection and budget strategies. Good evening, Mayor and members of the Council, Brian Moira from Regional Government Services, Finance Consultant. And tonight we're going to kick off the 2527 proposed budget hearings for the Council with a discussion of the updated five year model and some of the general fund challenges and options that you have in front of you. Next slide. So here's a quick background on the budget process. The city of Emeryville has a two year budget.. Currently, you're in the second year of your, current two-year budget, that'll end on June 30th. And then the finance department has been working on the next two-year budget, which starts on July 1st. The schedule is tonight, we're gonna have a discussion of the five-year model. Then on May 20th, we'll have a discussion of the draft budget. And then it'll go to the various budget committees you have. And then on June 3rd, it'll be up for adoption. Next slide. So we'll start off with a review of the current 2023-25 budget. Next slide. This is the five-year forecast contained in the 2023-25 budget. The significance here is that it shows a deficit in the general fund for all five years ranging from 2.7 million to 6.4 million. It also is a little unusual in that the unassigned general fund balance starts out at 18 percent and by the end of the five years it's projected at negative 16. Next slide. A couple things worth highlighting in the current budget. One is that similar to budgets in the city since 2020 for the last five years, the budget contained continued warnings about the structural deficit in the general fund and that that deficit was not sustainable. The budget was also a little unusual in my experience because the focus of the budget, rather than keeping the general fund at a sustainable level instead was focused on keeping the economic uncertainty reserve at a certain level, which seemed to me a little bit backwards. It's worth noting here that the government finance officer's association, also known as the GFOA, has a national standard that recommends that local governments, which would include cities and counties, maintain an unrestricted general fund balance of no less than two months worth of cash, which equals 16.7 percent. what's notable here is that the city's budget, the current budget only met the standard in the first year, but did not meet that standard in years two through five. Next slide. So in terms of the performance in the general fund over the last two years, in July of last year, at the midpoint in the-year budget, projections showed that both years of the budget we're gonna have increased deficits over projections and the city began to research opportunities and strategies. The 23, 24 budget ended with a general fund deficit that was $2 million higher than projected, primarily due to the IRS settlement where the city began subject to social security payments. In the following year, the current year, the deficit increased to $8.8 million versus $2.7 million budgeted. And some of the key factors for that were a drop in fees, primarily development fees of $4 million, a $1.3 million drop in sales tax rather than a projection of 3.5% growth per year. And this was offset somewhat by increases in your utility tax revenues and your investment income. Expenditures were also over budget estimates by about $3 million. This was due to two years of the Social Security payments, which were initially anticipated, and also labor agreements that were higher than the original budget estimates. And this was offset somewhat by vacant positions. Next slide. So addressing the 2425 budget deficit, a couple things were occurred in March where we're a note. First of all, the City Council took several key actions upon the recommendation of your two budget committees. You transferred $3.2 million per year in residual property tax payments to the general fund providing a new ongoing source of revenue. You also transferred $7 million from the economic uncertainty and capital funds to bring the general fund up to the 20% goal. You combine the disaster reserve and economic uncertainty funds, and you finally assign $3.3 million in economic uncertainty funds for the future Social Security settlement, which is yet to occur. And then a couple weeks later, was the unanticipated Sutter Property Transfer Tax revenues. This was when Sutter purchased the BioMed site and that generated $11.2 million in one-time money in property transfer taxes is pursuant to the terms of measure O, which the voters passed in 2022, and this further strength in the general fund balance in the current year. However, it's worth noting that Sutter as a health foundation in California is exempt from future taxes, which means they will not be paying property taxes, business license, license tax, et cetera, to the City of Emeryville in the future. next slide. So now we move on to the 2527 proposed budget. Next slide. This is the updated or the new five year general fund forecast. And there are a couple things to note here. First of all, the projected deficit in the general fund has continued to get worse. And then we have the next slide. And then we have the next slide. And then we have the next slide. The projected deficit in the general fund has continued to get worse. In this round, the projection is anywhere from $9.7 million deficit next year all the way up to 15 point or 14.6 million in the fifth year. In the yellow band, what we're showing you is some of the initial thoughts about how those negative numbers might be addressed and that would include taking into account the typical 5% vacancy factor the city has which would save somewhere on the order of 1.4 to 1.6 million dollars a year. We also showed transfers from other funds into the general fund. You'll notice that in the first year we don't really have much of that because again the Sutter money is still there. Your general fund is still at a 31% level so there's not a need for additional funds but starting next year. Excuse me the following year. We're looking at transferring four million dollars out of the economic uncertainty reserve into this fund. And then in the third, fourth, and fifth year, the amount of money being transferred significantly increases. What you will notice here that unlike the previous budget, all five years showed the general fund at or above the 20% benchmark. So again, our focus, this go round is rather than focusing on the reserve or focusing on the general fund's health. Next slide. So again, this is kind of some of the highlights. The key factors here in terms of the increasing deficit or things like we're anticipating that the sales tax and your fees are going to be relatively flat with a very slow growth over the five-year period rather than the more ambitious projections in your last budget. We're also factoring in the increased social security costs. The final year of the 5% labor agreements, which will be next year, and then increased costs in general. And then in terms of, you know, the obvious question about, will these numbers change? It really is a function of several things. If revenues come in ahead of projections, or if you get any one time unanticipated revenues, not unlike the Southern revenue, the deficit could go down. Conversely, if things like the tariffs and the downturn in the economy, the local and national level continue. If the declining consumer confidence continues, that will tend to reduce your sales tax revenue. And right now, the consumer index is at its lowest point since the 1950s. So that's a real risk. And then another related issue has to do with the stock market. The rates that the city has charged for its retirement under the CalPERS program are calculated in large part based on investment returns. And every June 30th, the CalPERS organization calculates their annual return. If it's below a certain benchmark, the rates go up, although that's phased in over a five-year ramp up period. So we're all waiting to see between now and June 30th whether the stock market returns will go up. I'm not real optimistic that that would happen, but it's possible, but that's another potential cloud looming out there for you. Next slide. So now we roll into some of the budget strategy options that the city has. Next slide. The first one is the one we talked about, which is essentially depending on your reserves and your fund balances. And because the city has been so good about its reserves and its fund balances over the years, you have a substantial amount of money in these categories that you can draw upon over the next few years, even with the large deficits that you're looking at. However, as the finance department went through this process of modeling and looking what's possible, what we found was that even though you literally could absorb all five years of those deficits using these one-time monies, by the end of the five years, you'd be pretty close to exhausting some of these funds. And so I don't think you really want to approach it that way. But you can see on this slide, some of the measures that we would have to take and the amount, I mean, you're talking about things like taking almost $19 million out of your section, 115 pension reserve, using a pretty good chunk of your economic uncertainty reserve, taking one of the capital program, et cetera. So it's an option you have, but not really one that would be recommended. Next slide. So now we get into the question of revenue measures. And I think what I could say here is that this is a very different picture today than what you were looking at last year. Last year you will recall that in August, the budget and governance committee began looking at revenue measures and the staff reported to them at that time that there were four different options and that they would in aggregate bring in $4.2 million and that of that 2.4 million would have been sales tax, a quarter-cent that you have remaining. And because of that, there was some energy around sales tax at the time. Since that time, I've been working with your finance team and we've been trying to look at this and also get into a lot more detail and try to really fine tune these numbers. And so a couple of things were changed. One is we put the parcel tax and facility district option that the city looked at in 2022, but did not move ahead with back on the list because this has the potential of raising $3.5 to $5 million a year. But in addition, we also looked at the other revenues. And while the sales tax number is consistent with the estimate from before, although we've lowered it a bit because your sales taxes been lowered a bit, it's now 2.1 million, not 2.4 million. You'll see that the other revenue items have significantly increased in terms of their revenue potential. The business license tax is now anywhere from $4 to almost $10 million a year in potential revenue. The utility tax is now up to almost $2 million a year and your hotel tax is up to $1 million And so if you add all of those together You're looking at almost $20 million a year in revenue potential Which interestingly would more than cover your entire deficit even in the worst case scenario So I think that Revenue measures are probably going to be part of the solution to the issue long term. And another thing in this area, and we talk about it later in the slide here, is that you do need to think about the timing of these measures in terms of your election cycles because you can only put these on during general elections. So you're looking at 26, 28, and 30 during this five-year model. But if one or more of these revenue measures were put on the ballot, voters approve them. The need for tapping into your reserve and fund balances, or the need for budget cuts, would be significantly reduced and potentially even eliminated altogether. It's also the case because you do have, you know, we are showing you this projection over a multi-year period that it may be the case that you might choose if you're pursuing one or more revenue measures to do them one or two at a time rather than doing them all at once. In other words, you know, phasing the mound. Next slide. And then we get to budget cuts. Obviously in the budget estimate, we do have the 5% vacancy rate already baked in. So that's a budget cut right there. But beyond that, obviously there's always the option of reducing the budget in terms of both money and staff. However, this would require if you only depended on budget cuts and nothing else, some pretty significant reductions. Remember, this is a $60 million budget in the general fund, 10% of that budget would be six million. So you can see to get to 15 million, that would be some pretty aggressive reductions if that was the sole option. Obviously, all three of these can be sort of mixed and matched. You don't necessarily have to do all one or all of the other. But we thought for purposes of tonight's discussion to lay all of this out at the front end of the budget process, you could begin to think about what your options are going forward. I think it's also important too to note that when we bring you the draft budget next time, you're next meeting, we only going to be talking about the first two years of the five year cycle, namely 25, six and 26, seven. But again, as I indicated earlier, having a five year model and looking at the process over a longer horizon, I think makes a lot of sense because you can begin to strategize about not only what's happening in the two years in front of you, but also what's going to happen in the next two-year cycle and after that, next slide. So in terms of our recommended strategy, what we would suggest is that in the first two years of the budget, in the first year, we would depend upon your prior your actions, the staff vacancies and the suitor money, and not take any more aggressive actions beyond that. In the second year, we would recommend that we take $4 million out of the economic uncertainty fund to stay at the benchmark level. And then also during 26, 7, and probably even earlier than that begin to have a discussion about what direction you want to go for the future years, whether that's revenue measures and or budget reductions. And if you're interested in the revenue measures, we would suggest that you begin to entertain that sometime this fall, around September, once we have all the studies complete and all the numbers ready for your review. And then as we note in the third through fifth year, this is where really the big challenges come because you might look at new revenues or you might look at budget cuts, but again, if you don't have new revenues and your one-time revenues are beginning to fade, we think that budget cuts are definitely in your future. So it's gonna be challenging, but particularly so in years three through five, next slide. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Members, any questions? I have a question. Vice mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much, Brian. First of all, for all your help that you have provided over the time period since we've been trying to get a financial, financial department director. Really appreciated all your knowledge, all your expertise. Very helpful. Thank you. The question I have is about the pilot that we had discussed as one of the things that we could do. I believe payment in lieu of taxes. Correct. Which you've been very successful with in Burlingham. We discussed those models. I would like for you to please share about that. Sure, it's part of a revenue measure. I'd be happy to vice mayor. And you are correct, that's yet another opportunity we didn't specifically call it out. Pilot, payment in lieu of taxes and congratulations you earned your local government acronym degree for tonight. Basically what has happened in the Bay Area over the last several years is as Sutter has opened medical facilities around the Bay Area in each of those cities. They've also come as part of a development and green process. Come to pay each of the so cities money in lieu of tax revenue because of the fact there's a loss of revenue. The different cities have handled it differently in part because of both their revenue and budgetary needs and also the facility. So for example, in the city of Palo Alto, which was the first one that I was aware of, they have an agreement with Sutter that Sutter pays them $75,000 a year, which goes into their general fund as an in lieu payment. In the city of Mountain View, which also has a medical center similar to Palo Alto, they elected to take a one-time payment from Sutter rather than an ongoing payment like Palo Alto. So they got a one-time $5 million payment from Sutter. And then most recently, San Carlos, and this is the one I'm most familiar with because I was involved in negotiating that particular deal in San Carlos. The city elected again to take the ongoing payment to the general fund, not a one time payment. And this one was a little unique because what they did is they took the $10 million, which was what Cedra agreed to with the city. And they put it into the Silicon Valley Foundation in an interest bearing account. And then the city receives what's called a target payment, not sure where that terminology came from. But anyway, it started out at $675,000 in the first year and then it grows by 3% per year over time for the next 50 years. And part of the arrangement with Sutter is that if the interest from the $10 million investment in the foundations is not sufficient to meet the terms of the city's target amount, then Sutter will replenish, I think, as the term the amount of money in the foundation to get it to where it needs to be to make those annual payments. So I think each of those city models are things that the city of Emeryville could look at as you begin to prepare for your negotiations with Sutter in terms of a development agreement, which I understand is part of the intent in this project as well. And vice mayor, you are correct that that could also be obviously an additional source of funds for the city. It's a somewhat involved process, usually you have to bring in outside legal help and economists and other folks. And I believe in the St. Carlos example, I think we spent about two or three years pulling all that together. So it won't happen overnight, but if it is something that is a priority for the city and the council, it's something certainly to be considered. Thank you. Other questions? Member Price Force. Thank you Mayor. Brian, it's been just great. You are working with us and even as we are welcoming a member, a new member of our team in terms of finance, I hope that they have the same wit and candidness that has been refreshing ever since you started working with the city. I have questions around the business license tax. So and and the sort of landscape analysis with other cities have other cities. What was their cap as it relates to, or have any other city have had cats as it relates to the business license tax? Or is it just simply just raising that amount? On business license tax it can be all of the above and I think one of the things that typically happens when you look at business license tax is it gets very involved. You probably recall that one of my first comments about that was if you're going to do it you need to consult with your business community, the Chamber of Commerce and you also probably are going to want to refer the matter to your business and governance subcommittee before it gets to council because there's going to be all sorts of options. In terms of our discussions with HDL, in fact we're in the process of contracting with them to start the study, they've indicated that they believe that your rates are on the lower side compared to other communities and so there's an opportunity to raise the rates to get a little closer to market and the two numbers that you saw in the range were I think the 3.7 million they characterized as if the city made a modest increase in the rates whereas the $9 million would be more of a larger amount as they called it. I think what will happen in the study process is you'll look at the number of categories you have. I think when I looked at it, you had like 41, which is way too many, typically in the more modern ordinances of this type, you get typically four to six categories. However, in cities that have older ordinances such as yours, it's not uncommon to have a lot of rates. And the reason for that is before the business license taxes required voter approval, it used to be something the city councils could do on their own. As new businesses came into town and new business types, the staff would come to the council and they would add categories. And so the number of categories grew and grew and grew. The problem is if you get to as many categories as you have it becomes difficult to figure out exactly what category businesses fit into, particularly as new business types come online. So that will be part of the study. And I think that even though we're showing a range of three to nine million, I think it's fair to say that as you get into the meat and potatoes of this, it could be the case that looking at the rates and the categories and whatever the actual number might be somewhere in the middle, it might be maybe four or five, six million, whatever. It's, there'll be all sorts of things to consider. On the cap question, it's again, sort of all over the map. Some cities have caps, some don't. My experience is when you update a business license ordinance and you have a cap, the normal practice is to increase the cap as part of the reform or the modernization. However, you always have the option of eliminating it if you choose. At the moment, Emeryville has one business at the cap and that business is paying $455,000 per year for business license tax, and it goes up each year. I think if you increase the rates as is envisioned in this study, you'll have more than one business at the cap. So part of the discussion is going to be if you pursue a business license tax increase, not only what are the categories, what are the rates in the categories, but also what do you do with the cap? Do you increase it? Do you eliminate it? I know for example, in the peninsula, where I'm based, two of the cities increased the cap, and a third eliminated it all together. So for example, in I think it was Redwoodwood City, the cap used to be $7,000 and they increased it to $250,000. In Foster City, they took the cap from $28,000 to $250,000. And each of those cases still way below where your cap is. But then in the third city in South San Francisco, the cap was a million dollars and they removed it all together. So I think all of those things are on the table when you look at this particular tax and you could consider raising the cap, limiting the cap. But again, that's the sort of thing, I think as you get into it and also in your discussions with the business community, I'm sure they'll have some feelings about that particularly, either if they're already at the max or with your new rates They could be and again to get to three to nine million. We're talking about some pretty significant rate increases now because most of your rates haven't changed since the 1990s Perhaps that's to be expected by some but again given the magnitude of what's on the table. You know, I'm sure it'll get some reaction. Member Price Force. Thank you. So with the business license tax, the your recommendation in terms of ballot measures since these would have to be general election measures, which pretty much every two years. Then, let's say if we limited it to about two, one or two measures, the business license tax, the conversation, and I believe that this question extends beyond you, Brian, and perhaps the city Attorney, I see a major and maybe Chad, if you can help with that, that the business license tax is something that we can actually do on our own as a City Council, or it would have to be a measure. it has to be a measure. Okay. Yeah. Okay. In fact, all five of these have to go to the voters. Okay. I think to your point about how many measures you'd put on a ballot and how many you do outreach on. Typically, the way this works is you have a study session in the fall ahead of the election. You look at the five measures and the council says, we think these two or these three are the ones we'd like to pursue. The pollsters in my experience generally don't like to poll on more than two, although if you really push them, they might look at a third. So I think there'll be some discussion and selection by this council in terms of what are those two or three that you'd like to take a closer look at. And at that point, usually you have an outreach firm that helps you do some outreach and tell the story to the community why you need the money and why these are the options. And then the pollster will frame some questions. And you'll get some data back in terms of what is the public's feeling or the vote more specific than the voters feeling about these measures are one or more of them at a level that could pass. It's also worth noting that of these five, the parcel tax and the facility district, take a two thirds vote, the others take a majority. And that might also influence your thinking about which ones to advance, but it's also the case when you get the polling data, you have to look now at, do you have two thirdsthirds support on that one versus the other four majority. But, you know, I've had experience in the last few years working on different RGS projects where in one city they put the business license tax and the hotel tax on the same ballot in both past and they also increase their downtown parking rates because it was a tourist-based economy and that one to your point, that one is something the Council can adopt. On another city, they elected to do only one at a time. So the first year they did, it was actually half-send sales tax and then the following two years later, they did the hotel tax and part of their incentive was they had a $2 million deficit and the sales tax would have generated more than $2 million. So they said since both hotel and sales tax have pulled high enough to pass and we need $2 million clearly we want to do the sales tax first and then we can do the hotel tax two years later. And the good news for them is they both passed. So I think there's different philosophies in terms of how you do these whether you want to have multiple measures on or not or just one, but I think in terms of in the fall when you look at all this it is probably likely that you'll want to narrow the list a little bit just because the pollsters is going to probably tell you can't really pull on all five. Number of price, Horse. Thank you. The staff vacancies with the staff vacancies and a priority, a strategic plan, a priority being researching revenue measures for 2026 and perhaps the city manager, perhaps you can answer that question as well. Would we need to fill any positions as relates to any revenue building? So for example, any grant writers's not a very good question. As we said, it's not a very good question. As we said, it's not a very good question. As we said, it's not a very good question. As we said, it's not a very good question. As we said, it's not a very good question. As we said, it's% number is a number that's reflected that in any given year the city maintains about a 5% vacancy rate, not because we decided not to fill the positions, but because of the time that it takes to recruit. An average recruitment is about 3 to 6 months, and so that's about 3 to 6 months of salary And so we calculated all of that. The last vacancy report that you received was in March and I think was about 19 vacancies. And so we calculated that and that's the number that we came up with and we just feel with the size of our current HR department. We will probably always run at about a 5% vacancy rate just as a result of the recruitment process. So that's one. I do think yes. Council gave us approval in March to consider hiring a consultant firm to support the city's advancement for additional grant research and grant writing as needed and that is something we will probably utilize when that time comes. Does that answer your question? Yes, thank you for making it clear so that we wouldn't necessarily be adding staff. We would be more sour outsourcing staff as relates to. We wouldn't be adding staff. We will continue to feel but it just takes us time to feel the the recruitment process Well, that's where that number comes from. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. I've gotten several questions around Well, why don't you just how are you a grant writer? Why don't you just you know, and so this helps a lot in Clarifying that thank you. I would say too that on hiring a grant writer that has been something in the last two years and number of cities have done and I think we talked about that at an earlier meeting that the cost is somewhere on the area of maybe 60 to 65,000 and I think the the way the other cities have looked at it is even if we get one grant of say a hundred thousand dollars we've more than made up for the cost of that grant writing assistance but on the other other hand, I think, you know, everyone needs to be clear that given the magnitude of your general fund deficits grants aren't going to get you there because not only the size of them is not sufficient to cover it, but also again it's back to that discussion of it's one time money. So usually for grants, what you really want to look at are things like do you have specific programs or initiatives? Is it in the environmental area or youth or other park related things where a one time grant would help you? And I think it's certainly worth pursuing. But again, in the context of this discussion, I'm not sure it's going to materially help you on your multimillion dollar deficit problem. Thank you. You answered all my questions. Thank you. Vice mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Brian, on that issue, I just want to explore what your ideas or thoughts would be. If there is a foundation like the Silicon Valley Foundation in which the pilot would put funds in, would that kind of foundation also be eligible for potentially annual grants? If we structure it such a way? I think there are two different things. The grants basically tend to be from the state and federal government and they tend to be for specific types of things, like EV charging stations or citizen outreach or parks or various things. The use of the foundation in San Carlos was more a question of if Sutter's willing to front the money and park it somewhere, I think they kind of wanted to have an arms link to relationship in terms of the money. It's like, we'll give you a check, and you can either have it up front like Mountain View or you can put it in an investment, and then you figure out where to invest it. And I think because St. Carlos had didn't work previously with the Silicon Valley Foundation, they thought that would be a good vehicle to use. But here in the East Bay, I'm imagining there are foundations and other organizations one could work with, you know, our financial institutions even to set up a similar vehicle. So they're different, but again, both worth pursuing. Thank you, Brian. Seeing no further questions, I'd like to take public comment on this item. Are there any members of the public who'd like to comment on the five-year general fund projection? Seeing none, I'll bring this back to the council for discussion and I would just like to note that this is a purely informational item. As Brian mentioned, we will be considering potential revenue measures to consider more seriously in the fall. All. Number of price force. I just want to thank Vice Mayor Carr for mission the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and that of foundations are very interesting and tricky. Silicon Valley Community Foundation has more money than I pretty much every foundation in the United States. And so, and then yet at the same time, the amount of money they actually use is it's almost negligible compared to what they actually have. It's one of the biggest issues that we've, we talk about a lot in the philanthropy community. And so you have whether or not we can create a foundation and then that foundation can sort of offset. And it's one of the things that I've explored with the promise initiative that we can create something that can offset some of the expenses that we make as a city. So for example, if we create a, that private foundation can actually create a grant that either the city can apply for or an organization within the community can apply for. And then that's granted, let's say, swimming. Let's say we want to make swimming free for everyone, for community groups, for, yeah. So when we do that, then any costs related to, so even if swimming is free, any cost related to maintaining the pool, those sort of things would be a part of that grant. And then we wouldn't have to necessarily spend that kind of money as a city. And so the question is, is the foundation sort of just holding money as a fund? And then is it just collecting interest or is it actually a very actionable foundation? And that's something that we as a city can actually create and we can actually push many of our businesses to invest in that particular foundation. And so that's something that I definitely would be happy to explore in the future. But other than that, I just want to say thank you for thinking outside the box. I was released to how we can close some of the gaps in terms of services that we can provide in the city using both public and private partnerships. Members, any other comments? Members Solomon. Thank you Mayor. Just a couple of reflections that came up during Brian's presentation. Thank you, Brian, for that. So one is, you know, just to, I know everyone on the council knows this, but just to repeat that we are certainly not the only steady dealing with deficits of this kind. And I think we are in a better position than many to navigate the choppy waters. The second is the amount of uncertainty that Brian mentioned as we go forward, just in terms of both our revenue coming in that's partially due to larger economic forces which are completely outside of our control and no one knows where those are going. But then the third is, you know, we talk about revenue generation and something I think we helpful to include as part of that conversation is, you know, how can we maximize revenue from the business that is currently conducted in the city that's not raising taxes? In addition to raising taxes potentially, that is, you know, increasing business, increasing the amount of people coming here to shop and, you know, generally revenue for our sales tax, increasing number of businesses. So I know that's something that Chad and the community service, or community development team are working on, but, you know, important to include sort of the full range of revenue options for our city. So thank you again to Brian and I think the presentation is very useful. And I look forward with the council to making the challenging choices as to how we feel to get. I'd also just like to thank the staff, Brian and others for helping us understand the scope of the deficit facing the city. It's quite a difficult financial challenge to say the least. I think it's worth kind of making a distinction between things that the city can do on its own, which we are doing, such as negotiating development agreements with new businesses, recruiting additional businesses, promoting economic activity. These are all things that the city and staff are working hard at every day. So I trust that and hopefully we can change the flat line economic forecast if things start to turn up for the city. But the way I see the revenue measures, those are distinct big picture items. These are things that we need to go to the voters for. The parcel tax, sales tax, the business license tax. So I appreciate that we are studying those more. They need to be fleshed out. We need to know what we're asking the voters for. And then hopefully we'll know enough to hopefully settle on two or three in the fall. But it's looking likely that we're going to have to adopt some sort of revenue measure because if we don't, the financial outlook starts to look quite dire. And I just wanted to note for that analysis, it's very important to consider the surrounding cities, San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, and look at where do we fall currently on those taxes? And I think that will be helpful to at least it would help this council understand where we're competitive, where we're falling behind. Certainly we don't want to be an outlier in terms of any one of these taxes to discourage that sort of economic activity. So those are my comments. Any other remarks? The time is 7.29. This meeting is adjourned.