Yes. We want to talk about it. The people who took it. the I and let the blue lights are on. If you feel the need to speak about... and Thank you. Okay. to think about, thank know, like the air mixture. Awesome. I will make sure you see the blue lights. There you go. Okay. Make sure you see the blue light. Okay, perfect. Make sure you see the blue light. Okay, perfect. And you want to talk about it, and people don't want to be heard? I'm going to talk. Okay. I'm going to go to the other side. I'm going to go to the other side. I'm going to go to the other side. I'm going to go to the other side. I'm going to go to the other side. I'm going to go to the other side. I'm going to go to the other side. I'm going to go to the other side. I'm going to go to the other side. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. Make sure you see the blue light and when you're not ready. All right, I think we're ready to get started. Good morning, everyone. Happy Saturday. Thank you for coming to the library this morning and welcome to this special joint meeting at the main library at 9 a.m. today is March 8th. And I would like to see if Mayor Perotum Trocess would like to lead us... Oh, first let me just remind her we want to turn off their phones or put them on vibrate as to not disrupt the meeting. Mayor Perotum Trocess would you like to lead us in the of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands on nation under God in the middle of liberty and justice for all. Councilmember Snalagy, would you like to read. I'll tap your mic. The City of Santa Monica is located on the land, but to talk with not. With great respect, the city acknowledges the Gabrie the Gabriola Togah. As the first people of the ancient and unseated territory of Kuma Ka, as I had you say, Kuma Ka. A village that we know as Santa Monica. We honor their elders past and present. And the Gabriola descendants who are part of the Gabrille Tonga tribe. We recognize that these people are still here and are settlers and yes we recognize our responsibility and obligation to care for their land and partnership with them. The city of Santa Monica admits to work and partnership with the Gabrielle Tonga people uplift their voices and visibility on their engine. Thank you. I'll now call the role Council members, Wic. Here. Council member Halls here. Council member Raskin here. Council member Snell here. Council member Zernick Skaya here. Mayor Protem, Taro says here and Mayor Negrete here. I will now ask if any council members will be accusing themselves pursuant to the being act this morning. Hearing none. Mayor, did you want to suspend the rule? Yeah, I would like to request that the council suspend the rules on the timers since we are in a informal setting and this is more of discussion. This would mean that collectively we wouldn't be held to the 10-minute rule. I'll second that. I'd just clarify it's a rule 12 section J. So I've got, I guess I'll make the motion and Council Member Hall is seconding. Did you want to do a voice vote? Sure, all in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any pose, no. Well, now move on to public input on remaining items, but there's only one item, and it looks like we have approximately 23 speakers. And Madam Mayor, I have a few more, so I'm gonna give these two because. Is there any discernment between yellow and white or no? Yes. No. Mayor, if it would please you, I would like to make a motion just in order to move us along today to limit public comment to one minute given the number of speakers that we have. I'm asking if anyone would like to second that. I second that. Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Are we calling the vote. So the motion, okay, you get all you everybody, we can't shout out or just going to take a vote. If you can call the vote, the motion was made by Mayor Pro Tem to us is to limit public comment to one minute and seconded by Council Member Snow. Council members are in it, Sk No. Council member SNL. Councillor Murrouss. Councillor Murrouss. No. Councillor Murrouss. No. Councillor Murrouss. No. Councillor Murrouss. No. Councillor Murrouss. No. Councillor Murrouss. No. Councillor Murrouss. No. Councillor Murrouss. No. No. And Mayor Negrete? No. That motion fails. Okay. So I'm going to call the first. Where are we lining up and speaking? No, right to podium. Oh, OK. So if you call the first few names, and these are actually all our minors in the room, thank you for coming. I've got Sori Thompson, Kusa Top, Jennifer Loman, and Jennifer Rice. And I deeply apologize if I miss pronounce. I'm also reading handwriting. So, so the first one is Sory Thompson. Yes, is there Mike? Oh, then once I go and want to make sure your mic's on. Testing. Oh, there we go. Okay. Okay. Hello. I'm Sarah and I'm an 11th grade student who has lived their whole life alongside the Santa Monica Beach. According to Heal the Bay's 34th Annual Beach Report Card, Santa Monica Beach is the third most polluted beach on the West Coast. The runoff from the Palisades Fire Degree has worsened the already suffering quality of our beach with residents being advised to avoid the ocean due to the harmful compounds and tring it. With the fire to be runoff, already degrading marine habitats within the Sanamon Cabay with the long-term impacts of that remaining unknown, the beach that makes our city so special is being damaged and becoming inaccessible to residents and tourists alike, turning from an awe-inspiring landmark to a public safety hazard. The health of our beach is only one example of the countless, sorry, the health of our beach is only one public safety concern that has been exacerbated since the fires and the intensity of those fires is only one example of the countless dangerous impacts climate change can have on the environment and our safety. I know the budget is tight, but the health of our climate is a massive public safety concern. Because of this, climate action should be prioritized in the budget. An investing in climate action is investing in the safety of the people of Santa Monica, and it's too expensive not to act now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Kusa top. Hi, everyone. My name is Kara Taub. Sorry, my writing is not very good. Hi everyone, my name is Cara TAB. Sorry, my writing is not very good on those things. I am currently the chair of Montana Avenue Merchants Association. I would like to remind you of Main Street and Montana Avenue's request for a line item inclusion into the budget that will provide for about half of the mandated and required fees associated with our very popular open street events. So like the art walk on Montana Avenue and the summer solstice on Main Street. We are asking for 12,000 per event. These funds go right back to city departments to cover those required fees. We are planning for two events on Montanan Avenue this year and two on Main Street, so a total of four. Having this in the budget would give us confidence needed to plan ahead instead of pestering you throughout the year with item 16 requests. Please help us ensure that these events can continue to happen. We really need your support. Thank you. Thank you. Jennifer Cowan. Hi, good morning, Council members. My name is Jennifer Cowan, and I am the CEO of Connections for Children, a current recipient of the Human Services Grants Program. Connections has been instrumental in partnering with the city and other community organizations in responding to emergency needs, including the pandemic and recent wildfires. We also, through city funding, provide critical financial resources to low income and vulnerable residents to help them afford the high cost of childcare. City resources are directed to residents who may not otherwise have access to federal and state funded subsidies, allowing parents to participate in the workforce, pursue education, and maintain housing. As you know, the cost of child care, as well as other basic needs, continues to rise. And I'm proud to report that connections has served 221 low-income Santa Monica children in our child care subsidy program in this fiscal year. About 40% of these families are supported by city funding. However, 34 children are still on our wait list, and we expect that number to rise with cuts in federal and state funding. Thank you for preserving your commitment to the grants program. Thank you. And before Ms. Rice comes up, I'm gonna call up a few more names. So next up is Jennifer Rice, and then I have Andrew Hoyer, Mark Verville, Debbie Mulvaney, and Jennifer Smith. Good morning, Councilmembers. I'm Jenny Rice, I'm a Community Events Organizer, and I'm also here to address requesting a line item for funding our beloved Open Street festivals. The city currently permits only four of these events annually and commendably the Main Street and Montana Avenue business improvement associations each secure two of these coveted slots. The Main Street summer solstice and day of the dog along with Montana Avenue, art walk and holiday market consistently draw thousands of residents and visitors creating and vibrant and engaging experience. These successful events are the results of months of meticulous planning and dedicated production by small but mighty team and local businesses. The average cost per event is $65,000 reflecting the significant investment required to ensure their success. In a time when festivals nationwide are being canceled, our city by the beach has boldly expanded its offerings. These events are not just celebrations, they are economic engines, driving shoppers to our retailer businesses, and diners to our restaurants. These city sponsored and council approved events, which I'm pleased to say many of you have attended, necessitate significant fees. These fees directly support us. Excuse me, ma'am. You're tying up for a minute. Your time was now up. Sorry, the timer's not ringing. Okay, we are asking for $12,000 per event in a narrower form. Thank you, Ms. Rice. Thank you. Andrew Hoyer. I can speak loud. I am from Ohio. Good morning, my name is Andrew Hoyer. I'm the chair of the Urban Forest Task Force. As you may have heard, Santa Monica lost a number of trees very recently, over 40 in just one day. Public works burn through a quarter of their annual tree pruning budget in one week. So I am obviously going to ask that you find a way to replace that hole in their budget so that they can catch up on their post-COVID workload. But beyond that recent event, Santa Monica has been losing its tree canopy over the last decade. The vast majority of that loss is from private residential properties. The Urban forest task force has been working on a private tree ordinance since its very first meeting. It was all ready to go to city staff for the final stages of work in 2019. And we all know what happened in 2020. The time has come for this council to push the urban forest conservation ordinance up to the top and direct city planning staff to bring it over the finish line. I know times are still hard, but I hope I can find a way to make this happen. Thank you, Mr. Hoyer. And I requested two minutes, not one. Mark Ferville. And I did receive the message that some folks can't hear at home and we're working on the sound. I've got two minutes and I've got a donation of two minutes, so that's four minutes. Your donation is here from Trisha Crane, okay. Thank you. Good morning. The financial crisis that the city finds itself in has been years in the making. Make no mistake, it is policy driven and represents a complete failure of economic leadership. There is no justification for the current financial situation that the city boasts in a city that boasts one of the most competitive destination asset portfolios in the country, if not in the world. By any basic measure, a city with a unique portfolio of world-class assets within a one-mile radius should be in robust financial health. Those assets include a year-round Mediterranean weather, a live entertainment venue at the Civic Center, Center, Santa Monica Place Shopping, Promenade Dining and Er dining and entertainment, 245 acres of world-class beach, a globally branded and historic pleasure pier, and comprehensive hotel options. Compounding the issues is the fact that to the extent that these assets have been managed at all, it has been on an uncoordinated, siloed basis, further depressing economic output. Instead of balancing the general fund, the general fund now requires borrowing money from multiple city sources without any idea as to pay back timing. The proposed cure, a 460 million general obligation bond, is even worse than a. Is it is an admission that this leadership has no ability to economically manage this unique city back to health and instead seeks to pivot city financing to direct resident taxation, increasing the cost of living while absolving the leadership of any economic management accountability? Let's be honest, this bond would only be the beginning. Taken together, this situation reflects a complete and unacceptable abandonment of the commercial economic marvel. To be clear, the economic devastation we see every day in the city and in the budget is a policy outcome. them.oring salt into the wound is the irresponsible and cynical policy to use this financial crisis to justify permanently eliminating commercial infrastructure. In a visitor-driven economy, anti-visitor policies, such as the entirely inappropriate and failed homeless management combined with indifferent approach to crime and security, have ensured that visitors avoid our city and businesses brave enough to exist struggle to survive. If downtown had simply recovered to the same degree as Montana Avenue, downtown's revenue would be 50% higher in 2024. The financial upside being left on the table is huge. For each half a percentage point increase in economic growth since fiscal year 2012, business related general fund revenues would have been $16 million higher in 2024. Assuming annual growth of 5.4% versus the actual 3.4% since 2012, fiscal year 24's revenue would have increased by $58 million. Given a huge unused capacity in the commercial environment, a 6.4 annual growth rate would have delivered $92 million in additional annual revenue in FY 24. And future growth compounds from there. It is indicative of abandonment of this entire sector that there is no discussion of these opportunities or benchmarking against local vibrant destinations such as Century City and Rina Del Rey. It is also an abandonment of the residents. Thank you. Thank you. I'll text up with Debbie Mulaney and before I call, I'm just going to call a few more names that are going to be after Mrs. Smith, Gleene Davis, Judith Serlin, and Diana Flores. Ms. Mulvaney. Good morning. I'm here to speak to you about the importance of keeping education at the forefront of your budget conversation and priorities. I recognize the severity of the challenges that lie ahead of you. The city's unwavering support for public education has been a testament to its dedication to fostering an environment where every child has the opportunity to thrive and succeed. Unfortunately, there are many places where the school district and the city are facing similar financial difficulties and uncertainties. Like the city, most of the school's district budget goes to its personnel. The joint use agreement represents at least 73 teachers, but it also represents parks and fields for the city as a whole, which are used fully every weekend by the residents. Like the city, the district is facing a lot of uncertainty with regards to the federal government's decisions, specifically regarding the Department of Education. Like the city, the Palisades Fire, which has displaced students and families, has had a major impact on the district, and is facilitating the district taking in 150 students already with no additional funding to cover these students and the extra staffing that it requires with 200 more waiting in the wins. In the wins. Our excellent public schools attract people to the city, which helps increase both sales tax, transfer taxes, property taxes, and civic engagement. The school community will support the city in this difficult time, and we are willing to help you find ways to improve this financial picture. The city's commitment to funding public education is a belief in the power of education to transform lives and build a stronger community. Please support public education as the top priority in your budget process. Thank you. Thank you. Jennifer Smith. Hi. Honorable City Council, I'm Jennifer Smith. I'm the president of the SMMUSD School Board. We live in an extraordinary place and I wake up every day grateful and honored to call Santa Monica home. Not just because of the beautiful occasion, the wonderful restaurants, the first class health care, the nationally top ranked schools, and I can go on. But it also is extraordinary because of the partnership and care our civic institutions have created to uplift each other and enhance the everyday lives of the people who live, work, and visit here. I want to acknowledge the difficult times we're in, and for you to know, our school district available and willing to assist in solutions to get us through. This is a wee problem and we want you to know that we are your partners. I also have a request. Please do not let the master's facilities use agreement labs and keep the school funding intact. While education was not one of the choices in the survey, time after time and election after election, the voters, the people of Santa Monica have made education a priority. Our community has a rich history of supporting education, notably the Men's Truth Facilities Use Agreement that started over 20 years ago, an agreement that enhances our city's ability to provide parks and green space to its citizens and supports the district's ability to provide a worldclass education. The impact of such a lapse is great and would diminish the educational experience of every child in our schools. Specifically, that means we would lose 73 teachers, class sizes would increase and we would have fewer course offerings. The district is having challenges with the impacts of the fires, displaced students, property tax deferments, as well as unfounded mandate of TK, and the learning elimination of the Department of Education, which means losing federal funds. It is an uncertain world that we are living in, and what I've learned from being a parent and mother is one of the best and most important things you can do for children is give them a stable, predominantly predictable, and supportive experience. Thank you for your time and dedication. Thank you. I just want to make our reminder, we're doing, I know it's hard born a casual setting, happy hands. No clapping. Full of Mayor Gleene Davis. I'm short. Good morning, Mayor and City Council. I'm here this morning as the co-chair of the Santa Monica Early Childhood Task Force. And I want to remind you all that providing high quality, accessible childcare is a key component of any economic recovery in the city. If people cannot leave their children and be confident that they will be taken care of during the day, they cannot to work. For decades this community supported the early childhood efforts, room city funding by use of allowing city staff to provide administrative support to the task force. Sadly that was taken away several years ago and it has really impacted the ability of the task force to serve the youngsters and the working family in this community. We were lucky enough at the end of last year to get a very limited grant to reinstate that administrative support, but sadly it will expire at the end of June of this year. And so we are asking for a relatively small amount of $50,000 per year for each of the next three years in order to fund the task force administrative operations as well as to support the programming that we sadly have not been able to provide to the community due to the lack of administrative support. It's really important that people understand that early childhood education sets the tone for the city, not only do we owe it to our youngest citizens to take care of them, but to provide the support for working families. On top of that, there are studies that show decades later that the impact of early childhood education pays off in better life outcomes, not only for the youngsters, but for their siblings and their families. So we're hoping that in a difficult economic time that you will find a way to spring a small amount of money and able to support the work of the task force. Unless you think we're picking on you, we also will be making the same ask of both the school district and the college as the early childhood master plan, which was adopted decades ago, identifies these three institutions. It's the one that should be supporting the work. Thank you and good luck today. Thank you, Mrs. Judith Serlan. And then after that, we have Diana Flores, Denise Barton, and Gail Gordon. Miss Serlan? Hi. Good morning, Mayor and City Council. I'm from the teamsters and I represent workers in public works and BBB. City workers keep the lights on. They keep the water flowing. That's clean water and wastewater. They pick up trash, sanitation, parks and beaches. They keep everything clean, maintained. And there are a number of other workers whom we represent. When you talk about the needs of the city, we talk about the needs of the city. It's not just the programs, it's also the workers. Right now, we don't believe the city is something that needs to be paid a lot more attention to. Over the last five years, workers got an increase of 9%. That's not even near the cost of inflation. We are in union negotiations now. The opening salvo for management was they denied our proposal to right pay about a third of our job classifications. Yes, we're at the beginning of negotiations, but we want that paid attention to because workers need a raise, but it's not just workers. it's the programs they represent. Because it's a message you send to the city residents. If programs not important, if they can't pay for a worker, they can't pay for a program. So we have to look at that. We have people here talking about beaches. They can't keep beach workers hired. Do you want to spend your money on attracting and hiring and attracting and attract, you know, that carousel ride? Or do you want to keep workers hired and keep them retained so that you can have follow through on programs? This is some of the issues that you have to deal with as a body here. This is something we need, but we need to change there needs to be a change in the priority. There needs to be a change in the way things are handled on the ground and the goal planning. So we asked that because that is how, you know, when we look at the programs right now, it's not just programs, it what makes programs run, it's workers. So we urge you again to get your programs. Thank you. Diana Flores. I'm going to get you. Thank you. Thank you. Diana Flores. My name is Diana Flores and I'm here representing the great community of the Virginia Avenue apartments and the Pico neighborhood. As you know, we are in desperate need of the city's help to allocate money this year's budget to support the rehabilitation of our apartment building. Please support us in keeping the over 100 and 6 tenants 99% minorities and low income families in our right control homes. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Flores. Denise Barton. Good morning. I'm going to touch some points to the post budget. Starting with the staff report. Have you looked at what bonds you can put out due to the amount of debt the city was presently holding? And would the 10 officers who are listed as new actually be replacements for retiring officers? And that really didn't increase to the police department. Then would you be trying to put the businesses down to further disadvantage by taking away the free 90 minutes in the parking structures or are you trying to push anyone who would come down here to the Westfield malls and the Century City or Covers City where they have free parking and wouldn't the Coastal Commission have something to say about this proposed. Next, let's look at the results of this recent survey that taken by 1200 people. With the highest low scoring, 85% in clean and safe, which says it's significantly lacking. 80% on addressing homelessness. With all the money you spend on this issue, you are an utter failure. 53% on economic growth and cultural vitality, which isn't great. 37% on sustainability and connected. Maybe here you should just keep up with the statement, the current standards. And 28% on social justice, equity and diversity the low is scoring. So maybe your financial, with your financial constraint, you should focus on the three top issues of importance to the community. I also hope you can see the social justice that maybe you need to cut the departments of DEI and provide the needed personnel to fill lacking in personnel and departments such as human service grants. And city employees need to come back to work at City Hall because with the ex-exorbitant rates they're paid, without really getting our money's worth. Please do consider these points in retention to the budget. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Barton. I just want to make a quick announcement, and then I'm going to call some names. We have a lot of late chits that came in, And we just want you to know that if you came in late, you get one minute. So hopefully that's okay. Otherwise, we'd have to suspend the rules. We just wanna get through the meaty stuff today, if we can, and we've have about six or so late chits. So I'm just letting everyone know if we can just kind of condense those all announce when it comes up, who's late. I'm going to call the next few names, Gail Gordon, Casper Caspian, and Goldstein and Juan Matute, Miss Gordon. Yes, good morning. My name is Gail Gordon. I'm the Chair of Housing Commission. I first want to mention I want to discuss Measure GS with you. Measure GS was a Citizens Initiative ballot that an acts a third tier documentary transfer tax of additional 5% for property sales over 8 million with revenue going to fund homelessness prevention, affordable housing projects and schools. In the past two years, revenues from the passage of GS have generated 28 million year one and 18.3 million in year two as of the end of February 2025. In year one, 10 million was paid out to the school district and pending any adjustments and corrections. Another 10 million is anticipated to be paid out this year. The remaining 23.26.3 million is set aside in the cities and measure, GS fund to support homelessness prevention and affordable housing. We have not received any money to date, and I saw in the budget that there's actually some money that's going to be taken out of our budget. So I would like to leave that with you and also housing commission has not. And we have not given the opportunity to comment on the current budget and I'm hoping that we will be approached because it states in one of your budgets that housing commission commented on something and we have not. So thank you very much. Thank you. Casper, Casperian. All right. Good morning, Honorable Council members. We need to be raised from Gleam. Thank you for your service to our city, and thank you for hearing public comments. I'm Casper Casper, and I'm a 15 plus year Santa Monica resident, long time PTA executive board member. in my second term as the legislation chair for the Santa Monica Malibu Council of PTAs. I'm also the proud parent of two children who have been through the district, including a current seventh grader at Lincoln Middle School Lions. As you know, this week the Santa Monica Malibu Council of PTA's executive board voted unanimously to voice our support for sustained city support of public education in Santa Monica. We know that the city and the district have had a long and fruitful and beneficial partnership and we're very grateful to this council for maintaining that partnership. the total value of the city support to the district is almost $30 million in discretionary agreements, so we urge you to maintain that level of support. This funding supports programs that make the Santa Monica Mallaboo schools a crown jewel of achievement among schools in our area and beyond. My wife and I moved here in part on the strength of the public schools here. Having been apparent in the district for more than 10 years, I know firsthand the quality of the staff, the early childhood education programs and the youth programs that the district budget funds. As I noted in letters to each of you this week, thank you for receiving those. We urge you to play sustained and ongoing support of the Santa Maca Malibu Unified School District at the very highest level of priority in the budget planning process. We are concerned that the budget survey distributed in February did not have funding of public education as one of the default categories. And I hope that this does not mean that it's not already the highest priority for you all. Thank you. Okay, we appreciate your work and thank you for your service. Thank you. Ann Goldstein. Is Ann Goldstein here? Okay, I'm sorry, Amy. Sorry about that. Amy Godstein. Sorry. I told you I was going to mess up somebody's name. Good morning and thank you for having this session with us. I am Amy Gottstein, your resident tenants rights advocate and I'm constantly poking around in public records, specifically the code enforcement, building and safety, and the rent control document portal as I assist folks who reach out to the SMIR hotline. What I have found is that I believe the city could use some housekeeping. And what I mean by that is that there's really not any sort of checks and balances. Let me give you just a couple basic examples. Now these are also lost opportunities as well and create problems that are predictable because of this. So for example, say when a property owner registers their property with rent control, there is no check and balance to ensure that that property owner also obtains a business license, which is required. Business licenses generate money for the city. In another example, I received a call from somebody who was in a bootleg unit. The owner had filed plans with the city, but never really paid the fees. Did proceed with the project, rented out units, successfully registered those units and rented them. And but there was no certificate of occupancy. This particular owner has never paid thousands of dollars in fees that were due to the city and had been cited previously by code enforcement for a bootleg unit. This particular caller contacted me last May and the problem still remains unresolved. So I'll give you just one more example is that for example when code enforcement comes out and they cite for say work without permit, there's a function for them to communicate with building and safety to ensure that they obtain a permit. Thank you. And before I call up Mr. Matute, I have after one Matute, I've got Zina Joseph's Lorraine Von Klan and Harvey Eder. Mr. Matute. Thank you. Good morning, Mayor and Council members. I don't envy the position that you are all in. This is the toughest budget situation that I've seen, and you have a lot of tough choices to make. I spend time trying to figure out what performance and the mon Santa Monica want and I think consistently people have supported education and now state streets. From that I get a sense that they really want data driven and professional decision making. And so we now have to address some of the priorities for the city, expenditures, et cetera. I work in transportation funding and and I know sometimes to move forward, you need to engage some third rails. And in Santa Monica, some of those third rails are related to the police department. We can't afford both the authorized number of officers and to have the second highest police compensation of some pure city group. We're probably going to have to look at insourcing versus outsourcing, especially in areas where we're having consistent challenges and with recruiting. And then performance metrics and transparency and then potential for performance based competition are really important to look at as well. I think in thinking through this framing, you can start seeing some win-win such as a partnership between the code enforcement and the city attorney's office for nuisance abacement, which will both reduce blight and also increase revenues. Within PD, looking at expanding traffic service officers who can enforce safety related violations, but also act as eyes and ears, force multipliers for PD. They have the radios, they can be out there looking for things. And then really investing in safe streets and economic development. I think within safe streets having a traffic safety analyst, lead a traffic analysis studio, so that the lessons learned from community tragedies can be quickly implemented to reduce to reduce morning in the future. Within long-term economic development, I think, looking toward the conference hotel and entertainment zone. Thank you, Mr. Mat received two emails yesterday from Friends of Sense at Park. One said that city residents have a right to know about the current status of city finances as we will bear the burden of any resulting reduction in services and therefore we ask that this meeting will not fear the nine actions will be taken be held in the city council chambers. Holding it here, the room is extremely crowded, let's all catch the flu. There is to be no live stream on YouTube and only an audio recording available at some point in the future. Again, in the spirit of the Brown Act and public access we urge you to move the meeting. What is the rationale for holding such an important meeting essentially in secret? We thank Council Member Raskin for responding to our request. Secondly, there was a longer email from friends which I won't try to summarize here, but speaking only for myself I'm living with. When the restructuring was done, a scap was taken to some departments, but in me clover was taken to the library. At Fairview, a member heard the traveling story time is once a month, only for ages 2 to 5. The self-service is the 2 days a week on EPR for 18 years and older. What about kids from 5 to 18? Are they not supposed to use the library? The PECO library is nearby but has a few computers and hardly any books. About $600,000 in funding is needed to open both Fairview and Ocean Park branches for two days of full service. That is to restore minimum amount of full library service to 28,000 residents in sunset park and ocean park. I urge you to set aside that funding. Thank you. Thank you. Lorraine Von Klan. Good morning, Mayor, Negrete Council. I'm Co-chair and executive director of Climate Action Santa Monica. I want to say thank you to everyone here but to our Council as well for your diligent service during the fires. Our community showed an impressive response. These fires were a reminder that we need to prioritize community safety and response to fire, drought, wind, heat, and the homelessness and economic disruption caused by the continuous continued emission of fossil fuels. I'm here today to ask you to prioritize in our budget what science tells us that we We need to reduce emissions soon. Time matters. Time is of the essence. We all know what's happening, I think, at the federal level, to make progress we must act locally. I haven't examined the budget in complete detail, but I ask you to ask these important questions when you're reviewing priorities. Will this action reduce, this budget item reduce our fossil fuels? Will it keep our community prosperous and functioning even in the face of extreme events? Will it be a high impact action? This is critical. There are so many things done in the broad realm of sustainability that ultimately, even as a sustainability advocate, I see have very little impact for the things that really, truly matter. Will it accelerate progress, particularly in the area of energy? Will it engage the community to act? Will it empower the community to act? So we need to budget our staff appropriately to use the money that does exist, to find more money that is available. Yes, there is more, actually. And to implement projects that we already have in our toolkit. Thank you. Thank you so much. We punch harder than our weight in San Monica. Thank you. Next we have Harvey Eder and then I'm going to call the next names after that. Erica Bell, Ted Winner and Judith Meister. Mr. Eder? Yes. Good morning. My name is Harvey Eder. I'm speaking for myself and from the Public Solar Power Coalition. I was a founder and director in the line back 40-50 years ago. We were involved in Solar Santa Monica here and the Clean Power Alliance that your members have the third largest electric utility in the state. They're being sued now for these fires for the one and a... ... past in the United States. There might have been a worse one that went over here. So an insurance commissioner has done a report on it's been in the local paper and they said they once have protected insurance in history. Well, they, Edithson's got insurance companies, you know, Peter Paypal, I don't know what's up. Okay. a lot of stuff's going on and we want to incorporate by the comments that we made to the air district. We've been going out there 40 years trying to get them a dooster. We like to, the first thing that's spoken, the one that just broke, we're on their side for climate. We're the first environmental study student, 55 years ago in New City.. Okay, the one incorporated by reference of those comments made, there's the Justice Committee in the House by Raskin ranking member on the 15th of January and the 7th of March, going after law companies and stuff, the Special Prosecutor Smith. OK, they're not going after it. They couldn't go after Trump. It was violation of the 50th and then the issue. Not a bit on the bow. 20 states came up. The Supreme Court made the lousy decisions. There's stuff on the record. I also watched in the general of the stuff we talked to. They've got to be taken out. It's illegal. We're a nation of law and not a man. And all this, all this, just, education, all this, all this, just, just gotta stop. We gotta take it to take it out and that's the way it's got to be done. So there's $25 million for litigation. They had 42 million in the first four years and go after this, 20% of that will be consulting money to make a priority number one to go after Trump on the 14th amendment and to have the state account from your appropriate budget, etc. There's many to do it. Thank you, Mr. Outer. Eric Kapoe. Good morning. Good morning, Honorable Council members. Thank you for hearing us today. My name is Erica Bell. As a chair of the early childhood task force along with Goyne, and a member of our same and uncommonable council of PTA's exec board, I'm here today as an advocate for youngest residents in our school-aged children. Prioritizing our schools as well as early childhood programs is one of the most effective ways to strengthen our community. When our city invests in this way, everyone benefits, families, businesses, and neighborhoods. It lays the foundation for thriving, safe, and economically strong city. Cities that invest in education experience many measurable benefits, reliable early childhood care, meet programs allow parents to remain in workforce. Businesses often consider school quality when deciding where to locate or invest. Strong schools attract families, increasing values, and strengthen local businesses contributing to sustained economic growth. The impact extends beyond economics. High quality early learning programs ensure children start school ready to succeed, while strong public schools set them up for lifelong achievement. While supported schools lead to lower crime rates, better health outcomes and produce engaged citizens who contribute to their communities. By continuing to prioritise our school and our childhood education care, we are making choice to build a safer, more prosperous and connected community. I urge you to maintain funding for our school districts, keeping it a top priority in the city budget, and I ask that you approve their our childhood task force's initial request of 50,000 per year for the next three years so that we can continue to address the needs of our youngest residents and school age children. Simply put, if we want to ensure a future with happy people and a happy place, we have to prioritize our children and youth today. I trust that you all agree. Thank you, Ms. Bell. Ted winner. Good morning, Mendegrin A. Honorable Council Members. I'm Ted Winter. I'm here in my capacity to co-chair of community for excellent public schools. I imagine most of you read Oscar Santa Eccles report. good times. Pretty gloomy. I'm optimistic though that this city will be out. I'm old enough to have lived in New York City in 1975 when Gerald Ford told us to drop dead. We recovered. I've been here. We recovered. We recovered here in Santa Monica from the economic impacts of the Northridge earthquake from COVID from the Great Recession. We will recover again for the period we're now. But it's going to be tough sledding going ahead. We all acknowledge that. But on the voice of optimism, I want to point out to you that you're one revenue stream that is growing rather than declining is property taxes. And we're actually in the midst of a bit of a little bit of a boom lit here. I think you'll find that as we go forward and ask them some reports in the future, those property tax revenues increase because of the assess values of our homes have increased just this week. I saw a house in North of Montana, for at least $8 million sold in two days. one in sunset park so for 43% over its listed value so reason to be optimistic. Now let's draw correlation between those property values and our excellent public schools. That's why people move here. That's why they play top dollar. So your continued investment in our public schools will keep your revenue stream growing. Sorry. Whew. I don't know how much time I have since there's not a time error. So I urge you to continue to invest in our public schools. Any reduction to city funding would be to a decline in teachers, decline in class size, most people are moving here for our schools would be no longer incentivized to do so. So in summary, we know you have a lot of difficult choices ahead of you. We will support you when you make those difficult decisions, but we urge you to make continued funding of our public schools a highest priority in the coming budget year. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Winner. Judith Meister. And then after that we have John Medlin, Jane Dedaniel and Layla Tessley-Me. Good morning, I'm here in Silicon City, Kansas, New York. I'm here with Judith Meister and I'm here as Chair of the Library Board. I was preparing my remarks for today. I looked back at what I had said two years ago as you were developing the budget priorities at that steady session. I suggested our friends can let our libraries and we're going to be sourcing to be that check all of the boxes. And that is still true. So I, the council responded to the community and increased the library budget by 500,000 to allow the library to go into the next hours for evenings and Saturdays. But really, there are two years later and libraries still have the most impacted department as the impact to us chart shows. And the last department too, we restored to pre-pandemic levels. Over the placement of the library, members of my director are competing to have visited a group of associations to give an update on the status of the library and what we've heard was shock that five years after the pandemic, two of our branches are not fully opened. When I shared the library, another month, a couple of weeks ago, I said that it was time for the council to show some love to our libraries. Well, I think it's a past time for the 20,000 residents of Ocean Park and Sinside Park to see some action in the part of the council. And we're not asking for a lot of money. I've looked for the city fair a very long time, a lot of the challenges facing the city right now. Our library staff has estimated that about 600,000 would open Ocean Park and fare you at least two days a week before service. And I think that's a reasonable request given the value added for nearly a third of our residents. Thank you. Thank you. I'll just close by saying that the libraries are at trusted places. Thank you. Thank you. John Medlon. No clapping. Thank you. I'm back. What's the number one priority of all governments? Public safety. Looking at your prior people who had you sat in your desk and thanked you for being here, thank you for 100 plus people here today. It shows so much we all care. In the 20, looking at your data, 2024, we spent 185 million on public safety and you have proposed budgets 174, down $11 million, $6%. However, your total operating revenues expenditures are down $73 million from $536 million, $463 million, so down 14%. So you have hard choices to make hard priorities to make. What does public safety really mean? Currently I'm the president of the resident council of Westminster towers right across from the park. We have a 300 elderly people low income all that sort of stuff. This morning as I'm walking out of my building a Large almost man try to get in Fortunately, I'm I'm big myself as they will persuade them not to come in Our elderly people have been attacked there. It's been 68 days since since 2020 for ended We have yet to get the crime report from the public safety department, from the Santa Monica Police Department. We've been a lot of money getting a new data system. We still aren't getting a result. But again, public safety is number one. We have hard choices making the priorities. And please keep these things in mind. Because again, without public safety, you can't have streets, you can't have schools, you can't have libraries, because you are too scared to walk down the street. Thank you. Thank you. These next names, I just want to say these are all the late chits. So you'll have one minute. So Jane, T Daniel. Just a reminder, you'll have one minute. And I know it's hard because there's no time out there. Good morning. I'm Janty, Daniel. I'm Franklin, I'm a preschool parent and a member of the Franklin School PTA. My family and I moved to Santa Monica specifically to send our kids to the Santa Monica schools from the city of LA. We're already reaping the benefits of the education that Franklin provides and we're also spending money immediately at the local businesses in Santa Monica. We love our lives in Santa Monica. The education is of the highest quality because of the investment that that both the district and the city of Santa Monica have made into the district. As well the master use facility agreement allows our schools to not become to be not just schools during the weekdays but also community hubs on the weekends and contribute to our children's vital growth. We've gotten to know our neighbors by going just across the street and being able to play at the Franklin Play round on the weekends. And my little girl is going to enter TK or hopefully enter TK next year is already getting to know her schools specifically because she can go play on the weekends. I urge the City Council to not cut school funding and to keep our schools as world class as they've ever been. Thank you. Thank you. Laila teslingi. And then after Laila we're going to to have Paulo Larmor and Han Guy, Finec and Patty Braun. Hi, thank you. My comment is actually general. I know there are a lot of specific things that you're concerned with, with budget. But I find that it is related to budget and I'd like to pull actually from something that somebody mentioned before related to property taxes only because my perspective, I'm a teacher and therefore I don't have a fixed mindset that our problems are intractable, even though so many of them are beyond our ability to completely solve, I have a growth mindset and that means that we are in process. And I believe we are a city in process. I've been had the good fortune to live here since the 1960s. And I firmly believe that the size of our city and the resources of our city, which sounds like counterintuitive because the budget is strained, but the resources of our city are immense. We have businesses functioning here who are financially successful. We have wealthy residents as well. Thank you. And I urge you to remember that. Thank you. That source is available. Paula Lamar. Paula Lamar. I don't see her. Is Paula here? Okay. Okay. I'm Guy. Finek. Council. We have to switch gears. My name is Pagai. I'm a homeowner, live on Harvard. I have two girls going to Franklin. And we're considering our options leading the city. Why? Because we're here today. You need to switch gears. You need to run this city like a startup, not a charity. You have a bunch of people lining up here asking for money that you don't have to give and you're looking to borrow more, which will get you into further trouble. I've seen this with businesses that I've run. I've had to make similar choices on a smaller level. You need to switch gears. Right now, some of the options that you have is perhaps sell some city assets in short term in order to deal with short falls. Brave, be bold. Make those decisions now. Don't get yourselves in all of us in the more debt. The other piece of what I want to tell you is that you committed last year to what 75 million in homeless funding that you don't have. Right? Not money is going somewhere. You're taking it out of our kids' budgets, right? Out of this and then usually. Thank you Mr. Fening. We want a city that's clean and safe. Thank you. You're welcome. Paddy Brown and then after Paddy Brown our last speaker is Zoe Muntaner. Good morning. Thank you for this opportunity. My husband and I moved here in 1991 when we were expecting our first child because of a quality of our school system like many people here. As a professional volunteer and PTA leader, I've had the opportunity to work with families and with students to develop arts and academic programming and systems to support partnering with our district and our community with the goals of student success for 34 years. Through working these roles and through active involvement with many funding campaigns, including the GSNGSH and YNYY sales and use tax measures, I'm well aware of the ways that sustained school funding from our city is needed and utilized. Santa Monica has long been an excellent partner to SMMUSD and the city's ongoing financial support through the master facilities use agreement and through sales and use tax measure income makes possible the district's moderate class sizes and allow the district to retain its teachers, mental health professionals, nurses, counselors and leads to improved academic outcomes particularly for most vulnerable students. VP of Community Concerns for SMM, it makes sound flagregi to place the student on going support of SMMQ. She has very high spurt. Thank you. You have a job in those commercials doing the fine press. Ms. Mintonair, Zoe Mintonair. Zoe, I saw her in here, but Zoe Mintonair, going once, going twice. Here she comes. Come on down. Here's a final speaker. And you've got one minute, Ms. Mintonair. Thank you. Hi. Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for being here. I was speaking with Judith Meister from the Library because I presented a fundraiser for the library to create awareness of the need of money for funding. And unfortunately, this city is now cooperating with giving us the Annembrook Beach House. There is a writer that is coming from the, it's called A W P conference. That is the biggest literary conference in the country. And cultural affairs for the library at none event to post everybody from that conference and I created an event I can have it in another place but this will be a fundraiser for the library and to create awareness about the need for funding of the library and I cannot believe that man is an email telling me that I have to pay for the animation house to do a event that is going to benefit the city funding. So it is very confusing on the needs of money because if they don't want to post this event I beg to question if they really need for money. Thank you Ms. McNer. And that concludes our public comment. Thank you everybody for bearing with us. Um, yes you want to call this special meeting to order? Yes, so I'm now going to call this special meeting of the Santa Monica Housing Authority and Would like to announce the respective payment for the meetings as the following? Are you calling out the respective payments clerk? Yes, so the respective payment for each member for attending this meeting is $50 per meeting. I'll now call the roll. A authority member, MOOC, Tossett, Tinkler. President. A authority member, Zwik. Here. A authority member, Hall. President. A authority member, Raskin. A authority member, Snow. Here. A authority member, Zernick Skye. Here. Chair, Pro Temp, Teroz snail, a 30 member's in the sky, chair pro temp terraces, and chair negrate. Here. Item 11A approval of minutes for the housing authority board. All right, move the approval of minutes. Second. Move by council member raskin and seconded by Mayor Pro Temptuosis. We can do a voice for it. All in favor. Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, that passes 7-0. Item 11-B, fiscal year Klein, Assistant City Manager, currently acting as City Manager today. Good morning, Council, community and city team. I'll briefly review the run of show for the day to assist the mayor and council to efficiently get through the agenda and attempt to set some expectations. This is the beginning of the process. First, of course, I'll start with a moment of gratitude for everyone on the budget team putting together an incredible report and getting us here today, and everyone who coordinated today's meeting, a lot goes into this, putting this together, so really appreciate everyone who participated in that. And then, as we all know, as we've heard from a lot of the speakers, we are a full service city and a lot goes into preparing the budget for an organization of this size that is full service. So our exemplary department head team who is here today to answer questions is supported by the brilliant analysts working with operating teams doing the day-to-day work to deliver this balanced forecast. We value each of you, though you may not, you're not here today, you're boss is on. We hope you're getting a moment of rest so that you can gear up for the next phases of the budget process. So today we're breaking Council actions into two sections. First we'll hear the vast majority of today's presentation by Oscar on the forecast and budget, then pause on what we hope are a few straightforward actions on mid-year adjustments, which will conclude the housing authority portion of the meeting. And then we'll receive the forecast and accept a grant and adopt SQL findings. You all have the printouts of the PowerPoint presentation in front of you, Council. So you can do note-taking and track actions more efficiently. The recommended actions are in the slide, so it should be easier to follow along. We'll then move to briefly present the remaining few slides for Council consideration and context setting to inform the discussion in direction. We'll end just shortly thereafter and then we'll take the remaining few items. There's about four or five items at the end of the meeting that we'll take. We're proposing to take one at a time. So just having questions, discussion and direction item by item. So for that, after all that, on behalf of the city manager, acting interim or otherwise, we are here to present Council a strategy for a balanced budget for fiscal year 2527. To get here, I want to highlight just two things before passing it off to Christopher. This is an important meeting at a critical time. We hope even a pivotal moment. So we will be presenting a lot of information. This is our work. Given the city's structural deficit, we are doing a deeper dive on context where we've been financially what we've done to address ongoing financial constraints that led us to our approach in this budget, which keeps us flat, but our current work moving forward with a focused workforce. Using all available funds to keep the lights on and the work moving forward, well we all know that's not ideal or where we want to be. We've had to use funds from every source possible over the last five years, but with this approach that we're proposing today we can focus on moving forward instead of looking to more reductions. So today, lastly, we look toward establishing stability with a new council and setting a new city manager up for success to not only set a vision for the organization but set us on a path to implement that vision. We hope to move away from looming cuts and one time reactive budgeting, getting back to our aspirational roots, rekindling the spark in our employees that were drawn here to be on the cutting edge of all that we do and keeping those new employees in an organization where the work is balanced in a culture of excellence. Where, council? We hope that you continue to champion our work that we've been directed to deliver on. With that, Christopher. Is that better? Okay, good morning mayor and council and thanks to everyone for coming out on a Saturday morning, pretty early. Today's workshop is an important opportunity for council and staff to align on council's priorities and policy directives for the next two years as we go to build the next biennial budget. As you've heard from public comment this morning, since 2020, Santa Monica has experienced disruption in our local economy and has been delayed and our return to normal has been delayed by unprecedented liabilities and persistent economic challenges. We're now in our fifth year of deferred maintenance, staff are working with aging equipment and technology and we struggle to recruit and retain our workforce. This is now compounded in 2025 by our current environment in which our federal directives are at odds with our local values. Our dedicated and talented staff have identified many ways to work differently and respond to counseling community requests just with fewer resources and stuff. To give you two examples prior to 2020, staff responded to about 10,000 customer requests through our customer request system was formally called GO a year. Today that number has grown to nearly 50,000. That is in large part thanks to the implementation of 311 program but is also a reflection of the deferred maintenance and different standards of experience that people are experiencing in our community every day. I also share that there has been a significant uptick in the number of council directives on council agendas to give you an example. Since 2018 over the calendar year, there were 60 of what we call 16 items for those of you who don't know. The council items asking staff to do things. That number nearly doubled to 119 last year. And we have 41 on our agendas already for the first four meetings in 2025. I raise that because this is an important moment for alignment. The more we can put the work into our budget, the better we're able to plan, prioritize, and ultimately achieve the work that's designed to realize the vision you would like and the priority areas you would like. And these trends are happening while we have 175 fewer positions. Many of our communities programs are operating at 50 to 75% of pre-COVID capacity. And we have reduced service hours in city hall and other facilities. So again, today is an important moment to build that alignment as we build the budget going forward. And just to remind you, we'll touch on this towards the end of the presentation. Today is not the presentation of the budget. It is presentation of the forecast and to touch on priorities and direction to build the budget that will come back to you in May and for adoption in June. So as you will hear shortly, the city's financial position is a fragile one. But we have a solid foundation built on globally recognized brand, strong community partnerships, focused investment in our tourism and housing, and a location that's truly hard to be. So today we will be sharing with you both the difficult choices we are proposing to keep our budget balanced, but also introducing the opportunity to work together to rebuild our local economy and our city's foundational revenue streams. And with that, I'll turn it over to Oscar. Thank you, Christopher. I'm planning on Mayor Patel and Council members. Today I will provide an update on the five year forecast which is presented to you in February and also updated in May when we brought to you the proposed fiscal year 2325 budget. But before we get started, I think Christopher touches on these things. I want to talk about the climate that we're operating under. It continues to be volatile and uncertain, and we've done our best to consider these externalities into our for a cast. So I will simply summarize these items as they are described in detail in this staff report. So historical inflation, right now we are experiencing levels of historical inflation levels and we're increasing our operating costs. We also have our tools on which is lagging in international business travel and that's's affecting our economy. Having worked, the shift from office workers to remote work continues to impact foot traffic and daytime populations in South Monica. This is impacting our restaurants and our retail. The Pazés Fire are impacting our total activity and our consumer spending in the beginning part of the fiscal year or the calendar year. We also have one of the resolve legal libraries of unknown magnitude. We've paid out 230 million in claims of social abuse and another facing another 157 claims that that matter and four claims are another in a different matter for a different employee, a former employee. In addition to that, we have the CVR8 case which is still in result and there's uncertainty at the federal level as well which could impact grants and also inflation. So with that, I'll start with our forecast. I'm not pointing out to you. This is our forecast as of May of 2024. So without the use of one-time money, we will operate on the deficit already. The deficit is in the, the $2.27.6 million. That's the line in red. The way I'm going to present this forecast to you is I'm going to build on where we started in May. And I'll show you all of those that have a chase from that point forward, which we do every forecast period. And we do a forecast every time we begin our preparation over the next year's budget, we update the information for everything that we know at this point in time. So the second slide basically shows you the blue line. And I want to point out that we balance the budget. But again, we balance the budget because we're using one-time funds. This was planned. We proposed this to Council in May of 2024. So we were present to use 27.6 million in one-time money fund balance, basically, from a million dollar to an expiry recovery in our revenues from one prior year. Here, I still show you that I need blue, which is our balance budget. That's the main information that I showed you. But I want to point out that we now have new costs. These are things that we've found. Up to now forecast, we need to update our expenditures for. The first item is general liability workers' compensation insurance. It received an annual extra review of our fund, self insurance fund.im Fund. Basically, what I told you is that we need to invest more and contribute more to our Self-Agrim Fund. In order for us to have enough money to cover our operating expenses in any outstanding claims. Our second thing that's impacting our budget is 12.4 million over five years. And that's our pension cost. So every year we receive reports from our CalPERS, it's called CalPERS Validation Report. When it reflects this, how much the earnings have been for the retirement system in our investments, and based on gains or losses, that contribution that we need to make to our own fund and our money changes. So this is the latest report that we received as well as some adjustment because we know that capors have some earnings and fiscal year 2024. So we've adjusted that a little bit, but still it's 12.4 million in pension costs on an average of 2.5 annual in additional costs. And then we have an MAU obligation of our salary effective January 2025. That's about 18.4 million or 3.4 million on a average annual amount. We also have our county live-car services contract, which is coming at a higher rate. The county is now running to increase our costs significantly for the same services that are provided to us. We estimate that we're in negotiations, but we're estimated that it might cost the city about, in the bulk part, of 1.5 million on average annually. So that's 7.2 million over the five years. And then we have legal costs remaining for our senior AACase, and over two years we estimate that our cost will be 6 million. So that puts us in our line and brown, right? We were balanced, now we're in a deficit. This is just the exposure slide. On top of that we also look at our revenues, how are we tracking, what are our trans tellers? In this case, you know, tourism decreased revenue revenue from tourism, visitors, and consumer spending is really in our sales tax, our translation and use tax, and our hotel tax. For that reason, revenues are coming in lower than we've projected, and we need to make that decrease. So over five years, it's something that we're increasing. We also have decreases in other areas where we call phasing charges for service. One example is the timing of the digital QS program revenue, which is basically due to the lower implementation, we're only going to receive half of the amount that we were supposed to receive this year, but we're going to receive the rest of it in next school year. So we're making about adjustment this year, but there is a decrease into 2425. We also have some reductions in inspection, final inspections, EMS charges and broadband services. Those are the decreases. Those decreases are then mitigated by more business license tax, are parking facility tax increases, just on the base, not capturing the measure K and measure F revenues yet. I'll build onto that. And then we have other revenues 5.9 million. The net is the 38.5 million. And so where I'm using the brown line, now I'm in the purple line. I just want to show you how we're building on and how we build a forecast. So now we know that the voters approve two tax measures, measure K and measure F. Measure F is supposed to generate 11.9 million or 3 million annually after a three year facing. Our measure K revenues for the parking facility tax is supposed to be 6.7 annually. Right? And so what we do here is this is revenue that coming in, so we want to adjust our forecast for that revenue as well. So this brings a lot of little higher. We start revenue, we're revenue down, we're revenue in further, with the revenue reductions, now the forecast is coming up because we're applying the measure K and measure F revenues. Now, these are extraordinary times. These revenues are critical to addressing our deficit, but we acknowledge that the world of orders are around the advisory measure, and we strive to address those as our financials improve. So this is where here, again, I applied the tax measure revenues. Now that I've done this, because we are still in a deficit, what things can we do on the expenditure side of the ledger to control costs? What are the strategies that we applied to here is over the next few years we're keeping our supplies and expenses budget flat. Without this, it's that generates 11.3 million to our budget so that we don't have to budget for this stuff. We're asking the premise to maintain the service that the company is funding from fiscal year 2525. So we're not growing the budget in the next two years. From what the failure of the story, we're estimating that growth would be a 2% factor, but that's a, we're trying to hold that budget flat for the two years. Another thing is vacancies, all the partners have vacancies throughout the year. And we let calculate a vacancy rate savings in our budget. When we do this, we increase our vacancies in rate savings by 5%, which basically creates almost a savings in our budget of 7.6 million. So these are the budget management strategies that we've implemented without taking major cuts to the departments. One of the reasons not to consider cuts or reductions at this point is that it must counter to economic development. If the government services and we're not keeping the set of market clean, the set of markets is less attractive and that goes against economic recovery. So for those of you who are cautious in terms of cutting the budget further, we went through a major cut in after the city's infrastructure, and after COVID, so we want a very detailed possible. So here, what I'm showing is, I adjusted again, and I'm in the Gale line. And the Gale line shows a deficit over three years. So there's the next slide. Basically, it talks about how we budget or balance the budget with one-time measures. Again, this is not recommended, this is not something I would want to do, but that's certainly a place that we can go to. So, when we get online, now we need to apply, now we can apply a 27.6 million in working capital that I showed you in the first slide. We're having to apply 33.2 million additionally to our firm balance to cover the deficit that I showed you in the line in the end. So I'm totally using 60.8 million in reserves to balance our budget. That's what it shows here. Now, when you talk about a balanced budget, you're going to forget that we're using one-time money to cover those the deficit. And what a kind of show really what a picture looks like without using the source. So the web line I showed you is that it was the first life, 27.6 billion deficit. The brown line is after I have the expenditures that I showed you previously. And the purple line is after I reduce my revenues based on the factors that I mentioned to you. So if we are already, this is what our deficit looks like. If we didn't apply the tax measures, if we did not apply the budget management strategies, and if we did not apply the tax measures into our budget, this is our true picture. Again, the reason I'm showing you this is because in showing you this, I show you that I'm a balanced budget. You don't know where the money is coming from. Money is one term and it's not sustainable. There's a lot of wishes we do in. So that's our forecast. I want to put on some things in our forecast. I want you to do that we're using one term money and fund balance with the cloudless Earth. And so this shows you our historical fund balance or the serve levels from 1819 to 2024. When we were at 61% of what we were in before COVID, a lot of us had to do with the claims that we had to put out, but also revenue losses that we incurred through the pandemic. Or again, our shows are 157.7 million. The sources are not only because that's our insurance, or our savings account, in case we need to address any contingent liabilities or anything that comes up, another emergency or another pandemic, anything like that, we need to have money from somewhere in case the savings is shut down or revenue sources. And so it's important that we keep that healthy. In this case it's not healthy. Again I mentioned to you resource our media for continuing live abilities, working and capital and relating for the gas when our revenues are less than our expenditures. The reason that our resource increased a little bit between 2023 and 2023-24 is that we received one time money from one one time insurance fund, settlement or processing fund, and two from one-time insurance settlement or processing settlement from litigation against our insurance providers from the claims that we paid up. And as well as the non-realized investment gains or losses which are lower than a prior year. So again, one of the benefits of $157.7 million is our reserve. Here I will tell you what makes up the 157.7 million. So the missing point component in my opinion here is our rainy day fund. Rainy day fund is basically the money that we have aside in case we don't have any revenue sources coming into the city. This rainy day fund is generally at 15% of our future operating expenses. In this case, we're only at 13.5%, we reduced it to 12.5% when the pandemic happened, because we never wanted to address operations and also some of the legal claims that we had to pay out. This is the blue section of the chart. The money is different and the.7 million in work, it's equivalent to only two and a half months of paying our employees and their benefits. So it's not sufficient. Well, it seems like a lot of it's really not even in terms of what is that mean to the city. We really are financial policy, requires us to be at 15% of our operating costs, we're only at 13.5%. Maybe we may understrict the fund levels, we accept the rest of the chart, so that I believe that 30.2 million was actually the entire thing was available at some point. What we have to do is, and I have to kind of show you here. We use it. We can't blow it up. It's about a percent. It's about a percent. It's about a percent. It's about a percent. It's about a percent. It's about a percent. and I have to kind of show you here. I'm sorry, Oscar. We can't hear you without the mic. So we saw that additional insurance supplementary payments are telling you and then in addition to that now with the forecast, we're having to go back to the fund balance to use additional funding. So without this, that only leaves 40.2 million in assigned fund balance. Now, some fund balance covers a few things. This is where we, if we need to, if we notice anticipated litigation and liabilities, we try to set that money aside so we can address that. We also have the full cost of our crude employee vacation set aside there in case it needs to be paid out at some point. When people retire, we have to pay out the vacation so we set that money aside. We also, anytime we have put a budget, a multi-year capital budget, the money that's on spent on the projects that has already been committed, we set it aside because it's already a budget it expense. So that means it needs to be set aside. As well as any contracts or things that are in cover for a prior year budget, we need to set that aside. So that makes up to 40.2 million. My point there is that this money is not available. This money that has a son purposes. So we're doing the only thing that we have here is our Pony Day Fund. This is our reality in terms of our resource. There's all ties to our financial reports that anyone wants to look at that. That's the number that we have in our books. So things that we haven't necessarily captured enough, I guess, are here. They're listed here. We have additional claims, the impacts of the wire fires and tourism and consumer spending, unplanned over time from having to address the wirefires with wildfire departments. If we decide to host the LL Olympics, that's an additional cost that needs to be addressed. We're storing our services. We're still operating at very low levels compared to pre-COVID levels. Our reserves are depleted. We owe money to the two other funds, including the Health and Trust Fund, that hasn't been able to do it. We need to have more of those negotiations in a comparative labor market. And there's other things, fiscal impacts on the federal changes, our fund liabilities, our fund capital projects. All these things that need to be considered, the next time we update our forecast, we can identify additional funds to cover these things. This is a picture of where we have projected our revenues to be before the pandemic. So the evening before the pandemic, when my process created the forecast, we're projecting that orange line would be with revenues. After the pandemic, you'll see the 2021 whatever revenues were dropped. This is basically a recovery as compared to the pandemic levels of projections. As you see, the earlier between the two lines, it's I get, right? And whether the revenue losses I would say, if we just calculate what it would be, it's about $195 million that we were projecting to receive more revenues that we're not receiving now. How do we generate revenues? What does the money come from? Here's a breakout of where the money comes from. Small amounts 11% in fines and licenses that permits you on the city. Very small amount compared to the rest of it. Charges for services, for any time we charge for programs and so forth, that makes about 12.1% of our budget, our biggest area is local taxes. Now, local taxes breaks out as in the table that I show here. One thing that I want to point out with this is that if you look at sales tax and transaction and use tax and hotel tax, if you combine those, that's 33.4% of our revenues. And that's related to tourism and consumer spending, right? So only the impact there, significantly impact the revenue sources. And what we think to consider is if we also are going to consider our parking which makes up 77.3% of our general fund revenues, then the total consuming, tourism spending would be 40% of our budget revenues. Just put it into perspective that if we don't increase economic savings in Santa Monica, our revenues are not going to get there any time soon. Here's our revenue historical trends, compared to fiscal year 2018-19 to now in the last fiscal year. Here, what I want to point out is the only area, and I think at the public speaking session, someone said, property taxes is the only area growing. Here, it shows you that it is. Right? It grows at an average 3% rate. We rely on that. The other revenue sources are either decreasing or increasing our very small pace. One of the things that we want to point out here is that if we consider inflation from 1890 to 2024, the compounded inflation is about 25.3%. That's what we see our expenses growing. If we compare our revenue growth, basically taking, let's take for example, 1000 and TUT, the dark blue line, 73.7 million to 72.8 million, that is a 1.2% decrease from that, number of 1919. And then the rest of the hotel tax, money increase of 8.4%. Parking revenue, a decrease of 18.6%. Because there's different patterns now in our parking. People are using other modes of transportation and so forth, as well as just as people coming to the South America, and moving vehicles and so forth. And the other thing is property taxes. I mentioned to you that's growing at a good rate. It continues to grow. So we'll just show you where our revenues are. And it justifies the fact that we're making adjustments to our revenues now. Because when we have this transfer happening, it will need to be realistic about them. Here, this is from our self-tax consultants. And I just want to point out a couple of things here. Where does our self-test come from? You see the two things on the two pipe chart areas on the right-hand side. I also have transportation and restaurants and hotels. So our self-test is relying on these areas. We have state and county posts at 18% that's basically online shopping to us. And how much money we get from online shopping into our area that's related to us. The chart on the other side of the bar chart basically shows you a four-core comparison of September of last year and this year. The dark shaded is this year. The bar shaded is the last year. so you can see see, revenues and sales tax are coming out of lower or another place. This is again from our sales test consultant. So now I need to tell you why are you decreasing revenues, right? Is it, is it, it might just make it up numbers? I want to show you here we're not, right? When I open up the revenue, blue line, that's our last year's revenues in the way it came in. We brought in 72.8 million in revenues in sales and transaction and those tax. The orange bar line shows you how much was received through the second quarter. So last year we were at 25 million at this point in time, right, the second quarter. This year we had 23.5 million in the second quarter. Last year we were about 72.1 million and year old. This year we put under the 79.3 million. So what we need to do is we're not going to hit that target. That's our reality in the way we're tracking. Not in quarter here out of the impacts offires, because this was only through second quarter. When we left it at a quarter, we're part again through March, with the impacts as well here. A similar story here for hotel techs. Even though we kicked off measures CS in 2022, there hasn't been that much change in terms of how the revenues are coming in. In 2003-24, there have been around 65.9 million as we were brought in at the end of the fiscal year. Second quarter, we were at 28.2 million. This year, a second quarter, we were at 28.2 million. So that was saying, we're probably bringing about the same amount of revenues. We budgeted 73.7 million. Our activity is not there, not there are revenues that are coming in. This is the reason why making such significant changes to our revenues in 2425, which then reduces our base in our forecast for the future years. You know, we talked about unfunded capital needs. This graph shows you our capital program. The general firm is the contributors, a capital program, at 21 million annually. That's in 18 in 1920. That's what shows you their 21 million. You see that through COVID and the revenue losses and so forth. We had to reduce our capital budget. The capital budget is the the area where we've reduced the most. We've deferred a lot maintenance. And that's not sustainable. Even when we catch up in 2627 to the same level that we had, that we were funding in 1819, if we were to cancel inflation, the same amount that was paying, the 20 million that was paying for services and expenses in 1920, now we do 26.3 million to be able to pay the same amount of services. The sounds are just you that even if we brought the base to the same amount that we were funding, it still not sufficient. In here we are 61% of our pre-COVID doses that are mentioned to you. Cost of inflation are up, placing our annual funding for capital, where deferring a lot of maintenance, which is not sustainable, it is also, could be a liability to the city. We are not making additional investments through the forecast above a 21 million that we used to budget, right? And that gets 7.26.27. And then we have, sitting right, about 460 million in our funded projects. Now there's lists extensive, and maybe council doesn't want to fund or doesn't feel like it's the time. The same time, we're not in the same point in time to fund the same projects, but we need to chase that approach. But the list is there. And it's 560 million. Here's the list just showing you not a comprehensive list, just some of the projects that are unfunded right now. Again, as I mentioned to you, we need to look at this list, Councilor Hensley consider what's still things that we want to move forward and what things do we stop kind of thinking about moving forward anytime soon. Here's an example of what the firmmanious means to us. Right-in-way maintenance, street-life maintenance. We're experiencing high levels of copper wire theft and it's constantly selling a lot of money. And so making efforts to protect our infrastructure, those are stuff that just comes up and we can't avoid. We need to pay for it. I mentioned to you that we borrowed money from other friends. What I'm showing you here is how much we borrowed through 24, 25. Now, 24, 25 is this fiscal year. So we plan on holding back more money in the housing trust fund just to be able to cover our expenses. For the $7.2 million to the housing trust fund, this is where friends are following housing and other projects. We earn money. We want to fund. We also borrow the money $15 million. We have a payment schedule for all of these things. It's just there's so much material in this thing in the market before we can start paying back. And then I work as compensation fund. and other insurance costs are are going up. We took a 6.5 million from the workers compensation fund. So the biggest thing here, an online library, one more about this library is we've all had as a magnitude of these libraries in the cost. I mentioned to you, we paid out 230 million in social abuse clothes in the U.L. case. We've received 100 and 57 additional plaintiffs for that case on top of another former employee for plaintiffs in that case. And we still have a civilA, which is on the salt, which comes as a significant legal cost. And then, yeah, it could be, you know, we have to pay out the planars if we prevail. So this is one of the 92 of this. So we're going to have a try. Or we're struggling, so we're trying to implement right now. Short chain and one time, unsustainable things, those are things that once we get money from these things, the money is not coming back, it is not an ongoing revenue source. We are still continuing to litigate with our insurance providers demanding compensation from prior settlement payments. So we are in litigation of that, but I don't know exactly how much it is going to be, we are litigating that. So it is going to be one time money that we will receive at some point in time. The time of the stuff could take years, so we don't have to ever get that. Other stuff that we're looking at is Lancel's. We're asking the to Mr. T. Dick on what sales we can make on land. But again this is all just one time revenue that's going to come into our pockets. It's not going to be something that's going to sustain us. Parking rates were looking at evaluating whether we do parking rate adjustments in what that would look like or the problem transportation is going through that. There's also waterways, waterways that are needed to be adjusted, just in those funds to be able to sustain their cost. And then we are looking at potentially seeing if the voters would approve a general observation bond to cover some of the projects that we have in our capital program. We want to focus on strategic, sustainable strategies. And so, ownership has partnerships and created more events in Santa Monica with Michael General and my revenues. We want to look at those opportunities. We also need to have a review and review and review their economic development, which I'll be able to talk to you about in this presentation as well. So, those are the strategies that we're also wanting to apply during this budget process. As part of the final practice, we also look at other funds and how they're doing. So, self-sustaining funds, they're the best resource we cover recycling and our housing authority fund and our cemetery fund, our funds that are self-sustaining. The rather most part of us are mentioned to you, we're doing a five-year-old rate study to keep pace, revenues, the same pace as costs. Funds that are called attention are known as the Housing Trust Fund, which we borrowed money from, our information technology fund, which we also had to borrow money from in our vehicle management fund, which we have had to plan on future payments to the forecast. Other places where we're seeing the impacts of the general fund are the beach and the pier, which are receiving subsidies to our forecast. Again, these are areas where they're not generally enough revenues to cover their expenditures, therefore the general fund's having to cover the subsidies. And then much of GSPAN, we just want to give you an update. So far, today, over two years, we received 46.3 million. That 20 million went to the school district, or was it telling me to go to the school district last year and telling them it was going to go this year. And the rest of it goes to homeless doesn't prevention and affordable housing efforts. So with that, I want to, you know, end my presentation on the forecast. And I want to move on to our mid-year changes. Before I do, I think I need to summarize all the information that I gave to you. It was a lot of information. So key takeaways here is that our budget is an instructional deficit. The revenues that we currently have are only enough to cover our, to pay our bills, to cover our existing costs. And that requires for us to balance our budget. So without any new expenditures, we're able to balance the budget. But anything beyond that, we can't afford. The General Fund 5A forecast shows that expenditures will exceed revenue significantly until 2029. And even with the use of measure F and measure K revenues, we're still having a deficit. What this means is that the city will need to continue to draw on our already depleted resource over the next three years just to balance the budget. So as a result, we recommend being a strategy that curves discretionary expenditure growth, utilizing 60 million in the city resource to give us an opportunity to develop an implement more aggressive and sustainable revenue generating economic revitalization strategy. This will strengthen our local economy and will bring long-term stability to our city's budget. We recognize that the structural deficit cannot be fixed overnight when we are committed to making strategic changes and improvements and will continue to look for opportunities to increase city's revenues. So the major focus of financial strategy will be a remvigorated focus on economic development strategy. Again, anything above what we already fund to pay our bills or what we have in our forecast has to come at the cost of a trade-off. So, anything else that we need to invest in, we need to get direction in terms of where we trade off on some of the services. So,'s it for the five year forecast. Namely talk about the millionaire changes that we're asking council to approve. So the revenue and expenditure changes are detailed in their staff report and attachment of the staff report. So for the current fiscal year, we're proposing a decrease in revenues from our initial targets, we're decreasing by 2.8 million in the general general fund and 12.5 million in the other funds. As I mentioned to you earlier, the key drivers of some of the decreases in the general fund are related to trends in travel, tourism and consumer spending. These shifts in spending impact sales tax revenue and transaction and use tax revenue in combined total of 4 million. That's a reduction to our budget targets. In addition our hotel tax or transaction occupancy tax we're reducing by 3.6 million from our delivery open-viral hotels and also from a slightly covering that area in an international travel. As well as wildfires, which are impacted at the third quarter of our revenues this fiscal year. We're also decreasing, these decreases are actually offset by 4.7 million increases from other areas in the city in charges for services. In the other funds, our adjustments include decreases in the upper fund due to lease reductions and run credits for renovation delays. In the big blue bus, primarily due to reduced advertising revenue resulting from a newly negotiated agreement. And in the housing authority fund due to lower housing voucher utilization. And the water fund is related the performing of a plan-rate study. We're also proposing modest increases in the other funds related to key ask advertising revenues for the beach and pier fund, gas tax and miscellaneous grants revenues and special revenues primarily due to revised funding marks and timing of anticipated reimbursements. These are the revenue changes that we're proposing for mid-year. On the expenditure side, we're proposing 2.2 million increase in expenditures, and less related to legal costs associated with CVRA, as well as adjustments in the police department, reflecting six months of compensation increases affected January 2025. Last thing we're making, expenditure reductions related to measure GSH revenue or translation and use tax revenue, because of lower our expenses for that, that go to the school district and to the housing transfer and our going to be less. So it decreases our expenditures. We're also proposing expenditures in the CIP budget of 1 million. This is basically for design costs for the pure bridge improvements, and this is all funded through the CalTrans grant. In the housing authority, we're proposing reductions due to lower vatual utilization. And then the remaining changes in the oil funds primarily affect grant adjustments in a reduction in general fund transfers related to the transaction and use text. So with that, we are recommending new councils take four actions in this slide, so we're asking Council to approve the appropriation of the media expenditure changes and the revenue budget adjustments. We're asking Council to receive our five-year FARCAS. We're asking Council to accept grants and then we're making our finding on NSEQA. This is where we're asking Council to take action on today. This is the end of my presentation and we're here for questions. Okay, I guess we'll have to do hand-raising, and I'll take notes of who wants to go first. Does anybody have any questions? We'll start with questions, and then we'll go to comments. Council Member Hall. All right, okay, so thank you for such a comprehensive report, Oscar. So I want to talk about our reserves first. So currently that's 61% of what they were in 2019 at approximately $158 million. So what has happened to our credit rating because of these unprecedented low reserve levels? So last year our lease revenue bond rating by S&P was reduced from a level of a AA plus to AA. So it was one notch down. And the report basically, what I've mentioned to us is that we cannot continue rely on reserves and use up reserves that we do that. Then it just looks, they're gonna reduce our ratings even further. Right, so if we wanted to pursue a general obligations bond, that would mean higher interest rates for investors to compensate perceived risk, which increases our debt service costs over time, making the bond more expensive to us. That was correct, yes. Which in theory would likely cause difficulty in attracting investors, because a lot of institutional investors have like pension funds, have rules limiting, riskier debts. Are we talking about that level of risk when our reserves of this low? No, no. We're still rated high. We're considering high rated revenue bonds. Now, our general obligation bonds are still rated high. Of course, have a high rating there. Whether it decreased or reduced revenue bonds. But yeah, there is something that is a risk of, we would incur higher loan costs, right? Interest rates, if we get the reducing further. Got it. And just to reiterate, would you say going into debt when we don't have a healthy reserves is a financially prudent choice? It is not a prudent choice. All right thank you. Are we doing parking rates now or is that later? That's later. That's it. Got it. In measure K, would you first later? Okay. I'll reserve the rest of my questions in. Thank you, aye. Anybody else have any other questions? Council members, Zwick? Thank you for that presentation again. As council member Hall said, just to get some clarity as well on some of the numbers that were thrown out, And The five-year budget proposes to allocate $33 million in reserves to cover the deficit is that correct? Yes, the land and yellow that I showed at the end and that's That's taking us beyond what's currently our reserve level, which is only 61% of 2019 levels That is the sixty-way presenting includes the as the money that would be used for to cover the expenditures. So it's 61% after we allocate that money? It'd be before. Before. So what would it be after? I don't know. We'll calculate what the data would be. But it is significantly more. We're reducing about 60 million more, right? We were at 40 million. We'll calculate that for you. OK. And this is all not accounting for any of the various looming legal liabilities that we still face. That is correct. That is correct. It's not accounting for them. OK. You mentioned at one point that using one-time funds to cover structural deficits is not a good strategy, I believe you said? That is correct. So then why are we pursuing it? This is the only strategy. I mean, the only option is cut services. And so in this case, we can try everything. And this is one of the last things that we want to try and give us some time to be able to do some economic recovery efforts and hopefully really generate strength in the area where it's actually going to be ongoing revenues. Okay. You mentioned on the kiosks that you revised revenues down. Why was that? This is we have a guaranteed annual amount of, I believe it's 5 million and the second phase of the project started late and so we're cutting in half. We're going to receive that money anyway but it's just in terms of the way we budget it we budgeted the full amount this fiscal year. So my understanding is it's because we ourselves as the city failed to permit these kiosks fast enough and now we denied ourselves that money timely. I am not sure. Well that's actually not entirely true so the big outdoor had to find power to draw for the kiosks and so they were supposed to provide their own power and work with adjacent property owners where they could not tie in to city power in some areas they were able to and some areas they were not. So in large part the delays were due to them being able to tie into electricity. Thank you. You're welcome. And on the topic of economic development, I'm glad that we're talking in this meeting about focusing on that going forward, but I think I'd be failed to ask about certain things that I think we've already been leaving currently on the table in that and just check in on their status. I know in addition to the kiosk that there are various pending applications for out of home advertising in various parts of the downtown, but that's not been presented to council. Is that something that we are actively bringing forward? I'm sorry. Can you say that again? What do you ask me? There were DA applications from Mace Ridge and now from certain private property owners to contemplate out of home advertising in the downtown. But that's not something that I hear we are making progress on. And I'm just curious if that's going to be being brought to council or if that needs to be directed. Armin A's, yeah, our director of CDD is coming. Good morning, Mayor, Mayor of the Telling Council. I believe those discussions are taking place. As of last week, we did meet with some of the potential applicants. to anticipate warnings and that information to counsel in the next few months as we're going through with the applicants to get a better sense of what they're proposing. So it is coming, but we're not prepared to provide that today because we're still going towards the original process of reviewing what they're proposing, but it's coming. Thank you. And then similarly, I know there's been ongoing discussions for over a year with the RAN Corporation about potentially mending their DA in exchange for a profit sharing agreement on any future sale. That's not something that I've heard much about in the last year. And again, it seems like a revenue generating potential, so I'm curious about that. I can answer that as well. are actually in the process of circling back with land. I believe there were no negotiations that went back and forth for several months. They have come back to us and I know I'm being summoned to have a meeting with them in the next two weeks. So it's coming. Okay. And then I know there are properties that we are now on in Comrade on, including fourth and Colorado, which is currently sort of sitting empty and ripe for redevelopment. There's other sites, of course, the Fairview branches, two blocks from Virginia Avenue Park, and it's not serving anyone currently sitting there closed. And there's of course the Civic, which everyone probably here knows my opinions on. I'm just curious if there's any status update on fourth and call of rato and specifically. I do not have any updates at this time. Okay, well I would just say that when it comes to all of the things that I just mentioned about, I would say that we don't wait on, you know, whatever subcommittee that we're forming and whatever strategy we're going to be putting forward on and that these are all things I would hope that we're moving forward with an all D speed. Thank you. Thank you and housing authority member Miss Sinclair. Hi, thank you for that report. So your budget is removing $1 million in reserves from the Santa Monica Housing Authority. It should remain with housing for the voucher program. We need to stop attacking a program and necessary housing that has already been gutted, including our depleted housing trust accounts, which you mentioned. The city using housing trust funds to pay the Euler power lawsuit lawsuit is unacceptable. When will we get the money back? Or information about that? Our money is not earmarked for lawsuits, so why is it being spent on the lawsuits? If we could not backfill the funding for housing programs, why are you proposing to remove over a million dollars in Federal-Head Reserve funds? The Santa Monica Housing Authority is also 82% staffed and needs to be at 100%. Where is that money going? So the adjustment to the housing trust fund is related to voucher utilization. So if we're not spending that money, we're not gonna get reimbursed for it. It's an adjustment to fix both sides of it, both sides of the ledger. Right. We're not reducing, we're not reducing or taking money away from that. We're not going to receive that revenue because we're not going to get reimbursed for it. But you already have a reserve. So you said that there's no decrease in the voucher use, but there is an increase in the voucher needs. We're just not allocating the funding. Hello, Duke. If one of our main city goals is homelessness prevention, where is the money? Obviously, staff is reporting to HUD and HCD that programs are in place to prevent homelessness, but our city streets scream otherwise. Hello. Hello, I'm Heather. Hello, I'm Director of Housing Human Services. Hi, Hizhar, thanks for being here. So I want to make sure I'm understanding your question. I think just to reiterate what Oscar was sharing, it's not that funds are being taken away. This is separate from the Housing Trust Fund topic. So in terms of voucher utilization, voucher utilization was less than what we anticipated. And the staff upper outlines that, but just to recap, it was in large part because the lease up of the wall, which was one of our first permits for the housing buildings to open almost a decade, took a little bit wrong to the anticipated. And then similarly issuing, well not issuing necessarily, but utilization of our emergency housing vouchers, also took longer than anticipated meaning. Even when people get the voucher, they can't always find housing here in our city with that voucher, which you'll see next week, we're taking a council and ask for a position to help support and expedite that. But just to recap, it's not that those funds are being taken away from us per se, it's that we don't get paid for the vouchers until someone moves in with them. And so there was a reduction in the number of movings, based on what we had anticipated. OK. until someone moves in with them. And so there was a reduction in the number of move-ins based on what we had anticipated. Okay, and then my other comment is about GS fundings. Meds of GS money has been collected, 10 million went to schools, but no money for measure GS has been allocated towards homelessness, prevention, or housing programs. Why is that? The money is in the housing trust, I'm sorry, in the GS fund to be able to be used. So we have 16 million, what are that? How do you say 16 million? Yeah, so I can switch to this a little bit as well. So there's actually a specific resident oversight committee that will oversee the measure GS funds. So the measure GS funds are their own separate fund within the housing trust fund and have their own separate agency that oversees them. So in that way, it falls a little bit outside the preview of the housing commission. That being said, on March 25th, Council is also going to be appointing the applicants to that measure GS committee. And how much did you say again? So yeah, it's 26.3 over the two, almost two total of the school years at this point. Okay, and I just had another question about the plan for HUD shortfall or getting of potential HUD SSI SSDI and Medicaid. These issues will affect Santa Monica's ability to remain housed and must prioritize our citizens. Do we have a plan for if that occurs? Yes, thanks for that question. So I know there's been a lot in the news and times recently about other housing authorities pausing their vouchers. What I will say is that we are uniquely positioned as the Santa Monica Housing Authority. We are not in a shortfall and we do have funds and vouchers that we will continue to issue. And to be conservative, the team is also looking at kind of a plan if funding for those were to cease. But at this point in time, we are not in a shortfall as other housing authority agencies are. Thank you. Catherine, what's your question about the percentage that would be only 40% of our unrestricted resource if we utilize a 60 million. Thank you. Are you still speaking, do you still have questions questions Miss Enkler? You didn't just mention That the non-brown act economic you didn't mention that in your report just right now, right? Okay Does that conclude that glutes right now? Is that concludes your questions for now for now? Okay? I'm gonna speak and then we'll try to do a second one. And if we can all help to try to condense our questions one round and then we can go in seconds over when we get an opportunity, I just want to ask you kind of touched on it from Housing and Human Services, Heather, thank you that we're continuously looking, are we continuously looking at our own obstacles that we create for ourselves, meaning red tape, which impede us from rather new opportunities? Council members would mention the permitting. I had the same question. I know you answered that that it was around the electricity. I was aware of that, but I think there was other permitting issues not connected to electricity. And I think we hear that a lot in the city. Is every department looking at, I had some of the similar questions with these housing vouchers, is it because things are taking long because of the city of Santa Monica or is it other agencies? And where we self-evaluate, are we removing our own red tape before council has to ask for it to be done? Are we constantly looking at ourselves and bringing that to council to expedite opportunities to make revenue where we can? Thanks for that question, ma'am. So yes, we continue to look at ways to expedite the process. I will say it's lengthy. I've seen that across all housing authorities, but our goal in our department is to make it as expeditious as possible. And so that's also part of why we're going to be bringing forward next week to council and ask for this housing navigator position because across the, I'll just call it like the visa process. So from the time the unit becomes vacant, to getting over all for the unit, to have, to supporting that person in completing the application because that's something in large part we can't reduce and it is quite laborious. You have to to provide so much documentation. I always say I don't know that I could ever complete that application. I'm still making sure we have ample support for that. But then again, what I highlighted is having a support because once the person gets the voucher issued, they then have to find a unit in our city. And that's a whole other part of the hurdle. So if that whole spectrum, we'll be asking for one housing navigator to help support that process. In the ideal world, we have many, probably, but I think that's a really good step in the right direction of helping to streamline that process. Are we looking at technology? I mean, when I attend National Legal Cities, I'm constantly seeing AI programs and assist cities to be in the 21st century. It seems that it also saves us money because, you know, although we like to have human connection, I think that's important. There's probably many technological advances that can be done that would do the job of five, six people and save the city money and expedite housing people faster. Yeah, and it's something we continue to look at. Additionally, in that same vein, we've moved to a more like a portal where people faster. Yeah, and it's something we continue to look at and additionally, you know, in that same vein, we've moved to like a more like a portal where people come up with their documents versus the old model that you've got to bring in your papers. So there are things we've already done to advance that, but I think it's an ever-evolving field that will continue to look into. Well, happy to bring it back when I come back from DC next week because I've seen to help both ends of it where people can easily go to a key ask and scan and documents have an AI interface answer a lot of questions that you know somebody who's getting salary and benefits and pension you know doesn't have to stack up a list of people waiting for answers. My next question is in regards to contracts that we have. I don't know if this is really now our new red department, our community development. I know Miss Rogers, we've talked about this, but I just want to publicly put out there. We're really actively looking at when we have events like freeze that we are capturing that sales tax. Because as we know, freeze sold millions of dollars and we didn't get any of that revenue. are we looking at that going forward to make sure that all of our contracts include explicitly that sentiment? no free sold millions of dollars and we didn't get any of that revenue. Are we, I mean looking at that going forward to make sure that all of our contracts include explicitly that the city of Santa Monica receives that sales tax revenue? I'm just using freeza as an example but any co-sponsored events. I guess. I guess. I guess. And folks at home, I'm aware that the sound is a little wonky. We're working and we will have the presentation attached to the agenda. I think Jenny and I are going to tag team this because the short answer is absolutely. I think what we're going to do as she and I are starting our relationship and working together is look for any and only opportunity to maximize events, bring events back to Santa Monica, expand on the events that we already have because as you will hear in a little bit in our presentation that's a huge part of economic development and I think that's something we're known for. So I know Jenny's got some great ideas, and I'm going to continue partnering with her because that is going to be a huge piece of what we do in economic development. I just was going to jump in. Jenny Rogers, your director of recreation and arts. Our rad team at the Council's direction has been working actually at looking at how we can streamline the process of the permitting, especially large scale events. And so we're going to be bringing some things to you in the near future. Some of those things by virtue of my position, I can just do as updates to our site guidelines, which we want to do do as quickly as possible because we want to be able to help the community make these things happen in a more expeditious way. Other things we're going to be bringing to council for your consideration. And so we just want for Santa Monica to be a much more friendly and welcoming environment. And we have incredible support. I just want to say a shout out. Part of this work has been in collaboration with our community partners, Santa Monica Tour and Travel, downtown Santa Monica, all of the bids, all of the neighborhood organizations have been meeting with us to let us know what's working well, what's a challenge, and where we can kind of smooth the road so that we don't have as many obstacles to being the host things. Well, I'm excited about the work that you two are doing because it's generating revenue. But just to back to my original question, are we highlighting as we do business, these are business contracts, right? We're running a $700 million budget and we're currently in a huge deficit. But even if we weren't, we should be really making sure nowadays with sales use tax. I mean, as a business owner myself, when you're doing business somewhere else, there's a process to make sure that that city gets that sales tax. Otherwise it goes back to your home city. So I just, I know we, I hope A, two questions. Can we recapture what we missed because I think it was in the freeze contract. Second question is are we making sure that's a priority as we go forward with any other arrangements or contracts? I don't know if Oscar others want to speak to the sales tax question. I'm not sure that we can recover it. I think we need to look at the agreement. It fills in there. There's some documents that need to be signed ahead of the agreement. So if those were incorporated, then we would get the sales tax portion, but we would check on that for you. And then going forward. And forward though, that's something that, yeah, we hear you. Yeah, and I just want to reinforce absolutely going forward. And we have it to the Radteams credit. They have, they did raise this in the negotiation. So we are working where we can to negotiate these measures in contracts. The partnerships team is also working very hard. The whole purpose of partnerships is to create revenue generating opportunities. They serve as on-bids people to our private partners to make sure that the processes are streamlined as much as possible. And process is probably right. We still have to ensure public safety. We still have to ensure the public. I mean, a lot of these activations are in the public right of way or in public spaces. We're not going to be able to forego the entire process because we need to make sure that all the measures are in response to public safety are in place and we're going to maximize revenues. We're looking across the city now to make sure that we're getting market rate for everything that will be utilizing and expanding what we can utilize for market rate events, especially ahead of FIFA and LA28, so that we're getting market rate negotiations and all of those agreements that are negotiated at market rate will come to council. So you'll see all of those. Again, I just want to highlight the focus on when we have small vendors collectively that adds up to a lot of sales tech. So all that's good. I'm not talking about processes and I hear you on that. But if we have vendors selling at an event collectively and we're not getting the sales tax because they're using a point of system that goes back to where they're set up their business, that's a huge loss of income. I think we probably would have resolved a lot of these issues in one day at freeze. So I'm glad we're looking at that. My next comment is just another revenue loss, revenue opportunities. I hope we're looking on its question is code really looking at how I see there's been a dip and I'm not looking at penalizing our residents of vacation rentals. But I'm looking at how many properties we have where we've adjusted the code where if you've got broken glass and you've got shuttered windows and you've got trash laying outside and overgrowth, which obviously impacts the clean and safe vibe and the businesses adjacent to it. I don't see those folks getting actual code citations where we're coping any money. In fact, I see in the report that they're just getting one, two, three, four, five, six warnings. And I can point to many properties I'm aware of right now. What are we doing with code enforcement to recapture those dollars? Because not only does it speak to public safety and code, you know, and economic recovery, it literally hits all top three priorities, but we're also losing money by not giving those people citations and sending the message that people need to clean up their properties. They need to actively be going out and renting those vacant properties. So is anyone here from Code Enforcement? I'll touch on it and Susan has one more thing. So I'm learning our process here, but I do know we are paying very close attention to the vacant properties and how the property owners are managing those properties or it lack thereof. And I believe our course, the Court of enforcement team is looking at a program specifically geared towards how we abate vacant property, Court of enforcement issues. I anticipate that that comment will counsel soon because I know it's a recurring issue. And similar to many other departments, other resources are very limited in how many staff we have that's out there. But if we're getting the same recurring complaints on certain properties, I think that's a red flag for us if we need to act quickly. So it's coming. I would just say the laws are on the books already, so we should start by using what we can enforce. And that by leaving them out there, it actually stresses staff and costs us more money as we have to keep going out. Crest, it looks like obviously Crest helps keep our youth safe. It's an extremely important program and we're losing revenue opportunity there. And I'm just curious if we're looking at, even though it might look like it's cost, there's a cost to it. It obviously also brings us, not it's not only a cost neutral, there's revenue. Are we looking at expanding, cross it off? And looking at it from the lens of revenue generating and public safety. So, Crest also falls in housing human services department. You bring up a great point which is something that we've been talking about internally in our department because Crest does generate revenue. Also we would need more staffing to expand that service. So that's kind of the cost benefit analysis, but we are talking about that internally. Okay, and I don't know, I know we also want to talk about the measure K and measure PSK. We told the community that these dollars would be spent specifically on public safety efforts, the city generated materials that had a photo of police and fire and addressing public safety, whether it be safer streets for pedestrians and bicyclists or public safety from a crime perspective and homelessness. And now we see that the fear of those unions that helped endorse those items is coming to realization which it's filling the potholes of our deficit and our general fund. And I just hope that we can have further discussion as to making sure that those dollars are spent where they should be. And I will just say, are we looking at, I see the $2 million for the CVARA, but I hope that we can look at reducing that as we adjust how we look at those legal expenses and how we go forward. And I see 2 million, but when City Attorney and I spoke, there was a number that you said which was 6 million. It's up to 6 million for the next year, so this fiscal year plus next fiscal year. So I'd like to make sure that we're looking at reducing that significantly and whatever that means in terms of it's changing our approach with our legal team to reduce those costs and what we do because I think that's an insane amount of money and half of that even would go towards funding a portion of what we promised the community with measure K and PSK. Yeah, we can have a conversation with council about that And then my last question is just about the addiction therapy services that are captured There's like 740,000 that we got in Grant money that was it says the opioid settlement fund that wasn't anticipated. My question is, does that, is that money earmarked obviously to be spent specifically for addiction services within the housing and human services? And is that how it's earmarked to be spent? The opioid settlement funds do sit. ButPO and settlement funds do sit within our department funding and those are some of the funds that council approved moving forward, some of the behavioral health services and substance use services at the February 25th Council meeting and we look to continue to expand those types of services with those funds because they are restricted. Are we looking at places like Claire matrix that do detox? We are. Okay. And that concludes my questions for now. But are we any more questions this round? Mayor Perterne-Jorosis? I just got one quick one. Oh God, you got it. Council member Smith? I want to thank you also for this really detailed work. My question is also with respect to, we see here where our sales tax and use revenue has gone down by $3.9 million. We talked about some of the things of how we're allocating money is to support that, but based on those properties in our downtown, particularly that are vacant. What kind of interaction are we doing with property owners? With respect to that as to finding out some of their needs. I know we're talking about escalating some of the permit, access, and what have you, but in addition to it, have we looked at some of our long standing property owners and maybe some of our absentee property owners and really tried to engage with them as to where are some of the reasons as to why activation hasn't happened. And then in addition to that, have we looked at how long these properties have been vacant and talked about ways of putting some pressure on them with respect to working with us to activate those properties? Council member, my understanding is that staff in our department has done their best to continue to see, communicate with the property owners. I think we're at a crossroads now where we need to start looking at the vacancies a little differently. Our goal as we look to activate economic development and we activate some of the things we're doing is to work very closely with each of the property owners to do a few things. First and foremost, identify what their actual plans are for those properties. And depending on what those plans are, whether we need to assist them with looking for potential tenants that can use those spaces, looking at ways to attract folks from the fires, businesses that are looking for relocation sites, looking for ways to activate some of the vacant spaces into possible gallery spaces. So at least they're not sitting vacant even on an interim basis. For the absentee property owners, looking for ways to put some additional pressure on them through code enforcement to get those sites really taken care of. I think there are some vacancies where I'm gonna make an assumption that we have property owners that are truly absentee property owners that are not doing their part in maintaining their properties. There's going to be a series of networking events. We're going to be establishing in the next few months geared towards property owners, geared towards existing businesses, geared towards developers, and geared towards people who want to do business with us that actually haven't come to us yet. So there's going to be several things we're going to be introducing as part of our reimagining of economic development. And certainly one of the key points is the look on vacancies and looking for ways to decrease our vacancy rate because it is significant at this point. Thank you. Mayor Pro Temtrosis. Oh, you go. It's fine. Thank you. So I just want to ask a clarifying question and I'm sorry for my voice. Council members WIC mentioned some of the other potential options to help raise one-time remedies. Can I just ask for clarification of why those weren't presented as potential considerations for filling this one-time funding gap? It might be a question for Oscar because it was a timing of how long that would take. Is it other things? It's timing of how long that would take. I mean, another way of actively looking at selling those properties. We hired a broker to do that. It's really timing. But if that money comes in, knowing how much is going to be, right, knowing that it's one time things that we could use, is definitely one place we would go to, I flew to that. Now, we do have a payment plan for monies that were borrowed that council approved in 2023, which basically outlines certain conditions that need to be met before we use those monies for anything else. So we would have to increase our reserve to a lot of other stuff before we utilize those funds to do other things with it. So there is a national policy that was created by council on these those funds. But But yes, to your question, it is about timing. And to follow up on, I think several folks have already asked this, just the fees and fines and uncollected fees and fines. Are we looking at how we can improve our collection rates on those, a kind of outstanding debts? That's something in my area that yes we will focus on that. We're also going to focus efforts on auditing, self-reporting taxes that we're receiving. So those are things of the economic development type of things that we're going to do. Also leaving money on the table we're going to make sure that that doesn't happen and then we'll confirm that information. Mayor Porto, I'm to recess. Thanks. I'll start with this quick excellent staff report. Excellent staff report and I agree with all the questions that have been asked. The staff report also mentions that we Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank shouldn't ask any questions about parking. All right. So the staff of our also looks at exploring increase in the corporate headquarters business tax rate beyond the .25%. Can you talk about maybe how much money that might bring in for us if we do that? So that was part of the business license modernization project. So we already captured that. So we estimated that all the changes with the business license modernization project would generate about 3 million annually, including that. I don't know the exact number for just for that component, but I can get back to that with that number. And is the economic development team looking at adjusting the tax rates for higher revenue industries that we have in the city and creating targeted tax incentives to attract certain types of businesses while increasing others tax contributions. Yes, and Arbonyk is beating that, but yes, I think that's one of the strategies. Mayor, at the time, yes, I think we need to start exploring the possibility. We just haven't run any of those analysis, but I think our intent is that as we form the Economic Development Committee with Council, the Interdepartmental Task Force, there are some higher level, I think ideas we need to explore and run the numbers to see what that would mean for us as far as what it could generate. Great. And would also agree with Council Member Snow on the incentivizing vacant and abandoned businesses, but we'll get to that. So in the staff report, we haven't talked about this yet, but we talked about, the staff report talks about filming, right? Santa Monica is a very desirable location. We do have filming that occurs in the city. The staff report talks about explaining the permit requirements to include private properties and leveraging our pills of the film industry. Do we have any sort of indication of how that might benefit our economy and what revenue projections we have? So the RFP for that recently closed is my understanding so whoever the city chooses to work with going forward will help us develop that information. And I assume we would also look at permitting reforms as well to make it yeah great. again going to market rate for city facilities absolutely because I understand that like Culver City Beverly Hills etc have different rates great. Thank you so much and looking forward to the next part of the presentation So any other questions? Council member askin? One real quick question And sorry for'm not asking this earlier, but earlier, Andrew Hoyer mentioned that the expenditures with respect to tree maintenance had gone up recently. Is that reflected as a line item in the meteor adjustments? I'm sorry, we'll repeat the question. The Chair of Urban Forests asked for a mention that expenditures with respect to tree maintenance had gone up unexpectedly. Is that reflected in the White items? Not in our budget adjustments, but it would be reflected in the public works department's budget. So we do have a lot of item. Okay. So I'll share with that. I'm so sorry, but I have one last question about code. Are we collecting those, I mean, not going back but going forward, have we resolved the issue around the vending issue on the pier where we were just allowing people to not pay those tickets or they would just only pay $10. Is that now changed? Was that just a COVID thing? We were allowing people to go in and say just on a waiver, oh I can't afford these and then they wouldn't pay them. And I think it was a few hundred thousand dollars that was quoted at one point. Are we not doing that anymore? Mayor, I'm actually, I don't know the answer to that question. Well, let's look at that. I'm talking about the vending cards on the pier and we had an issue where they would be cited. They would go and say, I can't afford it. And I think the maximum they would have to pay at that point was $10. So I don't have that information off the top of my head, but I've noted a number of things. So. they would have to pay at that point was $10. So I don't have that information off the top of my head, but I've noted a number of things. So what we'll be doing is where we can provide answers to counsel, we can put that in an information item so that we can be responsive to you. So you get the information ahead of the May study session and where we need more time, we'll definitely bring these back to you in May. But a lot of these, so we can include that in an information item. And if we can include also like what it would look like if we were to impose a vacancy tax, if we were to collect on these abandoned uses just so we could look at how much we would be capturing. And if it's worth it. And lastly, we just ask if we could include, I don't know how you would do this, what it would look like if we led include, I don't know how you would do this. What it would look like if we led by example by having our daytime population increase by asking our folks at the city to have a more work in person. Presence and seeing how we talked a lot about how our daytime population has decreased, you know, quite a bit. I know that's not the only thing, but if we could just look at what that would look like and incentivizing folks for in-person working, we have a lot of large organizations and empty office bases. If there's any way to be creative and incentivized businesses through tax credits or whatnot, that when they have bringing people to work as opposed to working remotely. Because I know people get penalized in some sense financially businesses in a way by having, you know, so just making sure we look at creative ways. All right. Mayor, I just add on the vacant commercial properties are retail spaces specifically. The city could look into a fee program which then wouldn't need to be approved by voters as a tax and it's worth considering that because otherwise it would take a long time. Yeah. So fee program versus vacancy tax? All right. I have a couple more questions. Yes. Sorry, Miss Sinclair. Okay. Okay. So I think that spending is a problem and we need to turn around revenue. How is it responsible to sell off public land one time fix when we aren't solving for the bigger problems? What happens when we continue the bad management and have nothing left to sell? Well, that's where we're as a part of the next part of the presentation. We're looking to Council to establish an ad hoc committee on economic development. So we are looking forward to revenue generating opportunities consistent with a lot of what we're hearing here, cutting through red tape, focusing on business, you know, attraction and retention efforts, and looking at big events, really focusing on creating revenue, generating opportunities, and not these one time cuts. Okay, and I don't know if right now is the time to ask, but what I'm about to ask is a lot about staffing and the needs in the report about different departments that need different staff. Right now is the time. Okay. So we don't need passport services because the main post office does the same thing and the process is not long. We don't need to spend money there. We're not doing it anymore, just say no. Okay. That's good to know. What about for the big blue bus? I saw that there were some additional people that were needed. That comes out of the general fund though. That comes out of the, sorry, I don't mean to answer that. Yeah, it's a big blue bus fund. Okay. And then my comment about the economic development ad hoc, by no means do I support a non-brown act body, even the resident advisory board which under head has the legal notion to do that. We weren't able to have a non-brown-act body. I support finding ways to improve the city's economic development, but this committee should be a regular committee to better ensure equitable outcomes to eliminate special interest groups and rewarding those who contributed to campaigns of elected officials. How are we going to ensure that the ad hoc is not doj in Santa Monica? Well, my understanding of doj is that they're on a singular mission to dismantle government. The purpose of the ad hoc economic development committee is to make government better partners with the private sector, with our nonprofit partners, with other public agencies to make sure that we're maximizing revenue generating opportunities and looking at areas that we haven't been able to focus on like in downtown and focusing on our business improvement districts. So it's not to look at city operations to dismantle or remove them. But if how can we eliminate special interests and people being rewarded on there for, you know, contributing to elected officials campaigns if it's not, if it's non-brown act compliant? We'll be coming back to counsel with the findings from the economic development task force because there will be a complimentary task force within the city staff team as well. So we'll be bringing forward all of the recommendations and findings to city council. So that will be in public meetings. Ms. Client, can I just absolutely? I think maybe it's not defined clear enough that the point of it is not to do anything behind closed doors, but or to make any decisions, but rather to collaborate with the community, both business owners, residents, and like to see if there's other opportunities because time and time again, government has not been and revered as innovative thinkers for economic revenue. So they're looking outside as an out of the box opportunity to engage in conversation, not as an opportunity to have someone say, I want to give a business place to this person, it's just to talk about ideas. I don't think there's no contracts being written or delved out. It's just literally a think tank. I still think it's an awful idea, and I do understand that a lot of those committees is where political shields get put into to put in other people's agendas. I understand the intent of it. I just don't know how we're going to prevent that, especially if it's not Brown Act compliant. We can talk about it the next section, right? Yeah. And without full transparency, I don't understand that. There's no way it's going to happen. And then my last comment is, well, probably not my last comment, but we need to implement all measures to clean our ocean and clean our city. We need more research on the fatalities that were mentioned. Does staff have any more information about who is specifically causing the majority of the fatalities? Are those at fault mainly residents? Are they people commuting in the city? Are they tourists? Covert city removed protected bike lanes and bus platforms as part of their move cover city pilot project. Covers city is sending back $435,000 grant for Metro because the one lane for biking was causing more problems and no longer being used as intended. Advocates sued to preserve the bike improvements and they lost. The courts found that substantial evidence supported the city's determination that the modified project was exempt from sequa. So I know that we spend a lot of money on these things, but they have caused a lot of fatalities, even though our people coming into the city has decreased. So have we really looked at that in depth? I want to take that question. Armin A has been on the spot today. No. It's a New Year's turn. Welcome. Good morning, Mayor Counsel and authority member. So I guess to respond to the question generally, we work very closely with our partners in public safety, the police department, the fire department to assess every fatal and severe injury crash that occurs in Santa Monica. We have regular meetings and are focused on assessing the source of each crash, the cause of each crash, and then obviously through our existing combination of traffic engineering, traffic safety, infrastructure projects, enforcement and public education are focused on our vision zero goal of eliminating all fatal and severe injury. Crash is on our roads so that's kind of the overall answer to your question but if you have anything further happy to address that. So So seeing how there's been a 49% reduction in daily visitors, but the fatalities has increased. Who was that fault for those? Have you said you analyzed that, but are they residents? Are they people commuting into work? Are they tourists? It went from 251,000 to 140,000, but the deaths are, the severe deaths have risen. Are we looking at that maybe it's because of the bike lanes? What are we projecting because of those numbers? So, I mean, we do assess each individual fatal or severe injury crash in terms of, you know, the causes, who's at fault. I don't have the data for you in terms of, you know, residents versus visitors. But what I can say is that, you know, we, of course, I think that the data you're referencing was published recently with regard to last year being a high in fatal and severe injury crash. It's something that we all see across all city departments is unacceptable. And I think there's a number of causes we could get into with regard to changes in driving behavior coming out of COVID, distracted drivers, pedestrian cyclists all across the board. And we're working closely with our police department colleagues, our communications team to make sure that we're absolutely redoubling our efforts on our vision zero goals. Okay I just want to make sure we're staying on with the housing authority questions and we're staying within the realm and I'm sorry as a new mayor I might have should have said that earlier. So do you have more questions pertaining to like housing authority board issues? So my understanding is that on the agenda, I'm to talk about the whole budget, not just something that affects the housing authority. And I'm not making these rules, but I'm going to turn to my city attorney. Yes, I'm sorry, members and Claire's participation here is limited to housing authority issues. Okay. So the agenda clearly tells the public that all items under item 11 are discussions and decisions being made by the joint session members. I would look at it more. It's a joint meeting, but the council has the authority over most of these issues and your role is limited to housing authority issues. But if I'm voting on a budget that includes all of that, how is it just limited to housing authority? You will not be voting on the major budget issues, only a housing authority issues. So then I was misinformed again. I know the first time I sat up here I talked about how there's not a lot of information that's given as far as what I am to do when I am to do it. And all those staff informed me last week that there would be a meeting that I needed to attend. Once again, I am reporting that the cab represented on the have needs ample time to digest the information. And I need specific information on what I'm supposed to look at and what I'm not supposed to look at. So, you know, it would be appreciated to adequately represent housing authority clients. And if our city wants to repair historic disenfranchisement of housing authority clients, we must do more to change this culture. I would move that, you know, whether it's a city clerk or the city attorney or together in conjunction that they do make an effort to prep our housing authority board and member us to their exact roles and duties in these meetings so that this issue doesn't happen again. I agreed. Understood. And to clarify, the housing authority item is listed as item 9 on the agenda. I agree it wasn't clear because clearly it wasn't even clear to me. So I apologize Ms. Sinclair and we will make a concerted effort to make sure that you're well informed for the next meeting. Before I move to call for a motion to approve the minutes of the April 9th and June 25th, housing authority board. I'm sorry, we already did that. So before I move to call for a motion to conclude, I just want to make sure you had all your questions asked. I'm sorry, we're going to do comments, but I want to make sure she was at her point. I was, I was in a part of the April 9th meeting. So I can't approve that budget. I was in a part of, I wasn't a Habtonet representative at that time. I don't even think there was a have tenant representative at that meeting Therefore I can't approve that budget and on June 25th That's the day that I was sworn in and I abstained from voting and I had that on the record because of How was not informed plus I had just gotten on the dies and was asked to vote on the budget? I do think that because the public are misinformed on the agenda that the meeting should be shut down. Council, if I could, the minute item was already dealt with. The remaining housing authority item is item 11b subsection 9. Yes, somebody else just told me it was 9 and not 11. So therefore that's why I'm saying so many people in the community could not understand it. Because I reached out to so many people to try to understand. And I was told by staff that it was number 4. So. Can I move that we approve 11 subsection 9 at this time? Do I hear a second? Second. Motion made by Council Member Zwick, seconded by Mayor Portem Tarosis. So we need a roll call vote. Or can we do a voice vote? I'm going to do a roll call, then. Okay. Authority member council member Skaya? Yes. Authority member council member Snow? Yes. Mayor Chair, a pro-10 terraces? Yes. Authority council member Raskin? Yes. Authority member Zouik? Yes. Authority member Mute. I'm sorry. Mocha Tessie, St. Clair, I'm sorry. Moot to see, sing clear, I'm sorry. No. An authority member, council, I'm sorry. Chair, mayor, pretend, I'm sorry. Chair, mayor, regrette. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry, I don't know how that happened. Council member Hall. Yes. And did you call you? Yes. Okay. Okay. So now, are we adjourning the housing authority meeting? Yes. And are we taking a short break? At this time or no? I don't know. I'm seeing we're going to keep going. Okay, great. All right, so that adjourns the housing authority meeting. Are we still going to be able to provide direction on the future? Yes, we have a room. All right, so we've adjourned the housing authority meeting and we're going to go on to more. I move that we receive the forecast. We authorize the city manager to accept the grant award and we author adopt a finding that the actions are not subject to CEQA. Motion made by Mayor Portenta roses. So I have a second. Seconded bya. Can we get a roll call vote? Council Member Raskin. Council Member Raskin. Yes. Mayor Pro Temterosis. Yes. Council Member Snell. Yes. Council Member Zunetskaya. Yes. Council Member Raskin. Yes. Council Member Raskin. Yes. Mayor Pro Temterosis. Yes. Council Member Raskin. Yes. Mayor Pro Temterosis. Yes. Councillor Moreruchnel. Yes. Councillor Gerrardt-Sky. Yes. And Mayor Negrette. Yes. And for the record I was yes as well. I think Jesse said twice. No worries. There's no more left. Okay. So you with a little bit of hope at the end. So we're going to touch on a few policy things, including the Council priorities, our operational roadmap and legislative platform before I turn it over to Lisa Person to talk about the city's response to the White House and we'll close out with some discussion on our plans for economic development. So in 2023, Council adopted five priority areas. We use these priorities to inform our budget, our department work plans, our legislative platform, and shape how we communicate with our city work. I'll add that this year's staff undertook an engagement effort ahead of the Bianno process. The first one we've really done since the COVID-19 pandemic. We held three community meetings and received almost 1,300 survey responses. I'd like to note the survey was not intended to be a scientific survey. It was intended to be an open invitation to our community to participate in our budget process. So take it that as it is. And I'll just end by noting that the results, largely mirror other survey results we've had with public safety and addressing homelessness remaining the top two priorities within the community. The full survey results were included with your in the binder with the report. Next I'd like to turn to an organizational roadmap, I sometimes call it operational roadmap sometimes. So if you hear that, it's the same thing. This was really designed to capture an outlook over the next five years of the city's major work initiatives. It captures 23 city initiatives with 94 milestones that are focused on the council priorities adopted in 2023. And one organizational priority of good governance that really discusses some of the internal operational financial management initiatives we're undertaking. And I'll just add this layers on top of the department work plans that feature over 300 individual projects and the 91 budget performance metrics that we also work towards. And then the final thing I'll touch on that we're asking for today is approval of the Council legislative platforms. These are used for our federal and state lobbying efforts. And just to say that it's really critical that we hear from you and get your endorsement on these as so much is happening in both Sacramento and DC at this time. And this allows staff to really quickly respond to those policy initiatives as they're coming through and being proposed so the city's voice is heard. And without I'm going to turn it over to Lisa to talk about our work. Good morning afternoon. We're getting close to afternoon now. Thank you for having me and I am very glad to be coordinating a lot of the response to the changes on the federal level and what it means for Santa Monica. It's a lot, obviously, and I won't be going in depth today. This is just an overview of what's been going on. On the local level, we've obviously been preparing for changes for our immigrant community. A big emphasis that I want to make this clear is that the city's role is making sure that all individuals know their rights. This is nothing about circumventing a law or legal process, but there are a number of rights that people are simply not aware that they have, and we want to make sure that all of our residents, regardless of whatever their status may be, are treated in accordance with the law and are familiar with those laws so that they are treated just as they're supposed to be according to the laws of this country. So we have been holding a number of events to support the dissemination of that information. We have built a network with our community residents to make sure that community stakeholders are also able to distribute accurate information about immigrant rights. We are also building out our LGBTQ plus support, Santa Monica, as we've known for a long time, supports our LGBTQ plus community. And with changes on the federal level, we want to make sure that there is a safety net and not just a safety net, but real support for those residents here. We are building out a number of resources for that community as well as events bringing in stakeholders from other organizations just to make sure again a large part of what makes this time so difficult is confusion. It's not so much what's happening although what's happening is very difficult. The hardest part is figuring out what is really going to happen, where do we need to step in and where is this conversation that's actually going to go nowhere. And so a big part of what our focus is in this first month or two has been just getting people grounded, understanding where we are, what's happening, what to worry about, and where we need to build up protections for people. We have also developed a rapid response coordination approach with city departments. We know that there are often questions that pop up about our, again, our rights as city staff. And so we're working very closely with the city attorney's office and others, so that when someone says, you know, I work in the park, I manage an after-school program, am I supposed to open the gate or not, right? These are basic questions that we need to be able to answer quickly and clearly, and we have developed a process so that those questions can be asked and entered quickly. We are also looking at, constantly, the fiscal impact analysis. This is the big weapon, right? This is the big thing that is going to make us need to pivot the most. Is the threat of withdrawing federal funds if we don't do certain things. A lot of the times what we learn when we dig into those things is that either they're framed in a way where we don't do the thing. You know, for example, there is a bill that says that it will take away federal funding for any federal funding dedicated to supporting undocumented immigrants. I don't think there's a federal grant in existence for supporting undocumented immigrants, but it's something that you will hear a headline, you get very nervous, we all spin our wheel. So we're really doing a lot of just fact checking and reading the fine print on all of these things to make sure again that we're not overburdening staff by preparing for things they don't need to, but also that we're in the right position to prepare for the things that we do need to. This will continue throughout. I don't expect things to calm down anytime soon. We do have two websites that I wanted to highlight. The first is Monica.gov slash sleep at home where you can find documents for the ambergrin community, know your rights information, free legal resources, etc. And the second is Santa Monica.gov slash LGBTQLGBTQIA inclusion and there you can find resources specifically for our trans community at the top of for the broader community as well throughout. There are a number of, you know, this is actually a beautiful country. I just want to editorialize for a second. There are so many resources to support people that are out there. And so it's a blessing for me that we don't need to be standing up a lot of new resources what we need to be doing is making sure people are aware of the resources. The amount of free legal support that, you know, lawyers across Los Angeles are standing up across Los Angeles County are standing up to support people. It's really beautiful. And so it makes our job easier because we need to, all we need to do this facilitate making sure that people know what's there for them. In our grantee community, we are looking at some concerns. These are the people who are going to be receiving operating more off of federal funds than city staff. There are people who have asked, you know, for help with how they protect their clients from immigration raids. Our team is working a lot to get them the same information, right? This is just basic, what are your rights in these situations information? So we're working to get that information to all of our grantees. There are, there have not been any visits by ICE to our grantees here, but there have been with sister organizations outside of Santa Monica. So these organizations are obviously concerned that it will come here. Again, preparation is the best thing we can do, so we're getting everybody information so they know how to handle it when it comes. There is a chilling effect for youth and LGBTQ individuals who are not showing up that's frequently for programming who are staying home because they are concerned about their safety or being targeted what have you. That's going to be something that we're just going to need to continue to work on and continue building trust so that people do know that they can feel safe coming to certain you know city services or what have you. I know that after school pick up there are lot of parents have not been there and a lot of times their kids are not there because they're not sure what they're going to be subject to. So that's a big part of our work is making sure that people understand the barriers that exist for people to come on to campuses or in programs or what have you and what really needs to be in place for that to occur. The biggest kind of scary part for some of these grantees is a lot of their budgets are completely made up of federal funds or almost completely made up of federal funds. So as we're talking about our budget and we're looking at all our grantees, we do have to bear in mind that a lot of these people, whose explicit mission may very well be, right, protecting undocumented immigrants or may very well be supporting trans individuals, they are looking at a very real threat of losing funding. We are not as much because of the broadness of the programs we provide, but they are. So I think we just need to make sure we're keeping those services in mind as we're funding people because a lot of these people will likely see various severe cuts if they don't call them threats. If suggested measures take place. We also will be looking at the funding for Santa Monica Project. So the peer-pitch replacement project is one project that does rely on federal funds. So we need to make sure that we're tracking anything that happens in that area. Transportation and housing in particular will see the good amount of federal funding, public safety. And I know OEM is part of that, it receives quite's quite a few federal grants. And so the difficulty now is nothing is clear. But difficulty now is there's a lot of things being said to make people very nervous and not quite sure whether they should proceed with work or not. And there's not a simple answer of like, yeah, we'll just do it all anyway. I think we just have to keep tracking things very closely and I want you to know there is a team of staff that is tracking these things very closely and we will continue to do that and are always available to give you any additional information that you want on any of these things. That's it. Oh, now the hopeful part. Officially introducing myself, I'm Nene Chiprion, Community Development Director. So we've got quite a bit and I think the part I'd like to maybe the hopeful part. So just kind of bringing it all together because we've gone through quite a bit this morning regarding where we are. And I think what's interesting is you've heard from several members of our team, Oscar has gone in depth about what are some of those challenges, what we're looking at doing. And if we were to categorize it, there's really four things we're looking at. We're looking at ways to continue with expenditure controls and cost shifts across the board and the organization. We're looking at the impacts of service to lowly changes. We talked quite a bit about creating greater efficiencies and everything we do and how we process everything that's coming to the city. Looking at areas where we truly don't want to impact the types of services we're providing to the community because I think that's the area where we want to continue providing the highest level of service. Looking at other areas where we can definitely be more efficient and of course exploring continuing to explore revenue enhancements. So this is the part that I'm going to talk about which is really shifting into what does that mean and what opportunities we've heard the word economic recovery, economic development, we mentioned quite a bit. So I'm going to cover a few things and just to get us all on the same baseline, I think most of you in this room know that economic development was a huge part of redevelopment. Redevelopment was a tool that all entities were able to use. Redevelopment brought in the tax increment that we use where 80% went into all of our business activities. 20% were able to set aside for affordable housing. And it truly was a mechanism for cities to act in a way where we could put financing back into our communities. Well, when we development went away in February of 2012, all of those tools went away. The state took away all of our abilities to be able to finance projects. And what ended up happening was economic development, which was like the SIFS survey development, when it became the primary tool that cities were left with. And in trying to define what is economic development, there's actually a definition, and a definition has a few things in it. It's truly land, labor, capital, and all this is coupled with continuous business growth. And if I were to take a step further, it is encouraging development of brightening and underutilized properties. We've put that to the land piece. We've heard a lot of discussion about land vacancies infrastructure, upgrading the physical environment of the land, creating jobs, retaining those jobs and keeping those jobs. That's a labor piece. Stimulating business activity that's labor and capital together, encouraging private financial investment that's capital capital, and increasing tax revenue and wealth, that's also capital. Why is it important? I think the best way I was able to put it all together was it's really the nucleus of everything we do as a community. Successful businesses are more inclined to continue investing in the city. It keeps our sales tax into community to help fund city services, like police, fire, street improvement, parks, recreation, and everything we do for our community. Helps keeps our residents employed, a strong workforce, and improved quality of life for all of our residents, and it promotes a healthy business community. And as we're seeing the impact of that on our budget, it's a direct impact. If that investment is not coming back, then it's going to, in some way, impact the level of services we're offering to the community. The big question becomes, well, how do we accomplish it? There's different ways we do that, actually. We accomplish it through proactive economic development, which is every planning activity in the city involves economic development and it's's the continuous relationship building for us with the development community in and outside of Santa Monica. And also creating a very strong business friendly culture. Now this is an area where Santa Monica is known for where we work with folks who come to us. Now I do think there are opportunities continue to continue building on that culture, helping with the mindset of how we say yes to opportunities that come to the city, and how do we continue looking for ways to expedite the processing of what's coming to us. And ultimately it's providing excellent customer service to our business community so we can keep the businesses here in Santa Monica. I think of it as looking at everything as an opportunity, and will all hear me say that looking at everything in the city as a way for us to generate. Let me keep our businesses here attract, retain, and expand what we have. And how is it done? It's done through a number of ways actually. It's done through building relationships, sites, selection analysis, where anyone was looking to do business in the city, we could, we are hands on helping them look for a site. Looking at the economic data and analysis that goes without looking for workforce linkages, how do we create the jobs, keep the jobs grow the jobs. Lots of marketing, promotions and information sharing, technical assistance and financing. Lots of special events, and we've talked about that earlier, bringing a lot of special events to the city, which actually helps promote economic development. Business concierge services, and when someone's looking to do business with the city, they're truly bringing all the resources to them. We bring staff members from all over the departments who help them go through the process. And ultimately, as UCS shift into that mind frame, it's really the city of Santa Monica for decades has always been a trend setter. That knowledge of Santa Monica has everything. You've heard different people mention that today. We've got the weather, we've got the beach, we've got the infrastructure, we've got the location that we are Santa Monica, I think needs to be navigated. The messaging needs to be the branding and marketing that we do needs to be focused on. We are open, we are here for business and we are welcoming people to Santa Monica. And as we've all heard in the last several years traditional brick and mortar has gone away but there are two things that haven't gone away. Food, people still want to go out to eat and people are looking for entertainment experiences. That is the only thing that draws people to go out. People go out to have good food and they're looking for experiences. And I think those are the top areas that we actually do offer as a city. We have good food. We need to continue building on, becoming and continuing to be a food mecca and we certainly have a lot of places for entertainment. The next big question becomes, well, who's responsible for economic development? And the leadership team meeting we had recently, I think I was very clear in saying all of us are every single employee that works for the city elected, everyone in the community, stakeholders, all of our partners, we are all responsible for doing economic development together. Because it truly is creating that business from the attitude, the culture, working with our residents, our business owners, property owners, realtors, brokers, all of our economic development partners, DTSM, the San Monica Traveler and Tegres, and all of our business improvement districts, all of our non-pathids school district. And the bottom line is everything is connected. So I think it's getting to that mindset of how do we get back to that good place? Because San Monica was the city that everyone turned to as the community that was providing the highest level of economic development and a healthy thriving business community is directly linked to improved quality of our residents and therefore important to all of us. And I think I keep saying back to the basics of good old economic development, business attraction, retention, expansion, both to the ground ground working with our business community, looking for ways to fill the vacancies. And I think as far as we're to be currently, we actually do quite a bit. We do quite a bit of property management for all of, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, bridge, force where every department's representative at the table and we look at economic development holistically as a city. That's it for me. Not only are we a play, we're a ward show, we cut people off. So, just to close out very, very quickly, I want to remind you where we are in the budget process. We're here at the March 8 on the lower left-hand side. Where we're really bringing you the major information that we've discovered through our community input, our forecast, our staff thinking about how to move forward with a balanced budget for the next couple of years. And this is the opportunity where we'll turn it over to you to get direction that will then inform our budget that we develop and produce in May and come back to in May and adoption in June. So with that, the last is just really the outline of the recommended actions to guide our conversation. So I will turn it back to you. Great. If you could leave that up. I think what we're going to do is take each item council and do questions and then comments and directions so that we don't have a big mess with all the different items separately. Everyone agree on that? Alright. So our first is to appoint this ad hoc committee to establish an appoint an economic development ad hoc subcommittee focused on developing an economic development strategy. Do I have anybody in the queue that raising your hand? Questions, comments, or do you want to suggest folks that you think should be on the ad hoc committee? Could I ask if people are interested in serving on this subcommittee to raise their hands? Definitely. From the council. From the council. Sorry, but thank you. So, Jessie's raising his hand, Council Member Roskin. Is everyone raising their hand or no? No. so Mayor Pro Temterosis, Barry Snow, myself, counts member of Raskin and counts members of WIC are raising their hands. Does anybody have? May I propose that we do vote one person at a time so that we don't separate? Yeah. So we can have three on this ad hoc subcommittee. Yeah. So you're saying suggesting one person? Like a member at a time if that would be the rest of the body. I mean, or we can do three on that. I would make a motion to appoint three members. But I'd like to make a motion to appoint three members. I think that's how we traditionally handle it. And we can always mix those three. Do you have a council? First I would recommend that you create the committee and then make the appointment. That's always a good idea. Let's move to create the committee. Second. Motion to create the committee was made by council members in its guy and seconded by Mayor Protemterosis. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. And for approval, I'm going to take my name out of consideration. I think the rest of you are going to do great. What is it? Well, okay. So Council Member Raskin is moving himself out of it. So we've got SNOW to assess myself. Council Member's WIC. And are you on there? No. No. I would make a motion that, I guess we've already formed the subcommittee and I would motion that as a body, we appoint Council members now, Mayor Negrete and myself. Second. Do we vote on that now and then? I'd like to make a substitute motion. I would move council members, WIC, their pro-tentorosis and council member, SNL. I was right. Can you repeat that? This is WIC, TOROSIS and SNL. Replacing myself with TOROSIS. It's fine. I won't do it. So you were moving yourself? It's fine. I'm doing countywide on economic development. I'm happy to be consulted with. So then we have one motion to put what counts members' What counts members, Whicks, Nell and Negretty on the said committee? And can I just ask because I think now that people have removed themselves, that's the only I don't know. What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? What counts? Okay, we. A little bit more. Bioclomage. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? So the out of how committee will consist of council members with council members now and myself, Mayor Negretti. Moving on to adopting priorities and legislative platforms. Anybody in the queue? I'm going to try to look back and forth. Council Member Hall. Okay, I'll try to burn through this. I promise I have cut out at least half of what I wanted to say to save time. So to Council Member Suik's point about development agreements, when we're talking about economic development, you know, I have yet to see digital signage and out of home advertising come before this council and I want to make sure that that is a priority. West Hollywood is making millions off of their digital signage that we're leaving on the table because of a decades longer version to signage. So I think it's time we need to change that to fund our many needs. Well, can I just to be, should we pull up the priorities? I don't know. Yeah, that would be helpful. Sure, rather, this sounds more like specific direction. And I want us, which we, You'd like me to keep the priorities for now? Yeah, no. Yeah, well, we are learning on this way. going to do priorities first or ledge platforms. Consider in a fair way. They're going to be all sort of priorities. Yeah, this are learning on this way. You want to do priorities first or ledge platforms. Consider in a private. Yeah, this is the priorities. So do you want us to bring up the existing priorities and modify those or do you have whole new ones? Okay. Okay. So starting with the priorities, I would really like to see an intense focus on only three priorities. I would like to see economic opportunity and growth, clean streets and safe neighborhoods and affordable, livable, and secure housing for all. That to me does not mean that we are turning our backs on racial justice equity and social diversity or sustainable and connected community. I see those as values that permeate amongst all the other three and are critical to everything we do that fall under the other three priorities. But I do want to see a intense focus on economic opportunity as our number one priority. Can some of them help? Because I'm going to write it down. Because we're read adjusting the words. So can you say that one more time? So top number one, economic opportunity and growth. Number two, clean streets and safe neighborhoods. And number three, affordable, livable, and secure housing for all. Well, that's direction. I would love to jump in on that. That's okay. Are you done? That's not at all. I just want to make sure we go one by one with art all our, so we are not going back and forth if possible. Sorry. Well, it's a little confusing as to where you want direction to come in. So I look to the- We're talking about these council priorities. So I'm hearing you- City manager. Reward it. Did you want to make a specific comment to this? Yes. Councilor Rizark. As it happens, despite not having communicated with Council Member Hall on this item, I do have three proposal for three priorities that closely aligns with what he just put forward. I did write down a sentence to go with each one as is traditionally written in our current priorities. I'm not sure if that's available for display, but I did submit it ahead of time so that people could take a look at that writing. I agree with Council Member Hall that, while I think all five of these are deep values that we held in our community, priorities really shouldn't extend beyond three. And I do believe that the three he outlined are the correct ones. I tried to encompass some of that in a sentence each. And it's never great towards Smith in this kind of setting, but this is what we have as an option. So I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I all have similar direction. I do have one question as we go forward is the order of which important because I see and Council members who ex-propositioned economic growth and stability is specifically second to save streets and public strictly up to council. Okay. We've never done it as a higher art. Okay. Got it. Yeah, at least in my intention it wasn't to prioritize among these three, but just to limit two three. Got it. But again, that's a choice that I guess we could make. Okay. May I approach those? Yeah, I mean, I like this, but I think that the overarching titles of the priorities need to be more aligned with what Council Member Hall stated. Like for example, we want it on economic growth instability. I think we want to unleash economic opportunity and growth. That's like the action on tenant protections and housing stability. We want to promote affordable, livable, and secure homes for all. And on Community Center public safety, we want to ensure that we have clean streets and safe neighborhoods and take holistic approaches to safety using 21st century solution. So I don't know if there's a way to incorporate action titles for these. I certainly would say I'm not married to the titles. Okay. And I would hope that the descriptions align with that, but I also welcome feedback on that. I just have feedback on, I agree that we should be focusing on the top three. Besides, I think the community has spoken in regards to that as well, top three are are, and luckily, we live in Santa Monica, where equity and justice is something that has been at the core of what we do anyways. And I have, I assume we will continue to do that, but when it talks about housing and homelessness, and we talk about bestowing renters with 10-year security, something specific to our rent controlled units, I don't know how. We worked with that. I just hope that somehow we capture in the verbiage that we're using whatever funding, whether it be housing trust fund funding as we talk about that in a minute. To specifically assist in maintaining those buildings, which maintains our renters. So I don't know how we would submit that into a goal, but I just want to make sure that we're not talking about renters generally and that we're missing maintaining the current population of our seniors and our families and generations of families that live in rent control units. Yeah, the portion just to speak to it, the portion that does speak to tenure security is the notion that that renters should enjoy the same security as homeowners and not necessarily being evicted or otherwise expelled from their homes without Just cause I get that that part I totally get and agree with I just specifically about that economic assistance also being of made available potentially through creative ways that we can broaden it to folks that own What did you do? What did you do? What did you do? What did you do? What did you do? What did you do? What did you do? What did you do? What did you do? What did you do? What did you do? What did you do? What did you do? What did you do? What did you do? What did you do? What did you do? What did you do? specifically about that economic assistance also being made available potentially through creative ways that we can broaden it to folks that own rent controlled units so that we can help maintain and that's I know a more detailed ask but I just want to make sure we're capturing specifically our rent controlled units and assisting there somehow to preserve those so that we don't lose rent controlled buildings within the community. So if and maintain our rent controlled housing stock. There you go. Mayor Potemperosis. If we can add that in there, if you're amenable to it. Definitely. We didn't, I didn't get this and so I'm just reading it for the first time a couple times. Is there any way to like ratify this? I don't know. Are we going to ratify this right now or should staff return with? We could make a motion to, I mean I assume all everything is on the table including a provisional ratification with languages, potential updates. Potential updates. Potential updates. I could be brought back at the next meeting. Yeah, I think that makes sense. Yeah. make sure we capture what we need to capture because we're all looking at it for the first time. We don't want to miss anything. I think the general idea, we all agree that I don't mean to assume that out of five priorities, obviously all are important, but we are in a position right now where top three would allow us to focus on the most important that reflects the communities. Yes. I just wanted to note, and I think Council members, Hall and Swit both noted this. The prior five priorities of sustainability and connected community and diversity equity inclusion, those are values and those are lenses through which we see all of our other priorities. Exactly. They are not separate, they are ingrained in everything that we do as they should be. That was a statement I made earlier. Thank you for reinforcing the fact that these three priorities are through the lens of diversity, equity, inclusion and sustainability, something we pride ourselves on and I think we do pretty well as people look to our city to take note. And so with that, we are aligning priorities through that lens, but we are shortening it so we can specifically focus on these three things. Yes. I have one question ahead, and I know there was some discussion but we really haven't had anything that came to council with respect to the major electrical signage, at least since I've been on council. So I'm hoping that we will have time and discussion about that at some point before we give any direction to staff as to it, because I know there's some concerns about where the signage is going to be in downtown and the size and what have you and we haven't had any discussion about that. So, what's the elevator before? That's a little bit later. But right now we're doing the, we're going to go like each one. But so Council member priorities, I think we need a motion to, oh go ahead. So just to be clear, so yeah, this is great. It'll help inform what we bring back in May. So we'll use basically the headings from Councilmember Hall and the text from Councilmember's WIC. And we'll add preserve and maintain rent-controlled units. Housing stock. Housing stock. Okay. And then staff has one recommendation. If we could under the first... Can you move the... Sorry, drop down box. Priority where it says in the last sentence, reduce deaths and severe injuries. We would propose the word eliminate so it's consistent with vision zero. Yes. I agree with that. Jessie says that. I'll be with that. You know would be happy for it to be moving in the right direction, but nonetheless, yes We just like to make I'm assuming you're proposing that for one of us to take as a motion So I would move that with one adjustment I would like to see economic opportunity and growth as our number one priority. And clean streets safe neighborhoods is number two and number three being affordable, livable, and secure housing for all I think in our current position. We are not able to do numbers two and three if we do not do number one. Oh, and the reverse. I said that. Yeah, that's fine. It's all equally important, I mean. But yeah, I understand what you're saying, but some would say that if we don't have safe streets, but I get it. Yes, sorry. Yeah, I don't know if I'm on board with creating a ranking. I think having unranked is my preference. I also, I haven't seen the subtext beneath all these. I think I'd want to consider that in more detail before committing those as being integral to the priorities. But I think the top line, top three is articulated. I think by consensus of a series is something I'm on board with. Again, with the understanding that environment, sustainability, and equity are values, and not necessarily priorities that frame what we're doing. Can I jump in there? Yes. So, traditionally, there's a sentence that goes along with each. My critique, I guess, of our current ones as well, I think I believe in all of them. I think they could essentially make everything we do as a city of priority. So they attempt with what's written below is to narrow the focus, to help staff focus as we look at our biannual budget. Again, I think that there should be no problem. I would assume to bring this language, bring amendments back to this language at a later meeting if anyone wanted, any any council member was amenable to, if we wanted to tweak it, if people did not feel comfortable fully, we could prove this with the idea that it can always be amended. I think we're proving the general text and the idea that we agree that we're reduced onto these and at reduced, but by the way, we're focusing on these three, right? And then when we come back, we will have time to engage individually with staff to help ward Smith it. Yeah, so we're conditionally approving the core concepts with opportunity to amend the subtext, right? Perfect. And we'll bring it back. This will be a part of the May budget study session and this will help guide. We really appreciate the focus. I think that is also an alignment with what staff is proposing in terms of a budget strategy. I imagine staff could bring back the proposed changes that were currently proposed and at that time, other ones could be made. All right, so moved. Okay, and with that, are we making a motion to move that direction? Second. Council Member Hall, mid to motion and secondemptrosis. Is this a vote by acclamation or all in favor? Aye. I'm opposed. Seeing none. That passes, 7-0. Next item. I know. Moving right along. We're getting hungry. Feed us. I don't know. Are we eating? That's okay. That's okay. Thank you. That's right. Thank you. Anyways, words. Adopting the Council of Federal and State legislative platforms is the next item. Do we have any comments and questions or direction on that? I have to- I have to- I'd ask a process question here because I have several amendments that I want to propose. And how would you- how would you recommend we go about that acting inter-interests platform to are these major legislative platform adjustments like direction or are they specific okay so their presentation sorry no okay and and there was a there was a comment earlier though I'm sorry, request earlier to submit. Items was that done and if so can we see what those proposed changes are? There were a couple. I can pull them up. One second. We only did Josh we only got Feedback from one council member. Two, two. Oh, okay. And one more today. So if you want to give us general direction or diet, I mean, it depends on how significant the changes are. I mean, I'm not sure with Council Member Hall. I have a few items that I submitted late, and they were submitted yesterday, and I would like to add them. OK. Josh, I would recommend that we start with yours, Council Memberswick. Yeah. Okay. And then we could build from there. Okay. Just to quickly speak to what these are. There's a wide, large number of priorities under the category of housing in our state legislative platform, but there's actually none that simply speak to support for legislation from the state that would increase the production of housing across the state. And that's what the first item is intended to do. When it comes to the mobility section, I'm proposing three items. One is support for legislation that would authorize cities to deploy cameras for the purpose of monitoring and forcing our California vehicle code violations. That could be speeding, that could be noise cameras as well. We've heard regular complaints from residents about modified mufflers and things like that. Currently, there's very, very limited leeway within the California, within the state law for the use of cameras to enforce the California vehicle code. Second would be to support legislation that I believe will be pending potentially to expand the definition of a major transit stop. Santa Monica has a great bus service, but depending on how you define a major transit stop, we do or don't qualify for that designation depending on the frequency of the buses that we run. Third, would be to support legislation removing coastal commission authority over street parking if the purpose is to make multimodal improvements such as sidewalk improvements bike lanes and bus lanes in our coastal zone. I've been told specifically that this could be helpful to us as we attempt to make these improvements within our coastal zone. I'm going to get a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a significant amount of what I wanted to do. But I would add—and forgive me for doing this verbally—but under direct relief for local governments on our state lobbying platform, to support legislation that limits liabilities from municipalities and class action lawsuits, and to support legislation that establishes emergency state fund that municipalities can draw from when facing class action lawsuits for sexual assault or harassment. Like AB-288? I agree. That's what I was just asking about because I just wanted to. I think we're doing that work now. So it wasn't sure if that was appropriate. I was just asking about putting that in the legislative platform because that's just something where is that is this where that's necessary though? Yeah, exactly what was read was perfect for the platform going into specific bills, not necessarily what we want to do in a platform, but it just happens to be that this bill is doing that. So it's fine because it shows that we support these efforts. Right, okay. Whether it be this bill or next year's bill. Because then the direction could go really, that's fine. It's a general or a change direction. I was just making sure. Mayor Protum-Trosis. Yeah. On the housing side, I just wanted to add one more thing, and I'm sorry it didn't send this in, but we don't either on the homelessness and or housing planck address affordable home ownership initiatives. So I would say support legislation that promotes advocacy for community land trust, first time buyer assistance, and cooperative housing models. I can send that to you if that would be more helpful. Thank you. Agreed. And along those notes, I guess we are putting this, I don't know that in our legislative platforms we look at adjusting the federal poverty line and the ways of which people are afforded the opportunity to get into affordable housing and other programmatic things at the municipality level. We use the FPO guideline. It hasn't been adjusted. And if we can look at legislative platforms that exist maybe around more addressing region by region, what those appropriate numbers would be because as we all know the median income and cost of living in our area is extremely high and oftentimes we leave out what we call the misty middle because there's no legislation kind of addressing this problem that's been going on for decades. So would you say that that's more expansive definition of who qualifies or? More expansive of who qualifies but more importantly legislation to like reassess I don't know by region because we do the federal poverty line is, you know, more specific to our area in the cost of living and here, did you have an addition to that or a comment? Well we do have something that includes broadening the type of housing that, affordable housing funding to people above 100% of AMI. I think the problem is those numbers are still based on national averages that are starkly different from what it costs to live in California, let alone Santa Monica. Yeah, I was thinking of that conflicting with anything that we currently have in there. Yeah, but I think that's why I asked this since we're giving that direction, making sure we have it in there. And just a minor tweak to mind, I actually want to strike the words class action. Okay. So I think the majority of these with the exception of Mayor de Greta's are on the state legislative platform and I imagine yours would speak to federal, the federal platform. I would, if there's not further discussion, I would move that we incorporate these, these planks into our platform. Sorry, I have one more thing on my back. Just about my second path. Yeah, I second that with an amendment if the makers friendly. On the cultivate economic and expand community and cultural offerings. First, I think that it's important that we revisit that plank after the economic development subcommittee comes back. But secondly, we don't have anything on there about supporting legislation to increase tax increment financing opportunities. And our director talked about the dissolution of redevelopment. We know that it has not come back to the same level that we would like it to. So I would add support legislation that expands opportunities for local governments to create tax increment financing authorities. All right. I'm a man of hope to that. Yes. Yep. Oh, and council members and it's guy. I apologize I wasn't in the room when you all started this. I just wanted to ask, so I sent my comments ahead of time. Are they already reflected in? So no, they have not been talked about yet. That's why I wanted to make sure that this motion is either just for these in this conversation or we still have some from councilmembers. Well, we made the motion, but of course now we can take that as an amendment. Yeah, my apology. I thought when you brought this up, that was what I didn't realize there was more I'd love to see. Yeah. So ready for that one. And I would just like to say that, I mean, silly comment now, but if we were provided these, it would have been good. Again, this is from this. The strategy that was done so that we wouldn't violate the Brein Act. Each member was asked to or offered the opportunity to submit changes and then we would bring it back in one way. I just want to go ahead. Well, each council member was asked to or offered the opportunity to submit Changes and then we would bring it back in one I just but okay, let's go ahead because I see there's a big one coming up I'm guessing it's probably mostly aligned with Discussed and the air just turned up extremely loud like a tornado behind us. It's cold and it's hard to hear. It's so cold. Thank you. I was wondering. Yeah. Council members, you're going to slide. Do you want to take it from here? We'll start with the statewide maybe. Sure. Going to be bigger. Yeah, that's all I'm saying. I just might print it out for us here because, okay, there we go. Okay, so just start on, yeah. So on housing, I don't know if you all already went over, uh, see queer reforms. So, okay, cool. So the Little Hoover Commission, um, I don't know if you all are familiar with it. They do. Okay, your mic, sorry. Sorry. So the Little Hoover Commission is an agency that basically reviews public policy and then comes up with suggestions on how to improve it. So they actually have a report on potential SQL reforms that would help kind of make it better. So I was just proposing to include that we support CEQA reforms as recommended in the Little Hoover Commission report. And I can list them. It fits easier for you to list them off. I'd like to meet you that, say your voice. Would you like me to list them off to say? Yes, please. Thank you. The six recommendations are one, strengthen standing requirements to sue under CEQA, two address data dumps and late hits, three create a broad simplified exemption for infill housing, four provide for additional judicial training, five request courts to show greater deference to statute and CEQA guidelines, and six provide clear parameters and guidelines for significant thresholds and mitigations. I would just add that the infill exemption is in our platform. The rest are also great. All right. Thank you. So next one you already might have discussed this, but adding support for or incentives for community land trusts because I know we've been talking a lot about affordable home ownership and that is an opportunity that we should look at supporting or I think we should look at supporting. Okay, cool, thank you. And support for supplemental funding for housing for pro housing designated cities because I know where one on public safety Support explicitly support reimbursement for expenses related to impacts from natural disasters Even when they're just tangentially related because I know that that's something that we're facing right now of of potentially not being able to get reimbursed for certain expenses during the emergency because they weren't directly related because of how it didn't come in here so if we could this is in our current platform right I mean as I want to Sacramento this was the stuff that we had I mean none of these so these, so these are more clear, these are more clear than what we have in there. I would do we add that to state and for all platform. And also on public safety, adding support for post-carceral reentry programs, including housing, because as I think a lot of us know, one of the challenges, if somebody who was incarcerated reenters into regular daily life, if they don't have a safe, stable housing, they're much more likely to become incarcerated again and fall into the cycle of incarceration homelessness, etc. So I would say that we support diversion and reentry programs because we already have a robust program in our city attorney and our police fire, etc. Yeah So sorry with housing do we talk about student housing at all there's a yeah, but I okay, sorry I would love to put that in here as well as student housing and allow and support for educational facility educational entities to be able to build housing on their land regardless of what types of education they provide. So I know we already have a state law about K12, but community colleges would also be fantastic. On tenant protection and access to housing. So I think you actually already noted this supporting legislation and resources for affordable home ownership and support for form of condo defect laws, because I understand that that's one of the issues that's prevented us from, or prevented folks from being able to actually build more condos and have that type of affordable amount of ship opportunity and I included a link to a study from the Turner Center at Berkeley. The other thing was expanding low income housing tax credits to include development and redevelopment of moderate income. And I think y'all were talking about that when I came back inside. Because, you know, as we know, even folks who are in the 80 to 120% of AMI here locally, even when adjusted for just Santa Monica's AMI are still struggling to afford housing here. So if we could make sure that housing tax credits still apply to projects that include that population in addition to folks that are below 30, 60, 80. I think that would be great and we would also have. Yeah, thank you. So for economic development, we should add support or incentives for apprenticeship programs, which we all may have already added. And supporting Prop 13 reform, which would allow increased revenues from local property taxes without negatively impacting homeowners. And we know that we do have a lot of homeowners locally who are, you know, quote unquote, house rich and poor. So they, you know, if we were to support the form of Prop 13 in a way that forces those folks out, that would not be that's not the goal. The goal is to try to raise more property taxes from the types of, in the types of property owners who have just, who have kind of artificially had their property taxes kept at a very low rate for many, many decades and can likely afford to pay that additional property tax. And I think actually we already did this because it's in the state constitution, but with support for legislation that protects bodily autonomy and expands and protects access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion across California. I do know that we did add that as a constitutional amendment at the state level, but if there's additional work that could be done or legislation that comes forward, I think that it would be a really great idea for Santa Monica to be a supporter on that kind of legislation. And so racial justice equity and social diversity support for reparations programs. And I know that the California legislature is a congressional, the Black Caucus, I believe, had reparations bill package last year and not all of them passed, but some of them did. But if we could add support for just general reparations programs based on best practices. So opposing funding for private prisons, jails, detention centers, and supporting development of reparations programs, especially funding to address the loss of property due to racially motivated eminent domain. I know that's been important to Santa Monica and would love to be able to memorialize that in our actual legislative platform. And then on climate change sustainability, this is all just basically like having more specificity. So adding support for funding of traffic calming infrastructure that includes but isn't limited to speed home, crosswalks, protected bike lanes, curveable bouts, et cetera, adding support for, and I believe that a lot of these things are actually recommended as best practices in, I want to say, the national traffic safety or national highway safety one of those, I'm sorry, my voice and my brain are a little bit painting. I'm right now. So adding support for incentives of development of climate change resistant and resilient housing, including fire resistant development. Yes. Maybe we just read this so you don't, so you can spare your voice. Thank you. If everyone could read this and then. I mean, OK. No, I would also try to act be expeditious in the timing of it, because do I want to give the highlights? So I should. None of these would conflict with any of its in our current agenda now. So it would be perfectly fine to accept that. I was just going to suggest that there's something that's wildly outside of what we already do, we should discuss it. And then if it's already encapsulated and you have the language and it's not outside the realm of what we already have, can we just... Can I... Yeah, and if I... I think it would be helpful Josh to explain that the intent of the platform is that it is broad and encompassing in the planks and then the subsections that would allow us you to have discretion with our lobbyists to see, okay, does it fall under one of these categories? Not. in the planks and then the subsections that would allow us you to have discretion with our lobbyists to see, okay, does it fall under one of these categories? Not, oh my God, we need to be so specific in order to take a position. Maybe if you could just explain how we take positions, that would be helpful. Yeah, so we, I mean, 2,000 bills get introduced every January. We go through those very quickly, glance at them, and we use the platform. And based upon my knowledge of the conversations we've had today, my experience with the city the last couple of years, the directions that you give, the priorities you've set, the budget, the items in the budget that you fund. All that is information that we use to form positions on bills. We may oftentimes think that, this is probably something the city will support, but if there's any doubt, I bring it to the council. And we always check with staff as well. One of the things just as an example right now, the reparations bills. The reparations bills, we may say that we agree with the intent of where those reparations bills may be going, but until we see the bill and staff has a time to look at it and see how it affects our city and all that, we wouldn't know. That's not something that I would say, yes, let's go ahead and take a position on. We'd probably bring it to you to make the final decision. So this gives us, as Mayor Pro Tem, to us this was saying, this gives us general direction, general guidelines to give us directions so that we can take those quick actions when necessary. Great, so we have a motion in a second on the floor to apply those legislative platform. I'd like to make a substitute motion. And first, can I ask, is there any need to do this today? Well, we've got this far. Yes, we're doing it. I appreciate the work that's gone into this. I think the public needs an opportunity to vet the proposed changes that we've looked at here. I'm a little bit hesitant to pre-volve this on the fly-line. I don't know that there's changes. I think what we're saying is that the idea is that we keep our legislative platform goals broad. And we have definitely highlighted and discussed here and notated some of the subtext as to more specific things we were looking at going after, given the change in the landscape at the federal level. And I think that's been captured here, but I think this is an ongoing discussion, and when things arise, correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Coupies, that comes to Council's attention, but the ideas that we keep it pretty general, I mean, outside of anything wildly different, I think we're pretty on target. If I could just suggest that you at least approve what was originally submitted, I have a basis to work under because we are at the point now in the year where I do need to take positions on bills. And although I still have heard the conversations I know where you're heading, it's not real credible. I don't have a platform to agree with all the changes that are being proposed. And those of us taking these upcoming trips to have hill days days I have one coming up next week. I think it's important that we have this in front of us, you know To prove okay, sorry, I'd like to make a substitute motion to approve the original Legislative priorities and come back with further discussion about the amendments Second, okay, so let's vote on the substitute motion first. We're just with the substitute motion. I'm sorry. Yeah, with the substitute motion, our maker, be amenable to including the proposed amendments from Council Members' WIC and we table the detailed proposals from Council Member or Sirtscuyon. I think the public needs to be on this, R. And I'll just, okay. Can I make a comment? Sure. This was supposed to be heard by us, I think, in the beginning of the year. Now it's March, and as Josh mentioned, bills are being introduced and the city needs to weigh in on them. The items I'm putting forward relate to some bills that are being introduced and the city needs to weigh in on. They are general in their nature, but they speak to whether we would automatically support or not certain bills. And I would move that we do this now because that's what's on the agenda. I would also just comment as the second or to that motion that I don't believe that they're wildly outside of the general goals of the city if I may legislatively. There's no public comment right now. No public comment was at the beginning. On the platform. Yeah. I see what you're saying. So what I'm hearing is that because there was no public comment on the platform that it doesn't give the public the ability to comment on any agenda. The platform was on the agenda. These are proposed twice now. These are. As it existed. Right and these are proposals that we are making to add to it. That's how it works. Just facilitating the meeting here. So we've got two motions. We've actually got three motions before. We've got amendments. We've got. So right here is the there's the original motion to have the proposed language that Council members WIC has proposed that there was amendments, Council Member Halls recommending that we move that forward with the amendments that were discussed here lightly. It's pretty much that language that was presented. proposing proposing counts memoraskin that we move forward with what was in the legislative platform before with no changes and we come back so that we can give more community input. But you do realize that even at that moment as we introduce changes, the public comment will have already been taken and the changes happen afterwards. I just want to make sure that you're capturing your goal. And if this helps, if I can offer something for Council Member Roskin to consider, we can, the legislative platforms can evolve. So, if after we make these revisions based on Council's direction, which is consistent with how we handle agendized items You want to revisit them we we can put them on the agenda again. Yeah I just were clear of getting it and at that time public will have an arbitrary way Okay, anytime many things agendas the public can weigh in but just to be clear the public ways in the beginning and then direction is taken. So it comes over Hall. So can I just clarify what's on the table? Yes, please. So my motion is to pass the current legislative platforms both federal and state with the incorporation of my additions of limiting liabilities and the addition, the broad additions that Council members would brought forward. Can I say that that's a amendment to the original because I think the maker and the seconder of the agenda that- I think we just started from scratch because again, we had three motions. Well, no, no, no, no, no. So the motion is made by Council members that were expected by myself and accepted amended additions from Council member Hall that added in what he just stated. And then there's a substitute motion by council member Raskin with a seconded by Mayor Protentrosis to only approve the legislative platform that currently exists without any of the additions today. That's what we're voting on. I'm withdrawing my second. No, we don't have a second on the substitute. Do we have a second on the substitute? And we don't, so we're going to vote on the first motion. Reiterating what Council Members' WIC propose in the language. I seconded and we both accepted the amendments that Council Member Hall proposed. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. Let's call the vote. Would it be possible to put that Council Member's Wix document back up please? Yes, guys. Would it be possible to put that Council Member's Wix document back up, please? Yes, sorry, Ms. Zernitzky, I have left the room briefly before my apologies. Mr. Carpese, do you think that our current platform enables us to take positions on legislation related to tax and current financing, because some has already been introduced. I believe so. Okay. I just want to make sure. Yeah, I believe so. I'll have to find the plan. So just to note, Mr. Nitsky, the Council members are in this guy. There was additional language that I think you heard Council Member Hall add, specifically to limiting liabilities from municipal governments and schools. And can you restate more clearly? I remember, Hall, did you also mention or did someone mention the allowing the college to operate like K through 12 schools and building housing on its limit? That was the government made that was customer's own sky. I'm sorry. Yeah, we already have that. It's within the platform already existing. Thank you so much. I'm comfortable with these. Okay, so let's call the vote. We've got the emotion made by Zwick, seconded by myself with the amendments made by Council Member Hall. Everybody understands, right? Okay. I think we need to avoid that on this. All in favor. Aye. Aye. I'm going to abstain. So we have six eyes and one abstention, which is Councilmember Roskin. I abstain also. Two abstentions. Councilmember Roskin and Councilmember Snow and five eyes. Passes. Can we get the slide of what we still have to do left? Yeah. Thanks. I do think Councilmember Roservant's guys either we take up what she proposed now or we table it or something because she did make a lot of suggestions, some of which might be more micro than her needed, but a lot of which are very important. So I don't know. I don't want to cut anyone off, but now we're going back to discussion. And we already just know. No, I'm just saying we need to say either that we're not approving it or tabling it for another meeting. I'd like to move that we table the suggestions for a future meeting. Second. All in favor. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. So now we are on to providing direction on parking rate restructuring and components of the parking rates and fees to target. Sorry. Oh, so if we want to go around and just give that direction with and can I just suggest that we give the direction along with your comment because that often is the case anyway so we don't have to go around two times. Does anyone need food or a bio break? I'm going to have to leave. So let's take this moment. It's 12.51. Can we come back at two to say 1 o'clock? Nine minutes? Eight minutes? It's eight minutes now. I think I see you have suggestions, but I have to leave. Do you want to make your suggestions now and we can table it? Is that okay? Sorry, everyone. I understand that there were several items proposed related to the parking rate restructuring. I'm pulling up my notes right now. Given the dire budget situation that we're in, I would agree that we advance scenarios. number one, I would agree that we advance scenarios on number one. I would agree that we target an additional up to 9.4 million dollars in annual revenue from the rate restructuring. And unfortunately, I also saw that we can make a few million dollars by doing this, pursue passing along the parking-related processing fees. the fees. And I know that is why I was asking a question earlier, Mr. Santiago, if we had analyzed the impact on small businesses, but I understand that that will come back in the analysis. So I'll table that question. I just think we have to look at every option, and that's why I'm supportive of all three of these. Thanks. Okay. I support all of these items. Okay, I think we're just hearing Mayor Protum's comments because yesterday and we're going to go to the bathroom and be back in seven minutes with having had bio breaks and guiding food. I'm happy to present my proposals on the budget, which was the last thing, but I think we kind of already gave direction on that and I can give it in writing to staff, but I think we're all aligned here. Thank you. Great. With that, I think we're going to take a seven minute break and don't want to get to the national today. I don't want to get to the national today. I don't want to get to the national today. I don't want to get to the national today. I don't want to get to the national today. I don't want to get to the national today. I don't want to get to the national today. We're going to come back in. I'm sorry. I called you back. I called you back. I called you back. I called you back. I have to follow the first student. I have to follow the first student. I have to follow the first student. I have to follow you guys later. All right, now I need to do it. Yeah, there you go, man. That's me hoping, man My hope, I need some help. I want to go skiing. Yeah? I'm trying to go on my next ski activity. Of course, no. Yeah. Thanks for that. Thanks for asking. Yeah. I'm going to go to and at the same time we'll try not to chew into our mics and bring it back so we can enjoy the rest of what looks to be a beautiful sunny yet possibly chilly day in Santa Monica. Great data. Frequent our local businesses. I'm just doing a little commercial plug right now. Tomorrow. So afterwards I hope you will all go to your favorite local business or one you haven't visited and support a local economy. All right, are we coming back? I think everybody's back and we're ready to roll. So we're looking at the recommended direction on parking rate restructuring. We heard from Mayor Pro Temterosa says she had to leave that. She's in favor of advancing all three of these. Do we have anybody else who would like to speak and give direction at this time? Council members, would you want to? Or? All right. I kind of I thought we were doing at the time so apologies about before but I would just say that I'm in support of all three items. The city needs to be making market revenues off of its resources and this is one way it can do so. I think that there's numerous studies that show that paid parking doesn't actually hurt our small businesses. So I think it would be totally appropriate for us to move forward with all three items. Council member Hall. I'm very aligned with number one. I think it's important that we are actually incentivizing her visitors to do what we want them to do, which is to stay in shop, dine, drink, and play over the course of several hours instead of rushing them out the door in 90 minutes. I'm in favor of passing along credit and debit card fees. We say we're a sustainable city, yet here we are subsidizing people to drive here. On the strategic rate restructuring I am in favor particularly for our meter rates. I would like to see options come back to us on the parking permits though because I'm hesitant to raise parking permit costs for for residents without like fully understanding trade-offs. That's in number two. Okay. Council Member Raskin. Yeah, I'd say did it to that. I think just two additional points. One, obviously long-term goal we need to incentivize workers, especially downtown, utilize public transit and ultra-dumins and transportation. In the meantime, I wonder if we can, you know, give a cash strapped everyone is in these trying times, figure out ways to perhaps exempt people who work downtown. And the other thing, I think we have some really good TDMs that have been developed through as conditions of approval for many of our projects, just make sure that they're being enforced, make sure that we're actually putting it to practice the transit demand management plans that have been developed for the products that are already online. Council member Stell. I support these recommendation directions. I would like to at least take a look at the reduction of the 90 minute free parking period. I know some other cities are. I have some concerns about reducing it, but maybe I'd like to hear some other strategies with respect to it just because it's something that has been really consistent in our downtown. I do know that you know from time to time people move all over downtown during the day to eliminate it So I'd like to have some strategies with respect to it, but I'm supportive these recommendations Council members are in its guy And I level I'm supportive all three of these recommendations for one. I would like to just ask that in what staff comes back with in the scenarios, we look at potential step down of how we reduce the 90 minutes and have numbers about like how many customers would actually be, you know, experience the rate reductions versus how much more funds we would bring in from longer, longer staying customers. We might need to move to note cards for you, I feel bad. I agree with my colleagues and specifically on item number one to echo what council members on its its guy has suggested with a step down I will say that you know in the past we've heard from businesses I think there was like a year ago where we gave free parking during the holidays because they felt that that You know my name packed shoppers I will say though that when you go to some of these other malls that we talk about in century city the parking is is pretty expensive and people just sort of accept and pay for it. So although I see that it, you know, there's revenue opportunity if there's a way to offer enough free parking for those that are picking up, maybe to go food orders on the promenade and that aren't part of the food delivery places. And that we look at things that may be expanding free parking during certain seasonal times when we want people to come here like during the holiday shopping period. I don't know if that's something we can look at. But with that, I think we are moving forward on all these all three items doing. So we've given that direction. We don't need to. All right. Next up. Keep it rolling. Can we pull up the other slide? Yeah, so this is the other way, the other rack. So just discuss and provide direction on the overall budget. So this is where, and we heard a lot earlier with your questions, but to give us concise direction on what you want to see us bring back in May for the study session. Okay. I'm going to start on this and council members, is it like, did you want to start? Yeah. Thanks. I'm going to speak specifically, I think, mainly to the recommendation regarding measure K. I need to say that, as Maryne Grady mentioned, it was very clearly stated and advertised to voters as to how these funds would be spent. We had a process two years prior with measure CS where we worked with our hotels to raise our transient occupancy tax in an exchange. While that was a general tax, it was spent in the way it was advertised to creating more clean and safe environments in our downtown and beach areas. Similarly with measure K, we said really clearly to voters that this was to enhance public safety. This was on the ballot. Create safe routes to school, lower the risk of fatal traffic accidents. And on Measure PSK, we mentioned that there would be funding going to police and firefighters, crime and homelessness prevention, police patrols, and emergency medical response. The city didn't put forward Measure K, I did. And with the help of Mayor Negrede and the support of mobility advocates and safety advocates and public safety unions, it passed with 74% of the vote. Speaking to cuts that different departments have suffered, mobility suffered the second largest cuts of any department or division within the entire city, 22.6% still to this day, only second to the libraries. And more people were killed and severely injured on our roadways last year than any year since we declared our vision zero goal in 2016. So it's in light of all of this that I do take serious issue with the proposal to reneg on our promises to voters and zero out this line item entirely in the upcoming budget cycle. This fails to honor the community's stated top priority of public safety and I believe it does break trust with voters. Compromising our ability to raise revenues through taxes and bonds in the future including the bond that's contemplated for a crucial infrastructure investments in the next cycle. One that I would support, but could not support if we did not use these taxes in the way that we sold voters that we would. So it's for all these reasons that I would request that this Council provide direction to staff to put forward a budget that does not reallocate these measure K funds, but rather programs them in a way that was promised to voters. Agreed, Council Member Hall. Okay, you heard my shabby about digital signage. The CVRA was brought up as an option. You know, I'm happy to look at options, but I will not be voting for anything that puts the city's position at risk. To build a measure K, you know, measure PSK, the advisory measure, uses words like improving, increasing, and enhancing, which all implies some form of net increase or improvement to the status quo. Measure K passed with 35,000 votes in 74% of the vote, which actually makes measure K the second highest vote winning by percentage, third by actual votes, tax or bond in 20 years. Meaning it is more popular with our residents than Measure QS, CS, DT, GS, HNPSMC, SMGS, YSMV. So I think Council Members' Wic is right on the money that we absolutely should be respecting the will of the voters of the letter K. I know this is a big ask but we have to keep repeating the drum that we need to be looking at options to be getting repayment of our housing trust fund. What we haven't talked about and what we need to talk about in the next few months as we think about our budget is sale of city-owned land. No one wants to sell off assets as a first option. I think in my municipal finance textbook it was bolded and underlined, do not sell city-owned land except in extreme circumstances. But we are facing that, I think. I'm concerned that we are corining towards bankruptcy and I'm worried that we're thinking a little small here and that unless this council takes very bold action, we're not going to course correct. You know, we've attempted to tweak around the edges in the past and while that's kept us afloat, I feel like it's really just delayed the pain until today. So I do would love to see options presented over the next few months for increasing our revenues through the strategic sale of property. For the general obligation behind, I'm supportive of exploring options. I'm not interested in touching the master facilities use agreement period. Investing in our children is the best economic driver that this city has. Part of our presentation touched on the potential for deprecating programs or capital improvement project. the city has. Part of our presentation touched on the potential for deprecating programs or capital improvement projects. I'd be open to having each department come to us and may study session with recommendations to end maybe two or three projects or initiatives as a cost saving measure. I want to be clear I do not want to cut headcount but what I what I would love to see are options to free up bandwidth and resources so that we can help prioritize towards our greatest needs. And then this was actually brought up in our audit subcommittee meeting last week by Audit Subcommittee member Jeff Bush. For our CIP, I think it would help us if we started classifying them in terms of urgency and importance. You know, what are our most urgent needs and what are the most important or highest impact improvement projects versus nice to have improvements? You know, our water infrastructure. We know that's coming up. We just saw how important it is that we maintain our independent water supply. So stuff like that, I think is incredibly. People who use READ PARK with dogs might dislike me saying this, but the READ PARK dog park should not be a priority right now, and I think that we need to delineate specifically how we're thinking about prioritizations. I'll touch on the workforce plan just to close out the work plan and performance measures just to close out my comments. You know, I don't want to spoil the ocean. It would be helpful to know year-over-year trends for many of these metrics and whether we are actually hitting our benchmark and our goals versus just numbers. So as we're thinking about our priorities for this year and how we're aligning our projects to our priorities and how we're measuring those projects, it would be helpful to see like outcomes and whether we are hitting our goals or under targets so that we can think about, you know, budget adjustments in the future. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Raskin. Thank you. First of all, thank you very much to staff for putting together a lot of information. I know that today was a heavy lift for a lot of people. I really appreciate the, I know we've been here for a long time, but it was concise. You know, there's so much to dwell down here and thank you for all your work on this. I know we're experiencing unprecedented challenges, but I agree with my colleagues, Council Member Sué, Council Member Hall, with respect to Measure K. The voters spoke. I think we have to respect the voters and I think we have to put the money towards what it was intended by the voters to be used for. Understanding that there are inherently going to be trade-offs given our financial situation, I hope that we can nevertheless prioritize our commitments towards the education community to the extent possible. Same goes for libraries. Again, they're going to be trade-offs. There are going to be difficult choices to make. But these are crucial public resources that I think we need to reopen to the extent that the funds are there. I agree with Council Member Hall about reopening or reinvesting in the Housing Trust Fund. That's going to pay dividends both with respect to housing, but with respect to many of the other broader priorities and values that we're talking about, including sustainability and protecting renters. With respect to exploring bonds, I'm curious what the temperature is with respect to public support for it. I'm a little bit concerned with the cost that goes into public opinion polling for that. It's not cheap. I think that well, I'd be curious to learn more what the cost would be for conducting that public opinion polling. But I would like to know if the public wants this. I suspect they probably don't. I'm hesitant to go down the road of this type of fine financing, but given our precarious financial situation, I don't know what choices we have. Generally speaking, I think we need to make it easier to do business in Santa Monica. We talked about that in terms of our budget priorities. And the last thing I want to just mention in terms of giving direction is with respect to the Virginia Avenue renters we heard from who came here tonight, we made a statement publicly about that at our last city council meeting and I hope that we can figure out some way to Address this in our upcoming budget priorities And that's it. Thank you council members now My Council members have really expressed my general concession with with our Medicaid also. I don't think we can touch that at all. Those of you that know me know my commitment to education and I'm going to support the relationship between the city and the school district on all funding aspects. We've got to find ways to keep that relationship strong. With respect to, I like to have staff take a look at looking at the bond measure and see how it affects us and we're concerned about the cost of it and how we go go through. And then finally, with respect to the major capital items, I think there are items that we could take a look at and actually take off the list that we heard as you heard from Councilman on Paul when we were at our audit committee there were specifically items that have been there for my understanding for a long period of time and we made me need to take a look at that and say whether it's a need there or how high the priority is for the need so those are my general comments. Council members are in its guy. Can I just say plus one to what's been said? Oh my gosh. Mayor, I'm so sorry. Can I add one more thing? Yes. So I'm happy to hear that there's a broad consensus on measure K and how it should be programmed. I do recognize that that presents an equally and even deeper dilemma when it comes to balancing this budget. So I'm going to say the thing that is the hard thing that I think we need to consider. Well, before I go into that, I will say that as a parent of a young child who lives within blocks of the Fairview branch, I walked to Virginia Avenue Park. It's OK. And I think we need to think about whether we are getting anything out of keeping that library open, well not open, but in our stock while not actually having the staffing to keep it open, but shutting it down and disposing of the land could even open up more hours after getting the avenue park, which is currently closed on Sunday mornings when I would love to take my son. So I just think that that's something that we need to consider. When it comes to the bigger thing that I said earlier, I hate that we're in this position as a city. I hate that five years after COVID, we are facing just as large a crunch in our budget as we were in many ways. And it's largely due to structural forces and decisions that happen long before anyone on this council took office. Unlike the federal government, we're not allowed to run deficits and we have very limited reserves. We have to look at right sizing some of our operations and expenditures. It don't mean that we want to give short shrift to anything that would compromise our economic recovery to elements of cleanliness and safety and other things that are top priorities for the community and would help that economic recovery. But I do think we need to focus the entire scope of what we do as a city. And I do think that while I don't want to, as Councilmember Hall said, don't want to lose a single person who is currently working for this city, we do have 136.5 vacancies right now. right now, and I do think we have to think strategically about which positions must be filled and which positions we could temporarily not fill in order to find some savings. Thank you. I'm going to just hopefully close this portion with my statements that this is a tough position to be in. I came on in 21. Oh sorry. It isn't any better today than it was in 21. It's difficult. I think there was times in the past growing up here where we were flush and we could do all these amazing programs of which now have become staples of our community and we now rely on. So it's always hard to pull back. And I think we have to buckle down. And as you hear, there's consensus not just only recognizing that in the community, but here on the day is that focusing on three priorities brings us to some things. I'm gonna look at this as a business. We are managing a $700 million budget. We are an organization that is providing customer service, if you will, to our constituents, our consumers. And that includes our travelers, our business owners, and the like. We need to lead by example. That means assisting our own local economy as I mentioned earlier. That means coming back to work within our own organization in the office. I don't know how you build organizational culture without being face to face. I think we can all agree. Our kids are on Zoom school. Many of us have returned to a work environment, although it costs savings in some ways, and also providing more work-life balance. We've gotten so used to it that it's almost impossible not to get anyone in an office, and it's impossible, I think, to build a true community culture that starts within the organization without that. It's also impossible to really evaluate the effectiveness of departments if you're not in the office and people aren't working together. We've talked about being overworked and under resourced, I think many of our staff has been doing the job of two and three people and maybe coming to work and being in the office together we would be better at collaborating, sharing that workload effectively, maybe minimizing some of the overload that some of our staff is seeing. also brings back that foot traffic that eats during the day. Many of our restaurants will tell you they've stopped serving breakfast, they don't sort of lunch. I've walked into many restaurants and they're completely empty. We have to lead by example for going to ask other people to frequent our local economy to bring their people back to work. We must come back to work as well. I know that may not be popular, and I think the word has, you know, the rumor is, you know, we might lose really good people. I beg to differ as I sit in a different, maybe, end of the socioeconomic total. There are many people who would love to have jobs that come with labor protections and benefits and pensions that don't exist in the private sector. I know it's a tough thing to say, but we're in a tough position right now, and we have to look at who wants to come to work and who wants to do the work so that we can be successful. So as we look at the budget, I hope we can prioritize there was a comment made earlier that was interesting about, I don't know how you do this, but I think even Council Member Hall might be leading to compensation based on meeting certain goals, I think, was what you were alluding to maybe? Oh, no. I think Mr. Warnman-Tutum, I'd have mentioned something about that. But providing bonuses and opportunities to incentivize folks to meet benchmarks. I also think we need to pair down and focus on our top three and with that as we do that. We talk about public safety. We will not have the businesses if we don't have public safety. We won't have the travelers if we don't have public safety. Measure K and measure PSK was a combined effort between myself and council members WIC. Priorities on safe streets focusing on two things Our pedestrians are safe routes to school and whatnot, but also promoting addressing homelessness and crime. And I think that specifically I want to mention that we talked a lot about the CRU van that was put into place and was not as effective because it ran during business hours and it wasn't seven days a week, 24 hours. I propose that we look at managing without putting ourselves in jeopardy, the legal projection of 6 million, and so that we can appropriate those funds to properly address the PSK measures that the people voted for, that I went out and begged for union support on from both our fire and police unions, who were concerned this is exactly what would happen. That those monies would just fill the potholes of our general fund. And I think our community members assumed that it would go towards what we said it would go towards and it's important that we do that. And so I hope that we can appropriate funds to look at getting up and running as soon as possible. understanding is it could be up and running running within a week. The CRU van running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For those of you that don't know what that is, it's a van that would be taking calls addressing our unhoused population and getting them the assistance they need. I know the long-term goal is to have a nurse practitioner that could do street medicine. could access more regional support. That maybe our CRU without that nurse practitioner can't do. I think that's the end goal. I don't think we sit and wait 10 months, 11 months a year to see if that happens. I think we need to address that now because it's literally addressing the top priorities we just discussed, which is clean and safe, unhoused and public safety and economic growth. These three things all tie in together. I think, you know, as far as economic growth goes, I'm really excited to see the departments of our Rad Department, our new, you know, Arminay, who's running our economic development department in this new edition of the task force. I think it's important that we make really bold changes and we have the uncomfortable discussion of pairing down right now and get back to basics. Back to basics. When we can get our back to basics, we're not even funding CIP projects that are basic things and basic needs, then we can start to add on all the other amenities that we've been able to have in Santa Monica as we go forward. Effectively addressing homelessness is something I also wanna touch on. I hope as we look at our budget and we look at where we have positions open that we're really pairing down. I'd like to better understand where like in public works, we've got 39 open positions. I would like to understand as we look at those positions, what exactly, I know there was some written, but are these painters, are they cleaning the bathrooms and figuring out how we can maybe restructure within so that we can still provide a clean and safe community, but I don't even understand what 39 positions is open for. So I'd like to better understand that and how we can look at pairing down some of these vacancies because I think Council members have had a conversation that that's in the tens of millions of dollars of our budget allotted to vacancies and we're operating right now. So think that although we're not operating at its full capacity, going back to the, you know, coming back to work model that we also look at as I mentioned technology and AI and technology that's out there to help everybody be as effective in their position, expeditious with technology upgrades. I think the money invested in something like that could be far less than what we would have to invest in personnel, but could help personnel maybe reduce the workload that they're currently seeing as they're taking on the workload of others. And I think we have to continue be ahead of the curve on that and looking at that because it can also be a tool to use for our constituents as well to streamline processes. I want to say that a lot of times we hear the programming process taking a lot of time and I often wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that I've heard many time and time again over the last three years that people feel like city halls empty. When they show up there's no one at the window and I wonder if that is also adding to the time that it takes to get things approved and then essentially it's a big gap and when we could be receiving economic revenue. I think as we look at public spaces, both parks, libraries, any entity, again, we look at it from a business perspective and an opportunity to raise revenue. I think we can do better at, and I'm excited, moving forward at looking at ways we can bring events into the city. So as we come back to work and we're expeditiously moving red tape and having things easier to do permitted here, we need to look at our outdoor dining. We need to look at fire code safety issues and maybe even legislative platforms around that so that we can have outdoor dining. We have some of these, what I would consider to be older antiquated municipal codes and laws that prohibit us from having outdoor events. The community might see the outdoor events exist, but I can tell you that what people have to go through, the money they have to spend and the hoops they have to jump through, to have something on the promenade with some dining chairs is pretty atrocious and there's many events that we have not done. I can count to seven that we didn't do because of some of the restrictions that we have with code and fire. So lastly, I mentioned every single event and contract that we do with public private partnerships have to include the opportunity for us to recover, recoup and make sales tax revenues because if we're not doing that, it's just missed money and missed opportunity. And with that, I think that pretty much covers effectively everything. I'm going to echo again, PSK and measure K. We leave the people voted. I don't know what we would have done without that money. We're clearly now just plugging holes with it and we need to make sure we find ways to do what we said we were going to do and the first thing I can look at or look to is the millions of dollars we're spending on this case. I think we're at a point where we might be able to make some adjustments and not jeopardize the city going forward. Councillor Mabaraskin. I just want to make a few very quick additional points and responses and things that were said after I spoke the first time. So with respect to library services, I think you made an important point that I think we need to think broadly about how we can reimagine, how we use library services in a way that meets the goals of the public in terms of access, but also thinking carefully about judicious use of resources. And it's not necessarily specific sites, but also I think thinking generally about how we can offer services that are more in line with what the public is looking for. With respect to the staffing comments that people made, I do think this is just my personal perspective that we need to be cognizant of of one, the mission of weathering the storm, and two long-term structural changes. As we saw, the next three years are going to be really tough. We've got to figure out how to weather the storm. I don't know if that means that we need to make long-term structural change with respect to staffing or things like that. Maybe it's something we come back and look at again in two or three years. But I don't want the public to get the wrong idea that we're thinking about, or this I'm not thinking about long-term changes five, six, seven years ahead. Our goal right now is to make sure we have a budget that works for the next two years. And one last thing, I agree, Mary and I agree with what you said about I know this probably isn't going to happen in the next two years, but thinking about also how we can bring our ambulance service in house long term. And it's recover costs through that or other development impact fees. And just again, thinking broadly about how we can get our first responders the resources that they need. I think Council members, we're. Your comments, Mayor, on public events and the difficulties occasionally of hosting them. These are smaller items, but I might be remiss not to say them. The peer deck is a resource that is currently constrained in terms of the size and the number of events and rentals that it can engage in. And I'd love to see recommendations on ways that we can better utilize that. And similarly, when it comes to these activations, I think they are very, no matter how you slice it, very complicated and time intensive to do them as one-off events. And one thing I'd like to propose, especially with Reckon Parks and other divisions that handle a lot of the open and public space in our city is also exploring more private concessions on those spaces. You know, you have beach fronts around the world that have restaurants and things on them. I know we have issues with coastal commission when it comes to taking away parking spots, but we could be making a lot of money if we were able to better offer private concessions along our beach front and some of our parks. every park in Europe has restaurants, beer gardens. It could serve a lot of purposes in terms of raising money and permanently activating those spaces, not on a one-off basis, but having people regularly there and patronizing these spaces also adds to public safety. So I would really hope that we consider looking at them from that perspective and not just one-off events as well. I agree and also looking at our libraries being able to serve wine at events. I know that's something that's been discussed, not right now, but maybe. But on that note, I just left my brain, ding it. I had something else that I wanted to add that I forgot to. Oh, I just want to see when we look at selling the city land and city property that we don't just sell to anything, we're looking at density and with density comes infrastructure needs and I think we often don't discuss that. And so when we're looking at selling land that we look at revenue generating opportunities that add culture and community. So community spaces that can bring in revenue but but at the same time create community and add to highlighting the diverse cultures in our community as opposed to just selling off to development all the time that doesn't provide that. I just want to point that out that we just constantly are looking at opportunities that we don't think exist to create revenue. With that, I think- I would just clearly, the economic development ad hoc has a lot of great ideas, a lot of this stuff. A stuff we're already working on. I don't want to leave today without reinforcing that we have not paused or slowed down in any way on property sales that we've gotten previous direction on. So we are moving forward with all of that. But in terms of addressing our immediate needs in this budget, there's a lot of things you want us to evaluate to re-invision services, expand services. So I'm services. So if there's any more direction on where you think we should reduce things, that would be really helpful. I did here evaluate hiring freeze, looking at the vacant positions we have, which is a very fluid thing, every week the every week, the list will be different. But we can evaluate. I cannot think these are accurate now, obviously. Yeah, I mean, it literally changes weekly, based on the recruitment timeline. But to add to that also, the freeze, but also the, I mean, I know you guys generally have it in here, but how it impacts its department. So for example, if one department has, I'm just going to use public works because it has 39 open positions. If six of those are painters and 12 are you know crucial to this thing and eight are crucial to that and what the impact is that's it's easier to understand as a pros to just saying a hiring freeze across the board. Right. Yeah so that would be a part of our analysis is looking at what the service level impacts would be. It's very clear and I do appreciate council reinforcing this that we are not looking at any reductions in staff. We're not looking to eliminate any positions. There's also, I hear, you know, evaluate bringing folks back to the office and what that may mean. I mean, they will obviously be hiring and retention impacts. But in terms of... Sorry, can I just go in on that really quick? Yeah. The hiring and retention impacts of bringing people in the office, I think we need to flip the script on that and highlight the benefits in contrast to the private sectors that the city of Santa Monica offers. Yeah, we'll look at all of the benefits and concerns that it may raise. And then the last one I heard from Council Member Hall was, this is how I heard it was evaluate projects in each department to, you know, if they could be reduced or we could pause things, department by department, that certainly puts it back on us to bring to you a list of what we think, you know, would cause the least impact to community services. I think that's all of our goal is to make sure that we're continuing to maximize services to the community, but address, I mean, I think we're looking at about $6 million, which is a fair, am I right? Three and a half. Three and a half million dollars that we have to identify. I'm not sorry, it's not, it's not three and a half. It's not three and a half, that's just half. PSK is half. PSK is half, but for K and PSK combined, it's about seven million. It's six point six point seven million. million. 6.7 million, PSK is half of that. Right. And if you heard my comments, there wasn't just about the promises in PSK. He's saying that it's about. We're saying that it's about K. We want 6.7 million reduced or invested. Just as CS as a general obligation bond was spent towards what was written in the proposal, measure K should be spent towards what was written in the proposal and on the ballot. So all you're saying the 6 million, yes. So that's a lot of money. So yeah, we're going to be clear. So I think I want to make sure I didn't miss any one of these. I want to be clear that with the P.S. in respect to P.S. Care, what I was suggesting is that roughly $3 million is a little bit more maybe from the City Attorney's Office in respect to the 6 million that we look at that savings that and what could be done to save half of that so that it could go towards that. That's what I was mentioning earlier and I'm not going to roll into too much, but I know that there's opportunity there. Okay. I would venture that that is a controversial opinion on this dius. We don't know yet. I have nothing to do with settlement. It has to do with just how we say we've had to understand. I understand that. Just in response to your point, I understand that the request is heavy on asks and less on direct concrete cuts. But I will say if you're talking about a position, as we talked about when we added positions in our police department, it being around $250 to $300,000 fully loaded. We have over 14 vacancies right now. So it can easily count to 4 million just right there. So when you get to 136 vacant positions, I don't know exactly what that number is now as you say it changes. But I do believe that we can look at those vacant positions and determine when it comes to where to, where, what department, what need. I hate to say it, but yes, I think our job has been to try to focus the priorities as best we can. and while I could try to go line by line, I do think the first pass would be on staff to then come back based on those priorities in terms of where the focus would have to lie. Yeah, I would never expect that we'd be a line by line, but just like we've gotten overall programmatic direction, if there's overall direction, to programmatic direction on where we shouldn't focus as much. We're clearly aligning everything going forward on the three new priorities. Right, in my mind, those priorities do speak to certain departments when it comes to say community development and its focus on economic development, when it comes to our public safety agencies and our mobility division when it comes to safe streets. I think those are the ones that seem to be prioritized right now. One thing that I also would say in response to something in the staff report, I know that there are outstanding 16 items from prior councils. There are current ones in this council, and I think it's totally fine. In addition to staff bringing us their own recommendations for programs or initiatives that may need to be scaled back. They can similarly also I think it would be worthwhile having a discussion where all the 16 items that are currently outstanding would be brought forward and we as a council could also try to pair those down for staff as well. I like that we also talked about looking at possibly, obviously, land sales or land leases, I think it's a great priority. But I just want to strongly recommend that our present financial position makes us have to look at it, because I don't strongly promote and sell in our land if necessary. Okay. Does that do we feel comfortable that there's clear direction? Is the council feel comfortable? All right. So with that clerk are we moving forward with a I mean we provided direction and now I don't think we need a vote on that no so if we're all wrapped up I think we can adjourn bye well with that it's a beautiful Saturday and we finished a little bit before Tuesday Sassy Santa Monica we'll see you next Tuesday at 5.30 pm and thank you all for participating and have a great weekend. Shot local.