Okay, thank you. We'll call this meeting to order of the Sacramento City Council. Please call the roll. Thank you. Councillor Member Kaplan. Councillor Member Dickinson. Vice-Mier Tylemante. Councillor Member councilmember plychebom councilmember maple mayor pro temgada councilmember Jennings Councilmember vang is expected momentarily and mayor mccarty here Councilmember plychebom can you listen the land acknowledgement and pledge please rise if you're able To the original people of this land the nesanon people, the southern Maidu Valley Plains, Miwok, Patwyn Wintu peoples, and the people of the Wilton Rancheria, Sacramento's only federally recognized tribe. May we acknowledge and honor the native people who came before us and still walk beside us today on these ancestral lands by choosing together together today in the active practice of acknowledgement and appreciation for Sacramento's indigenous peoples history, contribution and lives. Thank you. Ledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Well, Mayor, unfortunately we inadvertently skipped matters not on the agenda from the 2 p.m. So I'd like to take them now. I'll hopefully with you. We'll do seven. I have seven speakers. I apologize to the group that stayed. I'm going to read off some names. Lambert, Michael Bevin's, Sheree Dimmerling, Sherry Martinez. I hope everyone pays attention because this is tremendous discipline on my part. I arrived here at a quarter to two. And I submitted some paperwork to speak on the consent calendar. And I was passed over for whatever reason. And so I just waited so I could say, well, maybe they'll call me after this. After that, so I ended up having to wait three hours to speak. And what you don't understand is there's a lot of people following me now. They're starting to document what I'm talking about. And I'm glad this happened today because it's a lot of people following what I'm saying now. What I wanted to talk to was on the consent calendar. It was number 12 and it was talking about District 2 PB it. This is an example of a district that has over 20 communities and This is a whoever did this report did a wonderful job and to me I should get four minutes because I don't want to stay here and wait for another public comments when I was here at two o'clock But if you say My time is up then we got a problem with that because this is this is not enough time to show what I was going to talk about. But it does show gerrymandering in district two. District two is one of the most gerrymandered districts in California. I'm a native. I know about Sacramento. But that's what happens when you don't have minty cupie here, things were out of whack unless it was intentional. So do I get four minutes or do I just get two? Thank you for your comments, Mr. Davis. You do only get two minutes. Appreciate your patience. Michael Bevins. I don't see Michael Sheree dimmerling and Sheree Martinez. Then Mamoud Nazir. Hello, council. I'm Sheree dimmerling with the National Council of Jewish Women. We were here a couple of weeks ago to talk to you about tenants' right to council. In the two weeks since we were here last 600 people were evicted in Sacramento. I actually work in fair housing. A lot of you know that. And I want to give you an idea of the fair housing calls that we get because they're rarely without fair housing. They're typically calls about erroneous evictions. Here's one. The first is a guy that's living in his RV. He as well as a number of other people living in our V's was by a gentleman that's offering to rent them a space on his land. Now he's been cited for this before. He's gotten in trouble before. He takes these people's money. He lets them park. And as soon as he gets in trouble again, he evicts them. This is happening over and over. They took these people's money, he evicts them, and they're out of money. And guess what? They're parked back on residential streets. He went to the police precinct, and they told him call fair housing. This is nothing to do with fair housing. This is one example the calls we get. Secondly, a woman called the fair housing line because she rented a home from an individual that was going out of town for three months. She rented the home for three months. She got a notice from the daughter, the son was coming back, she could stay through the end of June. She was paid two days later, she got a call from the dad. Here's your three day notice to quit. She's in a panic. She has nowhere to go and she was told to call fair housing. That's not a fair housing matter. She called every single phone number she could find for renters assistance in Sacramento and got no help whatsoever and this is why we need a tenets right to council. Keep your comments. Sherry Martinez, the Mahmoud Nessierding. Hello, good evening. Still pretty jazzed and grateful for the opportunity to lead such a wonderful bike ride through D2 on Saturday, May 10th. Big thanks to Kevin McCarty, Brian Ford, Elkorn BMX Track, Shift Coffee House, American River Bike Patrol, Slow Down Sacramento, and River City Waterway Alliance for collaborating on this project. It's a powerful example of what can be accomplished through Unity and Community Spirit. Special thanks to the West Coast Wednesday Bike Ride Community for their steadfast dedication together, we can make a difference. Last but not least, thank you Katie Maple for writing a letter of support regarding my vehicular assault case. And wishing you a lifetime of love and happiness, congratulations on tying the knot. And that being said, kind of sucks that we had to wait so long to speak at public comment. Let's not forget about the Brown Act. Everyone does make mistakes, so, you know, peace there. I'm sorry to your staff staff what to do with really upset people, but mistakes happen. So, I've got to go on my chest to talk. Thank you. Thank you for comments and I appreciate your patience. Mahmoud Naziri. I don't see Mimood, Lisa Sanchez, Marla Shannon, and then... I've been here since April 2nd since I was San Jose, California. And I estimate there's 100 million people on the streets of Sacramento and Sacramento County. I fall through the cracks because I no longer take medication. My parents are dead and there are no food resources. I've explored them. I've been on 2-1-1 since about April 2nd, nothing. I've no homeless resources except emergency rooms and while in the center once, while in the center was wonderful but sorry they would not accept me again they thought I was a joke when I called back. We need many millions put into Sacramento home with food and shelters right now. There are no food resources, free food resources for us, no ice water. We have to bake burrow and steal. Tiny homes are a pipe dream. I've seen bears come out, scunks come out of the, the, the, the, right in the middle of Sacramento. It's a very safe place and I know the homeless rate is gone, the crime rate is gone down. We need bathrooms and all Sacramento City Parks reopened at all times. I've noticed there's no city park bathrooms open. If you could do that for us that we would be grateful. We need real free resources and I guess what I've explored the resources there. They've up some chapel today I look for it looked for the address thank you if your comments your time is complete we appreciate your comments and your patience is all the money put into it. Sanchez and their next speaker thank you Lisa. I don't see movement. I may have no more speakers. Let's go back to ‑‑ do I have one more? She's not longer here. Thank you. Sorry. I apologize for the error this afternoon. Madam City Attorney, do you have a report out from closed session? Councilor and Council met to discuss a number of litigation matters and there is nothing to report out at this time. So may I remove two special presentations and if you we may we'd like to reorder those and take the Jewish American Heritage Month's presentation first which is presented by Council Member Kaplan. Correct. Thank you Mayor. I I'd like to call up many of our Jewish leaders that are in attendance today. You are more than welcome to join the CEO of the Jewish Federation while she stands up here. So May is Jewish Heritage American Month. Whereas from our nation's founding, the biblical and contemporary history of Jewish people have played a critical role in the shaping of United States. It's growth, freedom, prosperity, and guiding values. This month is a great opportunity to celebrate important contribution Jewish Americans have made to America since the first group of Jewish individuals arrived in New Amsterdam America in 1654 and settled in Sacramento in 1849 with the arrival of merchants who supplied goods during the gold rush. By celebrating heritage months, we learn about one another, we honor the richness of our diverse nation and we celebrate the fabric of American society. By recognizing and celebrating Jewish American heritage, we as leaders are helping create a more inclusive society where all voices are heard and valued. The reason this month is dedicated to acknowledging Jewish American heritage because oftentimes, Jewish people, the Jewish experience, the Jewish story, the Jewish history is excluded, overlooked, or portrayed in a stereotypical or biased way. From what we learn in school to what narratives we read, whose accomplishments we admire, and acknowledge, and who we celebrate, and commemorate. The juicion of Jewish individuals are only 2.4% of the adult population. Many people do not know who is Jewish, but the hate crimes against Jewish individuals is approximately 60% of all reported religious-based hate crimes reported to the FBI. As instances of violent anti-semicism rise from year to year, it is becoming increasingly clear that an alarming amount of Americans hold one-dimensional stereotypical views of the Jewish people. Ernest Lee acknowledging Jewish heritage month in May is no cure for deeply rooted bigotry, but it can certainly humanize the Jewish American experience to those who may be susceptible to such prejudice so that we can all stand against the increase in our ostracism, violence, and hatred towards the Jewish community that we see in our streets, in our schools, and online. Jewish American Heritage Month highlights the importance of contributions that Jewish people have made to US history and American experience. So without this focus on this month, we may not hear these stories or in these perspectives. So I ask everyone tonight to combat anti-Semitism by learning about Jewish history. Inspire future generations by fostering a sense of understanding and respect for diversity. And in essence, Jewish American Heritage Month is a time to acknowledge, celebrate, the rich history and contributions, Jewish Americans have made, condemned, antisemitism wherever it exists, while also working towards a more inclusive and just society for all. I'd like to introduce to speak tonight is Mariela Sokolowski, who is the CEO of the Jewish American Federation of the Sacramento region. And I know many leaders rabbis are standing behind her, but Mariela, thank you for staying. I know you have to leave here soon. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Kaplan, for bringing the resolution and special presentation. Thank you Mayor. And thank you, City Council, for the opportunity to share a few words on behalf of the Jewish Federation of the Sacramento Region. My name is Maria Elizabeth Golbsky, and I have the honor of serving as the CEO. On behalf of our Jewish community, I want to thank you for this meaningful proclamation, recognizing May as Jewish Heritage Month. This resolution is more than a symbolic gesture. It is an affirmation, an affirmation that Jewish history, culture, and contributions are valued parts of the story of Sacramento, of California, and of America. Jewish Heritage Month invites us all to celebrate the richness and the resilience of a people whose story spans millennia, marked by perseverance, creativity, and a deep commitment to justice, education, and community. It is a time to recognize the extraordinary contributions of Jewish Americans to every facet of our society, from science and medicine to the arts, from social activism to public service. And yet, it also comes at a time when our community feels particularly vulnerable. The rise in anti-Semitism across the country has left many Jews feeling isolated and afraid. That is why this recognition matters so deeply. It reminds us that we are not alone. That the city we call home stands with us in celebrating who we are, in honoring our past, and in building a sure future rooted in mutual respect and inclusion. We are proud to be part of Sacramento's diverse and vibrant civic fabric. Thank you for standing with us, not just in this moment, but in ongoing partnership. Let this resolution serve as a reminder that history is not just something that we studied, it is something we shape together. Thank you. Thank you. Stay there, stay there. Mayor, would you mind joining me? Actually, I want everybody in the audience that would like to join us up front. We'll take a picture. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank presented by vice Marit Elementz. Thank you so much. On behalf of the city of Sacramento, I'm excited to recognize an honor may as affordable housing month. I'm a product of affordable housing thanks to a program called CHIP. My parents built their own home putting in 40 hours a week of work into the house, nail by nail, wood piece by wood piece, and getting a federal loan that was low interest for my parents to become homeowners and to give us a roof over our heads. The severity of our housing and homelessness crisis is not lost on any of us here and the statistics are startling. 54,364 low income renter households in Sacramento County do not have access to an affordable home. 79% of actually low income households in Sacramento County are paying more than half of their income on housing cost compared to 2% of modern income households. And I'd like to highlight and celebrate some of the amazing things here at the City of Sacramento that we're doing. Things throughout planning planning department and all the key stakeholders that push us to move the needle along. We were the first pro housing jurisdiction in the state and thanks to that we received 2.5 million in pro housing incentive pilot funds. Our housing trust fund and housing impact fees go towards affordable housing. Our recently approved general plan and zoning ordinances allow more units to be built across the city. And housing is than just a roof over our heads. It's a community and the ability to work and enjoy amenities close to home. The Sacramento Housing Alliance has worked for over 35 years to advance policies and programs that expand the production and preservation of affordable housing and promote housing justice throughout Sacramento and greater region. With that, I'd like to bring up Jonathan Cook, Executive Director of the Sacramento Housing Alliance, talk about some of their work and projects to affordable housing here in Sacramento. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor Telemontes. Jonathan Cook, I'm the Executive Director of the Sacramento Housing Alliance and proud resident of District 3 here in Sacramento. Thank you for recognizing May as affordable housing month. Thank you for recognizing May as affordable housing month. For over 35 years, the Sacramento Housing Alliance and proud resident of District 3 here in Sacramento. Thank you for recognizing May as affordable housing month. For over 35 years, the Sacramento Housing Alliance has advocated for the development of safe, accessible, and affordable homes for low income individuals and families, and those experiencing homelessness. Through public-private partnerships, our nonprofit affordable developer members are delivering thousands of new affordable homes across Sacramento. The City of Sacramento is a key partner in this work, dedicating millions of dollars to funding for projects, as well as implementing policies that make it easier to build affordable housing for all of our neighbors. This morning, we joined together to break grounds on the new Monarch project on the R Street corridor by Mutual Housing and Kada to of our members which will deliver over 200 units of new affordable homes on a site that was previously underutilized as a state warehouse. Monarch is an example of what we can do when we work together to create innovative solutions for our housing needs in Sacramento while also transforming a neighborhood at the same time. A affordable housing month is a time for us to reflect, imagine, and act on a future where everyone in the greater Sacramento region has a safe, stable, and affordable place to call home. Now more than ever, it's critical that we come together, advocates, neighbors, leaders, and residents to ensure that every person has access to an affordable place to call home. While we take time to celebrate the success of our previous efforts, we know that much work still lies ahead. The housing crisis demands bold solutions and collective action that matches the scale of the challenge. Throughout affordable housing month will be lifting up the voices of residents, highlighting innovative, affordable housing developments, and coming together in community. Thank you for standing with us because when we fight for housing justice, we're not just building homes. We're building hope for a better future because there's no place like home. And joining me this evening are members of our staff and board of directors, our Montserena Bof from our staff, April Ludwig, Gabriella Herrera, and Gianna Marzovich. Thank you. Thank you. And if I may, Mayor and Vice Mayor, just a couple comments before we do the festivities. I first want to thank Vice Mayor Talamontes for bringing this forward. This is without a doubt. One of, if not the most pressing issue of our time, right? We feel that in all of our districts, we feel it all across St. California and beyond that people are really struggling to find a place to live that they can afford. And that's an experience that's not wrong. Anyone in the spectrum, it doesn't matter who you are, what group that you're in, people are experiencing this. We know that our seniors are experiencing this, we know our young people are experiencing this, and everywhere in between. And so it's such an important issue. I also did want to call out specifically my wonderful chief of staff Ryan, Ron over here, his lovely fiance, Gianna, will be starting her new role at the state as a fair housing specialist. So I especially wanted to thank you for your work in this space. I know that there's a lot to do and I just appreciate you. Thank you. Wonderful. So if we can get you to come up and then our planning division, if you guys can come up and join us, Greg, Garrett, I think I see Stayshow over there, anyone that just feels housing. Come on over here. There you go. All right. One, two, three. We give one more. One, two, three. One, two, three. Thank you. Five, six, three. Thank you. Five, six, seven. 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 you, Madam Clerk. Mr. Mayor, as a matter of organizational structure for today's meeting, I'm going to request that we move to postpone the item number 10 on the audit review of the animal mission. And we will do this because I was requesting this because the animal wellbeing commission that advises us is actually going to hear it next Thursday. And I think it would be, it would not give, it would be not prudent to have a council make a decision and then take action before the Animal Rights Commission. Point of order, Mayor, point of order. Please don't shout from the audience. And Mayor, I think this is an item that we've an issue that we've had consistently where the Measure U Commission will present before the cat will present after we vote on something. And the advisory commissions are intended to give us advice. And it would, so if we're not going to take advice from our volunteer commissions, then why even have them at all? So my point with this is I think it's important that as a matter of scheduling that and it is scheduled, the schedule to be heard, but at that point the council will have already acted on this audit and recommendations to the audit. So before the council acts on the audit, and I wanted to just say that the audit was, I think, very helpful. I will listen to it through the budget not a committee. I also think it's important that when we do these that are citizen advisory commissions, listen to them before we do. My motion is to postpone item number 10 and bring it back immediately after the animal well being commission reviews the item. Okay, I hear that and I support as well. I know we heard some some groans from the audience and I will say that We take seriously this animal welfare committee and there are several new appointments on there too from the mayor's office, one from at least from Councillor Moura Plucky-Bombs office and this was an important body of work and thank our auditor and I think we caught this too late. I wish we would have notified people who showed up here tonight first but we do want to hear from the community about this. We want to hear first our animal welfare citizen body here this report come up with some insight for us and then have a full discussion at the city council. So this isn't going away. It's just being delayed. So thank you. I think do we need a motion or we have a second but people too. Okay, we have a motion and a second. Seconds by Councillor Plucky-Mong. Yeah, but yes. Yeah, question from Councillor Member Plucky-Mong? Yes. Question from Councillor Member Plucky-Mong. I take Councillor Member Gareth's point. I think it's a good idea to hear from the welfare commission before we take action. There are a lot of folks here that may check out tonight. If they allow us to continue, I think it would be ideal to open the hearing except public comment and then continue the item. I know we've got a long night. So if we have the time to hear some comment. I mean there's public 10, 15, 20 minutes. A lot of some comment for the folks that have made the truck out. If it's the world of the council. I mean we could hear that but I think we would just be repeating the same comment. I think the important thing is to have the advisory body discuss the matter and then hear it in full. My thoughts and thoughts, this and my cane here. We all can hear with busy schedules. We've been trying to get attention for five years, councilar. Point of order, just as we can get legal clarification. Are we a lot of, if we're moving an item, are we allowed to have public comment? I just want for clarity. We are. Okay. So, Council Member, since we're not hearing the item, if we did have public comment on that, there would be speaking on the continuation of that item. However, if they wanted to speak on public comment from matters not on the agenda that would be appropriate We just have one more item before we go. Well, let's do this. And so I understand that there's a large amount of people who came here for this. I know some people are recognized I'm the audience. Don't live it, you know, live a ways away. And they care about the city as well. And so we do have a motion to continue this. That's an item that people can speak on as well. It's being continued. You can come back and speak on it again. You can come to the Animal Welfare Commission next week. Your choice. But we will hear a public comment on the motion in a second for the continuance. Okay. The Animal Welfare Commission meeting tomorrow or not. It's not necessary. Yeah, they can speak whatever they want to speak for. Yeah. So there's public comment now on this item. You have your own two minutes. You can speak on how you don't want to continue. If you want, you can speak on the merits of the audit. It's your two minutes to address the City Council, the city of Sacramento. So we have a number of people that signed up. So we'll allow you to engage with the city council at this point. Call the speakers? Mayor, we do have a consent calendar and other items prior to getting to that agenda item. So do we want to take the agenda in the order that it was intended? Now that the people know that they would be speaking on the consent. Yeah, do the consent. So we'll do the consent and we'll do the remainder of the agenda. I have four speakers for the consent calendar. Marla Sharon, Alyssa Lee. And it might be Marla Shannon. Shannon. Thank you on items one and four. And then Jeffrey Tartigui as our third speaker. Yes, I want to make a comment. People are not always obvious whose home was most people are in cars. Those people at night getting their cars. There are like a hundred million people in cars in Sacramento County. They still don't have resources, they don't have food. They obviously don't have homeless resources of shelters. They had to buy cars to stay out of the cold. They don't know where to go. Some have kids, some don't have kids. We are begging you for food and ice water and more homeless We are the shelters. We, um, most of the people are water and more homeless shelters. We, most of the people are basically normal on the streets and have no resources look around and rely on themselves. I picked berries on the side of the road, which is actually legal. I found some blue berries. And I've, besides that, I found a community garden that charges a rental fee that, where I can pay per year and get my own community plot. So I'm looking into that. I'm being as resourceful as I can. I'm a master's degree in library science in San Jose State University. August 1993, I was a librarian for seven years. I'm applying for the librarian position. I hope I get it. And I believe in you more homeless resources. Thank you for your comments. Alyssa Lee, then Jeffrey Tartigia. Hi, my comment is short. My name's Alyssa Lee. I live in district four. I just wanted to highlight item two, the criterion guidance to accommodate active transportation and work zones Standard. This is basically just saying, we're gonna make a policy for how to direct people who are walking and biking when there are work zones. And this has just been a great development. Really wanna highlight JDW's team and Cassandra Cortez, who is no longer at the same, but for their work on this. And I also just wanna highlight Dan Allison, who I think brought this to the city's attention. It's great to see this move forward because it does really acknowledge that people who are walking and biking when suddenly the sidewalk ends or their bike lane ends because there's a work zone detour. It's really not a dignified way to allow them to travel. So this actually creates that specific guidance for what to do in those situations to prevent that and make sure that they have a way. So even though it's on consent and I'm glad it's just going to move forward. I want to highlight that it's a really good thing that we've got. Thanks to our city staff. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Jeffrey Tartigian, item two. Just a moment. Let me make sureya and say it's about time. I am going in the future ask about dealing with the accessible vehicles because the status of sidewalks are so poor. But in regards to that, it's about time that you have some means and it's about time that you have to be able to do it. And I'm going to ask you to be able to but in regards that it's about time that you have some means and it's been a long long time since this has been even looked at. So my comment I'm looking forward to this going forward and that's my comment right now today to you. Thank you for your comments and may I have I have no more speakers on the consent calendar? Council member Maple. All right. Thank you. I'll make this really brief. I know we have a long meeting ahead of us, but I could have missed an opportunity to comment on item two myself. And just really want to thank Jennifer Dullin-Wyett, her team, the entire city staff, public works team, and I also want to give a shout out to Dan Allison. I think that is completely appropriate. Great partner in this work. We know that sidewalks, there are spaces for all of us. These are community spaces and yet when we have much need to development, some of the housing development that we want to see throughout the city and beyond, we know that those spaces can be impacted and I really just appreciate the forward thinking, this of the staff to say how do we make sure we protect those spaces, get creative while also having these developments city wide. And I certainly have seen it in my district where I've seen whole entire sidewalks just be cut off by development projects for weeks or months and sometimes even longer. And that really can impact our seniors, can impact folks with disabilities. And so just really thankful for this. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Cappellan. Just really, oh, just really quickly, want to highlight item seven, which is our Meadows Park Phase three. I've heard our community, you're getting a basketball court. And the first in Natomas dedicated only four for pickleball courts because I know that is a huge thing right now as well as on its own a tennis court. So very excited. Thank you to our park staff Jason, everyone who has listened to our community and making this dream fulfilled that by the end of the year there will be four dedicated pickleball courts. I'll move consent. Okay. We have a motion a second on the consent calendar. All in favour, please say aye. Aye. Noes or abstentions? Hearing none, the animus. Next item. Thank you, Mayor. And just for the record, that was a motion by Councillor McKappah Kaplan and second by Councillor Moorah Dickinson. I know Jennings was trying to get in seconds, but we had a winner. Thank you. So public hearing item number eight. Parkbridge East Reson. Good evening, Mayor McCarty, members of the City Council. My name is Jose Quintanilla, associate planner with the community development department. The item before us P24024, the park bridge east Rizom, a request to subdivide a 4.87 acre site into 41 lots for residential development in South Natomas. Staff recommends approval of the following entitlements for this project, a Rizom from OB-PUD and AOS-PUD to R1A-PUD, an amendment to the park bridge PUD schematic plan to incorporate the site as a new residential village, village 5, and to the PUD development guidelines to update residential development standards to allow for a new housing product. Third is a tentative subdivision map to subdivide the property into 41 residential lots, five common lots with design deviations for non-standard residential street sections, and site plan and design review for review of the map, layout, circulation, and proposed development standards. There are no house plans proposed with this request. The Planning and Design Commission passed a motion recommending that the City Council approve the project on March 27, 2025. Thank you. This concludes my presentation. Staff and the applicant are here if you have any questions. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Talamantes. I'd like to open and close the public hearing. I mean there's no public comment. I have no public comment on this item. Okay. So I've closed the public hearing. And move the item. Second. Thank you. when it close the public hearing, a motion a second on the item no public comment correct also favor please say aye aye. He knows their abstentions hearing none item passes. Mary move now to item number nine which is fiscal year-26 proposed budget overview. Okay, we're going to start off with our city manager. Good evening, Mayor and Councilmembers. Tonight we begin our budget hearings for fiscal year 25-26. Before we begin, I'd like to extend my deepest thanks to staff to Marthala and the budget team who are sitting over there who I was once part of so I understand what they've gone through since November. And for Mayor and Council for their leadership and everyone including our department heads and all the department fiscal staff for your hard working collaboration in what has been already a very challenging budget year. The budget before you is balanced, closing a $62 million funding gap with the combination of ongoing and one-time cuts. As we head into a period of economic uncertainty and threats to withholding federal government, withholding federal funding for critical services, those budget makes progress in bringing the city's budget into structural balance while advancing council's priorities and minimizing service impacts on our residents. Over the past few months you've heard from our city department detailing their current levels of services and programs. Tonight you will hear the strategies used to balance the proposed budget and the associated service impacts. In keeping with council's commitment to transparency as part of the proposed budget, you and the public have the list of all the strategies that were considered for budget balancing, including those that are not in the proposed budget and that could be used as alternatives to the proposed reductions. This is now your budget, Mayor and Council, and I along with my staff are here to support you and provide you with the information you need as you deliberate and consider the difficult decisions necessary to balance the budget. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Pete Coletto, our finance director, and we're going to listen to you, our budget manager. Thank you. Thank you. Madam City Manager, good evening, Mayor, Council members, members of the public. the final instructor appears with me as Murtholus and Tzo or a budget manager. I really do want to echo the gratitude expressed. council members, members of the public. Peacled out of the finance director. Pears with me is Mertala Santizo, our budget manager. I really do want to echo the gratitude expressed by the city manager. Bouncing a budget is really a team effort. And I really want to extend my special thanks to the budget team in addition to what Lani said. They've also had to put up with me for the last nine months. So they really deserve a lot of thanks. So I think to start off, we can kind of go over our schedule for the budget hearings. The budget was released April 30th. Today you're going to get an overview of the budget from NorthAula and I. And then you're going to hear from each assistance city manager, very similar to last year. The focus is going to be on the strategies that were chosen to balance the budget and their associated impacts. On May 19th we're going to the Measure U Commission. Next Tuesday you get the pleasure of hearing from us twice. So in the afternoon we'll go over the capital improvement program and the budget equity tool. And then in the evening we'll go over fees and charges and then really we're looking for council to deliberate and provide us any direction to any changes you would like to make to the proposed budget. May 27th this is a new state mandate. It's a public hearing around vacancies. And June 3rd we're going to take whatever feedback direction we get from council to budget and audit to make sure we have it correct for June 10 budget adoption. So as the interim city manager mentioned, we have some budget challenges. So we have our immediate challenge. We need to by charter mandate balance our fiscal year 26 budget. And we have this near term context where we're still in a structural imbalance. We want to make progress on that. We do have threats to our federal funding and grants that we receive and a really uncertain economic climate. And then long term as we've discussed with Council, we have significant unfunded pension, liabilities and capital needs. So I'm going to start off with some relatively good news. So that chart that you see there is a comparison of the budget forecast you saw this February. And then how the budget forecast looks with all of the strategies adopted in the proposed budget. So you can see we closed that $62.2 million funding gap and all of those kind of checked lines are really are ongoing strategies closing or reducing the gaps in future years. In addition as we've discussed, instead of placing $4.2 million into the economic uncertainty reserve in the budget, we are proposing putting in a federal funding contingency. So I will hand it over to Mretallio to go over the budget overview. Thank you, Pete. Good evening, Mayor and Council members. I'm Rathallis Hittizo, the budget manager. Tonight I'll walk you through the budget overview and the budget gap. The fiscal year 26 proposed budget totals 1.6 billion for all funds and 847 million for the general fund. The budget is slightly higher than fiscal year 25 by approximately 69 million. Total FTE is slightly under 5,000 and there is a net decrease of 44.9 FTEs between fiscal year 26 and 25. proposed budget is balanced and closes the 62.2 million dollar funding gap. Okay, this slide shows the program area budgets by all funds and the general fund for all funds the largest program areas are public safety and municipal services at approximately 30% each public safety accounts for approximately 59% of the budget and And sorry, with the overall citywide budget accounting for 12% of the budget. By spending category, salaries and benefits is by far the largest at 72% with services and flies coming in second at 21% and for revenues, property tax and sales tax are approximately the same at almost 30%. These in charges comes next at 13% and this is what accounts for the general fund revenues in addition to everything that you see there. Okay. For our budget gap, the city has been essentially dealing with the structural budget, sorry, go back. The city has been dealing with the structural budget deficit since fiscal year 25. And what this means is that our expenses are growing faster than our revenue. And this is not due to a downturn in economy. There was not one decision that pushed the city into a structural budget deficit. There were many such as expanding into new services, new labor contract costs, increased staffing, and ballot measures, setting aside general fund monies. Inflation also had an impact on it. So to fix the structural budget deficit, there will need to be an increase in revenues, either through new or expanded fees and or decrease in expenses. The process for fiscal year 26 was very similar to the fiscal year 25 process. Departments were instructed to submit reduction strategies totaling 15% of their general fund budget with the focus being to minimize service impacts as much as possible and preserving core services. Reduction strategies could be revenue increases or and or expenditure decreases. There are 160 reduction proposals submitted by departments. Revenue proposals were analyzed to ensure cost recovery and prop 218 compliance. Expenditure reductions were reviewed to ensure they were categorized appropriately. Staffing impacts on reductions involving positions was also conducted. Both revenue and expended reductions were reviewed to determine the impact to the measure L baseline. In this chart, you'll see a breakdown of department reduction strategies of the total 93 million in strategies that were received. Approximately 21 million was in revenue increases and the remaining 72 million were in expense reductions. So in addition to the department strategies, there were a number of city-wide strategies identified totaling 44 million. Most of the strategies are one time in nature as the majority of them are project closures and council already took early action this fiscal year and approved using the fiscal year 24 year and savings of 23.5 million to help close the budget gap, which is included in the 44.3 million total that you see there. Okay, so in total there are $137.8 million in Department and Citywide Reduction Strategies available which include a reduction of 486.3 FTEs of the 486 FTEs. 250 FTEs are filled. These strategies are detailed in the budget book and also in the staff reports attachments. And so now I'll give this back to you. Great, thank you. So how did we balance the budget? I'll walk you all through this chart. You can see where we started. A $62.2 million budget gap. And then we received that bad news around our hapsics funding where we got a significant cut from the state which worsened our gap. And then council took early budget action. So the good news was we had significant prior year savings and council dedicated that towards closing the gap. So after February we had $44 million roughly left the close. And the chart below shows how we did that. So just over 20 million were revenue enhancement strategies. And then we didn't have to go beyond the level two reductions. So we have some level one, level two reductions. You can see the impacts mostly on vacant positions. However, there is a, we are proposing to eliminate or have 14.8 filled positions be impacted as part of budget strategies. Two of positions are moving to another fund So they won't be impacted and then there are some of those positions have since become vacant So as of now there are seven filled positions That are slated to be eliminated as part of the proposed budget We also looked at some of those citywide strategies and these are mainly one time, these are reallocations of project funds. We do have some augmentations. These aren't to do new things. These are primarily cost of doing business increases. So inflationary increases for building maintenance, for fleet costs, software licenses, and things like that. The bottom two lines, we did make some adjustments to our cost plan. So every year, we take a look at all of our costs in our general fund that are serving programs in other funds and update those. So that worked to our benefit. And we also, it's a little bit budget wonky, but we updated our Offets process, which allowed us to recognize some budget savings up front. And then we also had some retirement, purse increases, and things like that. So when you bounce it all out, we've closed the gap. As far as one time versus ongoing strategies, it was roughly 50-50 in the proposed budget. The challenge with the one-time strategies is they buy us time. So they really begin our budget gap for the next fiscal year. You're going to hear more detail from the ACMs about the various strategies. So I'm not going to go into a ton of detail here, but we did try to break up the strut, the categories in each bucket. So for the revenue enhancements, those first three pieces of a pie when you go clockwise, those aren't really impacting the public. These are really aligning our budget with projections. We are seeing better building and planning revenues. The fire IGT is our Medicaid waiver program for uncompensated ambulance care costs. And there was a change to how we get reimbursed to our benefit. And so we can raise that budget. And the same with parking. We're seeing better parking revenues, better parking enforcement. And so we can align the budget. Those other increases would have an impact on end users, although the EMSV increases to private insurers and it's to cover our cost of care. For the level one reductions, we did kind of a similar exercise. We have around 2 million that is what we would have done anyway. This is us looking at our projections and our budget allocations and matching what we need with what we're projecting. Some of that funding, cost shifts to our funding and contract adjustments to outside entities. There's a couple of pieces to that. So one is $1.3 million that's allocated for some youth programming. The other piece of that that's significant is ending a parking agreement with the city of West Sacramento where we provide enforcement and share revenues with them. They don't really need that anymore, and we would rather have those enforcement officers and get 100% of the revenues. We've also deleted some vacancies and shifted some cost to other funds. On the level two reductions, this is similar breakdown by category. Some of the ones that you have probably heard of that have some impact are the reduction in skate and art park hours, some youth stipend-based program reductions, and then some reductions, but not eliminations for the fire diversity outreach and recruitment program, and then the police department pipeline program, which is the community service officer, some vacancy deletions there. This just gives an overview of the vacant position impacts by department, and just some of those impacted impacted classifications are. Again you're going to see this again when the ACM is present. And this is the impact of the filled positions. And as I mentioned before, we've had some people leave as we've gone through the budget process so there are currently seven employees in filled positions. For the citywide strategies, again, these are all one-time strategies. The $3.5 million in ARPA funding, that was unallocated. That was part of the ARPA framework. It was really contingency there for other projects. We can now reallocate that to balance the budget. a thousand strong, again this is a project balance that we're proposing to reallocate to help balance the budget. And full disclosure, the proposed budget is also eliminating the ongoing annual funding into that project. And we should have listed that as a separate item and I apologize, that's on me, but I do want to be transparent about that. The 1.2 million in completed projects, that's just a ton of different projects. They range in balances as low as $1, but these are things that have been completed and they were under budget and we can take those savings. And the Creative Economy Program, there's a kind of reimagining of this program that economic development and convention and cultural services are working on. They have some other funding for it and they could free up this 1.2 million to help balance the budget. Other citywide strategies we did not use. We didn't use high impact ones such as the Sura Utility Rate Assistance Program. That's in the budget that is not being proposed to be eliminated. These are some of the augmentations I had mentioned earlier. Again, they are pretty much inflationary increases. On the right, that shows the position impacts. Many of these have already been approved by Council, such the Transportation Safety Team that does not have a budget impact on the general fund. Others are funded by other funds such as the opioid fund, the EMS core coordinator that's funded by a grant so those are budget neutral. We also received a lot of questions from Council around shifts specifically to the community center fund over the past two fiscal years. So you see the list up there. They are additive. So as part of the 2425 budget process, we shifted $3.5 million of costs to the community center fund from the general fund and in the proposed budget, another 1. is being proposed to be shifted. So annually ongoing $4.8 million. So the proposed budget forecast are usual disclaimers. We are not psychics. We don't know when there will be an economic downturn. So we're assuming the economy stays relatively the same as now. We haven't modeled out the loss of federal funding. There's just too much uncertainty around that right now. We do not include half funding for fiscal year 27. The governor did not include that in his proposed budget in January. He'll be releasing his May revision pretty soon. We're hopeful that the legislature will be able to negotiate funding for cities with the governor. One thing I will just point out though is what we're hearing initially is that the governor's May revision may now need to close a deficit where he was roughly balanced in January. And we also don't have additional costs from new labor contracts. We don't know what they might be. But full disclosure, every 1% in salary increase would add $4.8 million in general fund costs. So you saw the comparison with February earlier. This is the forecast in the proposed budget. Again, balances here makes progress on our structural deficit, but does not solve it. We still see deficits in the out years. We would be looking at a fiscal year 27 deficit of just under $60 million. Again, that doesn't include HAP. And there is a lot of uncertainty with federal funding and the economy. But we have made progress from February. As far as our long-term challenges, the city has a $1.5 billion unfunded pension liability based on our latest actuarial report, as well as a $200 million op-ed, which is primarily retiree benefits, health benefits, liability, and you'll hear our capital improvement program next week, but we're identifying roughly 1.8 billion of unfunded capital and deferred maintenance needs. So we do have significant long-term challenges. But the good news is that Council has taken some steps to address them. So earlier this year, you approved a prior year savings policy. That will balance our budget needs with addressing these liabilities. And over time, that's going to make an impact. As far as the pending issues, just things to think about as you deliberate on your budget, the ones that I've been highlighting, the city manager has been highlighting, are really this increased level of of economic uncertainty as well as the threats to federal funding. We don't know what the future of our homelessness funding from the state will be. And we're also worried about economic and federal funding impacts on our partners. So, you know, the President's budget, for example, had significant cuts to the Section 8 program and what would those cuts mean for the city and services that we would need to deliver. And you know, again, we're still underfunded or under Council's minimum for our economic uncertainty reserve as we head into an economic period of economic uncertainty. And with that, I'm sorry, it took a while, but I will hand it over to Mike Jaso for the first of the ACM summaries. Good evening, Mayor and members of the City Council. I'm here today to briefly summarize the proposed, and I do stress briefly, the proposed budget reduction strategies for the three community service departments that fall under my purview. As a reminder, Megan Van Vorhist, Director of the Department of Convention and Cultural Services, Denise Melbeddie, Deputy Director for the Office of Innovation and Economic Development, and Tom Pace, Director for the Department of Community Development, all presented before this Council earlier this year. They're also here today and will be available to respond to questions and comments. In approaching our collective tasks of proposing budget reduction strategies for the FY2526 fiscal year, we try to keep in mind the following guiding principles. As much as possible, focus on continuing to provide essential services and investment in an equitable manner within the context of each department's responsibilities. To maintain fill positions as much as possible through the examination and elimination of vacancies and the strategic alignment of staff. And finally, proposed where appropriate fee increases if our current fees do not currently reflect the cost of program and our project delivery and are not representative of the marketplace. Community to that end, community service departments have collectively proposed $5.5 million in net savings to the general fund. This is made up of 2.5 million in revenue enhancements, 2.6 million in level one reductions, and 400,000 in level two reductions. Cumulatively, we have identified six vacant positions to be eliminated, and another two-filled positions to be moved from the general fund to the community's center fund, as Pete has already spoken to. All of our proposed revenue enhancement strategies are within the Department of Community Development and total 2.46 million. Of these six strategies, four are the result of a lining revenue to actual budget projections while two of the strategies represent modest fee increases, estimated to result in approximately 500,000 per annum. We do not expect any of these strategies to result in service impacts. Level one reductions amount to approximately 2.6 million. These proposed reductions include the removal of five FTE from the general fund. The reduction of three of these positions will potentially mean that the Office of Innovation and Economic Development might have decreased reach and Responsiveness to the community in terms of new initiatives and opportunities. The reduction of the innovation growth myop by 160,000 will have limited impact on the work of OID. The transfer of three CCS or community convention and cultural service activities and two FTE to the community center fund. We believe is the appropriate funding source and within the capacity of the community center fund. Finally, our level two proposed reductions are all within the department of community development and result in the elimination of three vacancies across the department for total savings of approximately 410,000. As noted on this slide, this will likely impact building permit support for larger projects, those seeking entitlements and overall administrative support for the department. There is plenty of good news still in the city's budget and some of the highlights before you and I will only highlight a couple of them. As you notice the $0 rate for city impact fees for affordable housing development does continue. This is a critically important program in the production of affordable housing. Earlier you heard about the Monarch project which broke ground today. That project specifically cited the kind of zero dollar impact fee as a major component in that project being able to deliver 241 units of all affordable housing, the largest all affordable housing development in the city's history or certainly one of the largest and it was specifically called out by mutual housing as one of the reasons they believe Sacramento is the best place in California to deliver affordable housing. We also continue the work of the Financial Empowerment Center and our Small Business Economic Gardening Program, which really targets small entrepreneurs in the growth of really homegrown businesses. We continue the launch of the Small Business Assistance Center. We continue kind of supporting the Neighborhood Development Action Teams, which have been critical in spurring planning, re-envisioning kind of as well as development on our older commercial corridors, most notably Stockton and Del Paso as we move forward. We continue to fund our Cultural Arts Awards, which is critically important to nonprofits, arts, and community organizations, as well as neighborhood arts and culture programs, such as community, mural, Sacramento programming that is taking place on Del Paso and stocked in Boulevard. And we continue to launch, we continue to move forward with the launching of the recently begun Entertainment services division within convention and cultural services. The challenges Pete has already spoken to, a lot of the challenges that the units of government underneath kind of face obviously are the result of economic uncertainty. The continually uncertainty around tariffs that affects building materials has the ability to greatly affect the building horizon and that is something that greatly drives revenue within community development. We see the loss of federal grants or certainly been certainly around it, particularly affecting economic development. We've received considerable funding in the past, whether it's from EPA or small business administration. That continues to be a major point of uncertainty. So with that, I will turn it over to I believe we were talking about internal services with Laney. Okay, so slide. All right, this is my other hat that I'm wearing tonight. The next few slides will cover the budget reduction strategies for what continue to be my assigned departments included in the proposed budget. That includes finance, human resources, and information technology. As I said earlier, this wasn't an easy process. And these reduction strategies reflect council's priorities and my goal to avoid layoffs and focus on providing in the case of our support department supporting our operating departments in the provision of course services. The internal service department's reduction strategies total $3.2 million through level one and level two reductions, which include one vacant position and five filled positions in the human resources department, along with expenditure adjustments across all departments. The internal service departments have much smaller budgets than many of the larger operating departments and many revenue enhancements and vacancy reductions were used as budget balancing strategies last year. In addition, reductions in the Internal Services Departments can have impacts on the ability of operating departments to deliver services. The following slides will provide additional detail on these reductions. As you can see on this slide, a few classification changes are proposed to align with operational needs. In addition, we are aligning some budgeted costs with projected operational needs and offsetting eligible costs to appropriate funds. This slide in the next show of reduction in human resources staff with budget proposing targeted cuts to positions whose responsibilities while valuable are not legally mandated or necessary to maintain essential city operations. These decisions are guided by a commitment to preserve required services while minimizing disruption to our city's overall functioning. I do want to highlight that reductions to our IT functions were held to a minimum as we rely on our IT services to deliver all of our citywide programming well beyond human resources and finance functions. Our safety departments rely on IT for day-to-day functions as well as our development services, code enforcement, and our community development department to name just a few. We could not function as efficiently and effectively without RIT department and in fact, our investments and information technology have allowed us to keep pace with ever increasing workload and performance expectations. This is reflected in our continued support of these functions as the backbone of our citywide operations. Specifically, these reduction strategies will eliminate our organizational development unit, a team that has provided vital training employee development and organizational support services across the city. The proposed budget also includes the removal of the director's administrative support position and the elimination of a currently vacant role within the Office of Diversity and Equity. We recognize and deeply value the contributions these functions have made to our organization. These reductions, though difficult, are necessary to preserve core and mandated services during a time of fiscal constraint. This decision was not made lightly. Every position in our organization plays a meaningful role and acknowledge the personal and professional impact this will have on our dedicated employees. To continue supporting staff development and organizational needs despite these reductions the city will take several steps. We plan to expand the use of online training and learning platforms currently available through Accument to ensure continued access to professional development resources. We will leverage internal subject matter experts and department leaders to lead training and development efforts fostering peer learning and cross-departmental collaboration. Departments will resume some responsibility for scheduling their own trainings, including specialized or role-specific sessions, and will coordinate directly with internal or external trainers as needed. Managers and department staff will absorb certain administrative functions, previously handled by dedicated support staff wherever possible. Wherever possible, we will streamline and prioritize workflows to ensure critical needs are met efficiently. And the Office of Diversity and Equity will refocus its efforts on internal priorities, scaling back external partnerships and consultations in order to concentrate resources on equity work that directly support city staffs and programs. We do understand that this transition will be challenging, but we remain committed to maintaining our values of development, equity and operational operational excellence with the resources that we have. We will monitor these changes closely and continue to look for opportunities to support staff and maintain essential services across all departments. Although the Internal Service Departments are making painful reductions to help balance the budget, the Department's remain committed to improve internal and external service delivery. Technology upgrades, employee training, and modernization of finance functions such as procurement are allowing the city to provide higher quality services at lower costs. Efficient administration of our tax programs ensures the city collects revenues supporting all city services. Improvements to our 311 system including integrating a virtual agent allows the city to respond more effectively to increase request for service. And our last mile project will connect over 40,000 residents to high speed internet. If the federal government lets us keep the money. The prior slide included some but not all highlights that our departments continue to work on day in and day out. However, it is also essential to acknowledge some of these challenges will continue to address that all roll up in one way or another to the first bullet on this slide, supporting the long-term fiscal health of the city. When we do that, the other challenges you see on this slide and those you will see as part of my colleagues' presentations could be eased. Thank you for the opportunity to show this information staff is available to have an answer any questions you may have. Now, I'll turn it over to Ryan Moore, Assistant City Manager for Public Works Department. Thank you. So I am Ryan Moore, Assistant City Manager over municipal services. I'm joined here this evening by our Director of Public Works, Matt Ironman, our Director of Utilities, Pervani Vanjaar, and our Director of Youth Parks and Engineering, Jackie Beacham, as well as members of their executive team to answer questions as needed. So I want to quickly thank them all for the dedicated work of the last few months to put together this set of strategies to address our budget crisis. It was a lot of work and I hope the thoughtfulness and hard work shows through and what they come up with. So to begin, the municipal service basket includes just under $12 million of savings. Of that, just under nine is in the form of enhancements in, three in the form of cuts. That is done through, among other things, the elimination or reallocation of 52.5 FTE. That constitutes over 200 individual positions. I will note quickly though that the 2.8 filled FTE that we are proposing to cut are in career or non-career or seasonal employees. So getting into the enhancement side, the bulk of these strategies are alterations to our parking program. The first piece is a 2.35 million dollars in savings by aligning the budget projects and expected revenues both in Yipsey and Public Works. We'll see an additional $2 million in revenue from the new automated parking enforcement partnership with Sacramento Regional Transit, which carries the additional benefit of safety and operational enhancements managing our bus stops and our bike lanes in Sacramento better. $3.5 million increased revenue associated with new parking rates and expanded meter locations. These come with the benefit of bringing the city into market parity with other similar size cities in California, as well as allowing us to better ensure appropriate turnover and circulation in the parking inventory. We're also proposing a modest fee increase for the residential permit parking program. This program has historically been provided for free, resulting in uncovered administrative costs for the city. So this increase of about a million dollars will allow us to recover those administrative costs year over year. The proposed 5% daily minimum program fee for the triplar program will still be below market rate and the heart trust funds scholarships will be available for those who need it. Can you move in over to the cut side? So level one cuts in about $2 million. As Peter mentioned, the City of West Sacramento has gone through a change to their parking program so we're no longer needed over there. We'll realize the efficiencies in the room know here in Sacramento associated with that change. We'll see approximately $400,000 savings in Yip-C from reduction of contracted services and also the reduction in a stipend to our golf management vendor. We'll see, we'll be shifting $240,000 out of the start program away from the general fund. There are a number of community enrichment cuts which will save approximately $1 million annually. The reduction of several vacant positions which are not anticipated to reduce the overall delivery of recreation programs. Staff to program participant ratios will be insured to continue to deliver core programs. Core recreation programs will be limited however to 2025 operating with standard capacities for enrollment. Level one reductions will limit the RPD to grow and expand these programs in the future. There will also be some minor youth workforce development reductions with minimal impact. These are primarily seasonal positions which we have difficulty filling anyway. I do want to note importantly that the summer aquatic recreation so mayors at pools and waiting pools will be maintained at previous levels. So our pools will be open for business this summer. The reduction some vacancies in seasonal maintenance positions is not anticipated to reduce overall delivery of maintenance however. There may be some reduction in special requests. Okay moving into level two cuts. This is about $1 million and these are all limited to Yipsey. The elimination of vacant entry level park maintenance worker positions is not anticipated to have a huge impact on our service delivery. We're going to make this up with efficiencies and also change in some of the equipment that we use to deliver the services. I want to mention the 28th Street skate park reduction. The strategies will not create a service impact. The city will continue to utilize existing partners and expand opportunities with subject matter experts. Yipsy will continue to maintain the park for partner programs and camps, open skate and permitted events. Current unfunded deferred maintenance at the skate park continues to operate operational challenges however. Community center reductions in vacant positions will prevent the expansion of youth and senior programs offerings will again be limited to what we saw in 2025. And so just wrapping up here, I want to just point out some of the bright spots in the municipal services budget. As Pete already mentioned, the server program will continue to be available for Sacramento's utility rate users who need it. Both the departments of public works and utilities will not experience any reduction in service level. DOU is continuing to push to move towards 100% electric operations, including incorporation of new solar power. We continue to be very successful with bringing grant funding, including the recent grants of over $7 million for ground water sustainability projects, and over $72 million in additional funds for the IEEE Street Bridge project. And we do continue to push for better technology to improve efficiency, such as the automated parking guidance system downtown, as well as the AI-based parking enforcement of our NRT buses that I previously mentioned. Funding for the recently launched quick build traffic team as Pete mentioned remains intact. I already mentioned swimming that remains intact this summer so we're happy to see that continue. We will also be able to continue our youth scholarship programs this summer. So on the good news side. Some of the challenges continue to be, and I'll say this is awfully similar to what I shared last year and likely we'll be sharing in the future. The City Sacramento continues to have a very large backlog of deferred maintenance that we are not addressing. A lot of our underground infrastructure is over 100 years old. Our payment network continues to deteriorate with no plan to address it. Our parks and facilities infrastructure which are almost wholly dependent on the general fund, continue to see only a very anemic level of investment. I'll also note that our ratio of park land acreage to maintenance employees is an all-time high of over 30 acres per FDE. This makes it not only difficult to meet community expectations for the quality of our parks, but it also makes it difficult to seriously consider development of new parks. Funding for capital improvements is equally hard to come by and it's already been mentioned so on the labor rate there is the specter of the federal government and what they may do to the availability of grant funding. And of course in order to maintain this city's utility network, we will be seeking a rate increase in the next few years. Consistent with the message from last year, I do want to mention that staffing continues to be a significant challenge. Reduction of vacancies and senior seasonal positions eliminates our ability to expand youth and senior programs. Fleet mechanics, traffic signal, street lighting technicians, urban forest recrues, water treatment plan operators, street manage crews are among some of the most critical functions that we have, and they're very difficult to fill due to lack of available workforce in the market, and our competition with neighboring agencies that pay more for similar services. And I'll close out as you'd last year with a note on a Ranger team. With over 240 city parks and many miles of Ostrich bikeway, our dedicated Ranger Forces asks to perform a possible task of managing an open space with an inventory of only 12 positions. This usually means we typically have four or fewer Rangers on shift any time, so it's a very difficult spot for us. And with that, slice of good news. I will pass it over to Mario Lara. Thank you, Ryan. Honorable Mayor and Council, I am Mario Lara, Assistant City Manager for Public Safety. The next few slides outline the budget balancing strategies proposed for departments of community response, fire and police. I extend my gratitude to the department heads and their dedicated teams for their diligent efforts in identifying these strategies and for their and their teams' attendance here today to help address any questions that you may have. Each department has previously presented their programs and services. They highlighted escalating demand for services, legislative mandates and communities called for heightened transparency and social equity. It is crucial to recognize that public safety and homelessness consistently rang among the top priorities for our community and for this council. The budget reduction strategies that are presented here take into consideration community and council priorities, legal mandates, social equity considerations and the city managers directive to avoid layoffs and preserve core services as much as possible. The proposed budget for public safety departments includes strategies totaling 15.3 million, achieved through a combination of revenue enhancements, use of one time available funds, and the elimination of 30 full-time equivalent positions, five are filled, 25 are vacant. Departments are also actively pursuing and utilizing external funding opportunities to offset reductions. The Fire Department's proposed budget includes $9 million in revenue enhancements. $3 million is from emergency medical services operations which Pete had mentioned. These are medical transport reimbursements under the EMS program, which are expected to be higher based on historical and current year trends, increase call volume and reimbursement eligibility. Use of these funds to cover existing ongoing costs for EMS operations would mean that there wouldn't be any excess revenues available for other eligible EMS costs such as one time capital, or equity and outlies. The department also proposed increasing fees for emergency medical services approved by Council in April and for fire prevention programs Which is scheduled for council consideration next week This would result in increased cost for users of services and yield total of six million dollars across these two programs in Additional revenues a more detailed presentation on the fire prevention and fee proposal will be presented for council consideration on May 20th as I mentioned. Finally a small reduction related to special district buildings is also including fire's proposed budget. Think of one slide too many. Level one adjustments are as follows. Use of one time project funds to support patrol operations in the police department. As well as use of opioid settlement funds to support staffing costs in DCR associated with the street overdose response team. Elimination of a vacant position in the Fire Department Fiscal Services divisions and add the leads in the police department to consolidate the nighttime traffic staffing and a re-work in our public information office. Elimination of youth family investment programs from police department budget to the tune of 1.3 million. This and similar programs are already operated by youth parks and community enrichment department. This adusment does not negatively impact achievement of measure LB SLIN. However, it does reduce funding for CBOs for youth programs. These strategies combine yield approximately $2.1 million in savings and elimination of 2.0 FTEs. The service level impacts the public will be negligible, but due to improve the efficiency and workload redistribution to remaining personnel. Level 2 reductions. Level 2 budget reduction strategies involve the elimination of 28 FTEs, three of which are filled in the fire department, impacting our door program, the diversity outreach and recruitment program. Two are filled in the police department, one, impacting advanced officer training unit, which will lower our capacity to deliver high quality training. And the other being an elimination of an administrative support, police department, administrative support for the police department executives. The rest are vacant civilian positions in the police department, which will necessitate workload redistribution among the remaining existing staff. As you can see, the most significant impact to these level two strategies is the reduction in hiring pipelines in both the police and the fire department. This will make it more challenging to meet hiring goals and diversity and diversity of the workforce. Remaining sworn staff will need to handle functions previously performed by entry-level civilian personnel, which may lead to increasing officer workload, call volume and reduced response times. To avoid elimination of additional FTEs, costs for personnel and the investigation unit and the public information office will be covered using available one-time project ones. This is a temporary solution. The budget balancing strategies across public safety departments have been carefully and strategically vetted to preserve core services while addressing the structural deficit. While this is certainly an austerity budget, some key areas that I would like to highlight include. Firstly, the proposed budget for public safety preserves current staffing levels as much as possible to maintain critical services and operational readiness to meet the increasing demands that are placed on our public safety departments. Secondly, the proposed budget preserves specialized teams to address high priority challenges. For example, the homeless response teams, the multidisciplinary incident management teams since homelessness remains a high priority are maintained within this budget. The proposed budget also fund specialized crime reduction units such as human trafficking team, the nighttime trafficking team and violent crime rejection team in the police department, also because reduction in crime remains a critical priority for the community and for this council. Thirdly, the proposed budget leverages use of available one time and external funds. All public safety departments will continue to actively pursue external grants and opportunities that will allow the city to be growing demands for services. To conclude this brief overview of the public safety budget strategies, I would like to remind council of some of the challenges that staff will continue to manage. The recruitment and pipeline programs have been curtailed, although not eliminated. Therefore hiring will continue to be a challenge. We anticipate a significant vacancy factor which will be offset by continued use of overtime to meet the demand for services. High workloads can lead to declining employee morale and heightened compliance and risk exposure. Deferred maintenance, as Ryan mentioned, associated with aging facilities and public safety equipment will also continue to be a challenge in the public safety departments as there are no truly dedicated ongoing funds set aside to reduce the deferred maintenance burden. And finally, reliance on one time and external resources, the deliver services that are ongoing in nature, especially considering potential economic downturn and loss of federal grant programs, continues to present a risk. Thank you for your opportunity. I will now turn it back over to the finance director. Thank you. So, Marin Council, I know that was a lengthy presentation as we went over our $1.65 billion proposed budget. I appreciate your indulgence in letting us do that. And really tonight we're hoping to answer any questions that you have and hear if there are any, you know, areas of concern from council members so that we can get you any information you need prior to your deliberations and direction next week. And with that, that is staff's presentation. Thank you. Thank you. I know we will have quite a few questions and comments. But first we want to go to public comment. I think we have 20 or so speakers. Thank you, Mary. Have 17 speakers. I'll read off a few names. Andrea Durham, K. Crumb, Bob Sucato, Alyssa Lee, Wesley Allen. I'm here to encourage your ongoing support of this important community resource. Mosack is owned by the city. Thank you very much for that investment. And we need your ongoing support to deliver an important STEM learning in our community. We give back to the community in the form of an economic, we are part of the economic engine in our economy. are an important part because 96% of Americans support increased funding for museums. 76% of leisure travelers visit a museum on a trip. And we get a lot of requests from other museums to they're putting together packages for visiting Sacramento and visiting California and Mosec supports those packages and we get a lot of tourists that way. Most importantly, we improve the lives of children in our community daily and adults. We have school kids from Stockton and as far as Fresno who say they would never imagine being able to come to a place like Mosack. We have, I've had a mom and two teen boys describe how they were able to come twice in two weeks to spend quality time together, because of our free admission program for underserved families. We have design lab workshops that are changing the lives of students. We, you may remember hearing from a little boy named Edison last year, he spoke about our design lab and how we changed the trajectory of his life through our design lab workshops. Children who never can envision a life or a career in science or engineering sometimes are inspired by their experience. Thank you for your comments. Kay Krum is our next speaker. Hi, my name is Kay Krum. I'm a resident of District 6, and a member of Strong Sacktown. I'll try to keep this brief. So with all of this conversation about budget and the wonderful work that the finance staff has done on this project, we need to keep in the back of our minds that we have $1.8 billion in backlog of capital projects and maintenance for our city as well, even though we have a balanced budget. In general, during this budget conversation, I think that we need more community involvement. There wasn't much opportunity for us to have conversations at times who people are working eight to five or nine to five jobs. They can't come out to some of these meetings. And there wasn't a lot of input for that. And as a city, we need to pick winners and losers, we need to make some tough choices and invest in areas that are wealth multipliers and revenue generators like downtown has some really good places like that. Also with those cuts in mind we do need to keep in mind that we have some real harms that are happening on our streets with the deaths of our neighbors by drivers. And so we need to make sure that we're funding active transportation as well. Like Council Member Vang brought up during our quick build session. So I just wanted to put that in your ear and keep that for your consideration. Thank you. Bob Cicado? Well, Council members, Vice Mayor. My name is Bob Secado. I'm the board chair of the Sacramento History Alliance. And just in case you don't know, Sacramento History Museum is going to celebrate its 40th anniversary this August. So thank you for your continued support. And I just want to update you on what the past four years, the Sacramento Alliance, which manages Sacramento History Museum, has expanded and represented diverse communities through collaboration partnerships such as the Sheenal Springs, Miwak Indians, Sorge and Truth African Heritage Museums, Campbell Supes, Sacramento Plant Retirees, and the Sacramento Low Riders Commission. We have increased the variety of tours in old Sacramento Waterfront districts. We developed free programs such as the recent Spring Festival in April and the California Native Monty Market in Spring, greening many people to the museum in the district. We have grown a huge social media media present just in case you have noticed Please check out all of them were there and Exciting people around the globe and bringing attention to Sacramento but on to the history museum as well The money we received from the Sacramento city has been tremendous support and what was recommended to bring it to the community center will help continue to make these Activities event and school programs possible. So thank you for your time and your continued support Thank you for your comments Alyssa Lee and Wesley Allen and Victoria Vesquez Hi council my name is Alyssa Lee. I live in district four and I'm also representing Strong Sack Town today. We're a very large community group of passionate community members who really care about financial accounting and transparent accounting as well as just making our city as strong as it can be. I want to echo K's comments around community engagement. I recently learned about the city manager's community engagement team and I'm sure they're very busy, but I really like to encourage using them and thinking about how we can have a better community engagement process when it comes to our budget. There are a lot of other cities that do really awesome workshops, videos, Q&As, you know, regular sessions where people can come and ask questions and see presentations like what we saw tonight, but at a time that's maybe more geared for them in the languages they speak as well. And this is really something a city like ours should be doing when we're tackling, talking about millions of dollars that really affect people's daily lives and experiences in the city. It's really a kind of a shame that we don't have better community engagement opportunities to really try to understand what's happening in this really short time period where a lot of money is being decided. So I know there's a lot of hard work and I really want the community to be a better part of it. I also want to call out the unfunded liabilities. It was one slide and it wasn't glossed over, but it's really important to understand that we have $1.8 billion that are unfunded capital needs for maintenance from 2025 to 2030 that are not included in the five-year budget forecast. And what that says to me is that we are not planning to fund that maintenance. I think that is the easy choice to make at this point, but that's going to lead to, you know, sewers breaking down. That's going to lead to roads not being paved. It's going to lead to pools not being fixed for years for residents. This has already happened in the city. So I want to call that out and also say we really do need to start seeing active transportation funded. Thank you for your comments. Wesley Allen and Victoria Vasquez. Hello. I'm Wesley Allen. I live in District 2, also a part of strong sac town. Just kind of want to reiterate what they said previously about transparency and helping people understand the budget. I know we met as a group several times to just go through past budgets and try to understand this one and it's not easy things to parse. And I'm also concerned about deferred maintenance because if we don't have to take care of it, then we won't. And not putting it into the budget which seems not possible now but it also feels not possible next year. We saw the graph of the five years it's not going to be there's not like a savior coming for this so thank you. Thank you for your comments Victoria Vasquez, Sean Latour, Jörkwyn Quinn, then Ryan Foster. Thank you very much. Good evening, Vice Mayor. Council members and everyone. My name is Victoria Vasquez. I'm on your Yipsey Commission for District 6. I'm a mother in District 6 of two children who went through the escape camp at 28th and B. Escape Park, which is what I'm here to talk to you about tonight. I want to make it clear that there is a difference between private contracted hours at the skate park and public access hours. And one of those that's very important to me as a single mother and sole breadwinner is that the scholarship program, your youth scholarship program, would not be eligible for students or kids who want to skate there through a private contracted program. So we would be losing that. I believe that the impacts are greater than we're discussing here because the access hours are not just through youth programming or specific nonprofit programming. They're also safe hours. The 28th and B skate park is covered and in this day and age of climate change, the heat, the rain, this is a place where students can go year round in skateboard. And as we've just lost our ex-games because they're developing a league, how are we going to train if we don't have year round access to skateboarding for our youth? It's really important as well that we have those hours that we bring our youth, We sign them in, we pay a little fee, and they go skateboarding knowing that, that's a safe place. That's a very big difference than dropping them off at a park. Sacramento has long supported our skateboarding community with a lot of different types of skate parks that are outdoor and unsupervised. Being indoor and supervised is very unique to Sacramento. You have to drive a very long way to a different to find that and it's something that I want us to hold on to. It is a hidden gem. I can't imagine that if we hand this over to simply privately contracted hours, that we will be able to get them back. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments. Sean Latour, Jarkwynne, then Ryan Foster, Patrick Clark. My name is Sean Latour-Harkin. I'm the founder and director of skateboarding nonprofit in Sacramento called Project Lifelong. For more than 10 years, Project Lifelong has been working with thousands of youth and families throughout the Sacramento area. We specialize in empowering youth through skateboarding and helping them find a sense of belonging within our community. Council members, I'm here tonight to oppose any proposed reduction of city staff hours at 20 to be skate park and show how potentially harmful this decision will be to the youth and families in your community. I'm here because I want to make sure that you all understand some facts about the 20th to be skate park before you make such an important decision. I want to make sure that you understand that the 20th to be skate park is the only public place in the greater Sacramento area that a skateboarder can legally skate while it's raining outside. Last year it rained 63 days in Sacramento. I also want to make sure that you understand that the 28th to be skate park is the only public place in the greater Sacramento area that a skateboarder can legally skate that's fully shaded. Last year, Sacramento had 45 days of temperatures that were over 100 degrees. By making this decision to no longer fund the one staff member per day that it takes to keep up 20th and be open to the public, you're making a decision to take away the only public space for thousands of skateboarders, youth and families included to skate for over 100 days of the year. Please understand that sadly and historically, once the skate park moves to an all private model, a major reduction in public access historically follows. I've seen this in every skate park that does it for 30 years. If a vote is made to reduce public hours at 28th and be a skate park, it will harm thousands of youth and families in our community. Please consider this before making such an important decision on your budget. I'm happy to answer any questions. My information is on the sheet. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Ryan Foster, Patrick Clark, Tiffany Clark, and Stephanie Buckham. Hello. I find that the unfunded liabilities is one of the most concerning things to me just because I'm seeing that we're going to have less and less money in the budget every year and we still have over a billion dollars that we need to pay. I feel like it would be important to be clear with the community about what we need to cut or how we need to raise revenues to fix that. Otherwise it's just pushing the can down the road and then someone will be like eventually we'll be like well we don't have, we haven't been like focusing on this and seeing how we can fix this. And now we've got this huge problem when, you know, if we can ship out a way out of every year, I think that's important. And then I think also keeping funding for active transportation is important and traffic calming because I know police spend a lot of time focusing on crashes and that sort of thing. So if we can slow people down and reduce crashes and damage to property and police time spent on that, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you. I have Patrick Clark and Tiffany Clark. It might make sense for me to go first because we have sequential sort of presentations. Hello, good evening. Vice. It might make sense for me to go first because we have sequential sort of presentations. Hello. Good evening. Vice Mayor, Talamonte, Council members and staff. Sacramento Attorney Tiffany Clark here to reiterate what I shared with all of you in a proposal I sent a couple of weeks ago. Namely the fact that while there are very difficult decisions before you tonight, this does not need to be the way it is going forward, where you're looking at year after year of large and growing budget deficits. It does not have to be this way where you're looking at layoffs, unfilled vacancies, fee cuts, fee hikes, service cuts, and the lack of discretionary funding that would allow you all to pursue the projects that you're passionate about, the things that brought you into public service with the city in the first place. It does not need to be this way because the city can follow the lead of some of its self-identified peer jurisdictions and put forth a comprehensive business operations tax reform measure of the sort outlined in my proposal that could not only eliminate our budget deficits but could go much further while simultaneously jump-starting small businesses and economic growth in our city. If that sounds intriguing, I encourage you to focus on the next opportunity where this will be discussed. The Law and Legislation Committee, May 20th, where hopefully staff will be directed to research this proposal further along with alongside others and I do hope you all prioritize ceasing this incredible opportunity to dramatically improve the trajectory of the city of Sacramento. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your comments, Patrick Clark and Stephanie Buckham. Yes, I'm Patrick Clark, resident of district 3. I'm here to amplify my my wife's message. I've been before you before. I'm a Labor Relations Consultant, representing more than 50 different cities, counties and special districts in Northern California. In a pain to see meetings like this, I actually just came from a closed session with one of my clients going through the same type of drill this evening, talking about cuts. It's kind of the way of things right now. And the fact is, I've also been with clients when they get a new revenue measure and what a huge change that can mean for labor negotiations or just dealing with your unfunded liabilities or sexy things like potholes, right? I think that I've implore you to take a look, my wife put in a lot of work on this. Those of you that are on the Law and Lodge Committee next week, I implore you to take a look at it. You needn't be in this situation, frankly. I like to say to folks that in a Sacramento is the most important city. It is the capital of the most important state of the most important nation in the world. And I think that the city can turn things around, you have the opportunity. You can, like my wife said, not only eliminate your deficit, but you could be up $100 or $200 million depending on how far you wanted to go with it. And again, you're doing nothing other than what your sister, city, jurisdictions have already done. And that would be a far better place to be than we are this evening. Thank you. Next speaker is Stephanie Bucke. We have seven more. After Stephanie is Rashid Sedeek. And do, Bronos? Good evening, Mayor and Council members. My name is Stephanie Buckdom. I've been a Sacramento resident and state worker for over 13 years, a skateboarder for five years, and I'm also a skate night lead for project lifelong, the nonprofit that Sean just spoke about. I'm here tonight to oppose the proposed production in staff that would effectively shutter the 28th and be skate park at Setters Landing. This skate park is unique for many reasons. Sean Menton and some, so I'll just add a few more. The only wood bowl and large wooden half pipes in the area. The space feels more secure and feels safer for non-traditional skaters, including women, queer, disabled folks, and girls, particularly at night. And it's not just a local gem. people travel hours to skate here, especially in the rainy season. I know people that travel out here from San Francisco to skate here, and they have world class skate parks out there. Project Glathamon. And it's not just a local gem. People travel hours to skate here, especially in the rainy season. I know people that travel out here from San Francisco to skate here, and they have world-class skate parks out there. Project Lifelong recently contracted with the Upset at Fursi's skate night at 28th and B, and I've been leading them since January. In the few months since we began, I've seen many kids improve their skating, face their fears, make friends, encourage each other to reach their skate goals. Parents and kids are skating together, and several parents have expressed to me that this is the only physical activity their kids are interested in. And for many, this is the only public skate course where they... each other to reach their skate goals. Parents and kids are skating together and several parents have expressed to me that this is the only physical activity their kids are interested in. And for many this is the only public skate course where they skate park where they feel safe doing it. This is our goal. Use these skate nights to teach kids how to take up space and feel comfortable enough to come back during open hours and to start going to the other public parks. Our skate nights are dependent on the current infrastructure maintenance and city staff for these skate nights. We do not have the capacity to take over that responsibility. As far as I know, we are the only private contract currently in place with the FC for that skate park, so if we can't do it, who will? Our goal has always been to lead our youth and skateboarding programs as a complement to the current public hours, not to replace them. It's part of our organizational mission to make skateboarding more accessible, not less. $660,000 is 0.1% of the 6.2 million built-budget shortfall. This skate park has already been cut back to the bare minimum hours and maintenance. The value of the space and to the community means so more to more than what you would be saving. Thank you. Rashid Sadiq. Then Tijuana, Buranos. Okay. How you guys doing? Rashid Sadeek will lift up love always. And I'm a part of the race and equity committee, SIDWD, Sacramento Investment Without Displacement. But today, I'm here to talk to you about a collaborative that we put together, almost what September after a tragedy in South Sacramento. And some of you were at that meeting. We've continued to meet in a collaborative effort to minimize violence in our community. And so what I'm coming here today is to hopefully emphasize the importance of keeping funds in these historical disadvantaged communities. The police department, I noticed in section 21, had over 80 unfilled positions and that's typically what they do each year. And so I'm asking if we could possibly redirect some of those dollars to section 22 or I know 23, 24. And hopefully fund more programs that are working with the kids during these times around this time. So these are the times that we really need community-based organizations, fund it, we need them represented. And we need to make sure that they're important and they are part of our budget. So I'm hoping that you guys think about that and think about ways that we could redirect dollars and hopefully fund our community-based organizations to help suppress violence in our communities and give youth opportunities. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. To you, Wana, then Clinton, Austinburg? Good evening, everyone name is Attorney Tijuana Barnes. I'm the President of the Sacramento NAACP. Thank you for having me today. I want to echo Mr. Sadeek's comments. We have been meeting once a week to discuss how we can do a community-based approach to public safety. And it's important for you to consider the comments that Mr. Sudeik and myself is saying, because right now Mr. Lara mentioned that because of the budget cuts and public safety, they're going to have difficulties with recruitment. So if you have difficulties with recruitment, then how are we going to fill those 80 positions? And so what we're proposing is for this council to look at ways to increase community based responses to be more proactive when violence may arrive than to be reactive when violence occur. So we're asking you to maybe cut some of the 80 down and refund or fund community-based organizations because parents and community members actually call the organizations that are on the memo that you have to say we have a problem in the community and most of us respond without any funds being allocated to us. So again, we're asking for this council based on the information that you received in your presentation today that they're going to have difficulties with recruitment to allocate funds for those positions to community-based organizations that are actually doing the work. So basically a community approach to policing and if you look at the definition or the breakdown of the work community is with partnership with others in service. So I want you to think about that when it comes to money. I also just want to quickly say that it was a parent that a lot of the DEI programs are being cut, which is a response to some of the federal issues that we have in our community. 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. in Sacramento City for the last four decades. I'm actually calling in opposition of the private entity taking over the 28th in B Street skate park. 28th in B Street skate park has been a huge part of that my history of skateboarding within Sacramento. With the private entity taking over, you know, in regards to the operations of the park itself would be a mistake in this sense for, because I know there's been a lot of low attendance due to the park being charging actually for people that come into the actually skate. And another reason too behind that is actually that there hasn't been very much maintenance on the park itself when the city I've seen it would before the city had owned it and also when the city had owned it operated as well and there was a huge difference between You know when when was a full private park or not a private park. I'm sorry a public park For people to come and escape without any having to pay for any fees to come and actually escape. So I'm in opposition in regards to that and I want to pose for the private entity taking over the park itself. So, and that's about it. Thank you. If you're your comments. I have three more speakers. Stacy Anderson and Haley D. Pressy. Hello everyone. First of all, I want to say our youth is our future. Good evening mayor and city council. My name is Stacy Anderson. Today I am representing President Betty Williams with the National African American Civil Rights Organization. So this evening I stand before you all in solidarity with our community, with my comrades here, urging you to take bold action today. Sacramento's budget must reflect the needs of our youth. There are 80 unfulfilled police positions, fun sitting unused. While our youth, especially in underserved communities, lack the investment they desperately need. So we ask that these funds be shared, redirected, toward community investment for youth safety, toward mentorship, programs, mental health resources, education and opportunities that will keep our youth engaged. Our young people engaged, inspired, safe, and extraordinary as they are. Every dollar we invest in our youth is a dollar invested in a stronger, safer, and more prosperous, Sacramento. So let's not just talk about it, let's do, let's make change because we can do it. Let's create it. I urge you to take decisive action in your decision making and make the right investment in our future. After all, their acronyms is HID, highly intelligent and dangerous. Now, which dangerous they're going to be, whether we support them or the other dangerous is up to you. Make the right choice. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Haley Dupressi and Keon Bliss will be our final speaker. Good evening. My name is Haley Dupressi and I'm a resident of District 7. I'd like to urge the council and city finance managers in this season of budget reductions to address our much needed maintenance across the city. This includes maintenance we are committing ourselves to for years and decades to come with large development projects in the works. Additionally, I'd like to urge prioritizing funding infrastructure that keeps pedestrians and cyclists safe on the streets. The recent vote to approve quick builds needs to receive ongoing funding through this budget cycle and in future cycles. And I'm heartened to hear that the funding will be maintained for now. As my fellow members of strong satown have mentioned, I worry that the looming unfunded liabilities will come due in a few years and will not be prepared. I do not want to see the critically important work being done in active transportation, sacrificed because the city did not forecast our budget far enough into the future. I encourage you to keep these priorities of active transportation and dealing with our unfunded liabilities front of mind throughout the fiscal year. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Keon Bliss is our final speaker on this item. For the Record City Council, there are far more than 80 vacancies in the police department. There are as of March 11th, 194 vacant positions. And for those who couldn't read through the 1300 pages of the staff report, those are at least 80 positions, 83 positions that have been vacant for over 12 months. And 24 positions that have been vacant for at least six to 12 months, all together being the value of almost $9 million. That skate park that people are advocating for you not to cut is worth about $114,000 in cuts. For just one cut to Sacramento Police Department's program, which was on the table on March 11th, but not included in the budget reduction strategies used here. You could cut just one program, such as the ShotSpotter program, which according to Chief of Police, isn't even staffed. They eliminated their staffing for that program. It's valued over $510,000. If you cut that one program, which is just the cost to maintain it, you could actually afford to fund that skate park four times over. That's just the tip of the iceberg of all of the millions of dollars that are actually left on the table that you all could be using to plan for these rainy day funds. You don't have to make half as many cuts to the parks department which only comprises less than 1% of the city's proposed budget total. And you could actually afford to expand some of those if you just had the courage and political will to actually work hard at making those cuts in the police department's vacancies. Because it's really, I'm just getting started. Get ready. Your comments, Mary, have no more speakers on the agenda item? Okay. Well, no one's punched up yet, so I'll start first. Well, first of all, thank you to our city staff for leading it out there into our interim city manager. As I've been saying for months, there are no good choices. Everything on this list is something you'd say, we don't want that. Whether there are revenue increases, parking adjustments, impacts to small businesses, or impacts to city services. So we do try to limit them. I know the council will have quite a few questions and suggestions so just to repeat tonight is the overview. We're going to come back next week. Have another by the apple if you want to make suggestions. So we thought maybe tonight especially for the Marin Councils to have an opportunity to the city staff, have understanding of what these recommendations look like, make sure we understand exactly what they do and how they would impact the city of Sacramento. Of course, any council member can suggest issues tonight too. My only thing that I would ask of the council, the community can ask us, hey, please don't cut that. Please want to increase that. But as us, I'd be mindful that if we don't want to do something, what do you want to do over there? You don't want to increase that fee? What do you want to do over here? So at the end of the day, we have to balance our budget. We're not the federal government. They can print money, so we need to be responsive in this. And again, there are no great choices. So I'll let the council go. I have a few things at the end. But we'll start with councilmember bank. Thank you, mayor. Appreciate that. And this is the beginning of the deliberation. So first Let me just say thank you to interim city manager, Laney, P and Marthala and just the city staff, really the team, the finance team for all your hard work to present this year's proposed budget to the Mayor and Council to react to. I also want to thank all the public speakers who came out today to share their insights on the budget and also those that sent emails to the mayor and council. Thank you so much for making time for that. City staff has done all of the hard work now and now it's up to the policymakers to discuss the trade-offs in our priorities. And so I'm hoping to do that today as we begin this discussion. And I am looking forward to having a full-fledged conversation today and on the 20th, because I believe we not coming back next week, but we're not just going over the budget equity tool. We're going to be deliberating more on May 20th, so I look forward to that conversation as well. I do have a few comments. I might be a little bit repetitive from the past four years because my position hasn't changed much, but also, you know, there's new colleagues on the City Council now, and so I want to be able to just share my position on the budget. So I do have a few comments, and I also would like to provide direction on a few modification of the proposal as well. If we don't take that today, I'm happy to bring them up again on the 20th as we deliberate the budget. So first, I want to start off with the positives. I think there are definitely a few items in this budget that I like to uplift and want to think the interim city manager and city staff one. In this budget, right, we're implementing the newly established transportation safety team to enhance our road and pedestrian safety to improve traffic safety. And so I just really want to say thank you for that. I think that's really important. And then even with the reductions of state homelessness fund, we're still able to maintain over 1,300 beds for our shelter. And I know that we're looking at new strategies with working with Brian and his team. And so, wanna uplift that. And then also our continued support for our neighborhood action teams. And our financial empowerment center, that's really important to me because it's helped so many low-come families get their finances together. I want to uplift some of the programs that we're keeping in the budget. And I'm sharing these because for me, these are examples that shows that when we have political will and these are shared priorities, we can make it happen in a budget even if we're facing a deficit. That's really important because at the end of the day, this is really about priorities. I also want to speak on the right free RT. I saw that that was also in the budget. I want to say thank you as well for that. This program was implemented in fall of 2019 before I was on the council and it is such an important program for our youth. Last year's budget actually eliminated, proposed to eliminate the right RT, the city of Sacramento's share and community fought back and we were able to put that in the budget last year and I'm grateful that this year we have it in the budget I believe about 250K for our contribution to SACRT. I hope that this is not just a one time funding every year but we continue to continue to do this. And I have heard from several folks, even my colleague saying that it doesn't fall in the responsibility of the city, that we should ask our school district to do it. And I will say that our school district are stepping up to this, but the city should also contribute because I want to share that not all youth attend our neighborhood schools. We have low income youth attending charter schools, or at home, or attending vocational school. We have students who are not just using SACRT for school, but they're also using it to go to work, right? And so that's really important. And if you didn't know the stat, 70% of youth ridership actually occurs happens in the city of Sacramento. And so it's really important that we continue to fund that program. So I just wanted to uplift that. And so these are some of the programs I want to just acknowledge uplift center and say thank you to city staff for keeping this in the budget is really important and as we move forward on the budget it's going to be really important for me that we center our budget on core city services and perhaps we all have a different definition of what core city services and is and I'm going to that. But for me, it's really important that we continue to invest our budget in working families and our most vulnerable neighborhoods that need our support. And I also just want to acknowledge, even with the passing of Measure L, these dollars to support our young people are still very minimal in this budget. I'm going to say this again because I think I often hear out in the public that measure L is probably one reason why we're in the deficit. And I want to share with you all that even if measure L didn't pass we would still be in the red and because we have the Sacramento Children's Fund we're able to protect funding for young people and so I just wanted to share that. So a few comments first on the revenue generating options that are on the table. I'm not fully opposed to some of the options on the table, but I will say I do want us to be intentional on how and whom we increase the fees on, and that we got to do everything we can as policymakers to mitigate any of the harm to our most vulnerable communities. I know that we are on the process we discussed this in the racial equity committee. Next week, the budget equity guide tool is coming to council for discussion. I know that we have begun to use the budget equity tool for some of the reduction, not all. I know that we don't have the capacity for that and we're slowly facing this out into various departments. But some of the generating options do concern me, and I just want to name a few. One is increasing our daily program fee rate by 5% for our triple R general fund, our enrichment club refresh programs for our older adults, for our seniors. That for me is very problematic, right? That we're increasing fees on the back of poor, our poor community, but our seniors. And that's not something that I support. I do want to acknowledge that there is a scholarship. I did notice that we would have a scholarship set aside. I'm all for the scholarship, but as I was shared, this is like another barrier and another layer for our disadvantaged community already to now have to apply, right? So it makes it harder But I appreciate that we have that scholarship there And the other piece I want to name as we talk about trade-offs is that we also shouldn't be balancing this budget on the back of low income and our youth In the budget you'll also see an elimination funding of 1.3 million dollars for youth and families and measure youth funding, right? That for me is really problematic because we are in May right now, summer is around the corner. It's getting hot, y'all. And we know that when our young people are not active, if they're not engaged in programs, then we see crime uptick, right? And so for me, supporting our Office of Youth Violence Prevention, our summer night lights, supporting these critical programs is really important. And since we're talking about revenue increase, I know that we heard from a few public speaker, and I believe there's consensus on this council as well, is to put a BOT measure on the ballot. I think that's really important, right? I think one example is that we know Walmart only pays $5,000 to do business in our city, and they should be paying a lot more. So we need to modernize our BOT. So I am full support of that. I'm not on the Budget Audit Committee or law and ledge. So hoping that my colleagues will begin that work so that we could work on a ballot measure to be voted on and to be put forth to the voter. the voter So hoping that we can do that. Another position I just want to name as well and continues to be a top priority for me is really around our diversity equity inclusion staffing. In December we passed the racial equity resolution and we are now beginning to implement this work with community, with careholders and at this moment, we only have two city staff doing their operationalizing it, and they're beginning this work city-wide. And I haven't spoken to city staff about this, but I can just watch the ways in which they move, and the ways in which our community move. And if we are really to be bold and courageous, and really we are going to implement this racial equity resolution, it's going to be really important that we have three staff in the office and that's only three staff that's not even a lot. And on the proposal is to eliminate one of these positions in the diversity equity inclusion office. And so, you know, I'm urging my colleagues to reconsider that and to make the request to include this position. And as the mayor have said, if you want to add something, the budget, then you got to offer something up. And I'm going to talk a little bit about where I think we could, where we can absorb some vacancies to save some of these position, which is my last point. So, you know, last year, this mayor on council was able to avoid cutting-filled. We didn't lay any one off. This year, there's definitely positions on the table. We have about 70 full-time positions, citywide. Many of those vacant 14 field position. And what I'm hearing from Pete now is that some of those have retired or left. Now we really have seven field positions. These are seven actual people that works in the city of Sacramento, right? I just want to acknowledge that this year, based on this proposal, I appreciate police stepping up to absorb 26 vacancies, which tells me, because we didn't have the courage to do that before in the previous years, which tells me that we really want to do this, we could absorb vacancies if we had the political will and we were bold and courageous enough to do it. Right now we're limiting over 57 position in our parks in Yipsey, right? And we're only absorbing 26. And in March, when all of the reductions were on the table, we had 194 PD vacancies listed on the table for reductions. And today we're only proposing to absorb 26, which mean if we did the math accurately, we have 168 PD vacancies there. And so for me, I've heard from our city manager that it's important because we have to maintain the level of services for PD. And that's the reason why we have these vacancies. But I would also argue that that is based on priorities as well. That someone can argue we need to maintain our services for our youth. We need to maintain our services for our parks. And that is where the conversation has to happen on this diocese. What is our priorities? What are our values on this council and what are we going to prioritize? And so for me at the end of the day, the reality is that our dollars are tied up in our largest department, which is the police, right? And I want to remind folks that this council did pass a resolution in October 2020. I was not on the council at that time. I've said this in the previous year and I'm going to say it again is that this city council in our history, in our archive, we have a resolution redefining what public safety is, and that is to move beyond traditional services and naming that it is that our youth, our parks, they are also core of what we do and that they are also part of public safety and so I was not here at the time that we vote on this resolution but it redef redefines what that means. And the resolution formally defines and broadens the delivery of public safety services to include not only police and fire, which are important, but also youth center prevention services and our parks and our community partnership. And so I just wanted to uplift that because I believe that's really important. Now, if the council don't agree with that resolution, then bring it back for a vote and say that you don't agree that it is a core city service but on the books right now that is a core city service and we should make sure that that maintain that is a priority for the city. Since I've been in office the police budget has increased by a hundred million dollars and I just want to share that especially for my constituents in my district when they say hey council Councillor Mervang, we're not funding police enough and I tell them, look, we have never decreased the police budget. Since I've been in office, we have increased their budget by $100 million and you are still feeling afraid. Why is that? We need to ask ourselves that. Data is strong support that bold investment in measures that address root causes of crime and poverty and preventive efforts is the key. And just investing in PD simply is not going to solve the issue of crime in the city. And if you even look at over time, the over time for PD, 60% of over time for PD is used for admin, it's not even used for violent crime, right? And so I hear my constituents saying, hey, we need a PD needs to address violent crime. I totally agree with that. But if you look at the overtime, the majority of that is not for violent crime. It's for pushing papers, for adamant. And so I just wanted to share that. And so the mayor is going to say, council member Vang, where can we absorb if you want to keep that one position in the office of diversity and equity, I'm going to say absorb it from the PD vacancies, right? We have to have the political will to do that. And so for me, I know that we're not voting till June, but I just want to share my position is that before we lay off any failed position individuals in our city who takes home a paycheck to purchase food for their families, to provide housing for their loved ones, we need to have the courage to be able to absorb vacancies in the police department. Vacancies, meaning these people don't exist. Y'all, we're willing to cut someone that's taking home a paycheck before we can absorb vacancies because we're budgeting based off of fear. So for me, do we have a budget deficit? Yes, but I will also say perhaps we have a values deficit as well in this city. And so that's something that we need to be brave enough to have that conversation. And I'm looking forward to hearing from my colleagues and voting on this budget in June and deliberating in two weeks. Those are all my comments. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Mayor. You know, it just occurs to me that when I joined the Board of Supervisors who were in the middle of the recession, there was a deficit. When I went to the assembly, there was a middle of the recession, a deficit. Now I'm coming here and with a middle of a deficit. I'm telling you the next elective office, I'm looking for a surplus. I appreciate the work that the staff has done in presenting this budget. I appreciate the presentation this evening. I think the staff deserves a significant credit for crafting this budget to Peter and your team, the interim city manager to all of you who've been part of this process. And believe me, I know it is not easy. And it's not fun to look at how you reduce things or economize even though you know it's necessary. I have a few I think more themes than anything else that I just wanted to articulate this evening but I will say that I do share the sentiment with council member Vang in some significant respect such as trying to maintain our investments in youth, not to place too much of a burden on our citizens, particularly our seniors and our community groups. You know, we want our citizens to use our city facilities and yet we turn around and say, here's the charge for using this room where this facility and get a reaction of we can't afford that. I think that there's a balance here that we need to keep in mind. So I do hope that we will find a way not to increase the fees for the Triple R and Club Refresh programs, notwithstanding the scholarship element of that. I do hope we will find a way to preserve the $1.3 million in the youth programs for the pop-up and related events. And by the way, I hope we won't impose fees on those who seek residential permit parking. You know, it seems kind of like a double hit. People have to pursue residential permit parking because their neighborhoods are impacted by people who come from elsewhere and park there. then to say, by the way, you get to pay for the privilege of parking in your neighborhood, seems to be a little bit unfair. So those are just a few specifics, but more thematically, If I look at the vacant position count for the city and I appreciate Pete and the staff putting this together for the budget, not at committee. And I appreciate the approach that's been taken, as I mentioned a moment ago, in the budget to take something of a budget, excuse me, a vacant position reduction as a strategy to get to a balanced budget. But the count was roughly 927 vacant positions, about 203 un-budgeted filled positions, which is another category if I find kind of curious, but that aside. And then, initially it was 99 positions that were going to be reduced as down to 70 and a half, I think. I'm looking for Pete. Oh, yeah. 70 and a half positions, I think we're down to at this point that you're talking about as a net reduction of vacant positions. So we've got something on the order of 600 rough mass, 650 positions out there that are still vacant. Just one minor clarification. So that number is for all funds. For the general fund, we had 730 vacancies with 190 non-budgeted for net of 540. Okay. And then as you say, May 72. I'm 40 instead of 650. Okay. So you snagged 100 positions from me there. But nonetheless, I would encourage members to take a look at some of those positions. And by the way, this is not restricted to those positions that are within the jurisdiction control of the interim city manager. This is across all the departments, all the offices. And I don't think anyone can be exempt as we try to find the best budget outcome. No, everyone's part of the solution. So if you look at some of these positions have been vacant for a thousand or two thousand days and I know the interim city manager and I have had this conversation about housing positions get filled sometimes and so you rack up these very long periods of vacancy but nonetheless I think there are a number of positions that still we could look at and if we're responding to the mayor's call which I think is appropriate and necessary to look for offsets if we want to not cut things that have been suggested, I would suggest that we take a deeper dive into the vacant positions. The other thing that I would underscore is I think that not just the design ability but the necessity to make greater use of technology. We're going to have, if we're lucky as many people, but maybe some fewer people to do as much or asking them to do more work, what we need to do is become more productive. And I truly believe that there are ways in which technology drones and AI and other elements of technology can be our friend in helping us help our employees become more productive in the work they do. So just as an example, and by the way, Elk Grove has one place has gone very heavily into using drones, but they use them to spot people who are engaging in illegal fireworks in other kinds of activities where you're never going to have someone whether I don't care whether it's code enforcement officer or police officers, not going to be able to respond to that. Can't do it in time even if you had the person. But you can employ technology to identify who it is and in the case of El Grove they're using drones not for criminal purposes with respect to say to something like the legal fire works are using them to identify for code violations, which then it can be a somewhat simpler process actually to transact as opposed to a criminal process. So perhaps it's not a line item in the budget, but as we think about how we balance this budget and yet don't reduce our service levels, it seems to me technology is one of the directions that we have to look. And finally, finally, I would like some more information on all the reserve funds that the city has. There are money and different reserve funds for good reason, but it's not typically something that we talk a lot about or look at. There may be ways to employ reserves in some form or fashion that can be helpful to us. I just, I'm not here to propose that that's an answer, but I think it is an appropriate question. Thanks, Mayor. Thank you, Council Member. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you to the staff for this presentation. And for all the presentations that we've received on the budget, which have been numerous to this point and there are more to go and it's important that we do that because the public needs to be able to participate to hear what's going on need to be transparent about the situation that we're in. And so it's a challenging discussion but it's important. And my gift to you all and to my colleagues tonight is I'm going to reserve the majority of my comments for next week's discussion which will be a lot of the direction and deliberation. But I do have a couple of questions and a couple comments. My first question is around the youth pop-ups. So I know that's an issue of concern for at least a couple of my colleagues here that I've heard so far. It's a concern for me too. And my question is, can that funding possibly come from measure L children's funding? Should that program apply and? It would be eligible for measure L funding. In the future. In the future, correct. Okay, that's really good to know. So, but that wouldn't necessarily be something we can do. You know, the timing of when that comes forward, I don't know. Next week. So, so colleagues, maybe there's an opportunity there, I'm not sure. But that's certainly an area of concern for me. As Councillor Mavang mentioned, Councillor Mordickinson, we know that these programs that pay dividends because, you know, the relatively small amount of money that we put into them really has an impact on our youth and they're, especially as it comes to the summer months, it gets hot, kids are out of school, and we see that there is an increase in some of the challenges and the crimes and these nonprofits and CBS do a lot of work for a relatively small amount of money, and so that's top of mind for me. I will be looking for opportunities in the budget, and whether that's through the children's fund or something else. So that's top of mind. And then, do I have another question? I don't think I have another question. I'm just going to have a couple comments. And I'll speak with more in depth on this next week. But one of the things that's also just really difficult for us as a community, for us as a city is always around trying to protect our workers jobs. That was our number one goal last year and we were able to do that and then this year it's going to be more challenging for us to accomplish that goal. But I do want to appreciate staff for knowing that that was a high priority, if not the top priority for everyone on this diet, as I've heard it, to try to protect positions as much as we possibly can, because we know that these are, it's not just a job line, I line out of a piece of paper to budget, it's some's life. Whether or not they have health care, so whether or not their kids can go to childcare and so on, and so it's really, really important. And so I know that we, in our staff, have done a lot to try to protect that as much as humanly possible. And that includes, by the way, a lot of really creative strategies to help absorb people into other positions in the city and to move money around and to different funds to try to protect as much as possible. And so, but I'm also, you know, eyes wide open that this is a difficult year, last year's difficult year. and we have more difficult years ahead of us. We're not anywhere near out of the woods. In fact, we have more very challenging decisions ahead in the years to come as we correct this deficit. And so I'm going to be keeping that top of mind for me, is how we can always protect the workers that we currently have that make the city run. Nothing happens without them. And so one thing that's been brought up a couple times, I heard Council Member Vang bring this up, is the Business Operations Tax Modernization Effort. That is going to be coming forth to Law and Legislation Committee next week. 11 a.m. please join us there. We're going to restart the conversation. I think there a lot that we can learn from from what happened last time. I think that we know now what what what some community members want what others don't and we really want to invite the community to be a part of that discussion so that we can do it. Do it right because it is really important. I think it is high time that some of the businesses in our district that that are some of the highest grossing and revenue are paying a maximum amount of $5,000 in taxes. And it's time that they pay their fair share, in my opinion. I think a lot of other people share that feeling. And so let's make sure that we do that well so that we can capture that slice of pie. And while making sure that we're also protecting our small and medium sized businesses, we're not increasing the fees on folks who are just trying to do their business day-to-day from home. And so I invite you to be a part of that. I think that that's an important tool for us. The last thing I wanted to address, I did hear concerns from our restaurants, coffee shops, and came in the news and some of our other smaller businesses related to the fire fee increases. I do know that our fire department needs to be able to recuperate. These are cost recovery fees. You're not allowed to charge more than the actual cost of the service. But we haven't done it in several years, and that's on us, to be honest. It's time that we start to increase the rate at which we're adjusting our fee so that it's not all at once a huge expense for some of these small businesses. And so I take responsibility for that and I know that we're going to correct that moving forward. But I do hope that there's a way in our budget discussions that we can try to address some of those concerns in the short term, whether that be phasing them in, finding the other opportunities to ease the burden on our small businesses because we know that they're the the backbone of our city and our local economy here and certainly a lot of them are in all of our districts. So with that I will stop my comments. Thank you. Thank you. Did you have any questions to answer it further? Yeah, I want to thank you. Councillor Mour plucky-Bong. Thank you, Mayor. Two questions and then one comment. Ryan, first we heard a good bit of public testimony tonight about the Skate Park. Could you speak briefly to just sort of what the staffing model is and then if there's any deferred maintenance As a part of this budget that we need to address sure and so I may be that I didn't make it clear when I was In my comments the skate park remains open the hours are the same So the change is the model instead of the city staff attendant, it would be a contractor doing the attendant. So it's something we have records that's been a very small part of their time in the skate park, they do lots of other things. So the skate park operations will be open and will still be available to everyone. The skate park is, if you've been out there, it's old, It looks like original 1970s skate park. It has about $2 million identified maintenance needs. And that deficits independent of this budget discussion. That's an ongoing. Okay, that's right. Anything you want to add, Jack, here I'm going to move on. Okay, thank you for that. Next question for Pete. Pete, I am looking at the General Fund five-year forecast. It gets very bad next year and even worse years after that. If not tonight, next week or some point in the future, I'd like to understand what it would look like if this year we were to pass a budget that would make outlying years look better. Councilmember Kaplan and others have talked over the years about having potentially a two-year or longer budget planning cycle. I think this might be a good time for us to think about what it would look like to plan for 2020-06 now, or we're going to find ourselves facing another $60 million short fall a year from now. Is there anything you want to welcome to respond? Oh, sure. Yeah, thanks, Councilmember. So, the first place that I would start would be those strategies we didn't use and really to close that $60 million gap next year if we don't get additional HAP funding, we just want to close it. We are moving into those level four reduction strategies and so council would have to choose amongst those and or look at you know revenue measures or things like that Thank you for preparing the budget as presented. I know it's a difficult process and You know you you sort of thread the needle perfectly with the direction that you were given I want to state and fatically support for public safety, law enforcement, police fire. We've heard loud and clear that the top priority for the public is public safety. That's why we dedicate so much of our budget to that function. And so as we're moving forward through these discussions, just I wanted to put on the record that at least I support that use of public funds and we'll continue to. Thank you. Did our city manager want to respond to anything? After you're done. Okay, sounds good. Let's see, so for myself, I'm also concerned about the daily program fee for trip R and the Club, just the Community Center Programming. I know we have the scholarship available, but that's another layer of like asking low-income families to say, hey, I'm poor, give me something for free. It just doesn't feel good. I know my parents were always very cautious about when we would have to pay $20 from you to play soccer and not asking for a fee because it just doesn't it doesn't feel good. So that's one of my concerns. Homelessness, I mean obviously number one concern in the city of Sacramento so I'm glad that DCR is staying intact because it's the number one concern and it's what we talk about here about all day and we need to be able to have staff to be able to respond to emails with us and and coordinate with us. And so I'm really glad to see that in the budget, along with IT like our 311 department has moved mountains to reduce response times and I always say that we as a city of Sacramento need to be the best customer service agency for the residents of Sacramento and it's getting back to people and saying hey this will Y, and Z date. Just responding to people, I think is the most important thing that we can do. But I also agree with Council Member Dickinson on technology. I mean, just with AI and chat GBT, and I mean, we have SAC GBT now, but just technology is evolving so quickly, and there's so many tools available at our disposal. and that's where a lot of the paperwork that we're doing now. How do we transition typing things in and writing things in and all the back-end office work into more technology and being able to use that and adapt to the times right now to be able to be more efficient and productive with our times. And so I do have a question for the city manager for, like so for example fees or contractors that we get for We'll just do consulting fees. So for example say that one of us has a project and then we hire a consultant to be able to help us or one of the department's does. Where would those fees lie in the budget as it's presented? So would it be like per department? So say, for example, we hired consultant McCarty and we paid him $1 million to help us with the project. Where would we find that in the budget of how much money we're spending on consulting fees for different projects? So you wouldn't find it in the budget. It is within each department's operating budget. They would have an amount to spend on programs and services in those consulting fees would be paid from that. You can see every contract that we currently have. It's on our transparency page and you can see the contract and the amount of the contract and who the contract is with and that's posted right now on our transparency page. Okay. And then does that same apply for example we had the trim cutters last year that we had a higher during the storms and so we had to pay extra for contractors that local 39 couldn't do the work like would that be including the parks budget absorbed in this or would that be? It would be the cost and the resources to pay for it are in the parks budget and then the contract itself would come to council for approval and would be listed on our transparency page. Okay. Yeah, I think just for like just for my yeah, yeah, I just wanted to make sure like how much are we spending in our core services and then how much are we paying for consulting and just different contractors that we hire. Just because like we do a lot of special projects and then we spend 20,000 here, 20,000 here eventually starts to add up all the services that we hire. Just because we do a lot of special projects and then we spend 20,000 here and eventually it starts to add up all the services that we do. Those are all my comments for now. I think I agree with Councillor Verdicton said I'm just being an active approach and using technology to the best of our ability being able to move forward. That includes off-paper work. I know Councillor McIntyre said PD is spending a lot of time on the back end. And that's because we passed a lot of laws in the capital where that forces officers to go into the back office to be able to write reports, fill in everything, do in detail, and produce those reports in a timely manner. So there's a lot of laws that were put in place, that force our officers to go into the office that do that. So just things like that. So technology, I think, is the best friend. Thank you, Council Member Gera. Thank you, Mayor. One, I do want to between now and the our next meeting if staff could like to sit down with them to go through a little deeper into the 540 vacant positions and understand the level of service reduction that it would mean based on each different type of classification. I do think that that opens up the opportunity to identify where our needs are on the structural deficit and work trade-offs we want to go. I think to the concerns here, a question that I do have, I understand that on the skate park issue, I was going to wait for that last but since it was brought up earlier, you know, we're not essentially closing the facility, but the model of using the private contractor doesn't allow for all ages to participate and I think that's that here's the problem and so this is the first time I've ever heard a private contractor saying hey this is the wrong way to go and they're the ones who get the contract so I guess maybe a question for staff is how do you address the concern that all ages might not be allowed if anyone can answer that. And if they can't now, then that's fine to come to speak after. But I think that's my biggest concern here because it does. It is, I will say that for somebody who represents the South Sac area, we have a great skate park out there on granite in a number of areas. A hundred days out of the year, basically a third of the year, you can't use them because of either the inclement weather. So maybe let this discuss that component. Sure. Jackie B. Jim, Director of Youth Parks and Community Enrichment. I'm happy to come back to Council with a more detailed information. I the skate park issue. But just because we don't have current providers that provide that age range, we can put out a call for providers to do that. There are providers in the community that we can make connections with, that we work with already, that can provide that service for ages five and up, which is what we currently allow at the skate park. So that's absolutely something we would explore. We recognize the need for a covered facility. But as Ryan mentioned, the skate park in its current condition has a tremendous amount of maintenance issues including when it rains. We often have flooding due to some significant drainage issues and leaks in the roof. And during the really hot summer season we have to close early sometimes because it gets really hot in there. So we're definitely facing some significant maintenance issues that we're trying to address slowly. We have a project going on there right now to help make some improvements and it's something we're going to continue to do. This is simply just producing the number of non-career staff that we need to have out there to collect a $5 fee and instead relying on some of our community partners with that skate expertise to really support expanded programs and offerings at the skate park. Sure, I understand that. I mean, that's a good example to echo Councillor McKinston's point. You have to come in with cash to in order to even participate. You can't use VEMO, you can't use cell, you can't use any of that technology to be there. So we're losing either cost recovery there and as much as I would like it to be free and rather be able to maintain the facility and have it available. And if it's hard enough for to shut the park down when it's shaded in large and ventilated, imagine what it's like at our open concrete skate park. So to that point, I think that's an area of concern. So, and one I just wanted to thank Project Lifelong for the work that they've done at Will See Wood. I hope they can come back and look at continuing at that campus. There's a lot of stuff that we've done very well for young kids at the younger age level, but there's not a lot, my for organized programming for teens. So I think there's an important factor there. On the structural deficit side, one of the things that we've brought up before is on economic development and how we tried to grow out of our situation. And one of the most powerful tools that we do have is our ability to use TOT revenue dollars. And when we decide to use that, I think, is important and how we use it is important. But we will not, if our budget that we pass, completely ongoing obligates all those TOT dollars moving forward. So while we may use some of the community center fund and the TOT dollars to shift cost to the from the general fund, I think it's important for however we memorialize this budget that they be identified as one time in nature so that we can appropriately allow our Treasurer's Office to estimate how much TOT we could use in any significantly large economic development strategy. So, and if not, then I think what we're going to do is we're going to eat through our TOT dollars without being able to find the right tool for economic development. So I think those are my comments at the time mayor and I will come back later on. Oh, also are my, so maybe staff can answer this question. Our vacancy statutory vacancy hearing is I think May 27th. So I guess, if we are going to have a conversation on vacancies and if that is the will of the council, then how does staff recommend we proceed if we're going to discuss those maybe on the 20th but then we'll require to come back on the 27th. This is I think our first time we've had to do this. That's a new state mandate. That's correct. So I guess strategy wise on how to move forward on this conversation. Yeah, so I think there's a couple of things just around the vacancies just to clarify. Last year, as you remember, we instituted as a city of vacancy savings assumption into the budget, right? And so I believe last year is 2% or in this current budget. Last year's what's 3% this year's what? Well, it's two, I think it's two when we adjusted. But we have a salary savings assumption kind of baked in the cake. And the other thing just to kind of put out there for transparency is we may have gross salary savings in the department, but if they're using overtime to maintain the level of service, you don't actually see that savings at the end of the year. You see something much lower. So how as staff we approached it is looking at those strategies we didn't use. So if you say hey I want to sweep these vacancies and they're a million dollars in the finance department. I would say okay well look at those strategies we didn't use in the finance department and what is the service impact of that and that would be what I wouldn't be able to do anymore if that appropriation was taken away. So I think the interim city manager is- I want to be more specific than Pete because I've been writing this down to. If you go to page 991 of this staff report or you go on the budget website, you will see the budget reduction strategies not used. And they are numbered and they total 141 vacancies all the way through level four. So all you have to do is go to the first set of vacancies and it will tell you we can eliminate one, I'm sorry, this, well I don't want to. Oh I understand I'm going to pay you $9.93. Right so this is where you should go. I know where we are. We don't want to start. I know which page of vacancies. We want to start with these reductions because we already know the impact this way of eliminating that vacancy. And we were trying to be very strategic and not simply say, I mean Pete said it and I'm going to ask the chief to come up and talk about it a little bit more too. And we have had this conversation annually for the last four or five years about how we use vacancies to continue to provide service levels that our community has grown to expect and that if we sweep those vacancies to that end to either close deficits or restore other programs and that is what this proposed budget reduction strategies not use. That was the intent of providing this information is to understand the impact of taking those vacancies because it doesn't come without impact. It is not money that we are leaving, sitting for some other reason. We are using those dollars. If you look starting on page 1163 and yeah, it's a big document because it contains a lot of information that will outline in the current year how we have the police department has spent overtime. June, July 1, year to date. And a much of it is staffing current patrol and response units. So I just want to be specific to that. Thank you, Susan. We use this and not just poke to generic vacancies because we've given the tools to understand the impacts and then I want to be more specific. Pete said we have a 2% salary savings baked in. In the proposed now it's 1.1. 1.1. 6 and a half million dollars of our budget solutions are based on vacancies. And so if we sweep the vacancies we won't't have the cost of the budget will go up by that much. Yes, understood. So again, which is why, if you didn't hear them at the beginning of my comment was that we understand the level of service reduction. I mean, the reason we put these FTEs in was because we wanted work to get done. It's not that the work isn't getting done, it's getting because we have it filled those positions. So back to my point, I'd like to see that with staff to go through some of those 540 points and understand better, like the mixture of solutions on the vacancy side. And but again, I think we spent a lot of time on cuts as we should because we should because we need to figure out what's the three year But if we don't think about our our structural deficit on economic development side I think that we're gonna continue to we will continue to have these for the next three years to come and so then Back to your question here on the question about timing wise in this conversation Because we'll have to have we do this vacancy report next year as well. Do you advise the council to give recommend, are we going to be doing this conversation on vacancies twice or how do you expect the hearing to go on May 27th? Yeah, I mean we're on the 20th we're hoping to get the direction from council and us to say, hey, if whatever you want to do here are the service impacts on the 27th? Yeah, I mean, we're on the 20th, we're hoping to get the direction from Council and us to say, hey, if whatever you want to do here are the service impacts. On the 27th, it's a transparency measure. That's why the state passed it. Not every jurisdiction is as transparent as in providing the vacancy data, frankly. And it's something that Council has asked for and we've provided a supplemental budget information. Not everyone does that across the state, which is why the state put the mandate in. So that's more of an informational item for Council in the public, and it also gives labor groups who want to participate or testify to Council. It gives them the ability to raise what issues that they might see. That's more of an informational item. As far as the service impacts, we would hope council to give us direction on how you see those on the 20th. So on the 27th, is it would we have an opportunity, and I guess we could at any time, then to make suggestions again on that date saying, you know, we said this on this date, but now we're hearing this and then we want to move in this direction. The 27th is a state mandated presentation on vacancies. It has nothing to do with the budget. Oh, it has everything to do with the budget. But it is a point in time. And so we'll be reporting out. We could have done it last. There's a state mandated presentation on vacancies. It has nothing to do with the budget. Oh, it has everything to do with the budget. Oh, but it is a point in time. And so we'll be reporting out. We could have done it last week. And or we could do it three weeks from now as long as we meet their deadline. It is a point in time commentary on our vacancies. The budget discussion will happen today and on the 20th. will regroup on the third and adopt on the 10th. So the 27th right now, and we have some people who are going to be gone on the 27th was not envisioned as a budget related hearing. It is a state required and that we present. So I guess because we just did this at another GPA because our GPA is required to do this. So I think then going for next year, my advice is that when we did the staff, the draft budget proposal, we did it in line with the vacancy report. So I guess my suggestion for next year on the scheduling, since it's the first, you know, as they say, the first is the worst. What we want to do is do the vacancy hearing early on and then allow the labor groups to participate as the required by statute, have the information and not do that after the fact. I think a lot of these types of are kind of chasing ourselves on some of these requirements. So that would, I guess that's what I was trying to do. We can definitely move it up earlier in the process next year. Appreciate it. Thank you, Council Member Kaplan. Thank you, Mayor. My apologies. I've been working on my questions for about a week and talked to budget about some of them, but since I am not on budget and audit, this is my opportunity to lay things out. So, thank you for all that you do and the time that you put in. So as you develop our budget, what are the council's priorities in developing the budget? Because you developed the budget based off of the council priorities. I'm just curious what council priorities you're using. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if the city manager you might want to chime in on it. It's the budget priorities, Council's budget priorities that we used in balancing. I think- I'll ask it again. It thanks me. So, city manager, I asked when our budget office is developing the budget, what council priorities that have been adopted are they using? So, council did a priority setting workshop a year and a half ago to Ish and those are the priorities that we are using along with the budget guidelines that were adopted several years ago that have been included in the proposed budget. We have a planning session. We did not have an opportunity to do one this fall which would have been the perfect time for council to weigh in on priorities. So we have that tentatively scheduled for late September for this council to develop a set of priorities whether it's different than what we have right now or not to move forward for the 2627 budget process. And I just wanted to call that out and say thank you because that's really important that we as a body adopt what our priorities are so that the staff actually knows what direction to go in. I'd also like to call out I'm using the old 2526 proposed operating budget as it was originally released that has 562 pages because that's where all my notes are. But on page 78 it talks about the core budget policies and our budget guidelines which were adopted in 2017 of which we as a council are supposed to abide by like must adopt a balanced budget. The economic uncertainty reserve shall be maintained at a minimum of 10%. Well I know like we are going under that I would say I object to that. And I think as we're going into, as we heard from every assistant city manager, that we are going into significant uncertainty times, maintaining our uncertainty reserve is even more so than better. And then one of the things I highlight, and I asked this, brought this up last year. We all know my time of two decades on the school board that school districts have to adopt basically current fiscal year and two years out of a balanced budget. And I'm asking the city to be adopt a current year and one year out budget deficit. And on the budget guidelines, item five says, all budget actions must be considered in a five year context with new revenues not counted or spent until realized one time resources should be used for one time needs not ongoing expenses. So our budget guidelines ask us to plan out five years and so as I read through the report one of the things that it highlighted and brought up is we cannot be a city that is stable if we do not address like our deferred maintenance that we will continue to have volatility Well, we have a five year structural deficit and over and several billion dollars of unmet, structural needs and water and sewer and our fire department buildings and our skate park that we are not taking care of our deferred maintenance. Like, I get this year's proposal, which is really, and I don't like any of the cuts. But if I look at this strictly as a budget, sure we're balancing it this year. We're barely even scratching the surface if you look at page five of what you guys presented to us on the slide. So sure, of the $.2 million, only 34 or so are ongoing cuts, which still leaves us with approximately over $50 million in a structural deficit this year. This year was 62 million, and people may be losing their jobs and we're sweeping vacant positions, and we're asking our employees to do more. That's going to even be harder next year if we don't look at as to how we can make harder decisions this year, because the cuts we save for next year are compounded and then compounded the year out. Where if we save a million more this year, that's 2 million we've saved next year. So that's where I want us to look potentially as a little bit more. I always say when you look at our budget and that's as a council we have to have this hard discussion. We must make hard decisions so that we might have to eliminate positions and programs that are nice, sound good, we want them, but not our part of our core and mandated services as a city. That's really hard, but when you look at our structural deficit, we're not taking an action to really address that. We're barely even touching it. So, you know, that is something I would like us to have a plan, even if it's another workshop or another discussion after this budget, is how do we address our structural deficit and how do we address our deferred maintenance, because barely touching it every year, we're not even getting to all of our poccles and our roads are getting worse. So it comes with a mixture of how do we cut but how do we raise revenue? I am supportive of if there's more information to look at with the vacancies, more information is always great that I appreciate one of the other things. We're making difficult decisions now. We know that all 11 of our contracts with our employee groups are up next year and every 1% we give is $4.8 million additional dollars. We have to find cuts elsewhere. And that's really important for the city as we balance of one we want to pay our employees because they deserve to be paid. But in doing that, are we doing right by the city because we're going to have to cut elsewhere. And that's a lot of the balancing. We have to look at. One of the questions I wanted to ask that council member get a brought up and I would like to point out. Specifically how we are transferring some costs into our community services fund which is basically our transit occupancy tax or TOT because what I need to understand policy wise and I don don't see, how does covering the cost of fireworks increase our TOT? How do we know that's actually having people spend the night? Because now with Uber and Lyft, more people may be coming down here and leaving and not spending the night. So I can tell you now, fireworks for me are nice to have, but not essential as part of our core city services, and I'd actually like to cut them this year. That's not, I don't want to do that. Everybody likes fireworks. My kids like fireworks. But if it means that money gets to go into our, our financial, our uncertainty towards unfunding funding where we've got to consider the federal government We are a sanctuary city. We are standing up to our president I will not back down But that may mean we get punished in the short term and we need to have that fund to be fully funded in order to address those issues. So I would like to see next week when it comes back to us justification of how those switches from a general fund over to TOT actually generate and meet the requirements of I think it was measure N, which says that they have to generate tourism as well and cause people to spend the night because Eric's right, if we keep switching costs there, what are we leaving for our bonding, for building that will actually bring in economic development? Because we've got some major things in front of us where we could actually build and construct that will help our city and bring revenue in and I'd rather make sure we have the bonding capacity to do that. I am supportive of Mozak and I am supportive of Crocker because that is huge for the city. If we make the policy decision that we discuss that on an annual basis so it freeses up how we look at funding sources, know that I will fight tooth and nail for Mozac and Crocker, because keeping our sciences and our arts is so important for so many, and they help those, especially who may not have the money or funding to go and by us funding that, we are expanding the increase of people being able to realize the importance of arts and sciences and participate. Y'all know, last year it was part of my second grader when she went to Mozac. And you know, the school pays for that and Mozac helps with those costs to make sure that our kids can be part of that. It really is, I will say this now, we got to update our fees and it really, really, really sucks because we are the council, which I will say thank you to my colleagues that are doing this the right way. For eight years, a majority of the fees were not even looked at at raise from 2016 to 2024. That really sucks that we are now having done a study and are having to raise it to justify where had there been an incremental increase, we wouldn't be in this position now. I always look at the balance or the ways that we can still bring in revenue, but we don't harm our seniors. I will echo since I am not on-line ledged that I am fully supportive and have stated that I we should update our business operating tax. It was put in in 1991 and we got to go out to the voters but I'd really like to see it as we call it that we are actually updating our BOT and reducing taxes for small businesses. Because in reality, if we structure this right, that's how you do it. We're not going after small businesses. We're not even going after medium businesses. So let's tell our voters we're actually protecting you and going after our small businesses who are the backbones, who are our families, who are my neighbors. That's who we want to support. And if we're looking at, I don't support necessarily the licenses, but maybe if we put in, it can be adjusted by a small rate or cola. That is normal, then we never have to go back out to the voters. Nor does anybody have to experience a huge increase because it's just set by whatever the consumer price index is. And that you can find in many other things. Question on CalPERS. We saw on the budget that it was mentioned that CalPERS hit the 9% plus investment increase. What is the amount that if they don't reach, it actually ends up costing the city more? So their discount rate is now 6.9%. 6 I'm sorry 6.75% so if their investment 6.8 sorry so if their investment returns are below 6.8% that increases the city's unfunded liability all things being equal and over help reduce it, all things being equal. So what does that actually mean for our bottom line and budget? So it means if the markets go down, our costs for the next 20 years will go up. So thank you, I think, yeah, it's not one time, it's long time. It will get amortized over a 20 year period. But in reality, our cost for PEPRA has gone up significantly, I think, from 39 to 62%. So one of the big changes that's happened over the last decade or so is CalPERS has consistently lowered their discount rate. And when they lower their discount rate, that increases the liability for participating employers like us. So, you know, a decade ago, it was, you know, 100 basis points higher. And as they made those actuarial changes, that shifted, it lowered their risk, right? But it shifted costs onto us. And so we had to pay more. And that gets, again, amortized over a period of time. But we've seen a significant jump, the last five years of what we've had to pay, correct? Out of our general fund. Yeah. We have because CalPERS has taken the good years and used it to buy down the discount rate instead of lowering our consistent contributions. They have over the last few years met their interest earnings assumptions, but they've used that benefit to their benefit and not ours. And then every time they don't make their interest earnings assumption, which I don't think they have in each of the last five years I believe. It does cost us more. When you talk about pepper though, we have been fortunate in that our workforce has shifted from mostly classic employees, which are those hired before 2013 and to mostly now the pepper and employees, it's those who are hired after January 1, 2013. And that has helped us because pepper and employees take on a portion of that additional burden when we don't meet our interest earnings assumption. But there is nevertheless a cost to the city every time that happens. And so yes, our purse costs have never stayed static. And part of that is because when we pay our employees more, it's just straight math. The higher salary multiplies a per's rate. And so our obligation to purse goes up the more we pay people as well. So all things being equal even if they hadn't lost money. If we gave raises it would still cost us more because it bounces off a higher salary. And then that goes to part of circular back to our structural deficit. We've got increased cost of retirement, general liability, things that don't bring in revenue that should be part of this discussion of our structural deficit of how do we know in IT costs have gone through the roof. But we're not matching the increased cost be it through employee raises or just random increase because of the economy, you know, the revenue isn't coming in. So having that as part of the structural deficit, conversation I think is really important. So I'm hoping somebody can help me explain this. In our charter, provision 1-1-1, says that all department offices and agencies are to be part of the budget proposal process. Can Madam City Attorney or somebody explain to me? Does that also mean when you're talking about all department offices and agencies means all of our charter offices as well. I don't have it in front of me, but I'm familiar with it. And so that would mean all departments. And I know the budget defines all departments to include all charter offices. So what, yes. Because the charter provision specifically says all departments offices and agencies. So my understanding, that would mean that all of us have to work together. And I think there's been some confusion at that. So I would like, as we move forward, that we need to create an official process where all charter offices and direct reports are included in their part of the budget development process. And to be part of the discussion of budget cuts because it's set forth in the charter so I need to make sure we as a city so that we comply with the charter are implementing how we can do that so personalities are taken out of it and the positions actually comply with the charter requirements. So it has been asked what can we do to potentially have additional savings, my or with additional cuts. It is important to me that we fully fund our uncertainty fund. And so I would like to have proposed for discussion next week that we also include because I looked at the items that were not included that in the city attorney's office we eliminate the investigator position along with the SNS as well as reduce one of the proposals as they have five senior DCA positions. I would like to reduce two of the five senior to younger positions because there was a been hard to fill and that was an opportunity of how we find additional savings that is listed under two or a new or a new or attorneys. Correct. In the city treasurer eliminate the vacant treasury assistant position.. In the city clerk eliminate the vacant position. Don't hold it open regarding staff assistant for the receptionist. I'd like to hear back from OPSA and our city because one of the things OPSA proposed wasn't viable, but whether that is also if a vacant position comes up eliminating that and the city auditor. I didn't see anything that was really totally viable but whether they look at it and reaching budget cuts at this time for for ongoing. If we are requiring every single one of our city departments to do their part in taking these cuts charter offices did not take cuts next year last year They were not included. They have got to be included this year. We are a one big family and the charter requires us that we all work together. So I think we have got to do it and I'd like to see those positions up for discussion for us as a council to have because were already put forward by the charter offices and therefore we should have that discussion. And if they're all taken that's over $550,000 in additional savings which means more than a million dollars in savings addressing our structural budget deficit next year. Do I like proposing these? No. Are they vacant positions? Yes. And so nobody will be losing their job. I just want to thank everybody for doing this. This is a lot. But I know we're going to have a more robust conversation. But I want to see us find more options of cuts to bring forward that really address our structural deficit because this is going to be twice as hard next year if we are in the same position and don't really address the ongoing structural deficit. Thank you. Thank you. Keltz-Ravene, round two. Thanks, Mayor. I'll keep this short. I just wanted to comment on councilwoman Kaplan's comment when she asked Pete and interim city manager if this proposal was based on council priority and what I heard on record is that the answer is yes. It's based on the council priority workshops that happened. So I just want to also just share on record that I know in September of 26, 23, y'all remember we were at the, was it the safe credit union, was it that? Where we met and we did do in dot, a dot exercise where we were given three dots and we came up with like I think there was like nine priorities, but I just want to share that we actually didn't have additional mayor council follow-up. We didn't vote on the priorities. There were there was no follow-up after that workshop and so So for me right now, I didn't vote on the priorities. There was no follow up after that workshop. And so for me right now, I don't think we have priorities because we never voted on those priorities. We did a workshop. It was a whole bunch of dot exercises and the council never got a follow up. So I just wanted to put that on record. And I also just wanted to, you know, because we have a new mayor now, is that I know that he's been in conversation trying to figure out a budget setting kind of goals priorities. So just wanted to flag that. I know that's something that all of our colleagues have been just kind of talking among ourselves. I see Councillor from District 4 nodding his head as well. He's supportive of that. So just wanted to flag that because that deals with budget and I want to make sure that with the new mayor and council that we actually do a budget setting priorities and we actually do that and we actually vote on it and because we didn't vote on it yet. So I just wanted to put that on record that we don't have priorities actually right now in this moment. So thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor Talimante. Round two. I just real quick. So the charter officers did submit their budget priorities or budget reductions to us, mayor and council at budget audit. The city auditor had one vacancy and told her to not put it on this year's proposed budget because we need to make sure that the audits get done and it's going to impact our team heavily, just going to part with seven or ten. So just FYI, there was direction given ad budget audit and now it's here at council and so there was reasons why. Okay, thank you. So I have a few questions. I have all have several ideas for recommendations. I know some of the council members, which is their right tonight, to lay out some suggestions, but I'll bring those for next week. But just for overarching questions. The first one of these kind of elephant in the room questions that we hear quite often is related to vacancies and the police department. So can I ask our chief to start meandering down to the front? Good evening, Mayor. Hi, thank you, Chief. Yeah, so we heard during public comment a little bit from the council discussion, the issue of the vacancies and this is not a new issue. We have this discussion at prior council meetings. They can maybe tell us in plain English what that would mean if we swept the vacancies and took those savings to address the $44 million budget hole. What that would mean to deployment of resources on a day to day basis. It was brought up that maybe these aren't responding to serious crime or daily basis back off of stuff, but it is a picture what that would mean. Well, in short it would be catastrophic and I don't say that lightly because it's very significant. And I'll explain kind of where we were. I know we had a presentation in March where we talked about our current vacancy situation. And actually there was a request by Council to do an audit over over time. And I'm very much in support of that and I appreciate the Council, you know, recognizing the workload of the city auditor. but we talk about this every year. And while we track it, we monitor it, we make sure that we know how overtime is using down to really the hour and the program code, I think having an independent set of eyes to explain that publicly would be significant. Certainly, I believe, would show that we are using overtime and vacancy savings in a very controlled and judicious manner. We're down to about 735 authorized FTE for sworn. We're filled to about 650 right now. And when you look at our staffing numbers and patrol, for example, we've got 218 people deployed in patrol. When you look at our overtime usage and I talk about overtime because that's really what we use those vacancy savings, those dollars for, the number one user of overtime is our comm center. Our comm center uses about $1.3 million. That's where we are your date if you can believe that. But when you think about the workload we had 64242,000 calls come into a comm center. We just spatched about 200,000 of those calls. And so what that means is our comm center is handling about two thirds of the calls for citizens, community members that are calling for some type of service from our city before they send an officer, before we respond. And so their workload is huge. We're not unique when you look at big cities and you look at dispatch and you look at 911 call centers. You know, a lot of cities face those issues. We lost a lot of employees during the pandemic, especially employees that work in a 24-7 environment. And I know when you look at public safety, we take up a huge chunk of the budget we really do. But we, I think it's difficult and we've had to be careful comparing public safety to other departments because we are the only department along with fire, so all of public safety, where we physically respond 24-7 on the weekends on the holidays. And so you've got triple or quadruple the staff and the cost to provide that level of service. You know, a number of years ago, when we went through the recession, we cut a lot of our big programs, a lot of our big units. You know, we've talked about narcotics enforcement unit. We still don't have narcotics enforcement unit even to this day. Our traffic team is fairly minimal of about eight people. And they do fantastic work. There's been some comments about technology, And you know I'm a huge supporter of technology because I really do think that we can do a better job with less people and we've certainly proven that to be true. We have a public safety camera network that we use and I used an example when we were talking about Prop 36 of our cameras and how the technology has gotten so good that officers were responding to a ring burglar alarm. They pulled up the call on their phone and they were able to see the business was actually being broken into who was doing it and by the time they got there they were actually able to catch the person because they had seen it happen and that's not something that even would have happened a year ago. So when we talk about technology, we talk about the use of overtime. There's certainly an expectation, and not an unreasonable one, from our community, to provide at least a very basic level of service. If you call 911, you want somebody to respond, right? If you need an officer, we need to be there. And even with our use of overtime, we have seen our response time numbers creep up a little bit despite our best efforts. But I also have to credit the men and women of this department. I don't think we talk about that a lot. We've talked about and I very much appreciate trying to preserve people in their jobs that these are real people that make a paycheck and they serve the city. And we've got a city staff of officers, a professional staff work under very difficult conditions. They really I think our success and driving down violent crime has to do with our partnerships with the community but it has to with the talent the passion the drive of our staff. So when you talk about reducing overtime overtime is not an ideal way to staff any department. We all know that. We're paying time and a half for officers to work, and they're working in addition to their regular time. They've already worked 40, 50 hours a week. We're asking them to staff things like when we know we're going to have big events in the downtown area. We had 228 side shows last year. We need to address those. Those are huge public safety hazards. Another big driver of our overtime use is impact. And the impact team works directly with our department of community response. They're a big driver of overtime, but what we do is we want to make sure that we are number one responding and addressing our criminal concerns around the unhoused population and addressing those issues. It's the number one complaint that I hear. I know that you hear as well. And if we don't maintain a level of staffing, what happens is every weekend, if we're not working, those 3-1-1 calls stack up and DCR can't get in front of them. And the callers that are calling and asking for help and for someone to come and address the situation, you know, we're going to go back to where we were a couple of years ago, where it can be weeks before we get out there. And so right now, I think we're doing an excellent job of managing the priorities, finding a good balance of technology and certainly the demands that we have as a city. I definitely have to give credit to our people that volunteer for those jobs and step up for that over time because they don't have to do it right they have I really believe a call to serve this city and we should all very much appreciate that so maybe let me just ask you this in just for the public I ask you the question and you give a very detailed answer, but really was one word answer you said catastrophic catastrophic so if we took swept half of the vacancies, what would that mean for the city of Sacramento? So would that mean for the Com Center? What's your typical time for 911 call? And how would that differ? What would the public see if we, let's say, swept half of the vacancies? Sure. So for theCenter, for example, we have a state mandate that we need to answer, you know, 90% of our 911 calls within 15 seconds. Even with the overtime now, we barely make that. And so, and some months are a little bit less, right? There's really an impact though. I mean, if you're calling 911, you're waiting for minutes while there's something in progress, That's an immediate impact that people feel. What we would do is the same, probably exercise that we did a number of years ago, and we would look. waiting for minutes while there's something in progress, that's an immediate impact that people feel. What we would do is the same, probably exercise that we did a number of years ago, and we would look at where we're going to cut back. And really, it comes down to victim services and what we can provide. So if you're the victim of a violent crime, that crime may not be investigated. If you, right now we have a ton of backfill that we use, which means when we go out and we have shortages in patrol that we bring in people on over time. So you're gonna wait a lot longer for the call. have a ton of backfill that we use, which means when we go out and we have shortages in patrol that we bring people on over time. So you're going to wait a lot longer for the call for someone to show up. Proactivity is certainly going to go down because proactivity is minimized when we have a lot of calls pending we need to get to those and that really inhibits an officer's ability to be proactive and address issues in the community. Then a lot of the things that we do I think some of the council members have talked about these things that are really important and we know they build trust within our community. Those are things that would be limited to and we can certainly provide, you know, unfortunately a long list of those impacts. And so right now, you know, we are, we're for years have, have, haven't seen any changes to our authorized overtime budget. And so what I would, you know, right now we're using our vacancy savings to fill that gap and kind of coming in even right now. So we would have to make some very strategic decisions about what we would not do. Thank you. This is to be to be continued. Thank you. Thank you. So I just had three questions tonight. That was the first one. The next one is on the BOT. I'm in full accord with what Councillor Marcella, Nate Bull and Vang and Kaplan, but just to note, if we did this, this is not to help our budget woes in 25. It will help our budget woes in 26. So 26 or 27. Correct. correct. Exactly. So the budget, on the election in 26 for the year after. So that's not the fantasy right now. But yes, we should get on that. And then I know was mentioned earlier about our youth programs. Yeah, I think our youth programs are core city services and we did our best to protect that. Maybe you can make a clarification, I heard from some of the speakers as well as 1.3 million it's in there, but potentially with the measure L proposed allocation plan is going to come for us for ratification that would wipe out or mitigate that action. So on next Tuesday afternoon, you're going to hear an item with the Measure L commissions recommendations for Measure L funding. I don't believe that this program applied for those funds, so they're not going to be on the list even though they are in eligible use. However, if we have city general funds dedicated to a program that then applied and got funded and freed up those general funds, we could potentially look at using that to fund this for a year and then maybe they could apply for measure L in a following year. So there may be some options depending on Council's action on next Tuesday. Okay. We'll pin that and come back to that. And then lastly, we didn't hear a lot tonight, but I know a lot of the business owners are concerned about some of the fee adjustments, the fire fees, and there'd be a lot of residents upset about the parking proposal if they knew about it but they're not here tonight. But let's focus right here on the fire proposal. Are there any adjustments that we're looking at coming back with? So that's correct. Next week when you hear the fees and charges, fire is going to present an option that addresses some of the concerns that they've heard from you and from the business community. Okay. Thank you. Those are my four questions for this evening and I'll certainly come back with recommendations next week. Further questions or comments on this item? We'll be back. Thank you. Okay. We had the one item that was continued related to the audits of our animal department and we gave the public the opportunity to speak. I believe they all left. I don't see anybody in the back for that. Two are here, okay. We have comments not on the agenda, but if you want to speak specifically on the animal care audit, we'll wait till the room clears and then we'll allow those two people to speak. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. You can't speak in the hot air. Thank you. So members of the public, if you could please exit the room quietly, we still have some business to do this evening. We'd appreciate you leaving quietly. So as the mayor mentioned, the item number 10, the audit of the city of Sacramento's Animal Care Services decision. There is a motion to continue the item by Gara, second by Kaplan. So if you want to speak on this item, you're speaking on the continuation of the item, not the content of the item. And I believe we only have a few speakers, so if you want to come up and then let me know your name so that I can check your speaker slip rather than me calling 30 names. And following that will have matters not on the agenda. Hello, I'm Marlott Chattano, I signed up. I'm grateful for the Sacramento museums. Equity and inclusion is very important and there's a lack of connection to homeless resources through emergency medical services. Madam, you're speaking on audit of the city of Sacramento's animal care services division? No, about the emergency medical services. Okay, please have a seat and we'll do matters not on the agenda after this item. Okay, so no problem. Is there someone else wants to speak on the animal care services division audit? I do thank you, Madam Clerk. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Council members. I'm Jim Halt, the resident of District 7, and I am the former Board President for Friends of Front Street Shelter. I decided not to run again for the Friends Board as my term ended in February, so I'm not speaking tonight for friends. And let me say at the outset, I don't have a quar quarrel with the audits Core recommendation that the city and friends might benefit from a memorandum of understanding However, I was the point person with the contract auditors as they prepared this audit But when I reviewed the audit a few days before last month's budget not a committee meeting I was concerned with most of the conclusions and recommendations as they apply to friends And I would not want my silence in the face of the audit to be viewed as any kind of agreement with the conclusions and recommendations in the audit. I am concerned that most of the conclusions and recommendations are neither supported by the law that the auditor's site nor by the facts that are woefully incomplete. Although I answered questions, the contract auditor's asked, maybe I should have been more proactive in making them aware of the relationship between friends in the city and if so, I apologize. But after seeing the audit, I wrote a letter to the committee to express my concerns. Rather than writing a new letter, I'd refer any Councillor Staff to review the letter if they wish to see my concerns. I'd be happy to forward it to you. As a result of the budget not a committee's vote, the committee directed the city auditor to meet with me to discuss my concerns. We did so and while I continue to have the same concerns with the recommendations and conclusions, I promise to express my thought to the council that many of those conclusions and recommendations were fine for policies internally directed at shelter staff. But in my opinion, and with all due respect, they have no place in an MOU with friends. And let me say thank you for letting me address this tonight. I will not be able to attend next week's meeting. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Do I have any other speakers on continuation of item 10, Mr. Tartigia? I think we've got it. Okay, I guess we're the point of the way. To the mayor and to the council. This is exactly why I say you do not need items not on the agenda to be your last item. There are other concerns that need to place it up at a higher level for exactly what happened tonight. And this happened already four or five times so far this year. But that's what my comment is related to, is with this subject matter, is you need to fundamentally make the shift of getting concerns brought up earlier. So you hear the public comment. That's what this is related to mostly through here and that's why I'm talking, knowing what's going to be talked about. Because like last week that I couldn't make it because I was discussing IHSS with the county, Next week I will have another Tuesday meeting that will be enforced. So I will do my best to try and make some of your discussion, but I have conflicting other meetings like everybody else. That's my public comment related to item 10. Thank you. Do I have additional speakers on the continuation of item 10? One more. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mayor and Council members. My name is Dennis Greenbaum. I am on the board of directors of France of Front Street. I served with Mr. Hout for many years. I'll be very brief. I just want to say that I agree completely with everything Jim said. And I feel very strongly about that. And I'm concerned that about the MOU when that happens and that it is fair to friends of Front Street and doesn't put unfair demands on us to be serving only the shelter. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. I have no additional speakers. I have a motion by Iguera and a second by Kaplan to continue this item until after the Animal Wellbeing Commission. Here's the item. All those in favor? Pardon me, council member Gatta. Thank you very much, Madam Clerk. As everybody is getting ready to vote, I want to make sure one. Yes, I think tomorrow's hearing, I'd like to ask Madam Clerk if you can relate to the commission that if they could discuss some of the concerns that Mr. Jim Halt had talked about about the MOU if the commission could bring back to the council at least a thought and a recommendation on his concern. In the second, I know I heard from some commissioners about a process where the commission could be involved in tracking the implementation of progress as well. So I'd like to see if you could relate to the commission to discuss at least how they would advise the council on that process. So with that, I appreciate everyone here and as a matter of history, I do want to thank a former hornet reached out to me who asked that I and members of the audit committee put this audit Requested and I know it's taken a while, but I'm glad it's it's getting done But I want to make sure that it gets done the right way so that our commission gets a chance at the apple But at the out before it comes to the council and with that I really I respectfully ask the council's vote to postpone this so that the Commission can respond. Thank you. Yes. We just did that. Did we take the vote? We did not. We did not take the vote, though. Yeah, we have a motion and a second. All's in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed to oppositions? Hearing none. 8-0. Flocky-bombs absent. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Yes. We now move on to council comments. Ideas questions in AB 123 reports. Councillor Member Vang. Thank you. Just a few announcements. I just want to give a shout out to the MetaVee farmers market. They did really great for their opening this beginning of this month and just wanted to remind folks that our farmers market is open every Sunday from 9 in the morning to 1 at the MetaVee light rail station. So please come join us and support local entrepreneurs and local urban farmers and yeah the season ends October 26 so you have all year to join and then just a few announcements from my office and direct directly every year since I've been elected in 2020 I've been doing our annual heart and hustle scholarship and these are funds that I raised to provide scholarship to graduating high school seniors in district 8 who's pursuing educational or vocational training It's scholarships worth of a thousand dollars to be rewarded for any young High school senior that lives or go to school in district 8 and so encouraging Students to apply we have two days left and you can get that you can apply for that scholarship at www.hardhousele.org backslash scholarship 2025. And then I also just wanted to share with folks that tomorrow May 14th is the official Mon-American Day actually. But this Saturday we're hosting a regional event. It's an Elk Grove at Elk Grove Regional Park, it's a Sacramento Regional event, happening from 10 to 5 o'clock and just encouraging the community to join us. I just want to say, we didn't get a chance to actually bring the resolution to council because we were really packed this month, so I'm going to do an off agenda resolution, but just want to share that I'm really excited for the 50th anniversary as daughters of Hmong refugees who flood war So many of our residents carry the weight so many of our Hmong residents carry the weight of the war But really carry the hopes and dreams of their parents and so we're going to be celebrating this Saturday and hope that y'all can join us And then, just wanted to announce that we have our state of district eight, save the date, June 28th from 10 to 12. And this year it's gonna happen at the Paneu community center. We do have eight different categories, eight different categories to award amazing community members, artists of the year, community leader of the year, community organization of the year, educator of the year, neighborhood association of the year, small business of the year, community organization of the year, educator of the year, neighborhood association of the year, small business of the year, a youth leader of the year, and then the last award goes to an awesome city staff. This year's theme every year, I always have a theme when I do my state of district eight, and this year is we got us the power of community. So looking forward to the state of district eight and encouraging all my colleagues everyone to join us on June 28th from 10 to 12. Thank you. Council member Maple. All right, thank you, Madam Seaclurk. Just one exciting announcement. I hope that you will come join us. This is coming Saturday at 10.38 a.m. to 2 p.m. That's going to be taking place at Fairgrounds. So that's 425 fairgrounds drive, which is a 5501 Broadway. And myself along with our Mayor Pro Tem, Eric Guerra, and our School Board Chester, Michael Benjamin the second are all partnering together to bring you a community block party and resource fair and adoption day. So a lot of things all at once, we're going to have amazing food We're gonna have resources for the community and we're gonna have free barbecue lunch as well as food for purchase, games, activities for folks of all ages. And you can come look at some of the wonderful pets from Front Street and see if you wanna take your very own pet home. So come join us on Saturday. Thank you. Mayor Patel Mgata. Thank you very much. It is a busy Saturday, this Saturday, May 17th. Let's start off with the garden tour. Come join us out with the Tauho Park and Neighborhood Association from 10 to 3 p.m. There's a garden tour where people are showcasing everything from edible gardens to the amazing Camille is that are grown in Tauho Park. at 10 a.m. and this is with my air quality hat on. The electric bike showcase, I want to thank Marbella Salas with Garland neighborhood association stand from settlement. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 3 7 4 1 May street, Del Paso Highsicle Mobility Hub will be there out in El Paso, as well the e-bike electric bike showcase. On top of that, let's move on to 11 o'clock, just one hour forward at 11 a.m., Mark Twain's PTA and Mark Twain Elementary is having their kids cultural fest from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. It's a fundraising event to create an after school STEM program for Mark Twain Elementary. They're really diving in deep. We started off a while back ago with the after school robotics program, and now we're going big to try to create an after school robotics program. But if you don't have time to be there, then let's go to the Unity Fair, where we're working a supervisor, Rich Desmond. I want to thank his office for an amazing event they're doing with the refugee community over at 2201 Cottageway and this is a great way to help out and connect with all of our different neighbors that have come in and resettled here in Sacramento as well. And then finally, on Sunday at 12 o'clock, I want to do a big shout out to Emily, who is my Met intern, Met High School intern, who has organized the District 6 Multicultural Event Extravaganza. And that is from noon to five, where we'll have multiple different types of performances and singers and arts of different cultural folks at the George Sim Community Center, everything from dancing to martial arts presentations, to singing, to the visual performing arts, all from 12 o'clock to 5 p.m. this Sunday at the George Sim Community Center. And with that, thank you, Madam Clerk, and mayor for these great announcements. Thank you, Councilmember Jennings. Thank you. The trucks and such, this trucks and such series starts this Friday and we'll be collaborating with ACC senior services to make this a monthly tradition and it's a must attend event from May through September on the third Friday of every single month. The fun and food runs from 5 to 8 p.m. at Garsha Bend Park in the Pocket Neighborhood. We encourage you to bring your chairs, blankets, family, and friends, and enjoy the delicious food as well as the wonderful music that we have there. And all the, you get to meet all your neighbors and all your great friends to meet you there. So come on out and have a great time at Trucks and Such, third Friday of every month for the next five months. The address? Trucks and Such, I mean the Garcia Bend Park? The Garcia Bend Park. Garcia Bend Park, which is right on Pocket Road. Garcia bin, well Garcia bin part, some people call it. Garcia. The correct pronunciation is Garcia. And stick around at the end, I'll give you all the information about it, okay? And then finally Curtis Fest, come enjoy a fantastic day out with friends and family at the Curtis Fest, Sunday June the 1st, at the beautiful Curtis Park. You can browse a wide variety of handmade goods, unique gifts from local vendors. Kids can explore the magic of fairy land, filled with fun activities, live music from local bands and grab a bite from the delicious lineup of food trucks. You don't want to miss this lively day of shopping, music, food, and family friendly fun. We'll see you there and more information can be found on my Facebook and Instagram pages. Councillor Mabra Kaplan. Thank you following up, this Saturday, two great events. You can get your yoga exercise coffee and community engagement. All in one. From nine to ten at the North Natomas Regional Park. Come join me. I'll be doing yoga. It's a free class by a gope yoga. I'll be providing coffee and we can do, you can ask me any question you have after you get your exercise in or I guess show up at 10 o'clock after I'm done and you can catch me or get your coffee. Also on Saturday at the North Natomas Regional Park, I am partnering with Lune Marketplace to bring a community centered celebration of healing health and connections and participants can run a walk with R&B music along the route followed with live performances, DJ and mental health resources available for all at the finish line. That starts at 8.30 and runs through noon and then just heads up. The District One Farmers Market starts in a couple weeks on Saturday, May 31st. Every week starting from May through the end of September, we'll have yoga free yoga from 9 to 10 AM. And we are starting our season with nine local farmers and 28 vendors. We are also partnering with Alchemists. So if you're an EBT user, you can double up your money to get $30. So come on out and you can shop fresh food as well as support our vendors. And on opening day activities, we have free seedlings of photo booth, karate demo by karate dojo, live music and other performances. So come out and join us. Thank you, Councilmember Dickinson. Well, thank you. Well, all these are great events, but for those of you who are looking for a bargain, it's time on Saturday for the annual Woodlake Yard Sale, the entire neighborhood, yeah, see? There, we got a bargain shopper out there. So this is a, I know Councilman Getta needs a new box bed springs and mattress, so anything you need, it's going to be right there available. So get there early. I recommend no later than eight for the best selection. And it's the whole neighborhood virtually participates. So come out and enjoy it. People will be out there until they've sold everything. I'm sure. And then speaking of Councilman Gera, he stole my EV event, my EV bike event. So that's Saturday morning, Saturday 10 to 2 at the mobility hub in Del Paso Heights. 3741 Maestreet, you stole my announcement. Thank you. Mayor Patel Mgatta. Thank you, Madam Clerk you. Mayor Patel, thank you. Mayor Patel, thank you. Mayor Patel, thank you. Mayor Patel, thank you. Mayor Patel, thank you. Mayor Patel, thank you. Mayor Patel, thank you. Mayor Patel, thank you. Mayor Patel, thank you. Mayor Patel, thank you. Mayor Patel, thank you. our delegation, Kefra-Kapt-to-Kap, and I was on the air quality team and our team from the City of Sacramento and the county met with the U.S. EPA, the Council Environmental Quality with the White House, as long as with our congressional members on both their quality and land use, and as well with one important meeting we had on Head Start in my role as Vice Chair for CETA and Head Start in avoiding and trying to advocate for the make sure that we keep Head Start funding if not that may would be 4500 families in Sacramento who would be out of childcare which means they would be out of the workforce and unemployment. And then finally we had a great meeting with the Mexican Embassy on California and Sacramento U.S. relations and how much our trade partners in here in California and Sacramento impact with that time frame. So, I appreciate it at the time they're advocating on behalf of Sacramento and fighting for resources to our city. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mayor McCarty. Thank you. Councillor Momer Good, reminder I too had a chance to attend my first captive cap trip in 15 years. 15 years. Great to get back there with 100 plus local leaders including four council members and talking to our congressional delegation. We're with our US senators talking about things nationwide, but focusing on the golden state. So certainly had a great opportunity to advocate for Sacramento and want to report out on that. Thank you. Councilmember Jennings. I too would like to do my AB1234 report and my trip to CAPTACAP Cap and I was on the transportation committee. We had an opportunity to be there from May the 5th through May the 8th. We had an opportunity to go to the federal transportation authority, FTA, as well as go to the White House in order to lobby for resources to bring back to Sacramento for transportation. So I just want to give my report. Councillor Moherty. Councillor Moherty. Councillor Moherty. Councillor Moherty. Councillor Moherty. Councillor Moherty. Councillor Moherty. Councillor Moherty. Councillor Moherty. Councillor Moherty. Councillor Moherty. Councillor Moherty. Councillor Moherty. Councillor Moherty. Councillor Moherty. Councillor Moherty. Councillor Moherty. Councillor Moherty. to Sacramento for transportation. So, just want to give my report. Thank you, Councilmember Kaplan. And I too would like to do maybe one, two, three, four report. I also went to DC and I was part of the water and flood team advocating for future dam up at sites as well as our healthy water riverways and increasing the ground water capacity and how we can be more sustainable here in Sacramento and our region. A lot of good meetings, but it was interesting, so we shall see. Councillor Remember Jennings? Another comment? No, we're good. So we move on to public comments from matters not on the agenda I have seven speakers Robert Copeland Edward Edward Dominance Rosalina domingas. Thank you Rosalina and Kyla Gomez Hi, I would like every seat of council members here and one that took off or night in the room come come up with a plan to improve your district. Like housing, homelessness, jobs. Also, on the previous, I'm not of any agenda earlier today. One of the people said, tenants' rights to council, I agree with that as part of a Sacramento Valley tenants union. Also, if you own the SSI, like a lot of people in Sacramento are, the fair market value is more, for rent is more than what they get on the SSI. So we need more housing being built in Sacramento County. And we're one of of their 28 counties. Jack, the fair market value for housing is more than the SSS. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Edward and Rosa. I believe you guys have been here since two o'clock. Good evening mayor and city council. I'm a Glen Avenue Avenue resident of district 2. There is a DR 2542 plan to build 14 duplexed units on 930 Blaine Avenue. The neighborhood opposes this plan. The Blaine Avenue neighborhood was not aware of this plan application. The city's MMH document is for middle housing behind a current single family home that's blending into existing residential neighborhoods. This plan is not conducive for Blaine Avenue. The plan is also being advertised on a San Francisco website and not Sacramento. The Blaine Avenue is a dead end one lane road open ditch with no sidewalks. Blaine Avenue does not have street lighting. We are currently paying for it. Blaine Avenue does not have public sewage. We are currently paying for it. Each home is on septic. From what I understand, this project has proposed to be hooked up to public sewage and will install street lighting and sidewalks only to that building site. All the rest of the neighborhood will continue without lighting and sidewalks only to that building site while the rest of the neighborhood will continue without lighting sidewalks and public sewage. These units will increase street parking and endanger pedestrians especially in the evening with no lights. In addition to pedestrian danger service vehicles such as garbage pickup, fire trucks, and USPS will have difficulty driving through all the cars parked in the street. No on D or 2540 application. I thank you. And I don't have anything else to add and I made it. Okay, thank you. Thank you for your comments, Edward. And then Kayla Gomez and Jeffrey Tartigia. Hello, everyone. I'll make it simple. First of all, thank you for allowing us to speak and be here. My wife and I are also residents of Blaine Avenue. We are residents as a 20-blaine avenue that Mrs. Lane just spoke of was actually 930 Blaine Avenue, which is the planning, the issue that we're having. Real quickly, my wife and our opposed to it, we've been there for 22 years on the residents. It's a one lane road. As you heard with Mrs. Lane, we have no sewers, we have no lighting. But we love that. That's kind of my wife's thing, we love that. The main priority is safety. It's a small street. Mr. Dickerson, he literally has walked down our street and I thank you for doing that. He knows all small it is. He's actually walked the beat. Well thank you, Mr. Dickerson. But our priority is safety. The children we have elderly on our street. A lot of us are retired already. We've had instances where our fire trucks have actually the district station 19 is just down the street. They have come through there regarding elderly residents and it is concerned that if this project were to go through adding 14 additional homes it may congest the street to an emergency situation so so that's one of our concerns. But it just one of those things, thank you, Mr. Dickerson, again, for attending on a Saturday. You were there last few weeks ago with the Dapasso Heights Community Association, he heard our concerns, and that's what we're here for. We just wanna make sure that we're not left out. We're the last little street I would love to if you have time go to Blaine Avenue it's basically real-indible award and Bell Avenue to give you a coast for proximity but thank you again for hearing us and hopefully this will be downsized and Roger we'd love to hear from anything any any updates thank you sir thank you all thank you. Thank you for your comments Kayla Gomez I don't see Kayla anything, any updates. Thank you, sir. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Kayla Gomez. I don't see Kayla. Jeffrey Tartigia. Do you need the microphone? Let's try it from here. Okay. The lower ones are maybe better. We'll get you. Well, I'll start off with since the mayor's not here, I'm going to direct this to the interim city manager. And that is at least moved comments not on the agenda one forward because if you'd put it before, you all had your speaking about what you were involved with and everything else. It might have had a different impact when I discussed about CAP to CAP of S hearing what the report was about. Also dealing with those tomorrow, the COC board, and me talking to Roger Dickinson of the 55, should we say, individuals that at the I-80 encampment that only five took, you know, apparently took up your offer of vouchers. To fill, I get to say I need to have a conversation with you about dealing with 11th Street that because the parking situation needs to have a disability there, either in front of the city of Secretary of State and for the location that is the annex. There is no disability parking around there. And for Eric, I have to say, is this coming Thursday is when on the assembly floor is going to be AJR3, which is a measure that he is trying to have the assembly and hopefully the rest tell our congressional representatives that please government don't mess with our social security, don't mess with our Medicare, don't miss, and that's just an effort that has been done a time or two before to follow up of things to happen and go on. Now the other thing is because both CalTrans, I hope they gave you more than four days notice about the effort that they were going to remove the encampment because next January, I really want you to go for the COC board telling what is happening for CalTrans and the city police department when they- Thank you for your comments. Thank you for your comments. Your time is complete. I have two more speakers. Susan Alcopp and then Marla Shannon. Good evening, Council. My name is Susan Alcopp. I'm here. I'm here when my school Highland Community Char School came out. I'm pretty sure you guys already know that they're trying to close so many of our sites out. I was just told that I'm not graduating in June. I'm starting to graduate next month because of my peers, my staff, my teachers. We're not going to be able to graduate. Why? Because they're not able, there's nobody there to help teachers, but we need to be taught. Okay? I have 16 year-old grandson. I'm 53 years old. When he gets to my age, will he be denied the same thing as his education? All I'm trying to do is make sure that at least a thousand of us in that more will get our education be able to graduate, makes it the number of ourselves. I am in house. I'm one of the ones that are homeless that goes to school faithfully every day. Every day, my great average is 2.4. When I was a failure in high school, I'm 53 now, I'm going back to get my high school diploma. And I'm pushing for the next month, but I'm not, I'm going to get in January. But you guys can make the decision where the plans go for the school. Don't take our teachers. Do not take our peers. Why? Because we need them. We need them. They said they're there for a paycheck? No, they're not. They're there for us, for our education. To teach us what we need to know, to get better out there in our life. For myself personally, so I could teach my grandson how to live and not to depend on nobody. Do it yourself. That's what I always taught. But you guys can make the difference. Here's how. You'll be hearing some more of us coming out here. Come see our school. I'm right there on Grand Avenue. We love to hear y'all. Let's just see you guys. Come out there and support us. Make sure that dinner goes on to you down. Please, make sure they don't take our education. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Marla Shannon. Marla's our final speaker this evening. We are on the street. We had a hundred million of us in Sacramento, in Sacramento County. There are children on the streets. We had 100 million of us in Sacramento and Sacramento County. There are children on the streets. There are seniors on the streets. There are people all in between families on the streets single. A lot of single people on the street surviving. We have a lack of homeless resources. We don't have food or water most of the time. EBT was a pipe dream. I spent three hours at the benefits center. They never helped me. They helped the fat felons over me. And I have to go back and it was torture. We, the homeless and myself would be grateful if you would open the Sacramento Parks bathrooms. We, the homeless and myself would be grateful if you would provide food and ice water in the parks, the Sacramento City Parks. We, the homeless would be grateful if you would provide warming. It's 50 degrees, whipping up coal at night every night. It may sometimes 40 degrees, believe it or not. And we have nowhere to go, some of us, especially the children. There are children, many of them on the streets who are freezing cold, got hypothermia. They have no food, no resources. Because of my winnings, I pass it along to my kids to the children's receiving home. Besides that, they have nothing else. They rely day to day on fishing with, I've taught them how to fish with dental floss. Thank you for your comments. Your time is complete. Mayor, we've concluded the business of the council this evening. You may adjourn. So we are adjourned at 9.27 p.m. I'm going to put it on the top right corner of the head. I'm going to put it on the top right corner. I'm going to put it on the top right corner. Thank you.